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Combat Flight Simulator 2 - Part II
By Jim TittleCSIM: Certainly, A.I. has improved over past Sims but nothing is as unpredictable as the human factor. Are there any quantum leaps in A.I. to discuss?
Tucker: I don't really think we honestly could claim any quantum leaps in methods of implementing AI. That is something I hope we can do for future titles, but for this one our goal is simply to maximize the potential of the system we have.
Engine Damage Realism
The basic system for CFS1 was pretty strong, but we had quite a few holes in behaviour, and some notable bugs. We've addressed the bugs - for instance it's very hard to get AI pilots to crash, now - and we've added a bunch of new routines to let the pilots "understand" energy management and to make ground and ship attacks work better.
CSIM: For example, might there be a variety of A.I. skills encountered during one mission?
Tucker: In single and campaign missions, we can set AI skill level by flight. If you are jumped by a single flight of four aircraft, they would all be the same AI level, but we can choose to make that two groups of two, each with a different skill level.
We can also "spawn" AI aircraft so, depending on your what you are doing, the enemies that come to greet you might be rookies or aces. The mission builder, which we use to build both single and campaign missions, allow us a huge variety in how the mission reacts to your performance.
