Trying to get escorts to STAY with their assignment

Howdy,

I am having trouble getting the AI to stick to its assignment.

In this mission, the player (FORD) has to escort Air Force One around Nellis. It is a long and boring mission. A real snoozer that lasts over an hour. However, there are four versions in which something happens. In three out of the four cases, what happens is fairly innocuous, but in all cases, FORD must perform an intercept and merge with a bogey.

To make the intercept process easier, I have included AWACS, and made the bogeys Team RED. However, once they spawn, CHEVY, which is supposed to stick to Air Force One like a D.C. lobbyist, instead breaks off and pursues the bogey with an aim to kill.

My solution was to make the bogeys invisible, but then AWACS does not detect them and won't vector you to them.

So, I'm between a rock-and-a-hard place.

We really need an "invisible to all but AWACS" option.

Any ideas?

I have attached the mission for fun (read: boredom). You can play it if you like! It is otherwise complete. I don't expect the finished product will be popular, since it's not a "shoot 'em up." Still, some might dig the hour of boredom with five minutes of terror thing (in 1 out of 4 permutations).

Thanks!

Presidential Tour.miz

... However, once they spawn, CHEVY, which is supposed to stick to Air Force One like a D.C. lobbyist, instead breaks off and pursues the bogey with an aim to kill.

 

Any ideas?

 

Hi, thanks for sharing the mission ... I believe that the problem may be that Chevy's task is set to CAP ... if you use "Escort" then you will be able to use the Escort Task, like this:

I made the change, but havent tried the mission yet, to see if it indeed fixes the issue :)

Cheers!

Do you expect the escorts to ever have to engage anyone or are they just there as scenery?

If they will never need to engage anyone, you can just delete the CAP action entirely and they won't ever go chasing anyone.

If they may need to protect the AWACS in the mission, changing their task to Escort like Rudel_chw suggested will help. If they're still to aggressive you can add an option to set their engagement distance.

Thank you for the tips.

CHEVY should stay close to Air Force One, unless a bogey closes to within 20nm, then CHEVY is supposed to automatically go Weapons Free.

I created a moving zone and set a trigger to go from Weapons Hold to Weapons Free in the event a red unit comes within that zone. However, the odds of that happening are pretty much zero, since the player should be dealing with the threat long before then.

Therefore, CHEVY is mostly for decoration, but I would like them to have some usefulness. But ultimately, that's just a preference. Worst case, I can lobotomize them and have them follow Air Force One as window-dressing.

I have made the changes described above and will give it a test. I'll report back.

It works!

I think it's ready.

I am attaching the final version here. If any of you wish to give it a test, please go ahead. If you find it boring, do what I did and accelerate time between Hoover Cap and the flyover of Area 51.

THANK YOU!

Presidential Tour.miz

It works!

 

I think it's ready.

 

I am attaching the final version here.

Glad it worked.. I’ve also stumbled on that detail of the ME, that the waypoint actions are filtered acording to the group’s task ... thanks for sharing the mission, will give it a try soon, as I’ve the Civil aircrafts Mod installed :)

I’ve also stumbled on that detail of the ME, that the waypoint actions are filtered acording to the group’s task

Yah. Not just that, but available targets for actions like "attack group" are filtered by task as well. It's really confusing until you figure out what's going on.