The latest update for Korea IL-2 Series, update 1.004, touts some significant updates to the combat AI system. It is infact the first time in years that we’ve seen anything in the IL-2 series attempt to tackle its AI in any meaningful way. The community has been asking for it and we’ve finally got our first steps on the process to a more interesting and capable combat AI system. Does it meet expectations? Is it enough? These are my first impressions of how things are looking so far with several hours of hands on flying.

The AI conundrum

The AI in IL-2 Sturmovik Great Battles Series and in the follow-up Korea IL-2 Series has been lacklustre. It was competent in some aspects but in others it was largely a disappointment offering little challenge to experienced combat flight simmers.

Despite the problems that the AI has had over the last decade plus, there are also some things that I really appreciate about it. With Great Battles and now with IL-2 Series, the AI flies using the same flight model and engine restrictions that the player does. That means that they are affected by engine overheating, by the wind and weather conditions, and they are limited to the performance that their respective airplane can offer. You can do what they can do and they can do what you can do. I give the series creators a lot of kudos for going that direction because it probably wasn’t the easiest route to take. It did come with some maximum AI running at once CPU limitations (and that’s a whole other subject) but I think the goal was laudable.

Other sims, IL-2 1946, IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, and DCS World notably have AI that flies by their own rules. That often leads to under or overperforming AI that aren’t bound by the same restrictions or restraints that you as the player have. In many instances, they can out-roll you, out-climb you, and out-perform you. This makes them challenging but in an unrealistic way.

I’ve experienced a fair bit of frustration over the years playing DCS WWII scenarios or IL-2 1946 scenarios where the AI flat out does things that you can’t do. That hurts immersion and I was never satisfied with that experience. The benefit of this system was that you could run more AI at once, creating bigger battles, and that certainly holds some of its own appeal but not quite enough to override the sense that the AI just wasn’t playing in the same sandbox that you were.

So we have two different solutions for AI systems at play across the industry, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. None of them, of course, offer the truly unique challenge that is flying against human players online but having offline AI experiences are still important as many folks are single player only oriented.

With all of that in mind, we’ve seen the first of what are supposed to be several substantial updates to the AI in Korea IL-2 Series. They’ve maintained the underlying technology but at the same time they’ve given their AI flyers a new bag of tricks. I wondered if it would be noticeable or enjoyable to see in action. Turns out, it is noticeable!

It has changed, no doubt about it

My first several hours with IL-2 Series Korea following the release of update 1.004 has been to put myself into different scenarios and see where the AI had changed. I was keen to see if I’d even notice the difference. I’m pleased to report that I have seen quite a bit of difference!

One of the first was when flying my MiG-15bis in my ongoing Squadron Commander career mode. I pulled in behind an F-86 during a bomber intercept mission and was ready employ my usual tactic of sniping them at range. The AI, previous to this update, would likely have noticed my approach and made a lazy turn to the left or right. This new AI? It performed a hard roll over into a split-S maneuver! That really wowed me. That fight lasted several minutes of move and counter move before I got my guns on the Sabre. In the middle part of the fight, he nearly got a reversal on me too. That used to be much more rare. Already feeling more challenging and more real feeling than previously.

Flying an F-51D on an transport escort mission against attacking Yak-9Ps, I saw an AI pull a tight combat turn, pull in behind one of my wingmates, fire and score hits, before noticing my attack and pulling yet another tight combat turn to get away from my gunsight. The turn was a proper break into the attack maneuver that you’d expect as a defensive move. The whole experience was much more fluid than I’m used to seeing from the AI.

In yet another fight, I saw several AI flown MiG-15bis performing break turns, do two Split S turns back to back, and then punch into a negative G push when I was starting to pull lead on them after a prolonged chase. A well time negative G push from an AI…? Ok! I’m here for it!

Something else I noticed was the AI disengaging from a fight. In at least two of my missions, the AI seemed to collectively decide that it was time to head home and managed to get away in a sensible manner. That was nice to see as well!

They aren’t perfect in their moves but I have the feeling that the AI, especially at higher skill levels, is now performing more or less good textbook aerobatic defensive moves that they should be doing in the situation. Better still, they seem to be doing them much more fluidly in the middle of a fight too. I’m not sure what other tricks they may yet have and I would like to still see some slightly more desperate moves when things get dicey. That could still come in time but I’m impressed with the change so far.

For now, the noticeable changes seem to be almost entirely in the defensive maneuvring though some terrain avoidance work has also been done too. To be fair, that’s exactly what the developer diary and patch notes were talking about for this first update.

There are still some issues that I’ve run into over the last several hours too. I’m still seeing the AI occasionally screwing up formations and crashing into each other. In one example, several F-80Cs in my flight managed to clip wingtips while rolling in for an attack run on some IL-10s. Whoops! Formation keeping still needs some work.

I also did see at least one MiG-15bis perform a Split S at too low of an altitude and fail to pull out before hitting a hilltop. I haven’t seen it happen more than the one time so far so it may well be an isolated incident caused by battle damage, G-fatigue or simply that the AI isn’t great at judging the pull out distances over varied terrain. Frankly, I’ve seen human players do the same thing online and it surely happened in real life as well.

In many senses, I want to see the AI make the same mistakes and do things wrong too because we aren’t trying to make the AI a super combat AI but rather simulate the reactions of a human. We’ll have to see how much of that is at play over more extended sessions.

Iterative progress is good, but we’re not at the end of the road

We’ve just seen the first big jump in AI effectiveness for Korea IL-2 Series. It’s the biggest change since the series started under 1CGS back nearly 15 years ago. Perhaps the biggest in the last decade! While I share the collective frustration in the community around the AI not living up to expectations over that time nor Korea IL-2 Series tackling it before launch, I’m still very glad that we’re finally moving forward on this side of things.

1CGS reports that they are doing more work in this space. If this first big change represents the start of a process to further improve all aspects of how the single player AI operate then I see great things coming in the future. If they were to stop here, in this moment, I don’t think I’d be as optimistic. But that doesn’t seem to be what is planned and so I feel pretty good about this as a starting move.

If we see more work done in defensive and offensive maneuvring and more effort into the AI in general, IL-2 Series may turn a historic weak spot into a strong spot. We’ll need to see how they are able to improve on things over time. I’d love to see the AI work better as wingman/wingleader pairs, I’d like to see them better judge the strategic situation around them, and I’d like to giving the AI more strategic sense of the air battle unfolding around them and maneuvring appropriately.

For now, we’ve seen a very good first step. More of this please!