Dev Blog #87: AI: What's Next

[Bert_Foster]

DFLion see my bug post:

https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/3778-f-86a/page/6/#findComment-38577

Edited September 23 by Bert_Foster

[Bert_Foster]

58 minutes ago, DFLion said:

I still think there is an issue with the current Sabre's fuel management which is not properly programmed into the aircraft

See my bug report here:

https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/3778-f-86a/page/6/#findComment-38577

 

 

 

Edited September 23 by Bert_Foster

[Big-Al]

1 hour ago, Steini18778 said:

Is there any chance that AI improvements will make it to IL2 GB?

Nope sadly not. The only thing we can expect is the Bomber DLC & the completion Leningrad/Odessa DLC

[Kaenzdhi]

Good news for AI and improvements.
Will we have an option to get rid of the crappy "fast travel" pop.up.
I am waiting for this to do some career and deciding whether to invest time
in this great simulator.

[actionhank]

16 hours ago, harmless said:

New mission types for career is exciting. I had complained about how almost all missions are concentrated right at the front line which isn't very historical so I'm hopeful expanding on this will open up more of the map for sorties.

Lots of steps in the right direction with this patch and the next ones coming up, I just hope 1C does a good job of getting word out that some of the most major complaints have been addressed. Deck Ops feels like a perfect opportunity to show off the improvements since launch to people who were either on the fence about the game or got it and were disappointed by issues they felt got carried over from GB

This will definitely be a big boost for entertainment! While I do love the ground attack missions, it would be nice to get a little more variety in what we are tasked with.

I know there's only a finite amount of targets to choose from, but it would be cool to get more escort missions for bombers hitting a target, where we have to rendezvous with them at a certain waypoint, and then missions where maybe you get sent in to attack anti-air batteries while you get to watch some bombers or strike aircraft fly in behind your work and start blowing away train tracks.

So far in my campaign, I feel a bit like I'm part of a war, but for the most part, it just kind of feels like it's me and my guys out there running into the enemy. Having other flights and their missions depend on my flight and our success would be a massive jump for the fun factor.

Edit: To add to this, if any of the Devs happen to see this, is there any plan for a possible integration with voice recognition, so that you can just assign a "mic button" to your controls and then hold it and say something like the command you are searching for in the menus, but instead of having to navigate through key combinations, you can just speak it out loud. I know it's something that's possible with some macros and third party software, but it's one aspect of flight sims that I've always really hoped to see someone take on and integrate into the core game.

Edited September 23 by actionhank

[YoYo]

47 minutes ago, Kaenzdhi said:

Will we have an option to get rid of the crappy "fast travel" pop.up.

It’s possible; there are many voices calling for it to be an option rather than the standard. We’ll see in a week.

[Enceladus828]

9 hours ago, Big-Al said:

Nope sadly not. The only thing we can expect is the Bomber DLC & the completion Leningrad/Odessa DLC

Two AI improvements I would want to see in GBs is for all the enemy planes to NOT relentlessly pursue you when you are 5 miles from the airfield at low level and shooting you down is more important than defending the field from another attack, and for planes flying at least 5,000 feet above you over a remote area to abandon their mission and descend to take you down.

[PaperPilot]

It would be nice if Great Battles AI could be improved, but they won't do it. Why? Is the game engine too old? Would there be too much re-coding to the point where it would not be worth doing? 

[Jade_Monkey]

25 minutes ago, PaperPilot said:

It would be nice if Great Battles AI could be improved, but they won't do it. Why? Is the game engine too old? Would there be too much re-coding to the point where it would not be worth doing? 

If you have a secret for infinite time and resources please share

[Leifr]

27 minutes ago, PaperPilot said:

It would be nice if Great Battles AI could be improved, but they won't do it. Why? Is the game engine too old? Would there be too much re-coding to the point where it would not be worth doing? 

Game is almost fifteen years old, it's not worth it any more.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Honestly, after flying in Korea, going back to Great Battles just doesn't cut it anymore.

[Avimimus]

4 hours ago, YoYo said:

It’s possible; there are many voices calling for it to be an option rather than the standard. We’ll see in a week.

I'd like it to pop up a bit earlier 🙂 Or to have two fast travel points...

I do like flying full missions on rare occasions - but part of me remembers very fondly the system in the original Red Baron / Aces series where some types of missions could be broken up into multiple encounters (with time skips in between). It was fun at times.

Honestly, I think a major weakness of the current system is that you have to decide immediately whether you want to time skip or not - it'd be great to be able to close the menu for a bit, and then re-open it if you changed your mind (or if you finished what you were doing). Sometimes, I want to make a strafing pass after dropping my bombs for instance... but I still don't have time that evening to fly all the way home. So, being able to delay the time skip, and then activate it later would be nice.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

2 hours ago, PaperPilot said:

It would be nice if Great Battles AI could be improved, but they won't do it. Why? Is the game engine too old? Would there be too much re-coding to the point where it would not be worth doing? 

Exactly; you got it. It's not feasible to upgrade the old engine anymore.

[Avimimus]

Honestly, it is up to the developers.

Depending on how modular the code is it might be feasible or it might not be feasible to bring some of these features into the older engine.

We don't really know because we don't have the source code, and we also don't have the sales numbers.

That said, I definitely wouldn't expect it.

At a personal level, the sensation of the new flight models is the definitive reason why I tend to use Korea more than Great Battles these days - if there is obsolesce it is mainly due to how magnificent the flight model is. I do wonder if part of that is the new way inputs (e.g. from the joystick) are connected to the flight model... in addition to the increased fidelity overall?

 

[kodamcity]

Thank you for your efforts to improve the AI.

Do you have any plans to add a feature to adjust the chat window transparency?

Also, do you plan to add a feature that allows the camera to rotate 180 degrees to the rear while in the cockpit view?

 

[DFLion]

14 hours ago, Bert_Foster said:

See my bug report here:

https://forum.il2-series.com/topic/3778-f-86a/page/6/#findComment-38577

 

 

 

Thanks, Bert_Foster - you are exactly right about my observations regarding the F-86A fuel management in the game. I am sure the IL-2 team can simulate what actually happens with the Sabre's fuel as it fly's towards 'Mig Alley'. By fixing this situation it will give the Sabre more TOT (Time over target) and enough fuel to get back to base, simulating what happened at the time.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

57 minutes ago, Avimimus said:

Honestly, it is up to the developers.

I don't think it really is, in any reasonable sense of the meaning. In any software development, there comes a point where issues from the past come back to bite you. When that happens, the best course of action often is to start again with the new knowledge you gained. Which is what the Devs are doing. On the other hand, sticking with the old system, means much increased development times, or even the outright impossibility of some intended features. Ultimately, it's up to the management layer of the company, to decide whether or not implementing similar features in an outdated form of the engine, is worth the (usually quite substantial) investment.

1 hour ago, Avimimus said:

Depending on how modular the code is it might be feasible or it might not be feasible to bring some of these features into the older engine.

We don't really know because we don't have the source code, and we also don't have the sales numbers.

That said, I definitely wouldn't expect it.

True - except that we do have their public statements. And those are pretty univocal in that the old code won't be updated.

I worked with the old system a bit, to do funky stuff such as my Nachtjagd campaign with working radar. Some of the issues I spent more than a month on in GB, would be less than a day's worth of work in K. If I can help it, I'm sure not going back.

[Enceladus828]

1 hour ago, Avimimus said:

Depending on how modular the code is it might be feasible or it might not be feasible to bring some of these features into the older engine.

There’s also the thing of getting things to work as intended. In short if it was relatively simple for you to be warned by your wingmen, and possibly your crew, of incoming enemy aircraft this would have been in GBs long ago. Back in 2022 they said this along with you being able to request for help would require a major AI revision.

[YoYo]

I also hope they improve the AI in other respects as well—not just combat and commands.

More than once during my career, I’ve had wingmen collide with each other, for instance, while climbing and forming up. You can suddenly lose not just two aircraft but two pilots as well. It was a lousy experience when an AI pilot crashed into me, the flight leader, while I was climbing, and wrecked my plane. I also had a situation like that once.

Landing is another critical situation; the AI has actually crashed into me even when I had clearance to land and was on the approach. That plane ended up as scrap, luckily, I managed to bail out in time.

I hope these issues get fixed in a patch as well. 👌

Edited September 24 by YoYo

[Jegirs]

2 часа назад, YoYo сказал:

За свою карьеру мне не раз приходилось сталкиваться с ведомыми, например, во время набора высоты и построения в строй. Можно внезапно потерять не только два самолета, но и двух пилотов. Это был ужасный случай, когда пилот с искусственным интеллектом врезался в меня, командира звена, во время набора высоты, и мой самолет разбился. У меня также однажды была подобная ситуация.

Посадка — ещё одна критическая ситуация; искусственный интеллект врезался в меня, даже когда у меня было разрешение на посадку и я находился на подходе. В итоге самолёт превратился в металлолом, к счастью, мне удалось вовремя катапультироваться.

A few weeks ago, maybe in August, when I started a mission in the Il-10 Career Mode, I took off from the parking area as part of a four-aircraft flight. I taxied onto the runway and stopped at the spot where I always stopped... and then my wingman crashed into the back of my aircraft!

I switched to the third-person camera and watched to see what the other two wingmen would do, and they both crashed into each other... I was so disappointed that I ended the sortie and dismissed all three of them that same day.

By the way, I wonder if the ability to write off aircraft will be added to Career Mode? Because in the unit statistics there is a tab showing the number of written-off aircraft, but for now an aircraft only leaves the unit if it is lost in combat.

[MajorMagee]

I agree that write offs should be part of the process.

For example, of the thousands of B-25 that were produced during WW2 only 25% made it to the end of the war. 25% were written off as war weary and no longer maintainable. 25% were lost in operations for a variety of reasons (combat, weather, mechanical failure, accidents, etc.). The last 25% were lost in training accidents!

It's hard for us to realize sometimes that a significant number of operational and training accidents may well be an acceptable reality during a war.

[AndreiTomescu]

4 hours ago, Jegirs said:

I was so disappointed that I ended the sortie and dismissed all three of them that same day.

yep, to avoid this i end mission asap as I land. found no other solution.

if a plane is utterly destroyed, it's written off, otherwise, yo are stuck with it, waiting repairs.

3 hours ago, MajorMagee said:

It's hard for us to realize sometimes that a significant number of operational and training accidents may well be an acceptable reality during a war

well, yes, you are right, and it's a thought that might ease our pain concerning the poor AI performance.

still, imagine same AI on the deck of a carrier. it would be a massacre!

the enemy would just have to wait for victory!!

4 hours ago, Jegirs said:

I was so disappointed that I ended the sortie and dismissed all three of them that same day.

what plane was the career with?

[Jegirs]

4 часа назад, AndreiTomescu сказал:

what plane was the career with?

IL-10

[Jaegermeister]

On 9/23/2026 at 1:05 PM, Kaenzdhi said:

Will we have an option to get rid of the crappy "fast travel" pop.up.
 

From my understanding of how the fast travel mission logic works, removing it from career missions or modifying it to allow an on/off toggle at the beginning of the mission would require a significant rework or complete rewrite of each of the mission templates that allow the time skip feature one by one. It is not hard to do in single missions or scripted campaigns, because they are being started from scratch now.

I will let you draw your own conclusions from that fact since I can't say exactly what will happen, but I do know that there are a large number of mission templates in use at the moment.  

[KC23]

1 hour ago, Jaegermeister said:

From my understanding of how the fast travel mission logic works, removing it from career missions or modifying it to allow an on/off toggle at the beginning of the mission would require a significant rework or complete rewrite of each of the mission templates that allow the time skip feature one by one. It is not hard to do in single missions or scripted campaigns, because they are being started from scratch now.

I will let you draw your own conclusions from that fact since I can't say exactly what will happen, but I do know that there are a large number of mission templates in use at the moment.  

The way modern AI works with code, I'm not sure if it would be that hard.