Better low level AI flying/terrain following

My AI wingmen always fly into side of mountains and AI helicopters (particularly ones you have to follow in missions and campaigns) fly into terrain, pull up violently at the last second, then try flying into the mountain again, pulling up violently at the last second again, repeating this over and over again. 1) this makes formation flying dangerous. 2) a 30 minute flight ends up taking 2 hours. This makes helicopter missions and campaigns a boring nightmare to go through.

I have to agree that mainly the chopper AI needs some improvement on this matter

(Hopefully it'll be part of the long awaited for WIP AI improvements)

It's common to lose more allied aircrafts due to mountains than to enemy fire... usually i solve this by making allied flights immortal... otherwise I would lose half of them across the caucasus. Fuel management is the next major problem.... if allied aircrafts won't crash into a mountain, they will still eject while attempting to land (in the usual 3/4 allignment attempts) as they will have finished their fuel. This is just a humorous statement of course, the game itself is the best in its class and i am glad it exists, I just hope it will continue to get better, thanks ED

The fuel consumption problem was that AI has SFM and then when they fly in formation that will consume more fuel than player. And so on and up empty long before player does.

The fix for that would be that when in formation the AI aircraft fuel flow would be set to same as human pilot. So they would at least be in sync for most of the time.

As the AI will follow humans very accurately, it would not be cheating at all.

The fuel consumption problem was that AI has SFM and then when they fly in formation that will consume more fuel than player. And so on and up empty long before player does.

 

The fix for that would be that when in formation the AI aircraft fuel flow would be set to same as human pilot. So they would at least be in sync for most of the time.

 

As the AI will follow humans very accurately, it would not be cheating at all.

The reality is that IRL, human wingmen use more gas than the flight lead. Almost always. Especially inexperienced ones. It's just the nature of formation flying.

The flight lead can set a power setting and not touch the throttle while the wingman is making constant adjustments to stay in position. What makes a good flight lead is the ability to manage the flight's fuel to accomplish the mission without Bingo'ing out early. Frequent fuel checks is the key to see if trends are developing.

From my observation - The primary thing that makes AI wingmen in DCS run out of fuel WAAAY earlier than the human player flight lead is because the AI wingmen do not fly formation correctly and especially don't turn correctly in line abreast formation - which is the normal tactical formation for most situations, whether it be low level or A/A CAP. AI wingmen in DCS don't do "TAC turns" and therefore waste a huge amount of fuel, usually in AB, chasing lead around to get back into formation. If DCS could model Tac turns correctly, AI wingmen would likely have at least 50% more fuel by the time they call bingo.

I would just be happy if they would stop crashing into the sides of mountains as planes or stopping every 10 feet as helicopters.

Certainly. AI does need improvement. If not, playing campaigns is pointless.

I think most need to put a pause on campaigns, especially, campaigns for OLDER planes. Ai needs to be tweaked.