Rescue Helo-Carrier Formation 24/7

Okay, little progress update on the tanker. I attached a Tacview track (had to zip it again, because you cannot upload Tacview acmi files directly).

We have :)

• The rescue helo as before.
  
• An S-3B Viking taking off from the Stennis and orbiting a racetrack pattern, counter clockwise at 250 kts and Angels 6 (Say hello to your new master, Ed ;))
  
• An E-2D Hawkeye taking off from the Stennis and flying a circular orbit over the boat at Angels 20.
  
• Some speedboads spawned at the tail of the Stennis and going in formation. Why? Because someone asked me, if that is possible.
  

So, the orbits of the tanker and AWACS are updated every 20 minutes to align with the Stennis. For that, a new waypoint needs to be created. This leads to a bit of a disruption in the perfect racetrack pattern of the tanker. Also, whenever the Stennis changes its course, it needs a bit of time until the new pattern is established.

DCS bugs :cry:

• All fixed wing aircraft must leave the boat before the helo. Once the helo takes off, the other aircraft will start their engines but will not take off. This is not a scripting problem. You can make a simple mission, place a helo and an F/A-18 AI on the boat. The helo will take off, the Hornet will spool up its engine but not take off.
  
• Unfortunately, the above also leads to the issue, that when the tanker or AWACS run out of fuel, they will return to the Stennis but not take off again and go back on station. In principle, the script would do that.
  
• At the very end of the track (nearl 4 hours) you can see that the rescue helo will not return to the Stennis when it is out of fuel. It has done this several times successfully. The only difference I see, is that meanwhile the Hawkeye has anded on the Stennis because it was out of fuel.
  
• Found a funny thing, when you set the fuel of the Viking to 50% or less and the Stennis is moving:
  
  
  

Tacview-20181028-112928-DCS-HeloFormation.zip.acmi.zip

Great news, looking forward to flying with it!

Now on to the Air Traffic issue...

I've had a little time to troubleshoot it, and I've narrowed it down to the Liveries. As soon as I have 3 or more liveries available to an Airliner using RAT in Moose, the SH-60 lands straight away. With 2, no problem!

I'll post up the find in the MOOSE discord support channels, but I appreciate the help trying to find the root cause.

All fixed wing aircraft must leave the boat before the helo. Once the helo takes off, the other aircraft will start their engines but will not take off. This is not a scripting problem. You can make a simple mission, place a helo and an F/A-18 AI on the boat. The helo will take off, the Hornet will spool up its engine but not take off.

It might be cheating, but how about spawning the helo from the frigate escorts that must be set at a fixed position with the Carrier?

It might be cheating, but how about spawning the helo from the frigate escorts that must be set at a fixed position with the Carrier?

Stennis is WIP. So we need to work around issues sometimes. I like the idea! I'll test if it works. I don't know where the helo goes when it is out of fuel. Usually to the nearest "airbase" which would be the Stennis. Might need a bit of tweaking etc.

Today I found out, that this script (which is really awesome btw!!!) does not work with Alerax's LSO script (which is also awesome btw!!!) due to the specific "unit name"/"carrier name" requirements.

Could you mr. funkyfranky and mr. Alerax please communicate with each other to make these two scripts work simultaneously?!:music_whistling:

Today I found out, that this script (which is really awesome btw!!!) does not work with Alerax's LSO script (which is also awesome btw!!!) due to the specific "unit name"/"carrier name" requirements.

Could you mr. funkyfranky and mr. Alerax please communicate with each other to make these two scripts work simultaneously?!:music_whistling:

Yeah, I saw the script by Alerax and it is great indeed.

In my script, you only have to change a single line, if you want to adjust the carrier unit name. Look for

-- Carrier UNIT name as set in the ME. 
local CarrierUnitName="[b]USS Stennis[/b]"

and change it to the carrier name that is used in Alerax's script.

Yeah, I saw the script by Alerax and it is great indeed.

 

In my script, you only have to change a single line, if you want to adjust the carrier unit name. Look for

-- Carrier UNIT name as set in the ME. 
local CarrierUnitName="[b]USS Stennis[/b]"

and change it to the carrier name that is used in Alerax's script.

Thanks a lot, Sir!!!

Working like a charm now! :)

 

Great news, looking forward to flying with it!

 

Now on to the Air Traffic issue...

 

I've had a little time to troubleshoot it, and I've narrowed it down to the Liveries. As soon as I have 3 or more liveries available to an Airliner using RAT in Moose, the SH-60 lands straight away. With 2, no problem!

 

I'll post up the find in the MOOSE discord support channels, but I appreciate the help trying to find the root cause.

I have the same problems on PG you reported already.

My SAR Helo will takeoff, fly away from the ship and than lands again.

After that it's parked on the carrier and there is no respawn.

I am using RAT too and tried your fix with reducing the liveries, but without luck.

Is it ok to run different scripts and mission start like a RAT file and the Rescue Helo Skript or should it be one file?

Is the carrier tied into your RAT? i.e are aircraft set to land/takeoff from there. I have run into AI issues, which i have put down to the AI cannot handle mutiple aircraft trying to land/takeoff which leads to aircraft just becoming stuck on the deck.

I fear this is beyond the control of MOOSE and is something that needs to be improved in the engine, before we can start doing more complex air traffic off the carrier.

No, I only placed some static Hornets, Tomcats and Navy personal on the deck. There is no RAT generated airtraffic on the carrier yet.

Here is my current RAT script

--Creating RAT objects

local c130=RAT:New("RAT-C130")
c130:SetDeparture("Al Dhafra AB", "Al Maktoum Intl", "Al Minhad AB", "Sharjah Intl", "Fujairah Intl")
c130:ATC_Messages(false)
c130:StatusReports(false)
c130:Spawn(2)


local f15c=RAT:New("RAT-F15")
f15c:SetDeparture("Al Dhafra AB", "Al Maktoum Intl", "Al Minhad AB", "Sharjah Intl", "Khasab", "Fujairah Intl")
f15c:ATC_Messages(false)
f15c:StatusReports(false)
f15c:SetSpawnInterval(180)
f15c:Spawn(3)

local c17=RAT:New("RAT-C17")
c17:SetDeparture("Dubai Intl")
c17:StatusReports(false)
c17:ATC_Messages(false)
c17:Spawn(1)

--Activate uncontrolled planes at Al Minhad AB

local hornet=RAT:New("RAT_Hornet", "Hornet Al Minhad AB")
hornet:SetDeparture("Al Minhad AB")
hornet:SetDestination("Al Dhafra AB", "Al Maktoum Intl", "Al Minhad AB", "Sharjah Intl", "Khasab", "Fujairah Intl")
hornet:ATC_Messages(false)
hornet:StatusReports(false)
hornet:SetSpawnDelay(6)
hornet:SetSpawnInterval(0.5)
hornet:Uncontrolled()
hornet:ActivateUncontrolled(30, 120, 120, 0.5)
hornet:ContinueJourney()
hornet:Spawn(10)

local warthog=RAT:New("RAT_A10", "A10 Al Minhad AB")
warthog:SetDeparture("Al Minhad AB")
warthog:SetDestination("Al Dhafra AB", "Al Maktoum Intl", "Al Minhad AB", "Sharjah Intl", "Khasab", "Fujairah Intl")
warthog:ATC_Messages(false)
warthog:StatusReports(false)
warthog:SetSpawnDelay(2)
warthog:SetSpawnInterval(0.5)
warthog:Uncontrolled()
warthog:ActivateUncontrolled(360, 420, 420, 0.5)
warthog:ContinueJourney()
warthog:Spawn(5)

--Dubai Intl Outbound traffic

local b737skins={"Air Berlin", "American_Airlines"}
local b737=RAT:New("RAT_B737", "B737 Outbound")
b737:SetDeparture("Dubai Intl")
b737:SetDestination("RAT Zone")
b737:Livery(b737skins)
b737:SetMaxRespawnTriedWhenSpawnedOnRunway(0)
b737:StatusReports(false)
b737:SetSpawnDelay(320)
b737:SetSpawnInterval(20)
b737:SetTakeoff("hot")
b737:RespawnInAirNotAllowed()
b737:RespawnAfterTakeoff()
b737:Spawn(2)

local a380skins={"Air France", "Emirates"}
local a380=RAT:New("RAT_A380", "A380 Outbound")
a380:SetDeparture("Dubai Intl")
a380:SetDestination("RAT Zone")
a380:Livery(a380skins)
a380:SetMaxRespawnTriedWhenSpawnedOnRunway(0)
a380:StatusReports(false)
a380:SetSpawnDelay(120)
a380:SetSpawnInterval(10)
a380:SetTakeoff("cold")
a380:RespawnInAirNotAllowed()
a380:RespawnAfterTakeoff()
a380:Spawn(2)

local b757skins={"Delta", "DHL"}
local b757=RAT:New("RAT_B757", "B757 Outbound")
b757:SetDeparture("Dubai Intl")
b757:SetDestination("RAT Zone")
b757:Livery(b757skins)
b757:SetMaxRespawnTriedWhenSpawnedOnRunway(0)
b757:StatusReports(false)
b757:SetSpawnDelay(180)
b757:SetSpawnInterval(10)
b757:SetTakeoff("cold")
b757:RespawnInAirNotAllowed()
b757:RespawnAfterTakeoff()
b757:Spawn(2)

--High Level Transit west-east

local yak_westeast=RAT:New("YAK West-East")
yak_westeast:SetSpawnDelay(30)
yak_westeast:SetSpawnInterval(120)
yak_westeast:SetTakeoff("air") 
yak_westeast:DestinationZone()
yak_westeast:SetDeparture({"Zone West", "Zone East"})
yak_westeast:SetDestination({"Zone West", "Zone East"})
yak_westeast:SetFLmin(300)
yak_westeast:SetFLcruise(310)
yak_westeast:SetFLmax(320)
yak_westeast:Spawn(3)

Tried to use only parts of the above but without luck. There has to be something really wrong.

I have the same problems on PG you reported already.

My SAR Helo will takeoff, fly away from the ship and than lands again.

After that it's parked on the carrier and there is no respawn.

I'm still having issues with this too and I get inconsistent results which are very frustrating when trying to troubleshoot the problem.

First place to check is the DCS.log in your Saved Games folder and look for any script errors in there, and resolve those. Best way to do that is to reduce the number of aircraft spawned by the RAT scripts and gradually increase them, resolving each error as you find them. I found a couple of errors to do with Liveries primarily which is what I advised to be the primary issue. Since then, however, much as you have, I have found that this doesn't resolve the issue entirely.

I've now cleaned up my RAT script so that there are absolutely zero errors generated by the RAT (or any other) script, but now the Rescue Helo spawns, fly's next to the carrier for about 10 minutes, and then lands, and no other helicopters are launched... My gut tells me that it's something to do with RAT aircraft spawning and despawning in the background, but I have no evidence to base this off of.

I've rebuilt a mission completely from scratch trying to troubleshoot, but as soon as I put RAT functions in, the Helicopter breaks one way or another, and NEVER flys alongside the carrier for more than 10 minutes. Without any RAT, it's perfect.

I love this script, but for the time being, I've shelved the it for our server missions and gone back to a standard SH-60 with 3 waypoints, flying alongside the carrier until I can figure out what is breaking it.

To do this I set it up as follows;

- The helo spawns and flys at the same speed as the carrier.

- Waypoint 1 is aligned with the carriers final destination at 1 Knot slower than the carriers speed.

- Waypoint 2 is aligned with the carriers final destination, right next to waypoint 1, but it is at 1 Knot faster than the carriers speed.

I then have 2 switched condition triggers tied to moving zones on an escort ship at the carriers 5 O'Clock.

- If the helicopter is inside both of the 2 zones, it switches waypoint to waypoint 2 and speeds up.

- If the helicopter is outsize both zones, it switches to waypoint 1 and slows down.

This way the helicopter maintains position alongside the carrier until it reaches bingo fuel (around 3 hours) when it lands at waypoint 3 on the carriers escort ship and keeps the flight deck clear.

Doing it with a single zone didn't work, and I don't really understand why, hence the two zones.

Thx for your alternative Highwayman-Ed. Will try that out.

Have to check my logfile too. Maybe I can find the cause there.

Right now I think when using VR random traffic is not such a big deal. Still trying to get used to the low visibility at distance. Maybe I used Smartscaling way to long :(

@Highwayman-Ed @Snapper In your scripts, do you have the AI_FORMATION object declared as local variable, i.e.

[b][color="Red"]local[/color][/b] CarrierFormation = AI_FORMATION:New(Mother, FollowGroupSet, "Helo Formation with Carrier", "Follow Carrier at given parameters.")

If so, could you try setting it as global variable by just removing the "local" of that line?

I think it might be the lua garbage collector which kills the formation object if it is defined as local variable.

Yes, Line 75 from the original script is a local variable. I'll modify it and try again.

Update: FIXED! changing that variable to a global variable resolves the issue and the helicopter just stayed in formation for an hour (before I was happy that it was going to stay there ;) ), and airliners were happily flying their passengers all over the place :)

Franky, you are as always, a star. Now, where are my tankers? :smartass:

Same here. I deleted the local as you suggested and it seems to work in the beginning.

After 58 minutes of stable formation with the Stennis the helicopter did a 180 degree turn and started a pattern away from the carrier. The last times I saw that the Helo will land onboard the Stennis but this time it choosed the closest frigate on its course back to land.

Would be ok that far but the helo will stay parked onboard the frigate for around 34 minutes and than disappears. There comes no respawn.

I attached my missionfile and both skripts so you can see it yourself.

Thx for your help :thumbup:

Carrier_Test.miz

Carrier_Formation.lua

RAT.lua

Would be ok that far but the helo will stay parked onboard the frigate for around 34 minutes and than disappears. There comes no respawn.

Okay, that might need some fine tuning in the script. So far I only tested with no other ship around (which can act as potential "airbase").

By default, the helo will land on the closest airbase. If there are more possibilities, it gets a bit more complicated. I could try to monitor the fuel state and send the helo home to Mother if fuel is below a certain threshold. However, some DCS bugs might get into the way since it is (or was for a long time) not possible to give the helo a landing command at a particular airbase once it was spawned.

How far are the other ships away from the Stennis and could you try (for now) to put them a little further away so that the Stennis is always the nearest airbase for the helo?

PS: I could not open your miz because I have not installed the deck crew mod.

Ah sorry I missed that Navy Crew Mod. I deleted them inside my mission and you should be able to open the file now. I can't do further testing until tomorrow.

Will try than with just a carrier instead of a group.

Carrier_Test.miz

@Highwayman-Ed @Snapper In your scripts, do you have the AI_FORMATION object declared as local variable, i.e.

[b][color="Red"]local[/color][/b] CarrierFormation = AI_FORMATION:New(Mother, FollowGroupSet, "Helo Formation with Carrier", "Follow Carrier at given parameters.")

If so, could you try setting it as global variable by just removing the "local" of that line?

I think it might be the lua garbage collector which kills the formation object if it is defined as local variable.

This Script is AWESOME!

I also have the RAT on my server and after changing the variable from local to global works fine!

RAT is quite diffused maybe you can "update" the version adding a switch condition, or using it as global if global vs local doesn't have negative effects on performance or behavior.

-- Set this value true if you are using MOOSE RAT in your mission. 
local RATisUsed=true
.....
.....

if RATisUsed then
 CarrierFormation = AI_FORMATION:New(Mother, FollowGroupSet, "Helo Formation with Carrier", "Follow Carrier at given parameters.")
else
 local CarrierFormation = AI_FORMATION:New(Mother, FollowGroupSet, "Helo Formation with Carrier", "Follow Carrier at given parameters.")
end

or whatever is more clear for final user.

Hi Maverick,

is your Carrier alone or within a group? And further does he stay for more than 60 minutes in formation with your Carrier?

Is it Persian Gulf too?

Don‘t get me wrong. The script itself and all the Moose and RAT is great. I am still at the beginning with DCS and it’s capabilities.

Hi Maverick,

is your Carrier alone or within a group? And further does he stay for more than 60 minutes in formation with your Carrier?

Is it Persian Gulf too?

 

Don‘t get me wrong. The script itself and all the Moose and RAT is great. I am still at the beginning with DCS and it’s capabilities.

My Carrier is a standalone unit, the only one present in the Group. The Map is Caucasus, and yes, the Helicopter stay in formation with the carrier for all the server lifespan, 6 hours, with some landing, respawining and takeoff according to remaining fuel.

This Script is AWESOME!

Grazie mille :)

RAT is quite diffused maybe you can "update" the version adding a switch condition, or using it as global if global vs local doesn't have negative effects on performance or behavior.

or whatever is more clear for final user.

Absolutely! In this case a condition is not necessary. It's best to always use a global variable for the AI_FORMATION object.

I added a new version in the first post, where this is the case. It also uses a better respawning function. So if you have a carrier strike group and the helo decides to land on any another ship, it will be respawned there and go back on station at the Stennis.

Note, that the new version of the script requires MOOSE version >=2.4 (download link)

Thx for the new version. Now it works in PG, with RAT and with a carrier inside it's battlegroup. :thumbup:

Now we need a final carrier with fixed spawn points and working elevators from ED.

Looking forward for the tanker addition.

Seem to have run into a small issue in a player hosted enviroment. After the first refuel i.e when a new helo is spawned. The newly spawned helo cannot be seen by any clients and only the host.

Seem to have run into a small issue in a player hosted enviroment. After the first refuel i.e when a new helo is spawned. The newly spawned helo cannot be seen by any clients and only the host.

That sounds very much like a DCS bug.

Hi. First of all this script is awesome:

But i have a little issue with it.

The helo is spawning, patrolling so long he has fuel, then landing, make a complete shutdown and not respawning. I have 3 carriers in mission, each has unice name. script is runnung at mission start. anyone has an idea what do i wrong? carrier has waypoints, helo is on late activation withouit waypoints.

Thanks