Squad mates

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

I feel the urge for a rant tonight.

 

Why doesn't the game accurately report what truly happens to your squad mates? Instead of accurately reporting whether your wing mate was shot down, MIA or KIA, it seems that CFS3 randomly generates outcomes to your squad without any reference to what really happened on your sortie! This really kills the immersion factor, especially if you take pride in taking care of your wingies and like watching their kill tallies grow. This is one part of RB3D I really liked that I wish could be transplanted to OFF.

 

Isn't there any way of accurately keeping track of this? Doesn't the CFS3 engine keep track of the names of your wingmates? If not, is there any way to link the aircraft ID number you see in the AAR's with the names of your mates and so keep track of them that way?

 

This is not a knock on OBD, as it is my understanding that this is a CFS3 game limitation. Even so, it seems a major cock-up on Microsoft's part. How could they design a campaign game that doesn't accurately track the progress of your squad? Am I supposed to win the war all by myself?

 

OFF would be nearly even more perfect if this could be fixed.

 

Okay, I feel better now.

[Olham 164]

Well, that wasn't so much a rant but rather a request for improvement, I'd say,

and I agree. But I had thought, that their kills get also listed? Must check next sortie!

[Von Paulus 8]

But I had thought, that their kills get also listed?

No it doesn't as far as I notice.

That would be nice if possible.

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

I turned on the "kill labels" and noticed that your wingmen ALWAYS have "0 kills" listed for every sortie. even if they've just shot down two planes inside the last 15 minutes! and since the AI wingmen still seem to have the same sort of problem that we have. I may be mistaken-- but it seems like if I mention seeing a wingmen shoot down an enemy in flames that they get their victories confirmed faster. but I don't know if that's something the developers intentionally incorporated into the game or if it was just a lucky coincidence.

 

somebody has created an external program for CFS3 which keeps track of wingman activities... I can't for the life of me remember where to find it right now-- but I've been meaning to see if that would work for OFF... since the in-game action theoretically happens with CFS3.

[Bullethead 12]

Isn't there any way of accurately keeping track of this? Doesn't the CFS3 engine keep track of the names of your wingmates?

 

For lack of anything better at present, you can keep track of this yourself. In your pilot's dosier file there's a list of all your non-historical squaddies. You can tweak their entries to match what happens in your missions.

 

The format seems to be as follows:

 

rank;1stname;surname;kills;claims;status

 

Valid values for the status field seem to be: In Service, On leave, Returning, Injured, Missing, Presumed Dead, and KIA. "Missing" status seems to have a variable attached to it, so that sometimes they come back but usually go through Presumed Dead to KIA. Kills sometimes increase over time as claims go up.

 

This can never be much more than an approximation because, as you mention, it seems impossible to tell who is who from the code numbers shown in the mission replay, and of course a lot of the times you don't see everything they all do. Still, it's a start.

 

Be advised, however, that even doing this, wingmen are still subject to the existing seemingly random death thing. But that's cool with me; I figure they got killed doing test flights between missions, or whatever.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Thank you , Bullethead. So, it seems that the game tracks at least some of the information about what happens to other aircraft during your flight. I guess the question is whether it tracks enough information to help you sort out what happened to whom and then makes that information accessible somewhere in the game files so that an automated program can assemble and display the data for the player. Still doesn't get rid of the random death roll problem, unfortunately.

 

I like your attitude about the random deaths. Still, quite a bit of lazy thinking and programming on Microsoft's part.

[+Polovski 460]

Because CFS3 tracks NONE of it regarding your AI pilots (similar to many sims out there). CFS3 does at least output mission outcomes, which the OFF Manager can use.

 

OFF does however track a lot more (see the mission replay which did not exist in CFS3) and may be possible later to add support for tracking and using all data, all things everywhere always, but right now nope. Don't forget this will also take extra resources to do all these things, writing a lot more data more often to disk blah as you fly, so may have some down sides.

[Von Paulus 8]

Don't forget this will also take extra resources to do all these things, writing a lot more data more often to disk blah as you fly, so may have some down sides.

I see. It's a question of balance.

But it would be nice and would help the immersion.

Thanks for explaining us, Pol.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Von Paulus

[Bullethead 12]

Don't forget this will also take extra resources to do all these things, writing a lot more data more often to disk blah as you fly, so may have some down sides.

 

Yeah, this is a big problem in my job, too. Customers remember games from 20 years ago that provided all sorts of detailed reports so expect the same in new games. And you can't convince them that 1) new games have orders of magnitude more units, bullets, damage states, etc., to track, and 2) old games ran so slowly that you never noticed the slowdown due to write-to-drive operations going on to make the reports, whereas these days you can really see it.

 

So, I'd be perfectly happy with just 1 improvement: in the Mission Review playback, if the airplane in question is from your squadron, show the pilot's name instead of some incomprehensible string of hex digits. That way, I'd be more able to hand-tweak my dossier file to match what happened. I don't care if wingmen continue to die even if they survived my mission--that's entirely realistic.

 

HOWEVER (now talking to customers instead of devs), be warned that if you mark all your wingmen dead who really should be, you will shortly find yourself pretty much alone in the squadron except for the aces who only die on their expiration dates. The rate of wingman attrition in campaign missions rather exceeds their replacement rate, and then on top of this you have the apparently random decision to kill guys off here and there. IMHO, this is all good if you're flying for the Brits in Bloody April, but at other times and places you might thing this rather excessive......

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Thanks for the explanation, Pol. However, I still can't understand how OFF can track AI aircraft position, shots fired, craft downed, etc. if the CFS3 engine doesn't track anything about your AI, as you seemed to indicate in your above post.

 

BH makes a good point and possible suggestion. If there is any way to link the AI pilot name with the ID number in the mission report, then we could at least manually track the fate of our squad mates. I can certainly live with the random deaths--it's easy to die in a war zone, after all!

[catch 81]

I like this idea if it's possible. One does get attached to one's wingman although they all look the bleedin' same to me with their kit on ! But thank God they're willing to take a bullet to save my life which is the main thing. I'd also like to know more about their "missing" status. I'm convinced it's that bloody madamoiselle whatsits with the big front along the Rue de la Colonade that has their attention. But I can't prove it.

[Creaghorn 10]

IMHO real tracking would only make sense with regrouping AI. otherwise BH is right and every 3 days you'll have a new squadron. i also like the nonemission relevant randomness we have now.

the idea of seeing the replay tool with real names would be a great feature so one can changes the lines by himself.

 

in RB3D everything was tracked. good thing is the kills and deaths were there, downside is you had every couple days a new squad, and they made only kills in missions flown with you.

i like the randomness as it is now and the killnumbers increasing in missions where you didn't fly with.

 

maybe only tracking your own squad and leaving AI craft and other "unimportant" things out, e.g. nieuport crashes somewhere 50 miles west from your position and has nothing to do with your mission, or howitzer hits a squirrel 20 miles east of you etc.

that might save recources and all important things would have been tracked. but since i don't know nothing about programming things etc. it's just a thought.

[+Winder 32]

Thanks for the explanation, Pol. However, I still can't understand how OFF can track AI aircraft position, shots fired, craft downed, etc. if the CFS3 engine doesn't track anything about your AI, as you seemed to indicate in your above post.

 

BH makes a good point and possible suggestion. If there is any way to link the AI pilot name with the ID number in the mission report, then we could at least manually track the fate of our squad mates. I can certainly live with the random deaths--it's easy to die in a war zone, after all!

 

 

The fact that we are doing this n replay indicates how much info we have extracted by use of our own code in memory - and for P4 I will be doing more with this OBD info - but CFS3 itself does nowt no replay info nothing - what you are seeing is output of our own code and I will be expanding on this - time is all I need.

 

Cheers

 

WM

[+Polovski 460]

Another consideration - if we track AI perfectly, then we also have to make AI behaviour more human-like (this is pretty damn tricky for ANY sim ;)) otherwise you will not get close to real looking results.

 

Not only fighting but overall decision making in all situations, we'd also then need to have ALL craft types, performances, faults, squads in there in a region, active as they really were and so on to have totally perfect results. But we can do some of these things and get closer.

So on the one hand you gain immersion, on the other you lose some. Many things we have already thought of, are working on, or will do :) as WM says.

[Bullethead 12]

Another consideration - if we track AI perfectly, then we also have to make AI behaviour more human-like (this is pretty damn tricky for ANY sim ;)) otherwise you will not get close to real looking results.

 

That's the reason why manually killing off your downed wingmen results in horrific attrition. With the Historical AI set, you still see planes staying in the fight until it's hopeless for them.

 

Right now, we seem to have an AI that always attacks and then is all death before dishonor (the "aggressive" setting) and an AI that never attacks and if attacked just sits there and gets slaughtered (the other AI, whatever it's called). Neither one buggers off, scarpers, chickens out, pisses off home or otherwise does the Sir Robin. And that's why wingmen die in droves (or would, if their actions were truly tracked) and why human pilots can get so many kills.

 

I would like to see an AI that for attacking has a mixture of the aggressive and passive AIs, sometimes but not always. Then I would like to see most of them run away as soon as they've lost surprise. When you hit them, even with just 1 burst, I'd like to seem them go into a spin for a long way faking death and then, now being at a severe E disadvantage, running away while your attention is focused elsewhere.

 

If you do that, then tracking AI pilot actions might be worth doing. But as it stands now, the only thing that keeps your squadron loss rate at historical levels is that most wingmen shot down in flames minus a wing 20 miles behind the lines miraculously are OK and ready to go on the afternoon mission.

[+Polovski 460]

We know Bullethead - it's been discussed many times. We play too but as you know with all the variables this isn't easy by a long shot making a computer AI behave like humans in all scenarios.

Actually they do bugger off I have seen it many times, even in debug mode we can use, it says they are fleeing, but they fly straight and usually when damaged so slow and cannot avoid getting slaughtered anyway so it defeats the object. If we can improve it we will, we shall see.

[Mr. Lucky 0]

Many good points have been made here. I may try some experimentation combining these ideas with some tempering. The mission results allow that you can assign the pilots in your flights a numeric order and apply them to the numeric order in the mission review as they are in numerical order even though hex. We know that sometimes even though a plane goes down or is destroyed, it doesn't necessarily require the demise of the pilot, so that can be applied by a die roll and delayed return based on distance from the base. Same for behind enemy lines...die roll ...KIA,Captured, or escaped with an appropriate delay. With that I might even overwrite my wingman going on leave every other week. It is still possible that you might be short handed enough that that some missions might be scrubbed. Also, if multiple missions are flown per day, what about pilot fatigue? You could also correct pilots being killed when you saw them return to base with you. Now, if you wanted to take it a step further, you could do the same with airplanes, but destroyed is destroyed and down behind enemy lines is lost. You would quickly run out of planes though, so that might not be feasible.