Design Question

[DWReese]

There is nothing broken, so I did not place this in Tech Support. It may, however, need a little tweaking.

A Hornet, armed with bombs, is set out on a Land Attack Mission with two other Hornets as actual Escorts. The escorts are armed with AARAMs and Sidewiders.

The bombing mission goes as planned, and all three aircraft are now headed home.

On the way home they are suddenly bounced by four Migs. The Migs also have RHM (Alamo) and HSM (Archers).

The Hornets have longer firing missiles and they fire first. Often they kill one of the Migs. Three left, but the Hornets are out of AARAMs. The Hornets continue on their path home.

Now, it's the Migs' turn. they fire their Alamos at long range. The Hornets all go into their evasive maneuver techniques. They Alamos may, or may not, hit one of the Hornets.

Now, all the planes only have HSM left.

The Migs close on the Hornets, and now fire their Archers. The Hornets continue to evasive maneuvers, and possibly get hit (or possibly escape). In any case, some are still alive.

Here is the important part: The Hornets never use their Sidewinders.

Next, the Migs now revert to guns. The Hornets continue to fly home. They do take evasive action, but usually they get shot up and die.

Now, I have noticed that the Hornets will use guns if the opportunity presents itself, but they won't ever elect to go after the Migs with the Sidewinders.

I assume that it has something to do with the Mission being over, and that they are still escorting the Hornet that conducted the bombing attack.

Again, I'm sure that this is working as it is designed, so there is nothing broken. Is there some switch, or something, that could be turned on to make the Hornets go after the Migs, rather than get shot up as escorts? If you send them on their own, without being escorts, they seem to fight back. But, as escorts, they seem to be reluctant to use their Sidewinders.

Hopefully, I explained it well enough. Again, there is nothing broken, so it isn't a Tech Support issue. It is working as it should.

[guanotwozero]

Have you checked the Air-to-air doctrine settings? Look at "Weapon State Pre-Planned" and see if that's preventing use of WVR weapons. I'm currently playing a scenario where Hornets do fire Sidewinders when out of slammers, though they're on AAW missions. I had pre-set the doctrine to use WVR when BVR expended.

[DWReese]

Slammers? For AAW? I haven't done that as of yet. Since a Slammer was for attacking ground targets, I hadn't thought about putting something like that in an Escort role. I have always relegated AAW-equipped units only to Escort missions.

Okay, I just tried it, and it you assign them to be able to hit Targets of Opportunity, then escorts will try to bomb things, and shoot AARAMs. But, after receiving "Mission Over RTB" then seem to cease almost all offensive attacks. I'll play iwth it some more.

Doug

[guanotwozero]

Ah, by slammer I mean the common nickname for AMRAAM, not the SLAM-ER which is a Harpoon variant.

[DWReese]

I understand what you were referring to now.

It seems to be tied to the ESCORT role. By themselves, they work fine, But, the escort role seems to make them vulnerable AFTER they have completed the mission and are RTB. Before that, they work fine. After that, they just fly behind the bomber and essentially just get picked off, one-by-one. (It wasn't a fuel-thing, either.) So, it's definitely by design that they don't want to stop and fight with just Sidewinders. I will play around some more with WRA and the Doctrine to see if I can loosen them up.

[Gunner98]

Doug

I think this behavior is because the AC in escort mode are sticking with the mission they are bound to protect. Dicking with the range they can maneuver within the mission might change things but I doubt it. Also it would be interesting to see what they do on the outbound leg, i.e. before they have the RTB tag on them.

I think in this case as a player I would go offensive and 'U' unassign them from the escort mission and tell them to attack the marauding Migs. Getting the AI to do that might be a bit of a trick.

B

[guanotwozero]

ORIGINAL: Gunner98
Getting the AI to do that might be a bit of a trick.

One way might be for it to internally define a 'protection' area around the escorted flight, and if any enemy enters it the escort behaves like it's on an AAW mission. If BVR weapons are expended it makes sense to go defensive; however it would then be appropriate to go offensive if anything gets within/close to a shorter WVR range.

[DWReese]

Gunner,

They seem to do fine until the point where they get up to cruising speed for the leg back home. before that, they will fight back. But, after that, they are r=essentially sitting ducks. they will evade, and they might shoot guns if the enemy presents itself, but they will not maneuver to fire their Sidewinders. This is sad because planes with guns are shooting them down while they are still carrying missiles. I'm sure that it has to do with the fact that their are still "on an escort mission" as opposed to being free.

Doug

[Gunner98]

@guanotwozero That would generally work if it was a small scenario with only one or two AI missions. Anything larger would be a major PITA

@DWReese, this might be worth requesting the Devs to tweak the behavior but one thing I have done in the past, for different reasons, but would apply here:

Assuming this is a major strike package and not just a single mission:
-Set up an AAW Patrol zone
-As the strike package moves have the RPs for the AAW Patrol jump forward with them
-As they wdr, have the RPs move back as well.

You can use 'unit enters' triggers to act as tripwires and then Lua actions to move the RPs. All goes for crap if you lose all your trigger AC type and then your AAW Ptl doesn't come home, so set a deactivate time as well.

I have done this when I have a major Strike Package moving into a certain area and not enough fighters to provide escorts for all the missions. So the Patrol works as a zone defence around multiple missions

B

[guanotwozero]

I don't mean that the player would have to define them - I'm just suggesting an approach for the AI to take. Effectively it would duplicate what it already does for AAW missions, but with a further refinement for WVR. Even that refinement could be the same as how WVR fighters behave on AAW. The only real 'extra' would be defining the boundary of the protection zone; perhaps that could be user-definable, though with a default.