Mission building questions

Not sure if this is the rite place to post any questions on mission building. But here they are:

1. How do I have AWACs loop through 4 waypoints until it is either out of fuel or damaged? Then it will return to carrier.

2. Same as above, but this time, I want fighters flying on CAP to loop around until they are out of fuel or weapons.

3. How do I order Ticonder cruisers to use their guns beyond 1km? I have a scenario where 2 cruisers are supposed to bombard a tank column near the shore. But the ships won't fire gun unless I put them within 1km away. The tanks could fire 5km away. Before the cruisers can kill any tanks, the tanks have already sunk the ships.:cry:

There is a Mission Editor section for such questions for future reference.

You can have aircraft loop around in two ways. One is the orbit trigger action, which orbits in a circle around one way point or orbits in an oval around 2 consecutive waypoints. This is the standard way to have a looping flight, but you can loop through 4 waypoints.

If you want the planes to fly through 4 waypoints, you need to use the change waypoint trigger action on the last waypoint that you loop around. Then set the waypoint to change to as the first waypoint.

I don't have a lot of experience with ship guns, but have you tried the trigger actions fire at point or attack group?

@admin. Sorry about posting at wrong place. Move this post if you can. Just getting back to the Exorcet. I tried group attack, it didn't work. The guns just won't fire.

@Exorcet. I tried your way. It worked fine. However here is another issue. My carrier is not static. As the carrier moves onto the next waypoint, the AWACs waypoints are now miles away behind. Just wonder if I can get the waypoints to shift with the ships?

Testing it looks like Ticonderoga ships can't see tanks until 1-2 miles away. To fire further you need to use Attack Point, this will work from at least 5 miles away, but keep in mind that the ship won't shoot at targets or a target point if it doesn't have line of sight on it. This includes trees blocking line of sight.

As for waypoints to keep up with a moving ship, you can use multiple orbits. You'll have to add Stop conditions for the orbits to make the plane stop orbiting and move to the next one as the ship does. If the ship will only move in one way you can use duration as the stop condition, so the orbit stops after a certain amount of time. If the ship is dynamic you'll need to use flags and the "Is user flag" Stop Condition.

Back in the day, I was a direct fire spotter on a SPRUANCE-class DD. Never had to do it for real, but also, we never did any training to hit moving tanks. We'd be ~3 miles off the beach, and time of flight for a 5" round at that range is about 16 seconds. The trick was to fire at a point and hope you were lucky enough to hit a vehicle moving into it. (And trust me, at three miles, it ain't easy to hit a stationary vehicle.)

Real Naval Surface Fire Support involves a lot of prior planning, including picking points to fire at when a spotter calls for them. We had a procedure for shooting at tanks called "counter mechanized fires" or simply "countermech". The objective isn't to destroy the tanks, but rather to interdict their movement. Typically, there would have several points already picked out -- crossroads, road junctions, bridges, or other choke points where the enemy vehicles would be likely to concentrate. These coordinates would be entered into the fire control computer before we showed up on the gun line, and when tanks appeared, the spotter would simply radio, "TANKS TANKS TANKS! EXECUTE COUNTERMECH PLAN ALPHA" (or BRAVO, CHARLIE, DELTA, and so on). Without any further command, we'd call up the appropriate coordinates and fire a predetermined number of rounds at that point.

This works nicely in an F10 menu. You can set up a triggered task for each point you might want to shoot at, and use the F10 menu to generate the trigger.

I've got another issue now. I sent a flight of f-18's to attack an enemy fleet. Those fighters just won't fire off their harpoons. They just fly straight into enemy's sam range and dance back and forth with SAM's. Also, it seems that ships won't engage KH-31P (anti-radiation missile). I have 3 Ticonder. The missiles were flying very high. They just ignore them.

Seems they don't get into Harpoon range before getting into SAM range. They switch to defensive. You could try to set their threat reaction to "none" in the advanced waypoint actions, but that will for sure get them shot down

Seems they don't get into Harpoon range before getting into SAM range. They switch to defensive. You could try to set their threat reaction to "none" in the advanced waypoint actions, but that will for sure get them shot down

That can't be right, though. The harpoons have a range of 150nmi, but ship SAMs only start launching around 60-50nmi. Should I have the fighters go sea-skimming? But if they launch low, all the missiles would just get ditched into water.

The AI doesn't seem to like Harpoons. I guess the missile was recently reworked for the player Hornet, it might not function well with AI (like the AGM-88 since it can't loft at the moment).

The AI will launch the Harpoon from range, I managed a 100 mile launch, but curiously they don't like to shoot them if they're too close to the enemy. They just circle around and don't fire. See if placing the Hornets far away makes them shoot.

I figured out why AI won't launch missiles. You need have at least 2 waypoints for the attack. Before, I only had 2 waypoints. The first one I have them form up in then the 2nd one anti-ship strike. Now I have 3 waypoints. 1st forming up and 2nd and 3rd are anti-ship strikes. Now they launch fine. However, I found another issue. If you have a 4-ship strike, the first 2-3 aircraft would fire but the last one would hold back. I think there is some kinda ammo rationing logics in the code. To get everybody fire, you need break 4-ship into 2X2-ship elements.

By default AI will not fire their entire salvo. I don't recommend using default ME tasks (like Anti-Ship Strike).

You can use other tasks like Search and Engage or Engage Group that will let you specify the weapons used and the salvo size. Using this option you should be able to get a 4 ship to launch up to 16 missiles at once.

Thanks, your solutions worked pretty well. Just another questions. For those CAP fighters, they don't like to engage multiple targets in BVR fights. They always pick one target out of the formation, fire one AIM120 and then immediately notch to one side and wait. If the missile misses then they will turn around to fire another. Any way to have them fire at everybody in the formation rather than just one by one.

Only certain planes/weapons can engage multiple targets. The F-18 doesn't have TWS yet, even for the AI. The F-15 with AIM-120's does though.

Oh I see. Another mission building question. I put one 2-ship flight of f-18s to protect my AWACs, but the F-18's have hard time keeping station with E-2. They would fly up to E-2 then drop down low and climb back up like a yo-yo. In the process, AI's use a lot of AB and wasted a lot of fuel. Is there anyway to make F-18s stick to E-2's. Perhaps the E-2 is too slow for the fighters? I set it to run at 300kt TAS at 30k. I guess F-18s would stall at the speed and alt? Also, I can't have a mix bag flight such as a flight of 3, one AWACs + 2 fighters, correct? One flight has to be of the same plane type?

It sounds like the Hornets are being forced to fly too slowly. You can try setting the flights to lower altitudes, or just make the Hornets orbit near the AWACS at a higher speed instead of following it.

You can't mix flights, but you can use Escort and Follow to have different planes fly together.

Pandacat,

The fighters don't need to be in formation with the AEW aircraft in order to act as escorts. The E-2 can simply direct them like any other fighters, so put them in a DCA racetrack pattern above the AEW racetrack, or put them in a DCA racetrack out along the threat axis from the AEW asset.

Pandacat,

 

The fighters don't need to be in formation with the AEW aircraft in order to act as escorts. The E-2 can simply direct them like any other fighters, so put them in a DCA racetrack pattern above the AEW racetrack, or put them in a DCA racetrack out along the threat axis from the AEW asset.

If I select 'Escort' then the fighters would just follow AWACs and ignore all the waypoints. But if I use 'CAP' and do the race-track, then the fighters would be drawn off by retreating enemy fighters and leave AWACs unprotected. The AI is so stubborn on chasing bandits, sometimes they would follow targets back to their bases and strafe them on the ground.

If I select 'Escort' then the fighters would just follow AWACs and ignore all the waypoints. But if I use 'CAP' and do the race-track, then the fighters would be drawn off by retreating enemy fighters and leave AWACs unprotected. The AI is so stubborn on chasing bandits, sometimes they would follow targets back to their bases and strafe them on the ground.

Make sure the range box is checked. If the range is 30, the will attack only enemies 30 miles from their path until they get 45 miles (150% ) away

Good tip, let me try that. Btw, how do I get the carriers to remove landed aircraft faster? John C. Stennis currently has one working elevator, but the landed aircraft usually don't park there. They all concentrate to the stern of the ship. There was only one time, they park near the island where the working elevator is located.