Tasking with Wingman on Ground

[MBot]

AI is unresponsive to tasking as long as one of the flight's wingmen is still on the ground.

 

In the attached track, the group is tasked to orbit at the departure waypoint in order to facilitate join up. Wingman is deliberately parked to take off later than leader. Leader will take off and proceed on route and only start to orbit once the wingman has taken off as well. By which time the leader has flown a long distance, which the wingman will then cover at full afterburner.

 

If the group is reduced to just the leader, he will start to orbit right after take-off. So apparently tasking is inhibited as long as some flight members are not airborne. The orbiting is just an example. In more complex scripting situations, I also experienced that you cannot assign mission tasks to individual group members as long as some group members are still on the ground. The tasked group members will turn dumb and fly off unresponding until all wingmen have taken off, then complete the assigned task.

TaskDeparture.trk

[Grimes]

This one is a little weirder. It appears AI always go to WP 1 and orbit there until the flight is off the ground. Of course they can't do a normal orbit they gotta do it in a right hand circle instead of left hand. Donno why that is but it is beside the point. Once the flight is off the ground the AI return to their route or do whatever tasks were at WP0. 

 

This was a problem point in the past. Several of the DLC campaigns used either follow or attack map object waypoints on the initial take-off point that the AI simply would ignore entirely. That aspect of it got fixed but when the task occurs seems to be tied to the task itself.  For instance with Follow the AI will immediately go follow the aircraft after take-off without waiting for the wingman. Orbit and attack map object both occurred but after the wingman got airborne. 

 

Pushing tasks also yielded mixed results. Attack group/unit/map object would execute immediately for the lead aircraft that was airborne, but other tasks could be forgotten along the route and it depended on when the task was assigned. If the AI didn't transition from take-off to WP1 when the task was pushed nothing would happen. 

 

 

I need to do some more testing on this before reporting to figure out the specifics. 

 

[MBot]

Thanks Grimes. Since you are no stranger to scripting, I figured for you I can provide a little more complex example.

 

In the attached mission, all individual members of a group of 4 are assigned a GoTo mission task 5 minutes into the mission. The catapult of wingman 4 is blocked so that it cannot take off. With aircraft 4 still on the ground, aircraft 1 to 3 basically go dumb upon tasking and start to orbit a point ahead of the carrier.

 

If you remove the obstacle for aircraft 4 and allow it to take off, with all aircraft in the air, when being tasked all 4 aircraft correctly execute their individual mission task and fly towards coordinates x=0,y=0 as defined.

GoToDeparture.miz