[REPORTED]Strange AWACS Behavior

Not entirely certain that this is a Syria map problem however we have not had this happen on the Persian Gulf or the Caucus maps. The issue is that when there are no enemy air (Red) a/c spawned into the mission, AWACS will respond to a call for "Bogey Dope" with "Clean". As soon as the enemy a/c are on the map, AWACS will no longer respond to anybody for any reason and as soon as the last enemy a/c has been dispatched, AWACS is again happy to respond with "Clean" or give directions to base or nearest tanker or whatever.

Has anyone else noticed this??

those evil borises and ivans took over your awacs and not willing to provide picture for you!

I have found the AWACs as useless on the Syria map for some reason. They don't seem to see anything.

Hi. I've just tested it on latest open beta. AWACS has no issues finding and annoucing bandits over Syria map, even when I call for a "Bogey Dope".

Can you please try attached mission and tell me what you've got?

SYRIA_awacs.miz

Thanks Flappie! Here is what I have found. First off, I never fly the F-15 so when I got into it, none of my controllers worked and the plane just started rolling and heading for the ground. I figured the easiest thing to do would be to just switch the F-15 for an F/A-18, which is what I fly most often. Started the mission and called the AWACS as soon as I saw the notice that the Mig had spawned in and got crickets! :mad:

So, I went into the options and set up my controls for the F-15 and started the mission again. Called the AWACS after the Mig spawned in and got an immediate response with a BRA call. :doh: This is very interesting.

I don't own the Hornet but I've made a test with an M-2000C. I've preconfigured the UHF 251 AM frequency in the mission editor and was able to receive the bogey dope.

Please try the same thing with the Hornet with the attached mission. Whatever radio you choose, you'll only have 251 AM as presets. You can also try the Mirage if you have it of course.

SYRIA_awacs_no_easy_comm_251_Hornet.miz

SYRIA_awacs_no_easy_comm_251_M2000.miz

I thought about the frequency assigned to the AWACS as possibly being the culprit because we use 139.000 VHF for our AWACS but then I discounted that because, as I stated originally, the AWACS will answer with a "Clean" response when all the enemy a/c are gone so he is able to communicate with us in F/A-18s, just not while there are enemy a/c on the map. I will download your missions though and see what happens. Thanks Flappie.

I ran the one with the Hornet and quickly called him for some Bogey Dope and he quickly responded with "Clean". Then when the Mig spawned in, he immediately gave me a BRA call. I am going to go back to the mission I made that started all this and change the frequency to 251 and several others to see if that makes a difference.

Thank you again, Flappie, for looking into this for me.

You're welcome. ;)

I have found the AWACs as useless on the Syria map for some reason. They don't seem to see anything.

Can you look into the ME and see what the country of the AWACS is? I have discovered that, at least in my case, the problem lies with the country that the AWACS belongs to. I had "Combined Joint Task Forces" selected (don't ask why) and he would respond with vectors to tankers, home base, tell me that the picture was clean - all as long as there were no bogies. Once a bad guy showed up, he would clam up and refuse to respond at all. I am thinking that his electronics are still functioning because the bogey is shown on the SA page on the edge of the 160 mile ring, so at least he's seeing them. He just won't give BRA calls or even respond to a request for bogey dope.

Change him to USA and he talks his damn head off!! :doh: Again, a big thank you to Flappie for helping me solve this mystery.

Good finding! In my previous test missions, AWACS was from USA.

I was able to reproduce your issue by changing his 'country' to 'Combined Joint Task Forces blue'. Here's a track showing what looks like a bug.

EDIT: Same bug on the red side. I've sent a PM to ED staff.

joint_forces_blue_awacs_dont_answer.trk

joint_forces_blue_awacs_dont_answer-red.trk

those evil borises and ivans took over your awacs and not willing to provide picture for you!

Actually, this was an inside job! :cry:

I have had the same problem in different maps, I recently started using the "combined joint task force" setting and that's when my problems started. The group I belong to tested a new mission build last night using Syria map with the AWACS in the "combined joint task force" setting and AWACS would only give CLEAN and MERGED messages nothing else, this morning I have just tried as suggested above and set it as USA and it works as it should. ALL other aircraft in BLUE coalition are set to "combined joint task force".

As a follow up I set it up as a UK aircraft and it again worked correctly, all though not extensively tested it does point to the setting "combined joint task force" being used

Reported joint forces issue.

 

It is working in our dev build so a fix is coming.

 

thank you

As a follow up to this problem. there may actually be three problems here, the first quite correctly reported as the country that the AWACS is assigned to, the second a time issue, and thirdly if simple radio is used.

I fixed the COMMS problem in a mission our group uses by changing the AWACS country from "combined joint task force" to "USA". In the original mission the CJTF AWACS would respond "CLEAR" and then not function again.

In the version 2 , initially the USA AWACS worked correctly in all functions, but as the mission progressed the AWACS stopped responding and data on the F18/F16 SA pages stopped appearing. I built a simple test mission spawning in A/C at different times, initially the AWACS correctly and reported reported new targets, but after around 20-30 minutes, stopped working and also stopped providing data on SA page.

On the simple radio problem, this i had hit and miss results, sometimes the USA AWACS worked correctly on first contact and on other attempts it did not respond,

We have had an OB update since @BIGNEWY said it was reported and fixed in a Dev build.....still not fixed!!