how do i stop my fighters following contact outside patrol area?

[cato12]

I have the investigate contacts outside patrol area unticked yet my fighters still follow bogies all over the map.

how do I restrict my planes to their patrol areas?

[cato12]

I now have ignore plotted course when engaging ticked yet my places still follow contacts outside their patrol area.

ps

annoyingly this option is always on by default whenever I launch aircraft. if there no way to have it switched off by default?

[Dimitris]

Hello,

Please provide a suitable save file when reporting a potential issue. Without a save file it is usually impossible for the dev team to precisely reproduce the conditions of what you are experiencing.

Thanks!

[cato12]

ok here is the save. you can clearly see my patrol aircraft chasing contacts well outside the patrol area.

[Tomcat84]

Trying to figure out what is going on exactly. I think maybe the main cause of your issue is that, a fighter will patrol its area, and then a potential target flies through the area, the plane starts to try and investigate him, if the potential target leaves the area again, the friendly continues to try and hunt him down because the target "tripped" the engagement by flying through the area and even though he is out of it now your fighter tries to finish it, make sense?

If you do not want that, add a prosecution area to the mission! In the bottom right in the mission editor screen for the patrol, click prosecution area and add the same four RPs, now, when the target leaves the area, the fighter will drop him, make sense?

You can also use this functionality to put the planes in a center patrol axis (for example 2 RPs) where they patrol back and forth, and then add a prosecution area to determine how far out they might roam to engage people. Note that if you use this last functionality (e.g. a prosecution area that is DIFFERENT from the patrol area) you must ENABLE investigate contacts outside patrol area. But dont worry, they will not go farther than the prosection area you have set.

Let me know if you have any more trouble or need more tips on this!

To answer your last question about disabling Ignore plotted course when attacking for everybody: if you select a unit, right click him, go to attack options, then click Ignore plotted course when attacking - all units.

First time you do it it will enable for all units, if you click it again, it will disable. Any units that launch later should also go with this global setting.

One word of warning: if you disable this setting (so they do NOT ignore plotted course when attacking) then any unit that is on a patrol may be delayed in attacking, because when a unit is patrolling it always plots a course for itself in the patrol area. Now with this setting, even if an enemy enters the patrol area, the unit will still fly to the end of its plotted current patrol leg before turning to intercept. If it has weapons that are within range and boresight limits it will already start shooting, but if the enemy enters the patrol area from behind your fighter it will finis its patrol leg first and then turn. So you will have to keep an eye on if this is an issue. Make sense?

If any of this is not clear, feel free to ask and I will explain with images or video as needed.