Main page

If there would be a way to SELECT a particular bot and assign it a particular task that would be awesome. 

(and I mean something more specific than ask for help and get a random response, it would need to be - select an aircraft by class and assign it a task. For example select a heavy fighter to attack a bomber or select a GAA to attack a sector)

In the absence of that the bot AI for ground attack/bombers appears to need a tweak. I'm not sure how the AI decides which sector to target but on occasions where all GAA and bombers are AI controlled I have noticed that it can be impossible to take a rocket base sector because none of your ground attackers show up, (or a bomber may make one ineffective pass then move on to the next sector that takes its interest)

This happens even if you are spamming "Attack Sector" - you already got your response, but the aircraft class that responded will not be capable of killing a ground target and now you won't get another, different bot to respond.

On those maps where there are rocket bases GAA should prioritize these, especially if no human GAA or bombers exist in the team. On those maps where a rocket base and a mine exist then GAA should divide themselves between those sectors. 

Either that or add another ADA heavy to the rocket base and scrap the ground target kill requirement. (probably easier)

For those tempted to say "well, you could just fly a suitable aircraft" - as long as we do not get to select the map and layout in advance and therefore select an appropriate aircraft for the battle this is not possible. 

Generally speaking, nope. Don't expect to see that implemented. For the lack of staff, and also - I strongly suspect - because of the way the bot script was written in the first place.

As far as it was explained, bots do prioritize certain sectors. Therefore bot actions are determined by two factors mainly: what class is the bot, and what sectors are in proximity. LF bots will prioritize garrisons, MRF will flock to airfields, HF/bomber bots will do plants and rocket bases, GAA will prioritize mining plants. That's the general outline, and in many cases bots will respond to Attack Sector order based on those priorities. However they also (and that was a relatively recent change) take into account distance to target; if a bot of an 'appropriate' class is already engaged in a sector it has in high priority list, you will get a response from another of this class that is in range. That's the 'dynamic target selection' (as I believe it was called by the devs works) in practice.

The class priority seem to be the foremost 'consideration' for bots (I was actually thinking of including the following in the Quickstart guide). Because of this, people spamming bots with attack orders at the beginning of a battle are wasting time. Bots have already 'chosen' their targets (which sometimes seems to be pre-scripted, btw - and Alpine map with two plants and two airfields comes to mind), and any response player will get is going to come from a bot that is already headed that way. The prioritization is so prevalent that you can see bots crossing a neutral sector not fitting their list, while on route to a distant sector that is on the list, without engaging any targets and even without reacting to ADA planes attacking it while in transit.

The flexibility you are talking about is partially implemented; if you select Attack for a plant, you will likely get a respond from a bomber or GAA (not guaranteed), but if you select Defend for that plant, it will be one of the fighter classes responding. It's not tweaked, and game's AI is absolutely dumb with plane choices (e.g. I-16 responding to 'attack the bomber' order, when said bomber is a bot He-111 that is afflicted by Icarus syndrome and is trying to break the glass ceiling - oh wait, wrong lingo, we're not talking about social issues here). I agree that this should be refined, because quite often bots that respond to orders are simply not suited for the task; however they still work perfectly fine according to the script and priorities, because they will be of a suitable class AND within range. Part of the issue seems to be the pre-scripted targets in some cases (bots crossing all map for the most distant plant, and dying there immediately because opposing bot HFs are circling above according to their own script).

Like "don't fly over our bases and get inevitably killed over them, u friggin' piece of hasty programming" to allied FW190Ds and P47s?

Or: "get the f*ck out of the freshly capped plant asap u i***t bot" to allied GAAs?

U're right, it would lessen my swearing ratio dramatically

I would also like a command "leave this target alone".

Nothing worse than bot stealing your kill.

I think I see this more often if I have requested support....as well as support bot crashing into me in the fur ball while trying to steal me kill. 

I had figured similar, it would make sense that they use an "aggro" perimeter of some sort to detect enemy aircraft and sectors, therefore if a priority target falls within that zone they will head towards it. This would cause the issue if there is a mine and rocket base on same side of map but the bots spawn slightly closer to the mine.

Have you ever seen the actual scripts? would be interesting to see their parameters. 

Oh sure I've seen them, along with the original recipe for Coca-cola and Freud's personal papers!

Nope, all we have to work with is our observations and snippets of information WG gave on various occasions (like devblog, Q/A or introduction of new features). Most of what we 'know' about mechanics of WoWP is deductions and guesses of the community, based on what we observe in our battles - with a very general, outdated and worded for good PR (not precision of description) context provided by the devs... Quite a few things I talk about are my own observations, verified by confrontation with other veteran players, discussions on Discord and forums.

They are using the best RNG that WG coders could produce !! The same they use for matchmaking ..