I am replying to myself. This question was raised in January and an answer from Indioblack was as follows:
"It is true that often the player aircraft flies perfectly, but the AI have trouble with ground attack.
One of the reasons is that the AI has a different way of controlling the aircraft than the player. The player uses stick and rudder, but the AI uses the trim controls. If the trim settings are tight for the player, the AI has stiff controls and cannot manouevre as well as it needs to. The solution is to slacken off the trim in the airfile, (in AirEd, it is entry 1101, Primary aerodynamics, Pitch Moment - Trim Range. The figure should usually be set around -0.6000), and then make sure the aircraft.cfg trim settings are at 1.00.
The player may now have difficulty performing fine tuning of trim, but the AI wil be able to manouevre spectacularly.

The other factor is to check the settings for Inertia in the airfile (AirEd 1001). If there are no settings, then add some from another aircraft, and then take the figures down in comparison to the ones that appear in the aircraft.cfg.
Lower inertia gives better manouevrability, which is what the ground attack aircraft need to make a pass without being scared of auguring-in. I believe it is this that makes them pull-off without dropping.
It's quite safe to have Moment of Inertia figures in the airfile that are different to the ones in the aircraft.cfg. In CFS2 these particular airfile entries are obeyed by the AI aircraft, whereas the aircraft .cfg entries are obeyed by the player aircraft.

Naturally the other requirements, of arriving at target at the correct speed and altitude, as mentioned above, also have to be met. Plus if you're in the same flight, you need to issue the attack commands at the appropriate moment, so that the AI can actually see the target that you are ordering them to attack.

It's actually a very complex set of parameters that you need to achieve. I wish it was easier. "

Thanks Indio, I will try this and let everyone know.
Tom

Thanks, I see what you mean, I will se if it works. I am beginning to believe nothing will work.
I'll let you know.

Quote:


An important thing to consider is the type of bombers you are using.
Dive bombers will follow and attack a moving ship. Level bombers will not, whatever you do in your mission. They will keep bombing the point their are supposed to, even if the intended ship is no more present.
The way to solve that is to set the ships waypoints to "do not evade" and tune the mission such that the ship is at the place the bomb hits !

The way the AI behaves is in the first hand defined by the category defined in the DP file. there, has been a lot of tests in the community on that topic. A recent post at Simouthouse gave a good summary :
http://www.cfcforums.com/showthread.php?t=17855

Unit_Family
1=fighter
2=bomber
3=vehicle
4=Ground Unit or object
5=boat or ship
7=carrier

Category=
1 - aircraft fighter
2 - aircraft level bomber (B-24, He-111)
3 - aircraft dive bomber (Stuka, Dauntless, Val)
4 - aircraft torpedo bomber (Avenger, TBF)
5 - aircraft tactical bomber (A-20, Ju-88)
6 - aircraft strike (Fw-190F2, A-4; 2-engine nightfighters?)
7 - aircraft civil
8 - aircraft recon (Storch)
9 - aircraft transport (C-47)
10 - aircraft fighter-bomber (any fighter equipped with bombs)

Category codes for non-aircraft objects:
13 - ship aircraft carrier
14 - ship cruiser
15 - ship destroyer
16 - ship submarine
17 - ship battleship
18 - ship patrol
19 - ship auxiliary
21 - tracked vehicle
22 - wheeled vehicle
23 - train car
24 - amphibious vehicle
29 - artillery static
30 - mechanical equipment
31 - structure static
32 - factory
33 - non-target object
34 - runway

Guy

Quote:


That isn't fully correct. B-24 and B-17 performed skip bombing at mast top height in the Pacific with great success.

Guy

Thanks, GuyBoullenger for the info on the dp categories.
I had my own list which I will list tomorrow, I have to dig it out and after a 11 hour day, cannot stay awake long enough to do it tonight, but I will try changeing these settings. The alignment of the waypoint points over the target ships did not get them to drop their dog gone bombs, but it did get them to follow the ships for awhile... oh well, I will keep trying. This mission is historical and will be neat as heck as an early 1940 mission, so I hope I can make it work.
Thanks, Tom

Quote:


If you are looking for an example of how it can work, one of the Milne bay missions involves a flight of B-17 and a flight of RAAF Hudsons bombing two japanese destroyers with success.
To tune the mission, I had to try it and see if the ships were in advance or late versus the bombs, and adjust their speeds such that they meet ! ... and it worked.

Guy

Guys today I tested CFS2 on Bombing runs and here are my conclusions. I have been flying a mission for the INJ mimicking their attack on Sir Lanka in April 1942.

In the mission I escort a group of Kates to the port and back to the carriers. Well the mission went well as I was able to defend the Kates from the swarming Hurricaines sucessfuly, but started to notice that the Kates would not sink any ships no matter what I did.

I tried RabbitHawk method and and still did not fix the problem.

I decided to create  a mission to test how the AI Bombers really work. I flew as a wingman to a formation of AI Kates. I made it as a strike on a small convoy composed of a few destroyers and cargo ships.

The first time I made the ships pawn to close to the bombers and they where almost all shot down before they could execute the bombing attack.

The next time I corrected that by not spawning them at all but by placing the bombers closer to their target.

I also slow the ships speed down some what. The next time the Bombers flew by the ships and keeped on flying.

Now I was getting fustrated and ready to give up.

I decided to change the formation thinking that would help. I change it to Finger four.

Well I decided to stick out and finnish the mission even if the Kates left the area of contact with the enemy.

Well this what happen.
The kates split their formation as they approach the enemy convoy to divert the ships AAA. Then they flew past the convoy and left the area for a few miles away. Then to my surprise they turn around and flew right back into the convoy from different angle.

It seem they where looking for a more effective angle to make their attack more effective. They attacked with gusto strikes where registerd. It looked like the  torpedos just run under the ships.

I was disappointed one more time. Then I realize that the ships I was using where the CFS1 generic ships for use in CFS2.

I soon as change the ships to the one made by the communitty. The mission worked like charm after that.

The moral story of this post is for us to get now the Ai better and  to learn from each other.

I used tips form others in order to acomplish what a wanted.

So the Ai do attack the enemies ships and ground objests you just got to understand it.

I hope we have learn something together.

James007

One thing I did find when I used to write missions for CFS1, was that the correct placing of waypoints was essential for good ground attack runs.

You need three waypoints to make a Bomb run: THE INITIAL POINT, TARGET POINT and EXIT POINT. All three must be in a straight line with each other, same height, same speed. They must also not be too close together, so experimentation will help you come up with a comfortable distance for a smooth run-in to target and exit. I'd set a three-minute run in, with a two-minute run out for starters.

The Initial point gets the aircraft pointing at the target. Between that point and the target, they have time to straighten up their formation and heading. As they pass over the target, they feel no constraint to prepare for a waypoint turn, because the exit waypoint is directly in line with their flightpath, same height, same speed - so they drop with great accuracy.