Hey:

 

After playing the Ultimate edition a few times, I have come to one of two possible conclusions (somewhat related):

1) I suck

or

2) The computer rocks.

 

For example. 3 Flankers vs 6 Tornados. I'm protecting an E-3 and in no mood for playing so I let the Flankers have it: 9 SkyFlashes, or three per flanker on average. The flankers, being the argumentative buggers that they are, answer with four radar missiles themselves. Now to my mind, 3 missiles per aircraft is pretty good odds. Yet somehow the flankers get 100% hit rate and all bar one of my missiles miss, the flankers go off and retreat with a mission well done, drinking Vodka all the way back (no statistics available on landing accidents). Meanwhile the remaining 2(!) Tornados remain on station arguing about budget cuts to missile guidance systems while the E3 decides to call it a day.

 

Another example: Keflavik is annoying me. I decide enough is enough and launch 8 F4-G's with a raven and a fighter escort for good measure. At 70nm's, I let Keflavik have it with a broadside of HARM's. My tactic is to blind then and them lob a tomahawk or two downrange. 32 missiles is an awful lot of missiles. Yet Keflavik survives with not a single hit.

 

A third example. My ships are tootling along, sensors off, no ESM gear. All of a sudden, 10 missiles appear out of nowhere and blow them to kingdom come. No idea where it came from, what happened, anything. Yet when I try the same tactic (sneaking up etc), even the captain's dog detects my submarine.

 

Now presumably the game isn't unbalanced, otherwise this forum would be full of complaints (or is it? I didn't really look...). So that means either I'm a colossal idiot (quite possible) or the AI is insanely hard (quite likely) and is rigged against you (also possible). Or there's a patch that applies military budget cuts and I don't know about it.

 

What am I doing wrong? How do you actually win this game without losing 90% of your fighter fleet and having to use Cobra's in an air to air role?

At least you seem to have a sense of humour about it.

 

What battleset and scenario were you playing?

 

(If you dig around the forums you will find that a few folks do complain of terrible performance against the computer AI (for lack of a better term), while others will give accounts of wiping the floor with the computer AI, and everything in between.)

Hey:

 

After playing the Ultimate edition a few times, I have come to one of two possible conclusions (somewhat related):

1) I suck

or

2) The computer rocks.

 

Yup, that's me... I've run into all of that - and more! (They'd even almost convinced me that my computer is screwed up, but now I see that just ain't true).

 

It's pretty consistent when fighters go head to head, if the computer side's fighters launch missiles agin you, your only chance for survival is if you can "turn and burn" with enough time to get out of range before those missiles hit - 'cause if'n they do reach you, it's pretty much quaranteed that all of your air group will die, right then and there. (Meanwhile, the computer's planes lolley-gag along, my missiles reach them, but then... nothing! The missiles just disappear! No hits, no nuthin'!) It just ain't fair... well, at least not very reasonable. It's especially frustrating when there are no technological differences that the discrepancies could be blamed on - for example, when F-15C's go against F-15C's, with presumably the same missile loads... yet the same unbalanced results - consistently. Leaves me scratching my head...

 

I also have the same difficulty with subs as you've described. I've tried everything from sitting motionless at various depths while waiting for the prey to come within range, to headlong flank-speed charges. Same results: My subs get plastered. And even if I get off a shot or three, they almost always miss widely... while the computer's torps appear to hit nearly 100% of the time. The net result is that I've never had a snowball's chance when trying to play any of those sub-only scenarios.

 

But perhaps the most annoying discrepancy is in regards to the relative effectiveness of SAM and AAA on the computer's side versus the player's side - neither of which does the player have any control over. As you mentioned in your Keflavik example, the player's missiles readily get decimated - as do the player's aircraft that venture too close - yet the player's SAMs and AAA are considerably less effective against the computer's missiles and aircraft. Just the other night, I had a situation where I had an AWACS, guarded by two (or was it three) pairs of F-15C's. A flight of four Flanker B's had set its sights on the AWACS, and had shrugged off all the missiles that my three defending groups had let fly against them (while neatly dispatching all but one of the defender groups)... so, I maneuvered the AWACS so that one of my bases was between the Flankers and my AWACS, hoping that the base's SAMs and AAA would knock off the Flankers - and save the AWACS. Well, the maneuver worked... but the ploy didn't: The Flankers did indeed fly right over the base, and it fired repeatedly against the Flankers - but no hits at all out of at least six volleys of SAMs. (I don't know how to tell whether the AAA fired or not, but nothing hit the Flankers). Darned frustrating!

 

I regularly see this sort of thing as far as the relative effectiveness of the respective sides' SAM and AAA. If I launch, say, 60 Harpoon missiles against a red carrier group, from three or four axes, all the missiles get shot down except for perhaps three or four that get close enough to bring up the hit animation display... only to see the missiles fly harmlessly over the target. This contrasts with the cases where the computer launches, say, 20 missiles against my surface group - and typically only 6-8 get shot down, while the rest achieve a nearly 100% hit rate on my "defenseless" ships. And dittos for computer attacks on my bases.

 

But the weirdest thing about this may be that in scenarios where I can play the other side, then that sides' defenses are equally poor when I play them - so apparently it's not a matter of platform capability, or whatever, that explains this.

 

Other than the damage to my ego - due to getting shellaced all the time - the most aggravating aspect of this is that I can't make any sense of why such discrepancies would be legitimate.

I could be wrong about this but if the programers wanted to go for a realistic (more even win/loss ratios) in air to air battle they may have taken a few steps to even the odds of human vs AI.

 

For years the common tactic for a human when facing ai in air to air is fly in get in range launch and if fire is returned then turn and burn saving your fighters if they can get out of range while the simpleton ai fighters usually just head right for your missiles or engage afterburner and chase after you (heading for your missiles at an even faster speed). While a few human players play it more "realistic" (launch, maybe take some maneuvers but pretty much stay in range or continue heading towards the enemy). now if the designers took the majority of play (turn and burn) and decided to make it more fair they may have programed a decrease in the accuracy of human players air to air missiles while maintaining or increasing the lethality of enemy air to air. Just one possibility but I am not aware if anything was actually done.

 

As far as sub attacks out of the blue happens all the time and if you had all your sensors off if the bugger has you on passive sonar from a few zones away he could have done a bearing launch and popped you, way to tell if it was bearing is if all 10 missiles went after the same ship then unless it was a carrier its about guaranteed it was a bearing only launch.

 

But if the did tweak some things they may have gone too far, time will tell

now if the designers took the majority of play (turn and burn) and decided to make it more fair they may have programed a decrease in the accuracy of human players air to air missiles while maintaining or increasing the lethality of enemy air to air. Just one possibility but I am not aware if anything was actually done.

 

Nope, the player and the computer use the very same weapons pulled out of the database. So the performance values are the same on both sides, with no modifier to boost the AI performance at all. I play a LOT of HCE (as you might imagine) and I just don't have these issues. Yes, sometimes the die roll is really poor and my missiles suck. Sometimes I can't seem to score anything but kills. The odds do balance out, imho, just like real life if you spend any time looking at random probabilities.

 

I could never get anywhere trying to get JoeK to help us nail down his particular issues, so I am hoping that if there are other folks out there who never win their HCE battles, you can be very specific so that we can at least make an attempt to help. Otherwise we're stuck mucking about in generalities.

 

As far as sub attacks out of the blue happens all the time and if you had all your sensors off if the bugger has you on passive sonar from a few zones away he could have done a bearing launch and popped you, way to tell if it was bearing is if all 10 missiles went after the same ship then unless it was a carrier its about guaranteed it was a bearing only launch. But if the did tweak some things they may have gone too far, time will tell

 

No tweaks in favour of one side or another here, either.

Do you remember what missiles the "Flankers" were firing?

 

Sky Flash is a pretty old missile, so that might explain the Tornado stuff.

Do you remember what missiles the "Flankers" were firing? Sky Flash is a pretty old missile, so that might explain the Tornado stuff.

 

I am hoping that Crazedlog will tell us the battleset and scenario, because I have a sneaking suspicion that it was a pre EC2003 battleset and thus using the non-editable, hard coded database. Both Sky Flash and Tornado F3 suck royally in there, and the latter has a pitiful ATA/DATA compared to any version of the Flanker.

 

I am inviting anyone who can attest to similar experiences of consistently getting murdered by the AI, please speak up and give details details details.

 

SHUK, do you get demolished every time you play HCE?

I could never get anywhere trying to get JoeK to help us nail down his particular issues, so I am hoping that if there are other folks out there who never win their HCE battles, you can be very specific so that we can at least make an attempt to help. Otherwise we're stuck mucking about in generalities.

 

As I recall, your answer to my observations was that "nobody else saw them" (so they don't exist). I also sent game saves that consistently showed the same results when I ran them... but you said they worked fine when you tried them. And that was pretty much the extent of it. After that, I pretty much threw up my hands.

 

If I couldn't ever win my HCE battles, I probably would not bother playing - because I'd give up on it out of sheer frustration. The unfortunate truth is that although I can be successful, it is largely because I have to resort to "cheating" in a purist sense, in order to counter the times when the nonsense crops up. I would much prefer to be able to test my tactics under realistic conditions... but, unfortunately, when things start acting weird, it's just not possible to assess the tactics because I can't tell what's real versus what's bogus.

 

As I've said before, my best guess about what's going on is pure speculation because I don't know what's really going on behind the scenes, but my observations tend to suggest the problem has something to do with something getting squirrelly in the system services used by the app - such as the clock or the randomizer - which may only show up in large scenarios or in games that have been run for a long time with many pauses. I get the distinct impression that something tends to become corrupted in these situations.

 

I'll be quick to add that my judgment may be a bit biased due to being colored by past experiences with other apps suffering badly from screw-ups in these system services, and the apparent similarities to the issues here... yet maybe it's still a possibility. The thing that gives me pause is that, if the app does in fact apply the probabilities in the same way to each side, then the theory would not explain why the results seem to be so consistently biased towards the computer's side. In that case, it may still involve a problem with the randomizer, but there would have to be some other factor(s) coming into play as well.

 

Such is the extent of what I can offer to "analyze" the issue from where I sit - yet the observations stand.

 

 

I am hoping that Crazedlog will tell us the battleset and scenario, because I have a sneaking suspicion that it was a pre EC2003 battleset and thus using the non-editable, hard coded database. Both Sky Flash and Tornado F3 suck royally in there, and the latter has a pitiful ATA/DATA compared to any version of the Flanker.

 

That's what I was saying earlier about explaining away the discrepancies as being due to technological differences in the platforms: It doesn't seem to hold true because the effect seems to be consistent across cases involving several different platforms, which presumably have different relative capabilities. For example, F-14, F-15C, F-18, F-2X, F-4, etc. using Phoenix, various AMRAAMs, Sparrows, and AAMs versus various flavors of MiG-29, Su-27, MiG-23, MiG-25, F-15K, etc. using the various long-range missiles that they typically carry. The most telling of these are the cases where F-15C's go against F-15K's where there is near-parity between the platforms and their missiles - at least as compared to the other platforms. The nonsense results - once they start occuring - are fairly consistent in showing a clear bias in favor of the computer side.

As I recall, your answer to my observations was that "nobody else saw them" (so they don't exist). I also sent game saves that consistently showed the same results when I ran them... but you said they worked fine when you tried them. And that was pretty much the extent of it. After that, I pretty much threw up my hands.

 

I don't intend to dive back into that exercise in frustration, but you weren't the only one throwing up your hands, believe me.

 

... I can't tell what's real versus what's bogus.

 

Neither can we, at least not from here. Hard, tangible evidence - something that can form the foundation of a genuine 'bug' - is what we need to discover, firstly, whether something is really wrong, and then, what can be done about it. Without something like that, like I said earlier, we're floundering around in generalities, hunches, impressions and perceptions, and that isn't going to get us anywhere.

 

I get the distinct impression that something tends to become corrupted in these situations.

 

To my knowledge, Tony has never been able to find any evidence of that, and being hands on with the code, he would be in the know.

 

That's what I was saying earlier about explaining away the discrepancies as being due to technological differences in the platforms ...

 

Its not really technological differences, but rather database differences. The hard coded database uses wholly different values in many cases than what you will see in elsewhere. A Sky Flash with a PH of 45 in the old DB can be expected to behave differently than the same missile with a PH of 55 in the new DB.

 

It doesn't seem to hold true because the effect seems to be consistent across cases involving several different platforms, which presumably have different relative capabilities. For example, F-14, F-15C, F-18, F-2X, F-4, etc. using Phoenix, various AMRAAMs, Sparrows, and AAMs versus various flavors of MiG-29, Su-27, MiG-23, MiG-25, F-15K, etc. using the various long-range missiles that they typically carry. The most telling of these are the cases where F-15C's go against F-15K's where there is near-parity between the platforms and their missiles - at least as compared to the other platforms. The nonsense results - once they start occuring - are fairly consistent in showing a clear bias in favor of the computer side.

 

So you see this pattern across all databases, all battlesets and all scenarios, huh? Can anyone else attest to this? Please speak up. This is your invitation.

I'm at work at the moment so I can't say for sure, but it is a set with a scenario in it called "Mine is mine" or very similar, and in the first few scenarios involves the Foch (which dies). The Russians take Keflavik and you have got a whole slew of subs wandering around blowing stuff up.

 

At least you seem to have a sense of humour about it.

 

What battleset and scenario were you playing?

 

(If you dig around the forums you will find that a few folks do complain of terrible performance against the computer AI (for lack of a better term), while others will give accounts of wiping the floor with the computer AI, and everything in between.)

Hey:

 

After playing the Ultimate edition a few times, I have come to one of two possible conclusions (somewhat related):

1) I suck

or

2) The computer rocks.

 

<............................................>

Now presumably the game isn't unbalanced, otherwise this forum would be full of complaints (or is it? I didn't really look...). So that means either I'm a colossal idiot (quite possible) or the AI is insanely hard (quite likely) and is rigged against you (also possible). Or there's a patch that applies military budget cuts and I don't know about it.

 

What am I doing wrong? How do you actually win this game without losing 90% of your fighter fleet and having to use Cobra's in an air to air role?

Hey Thecrazedog, we all start as midshipman and try to work up to admiral. The guys like CV32 will help you heaps if you let them, I know from experience.

For my game play I usually only play from Battlesets EC2003 or newer, they have the editable databases and generally seem to work more realistically. Most of the old scenarios are redone in the newer battlesets anyway. (PS I wouldn't use a skyflash against anything with more than a pop gun to fire back with)

Subs can be killers, make sure you're not going too fast (maybe go down to about 10 knots) and if you've been advised (look at the orders) there are subs about get out lots of ASW aircraft and look for the subs because they are there looking for you.

Make sure you get the hang of how the game drives, start with a walk through scenario, there should be a good one in the westpac battleset (I don't have HUE, still waiting for physical release, but its in HCE so I guess its with HUE).

Then I'd suggest go for scenarios that don't have too many planes, they make it hard work and need you to do lots of micromanagement if you want to have a chance of surviving. If you really think things are going bad for you with out explanation, try the cheat mode (ctrl alt S) for a while and get to see what AI is doing and why its clobbering you, nothing like knowing how the enemy works.

Hope to soon hear things are improving for you, but keep smiling and laughing, one day you might think AI means "absolute idiot"

Don Thomas

I could never get anywhere trying to get JoeK to help us nail down his particular issues, so I am hoping that if there are other folks out there who never win their HCE battles, you can be very specific so that we can at least make an attempt to help. Otherwise we're stuck mucking about in generalities.

 

As I recall, your answer to my observations was that "nobody else saw them" (so they don't exist). I also sent game saves that consistently showed the same results when I ran them... but you said they worked fine when you tried them. And that was pretty much the extent of it. After that, I pretty much threw up my hands.

 

From my perspective it is, "We can't see them or reproduce them therefore we can't do much of anything." I'm not saying you aren't seeing issues but there hasn't been anything provided that we can reasonably work with to identify and remediate the issues.

 

The game definitely has issues and bugs including buffer overflows. Some things do get randomly strange after playing a long time in large scenarios. Closing out of the game and reloading every couple/few hours of play will go a long ways to minimize or eliminate those issues from view.

 

I very much doubt the random number calls specifically are failing for the AI since they are the exact same calls for the player. You would see all hits for both player and AI. You are now suggesting these things only crop up after long sessions of play, is that true?

Neither can we, at least not from here. Hard, tangible evidence - something that can form the foundation of a genuine 'bug' - is what we need to discover, firstly, whether something is really wrong, and then, what can be done about it. Without something like that, like I said earlier, we're floundering around in generalities, hunches, impressions and perceptions, and that isn't going to get us anywhere.

 

Short of sending in my computer (not an option, by the way ), I'm at a loss as far as what I else I can do beyond what we've already attempted. Because the issue has been reported independently, I no longer have that annoying doubt that it might just be something specific to my own installation.

 

Contrary to apparent mis-perceptions, it is not my desire to either bash the game nor disparage the developers. I would very much like to help eliminate this issue - as well as a few others that I've run across. And, for that matter, any others that may exist. That said, it is known that there are some rough spots in the game, and this one happens to be the one that by far causes me the most grief when I'm trying to play. I mean, a simulation that sometimes doesn't provide a resonably realistic portrayal is, well, darned frustrating! Especially if it may be some simple little bug that could be eradicated easily - if we could just isolate it.

 

So you see this pattern across all databases, all battlesets and all scenarios, huh? Can anyone else attest to this? Please speak up. This is your invitation.

 

No, I didn't say that at all. In fact, since the obsolecence of HC Gold, all I've been running is the HCE demo. I can't even create or modify scenarios, or change databases. So, all current reports of the issue are necessarily limited to that demo battleset/database. I have seen the issue manifest at times in many of the scenarios provided with the demo, though... but I can't say that it has turned up in literally all of them. FWIW, I do believe I also saw the same or similar issue occasionally in HC Gold, but very rarely. In the demo, I eventually see it in just about every game.

 

What I was saying there is that I've seen the same issue involving many different platforms - tending to indicate that it isn't something about the particular relative capabilities or characteristics of the platforms that are involved in the encounters. I should add that there are many times when encounters between the same platform types don't produce the problem, but it seems that once it shows up in a game, it tends to be persistent thereafter.

 

I fully realize this isn't "hard evidence"... but, unfortunately, it's all I am able to offer. Those game-saves that I provided awhile back seemed to be pretty solid evidence when I played them, but apparently, they did not produce the issue when you used them. Perhaps that, in itself, is some clue about what's going on?

I'm at work at the moment so I can't say for sure, but it is a set with a scenario in it called "Mine is mine" or very similar, and in the first few scenarios involves the Foch (which dies). The Russians take Keflavik and you have got a whole slew of subs wandering around blowing stuff up.

 

Welcome TheCrazedlog, sorry for the thread insanity

 

HDSIII GIUK aka HDS9 holds the scenario you speak of, "05.0 What's Mine is Mine". Since it isn't an EC2003 or newer battleset it doesn't make full use of game updates and changes but that doesn't mean it can't be a fun play as I'm sure you've found.

 

As a quick test using verion 2009.050 I did the following:

1. Flew 4 x F-15C towards Keflavik.

2. Turned on my radar which led to Red getting an ESM hit on my and vectoring 3 x Su-27 to intercept.

3. Noted that I see the jamming indicator lightning bolt, my F-15 is being actively jammed (logging shows that in this case the jammer is not close enough to reduce the PH of the already miserable Sparrows).

4. Saved the game when Su-27s are just out of range, this is where I'll load the game for reach run.

4. Su-27s launch 6 x AA-10 at me, I reply with 6 x Sparrow 10 game seconds later and continue closing at cruise, mediaum altitude. Why did I wait 10 seconds... because I'm at the extreme edge of Sparrow range and I know the Su-27s are going to do the jink next. If I hadn't made sure I was well within range the Sparrows would have fell out of the air without hitting after exhausting their range.

5. The Su-27s do a jink away as they detect my missile launch in an attempt to throw off the Sparrows.

6. Bam bam bam

 

Me playing Blue (numbers are losses):

1st run: 4 x F-15, 2 x Su-27

2nd run: 0 x F-15, 1 x Su-27

3rd run: 1 x F-15, 0 x Su-27

4th run: 1 x F-15, 1 x Su-27

5th run: 2 x F-15, 2 x Su-27

6th run: 1 x F-15, 1 x Su-27

 

Now most players will shoot and scoot instead of plodding right into the Red missiles but I think this is a fair indication that the game isn't intentionally favoring the AI in fairly equal air to air engagements (AAMs both 40% PH, planes both large).

 

Please let us know what you continue to find.

From my perspective it is, "We can't see them or reproduce them therefore we can't do much of anything." I'm not saying you aren't seeing issues but there hasn't been anything provided that we can reasonably work with to identify and remediate the issues.

 

The game definitely has issues and bugs including buffer overflows. Some things do get randomly strange after playing a long time in large scenarios. Closing out of the game and reloading every couple/few hours of play will go a long ways to minimize or eliminate those issues from view.

 

I very much doubt the random number calls specifically are failing for the AI since they are the exact same calls for the player. You would see all hits for both player and AI. You are now suggesting these things only crop up after long sessions of play, is that true?

 

I have tried re-loading the game in a number of cases, but it does not seem to remedy the situation. It appears that whatever is going on somehow gets saved with the game-save, and the issue comes right back with the re-load. (I've tried both re-loading within the session, and re-loading after closing out entirely and re-starting the app... doesn't seem to make much difference). My guess would be that something gets corrupted within the data that the save file stores, so it just gets loaded back again, and goes on its merry way.

 

Yes, the effect seems to be highly biased "in favor of" the AI side, where I see hit percentages approaching 100% for the AI while approaching 0% for the player's side. I agree that it is not likely due to a failure of the randomizer alone, since there would have to be something that caused the bias - unless it is simply an artifact of the order that the randomizer gets applied. If the random values are applied exactly the same way for both sides, then it's certanly a puzzle - and one that tends to point elsewhere for a cause. I guess I've experienced so much ill at the hands of the randomizer functions that I tend to suspect them of being behind most all problems...

 

Generally speaking, I do not see the effect until the game has been running for awhile. Yet, I recall a handful of cases where it showed up almost right out of the gate. I can't say whether there is any correlation between the number of pauses and the onset of the effect, and consequently I can't tell if there is any relationship to raw run time. I would tend to suspect that size of the scenario and/or the amount of "action" that has transpired in a game are in direct proportion to the probability of seeing the problem.

 

A possible issue specific to my machine is memory shortage. I typically have a number of apps running concurrently with HCE, and there tends to be a lot of swapping at times when HCE is in the background. Supposedly, this shouldn't screw anything up, but...???