Why is my wingman always running low on fuel?

It could be any of that, so far as the when I've landed with them in company, I don't why they would follow me to the divert base when I told them to go to the carrier. I have been using simple comms. In my campaign the wingman always seems to take off right before I get into the air, but regardless seems to burn more than I do. Usually ending up bingo right around the time I fire my last missile and I'm at 50 percent fuel. I do tend to climb towards the beginning... but come to think of it the only time I have not last my wingman to fuel shortages is when I've landed and quit immediately. I recall one of the earlier missions where a f14 from another flight had been shot up and diverted to the standby airfield... I landed and was in the process of reaching on the apron. Wingman just kept flying around until he ejected..but in that case I might not have ordered him to land... I can't recall. 

There also might be a problem of AI flight models. This has been known about for ages concerning dogfighting, but I'm pretty sure there's also a problem with them flying fast.

I've noticed that when you set AI to fly quite fast, they'll use max afterburner to accelerate, but once they hit the target speed they'll just magically stop accelerating, even though their power setting hasn't changed.

I've repeated tests where even though I'd reduce the speed they'd do the same thing, accelerate on max AB, magically stop accelerating at the target speed, but keeping the power the same (i.e max AB).

44 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

There also might be a problem of AI flight models.

 

The AI can do some really weird things regarding fuel burn. From my exploring there seems to be two models for AI fuel use, one for flyable planes and one for non flyables. Both models will not use fuel at all when their engine is idle (60% RPM). The non flyable one just seems to multiply fuel use by RPM which leads to weird stuff like maximum range being achieved at low altitude instead of high altitude. The flyable AI fuel model is a bit better, but the AI is terrible at managing fuel. They'll match the player if you just fly at cruise altitude all day, but any time they have to rejoin formation they will waste tons of fuel.

I think a few things that would help with AI fuel burn immensely until we get an AI overhaul would be:

Change hold position command to make the AI orbit at your current altitude when the command is given. This way they don't fly down low and then waste all their fuel afterburning up to altitude.

Give us a setting for no AB use for rejoin. This would be like the restrict AB command we already have but only take effect when the AI is rejoining the player.

Give us a floor setting for combat. This would be useful for many things, but in the case of wingmen hopefully it would prevent them from always spiraling to the ground during combat and then needing to climb again to rejoin. One issue that might around is that right now the AI sometimes just flails around hopelessly when it's near the ground. That behavior will be even worse in thin air.

On 3/17/2021 at 2:36 PM, Exorcet said:

Give us a floor setting for combat. This would be useful for many things, but in the case of wingmen hopefully it would prevent them from always spiraling to the ground during combat and then needing to climb again to rejoin. One issue that might around is that right now the AI sometimes just flails around hopelessly when it's near the ground. That behavior will be even worse in thin air.

Guess you actually can do this by scripting in a condition that tell them to disengage if below x altitude. like if in combat and x altitude disengage and go to a RP then rejoin, and restrict AB use there too. Not good at LUA but I'm certain it could be done.  The risk is that they just end up with a missile in their bum when disengaging. 
So yeah a ROE rule like don't AA combat below an altitude could be useful