JDingo

Scripting only allows AI respawning, not Player/Client unfortunately. The Player can respawn with a key combination (Rctrl-Rshift-Tab), but only after crashing or ejecting, and that only respawns the Player's aircraft, not the whole unit. So unfortunately no improvement over just landing refueling/rearming then taking off again without your wingman.

One slight correction to the very end of my post (#12) ... If you land at a different base and then tell your wingman to rejoin you when he starts to RTB, he will park at the ramp and be done no matter what you do. Also you need to be careful with this if the wingman is very low on fuel. The wingman will take an additional loop, and he can run out of fuel and crash on re-approach, closing the airport. In that case the new slot wingman won't take-off with you. (Maybe this is appropriate because the wingman crashed, but the wingman shouldn't have needed to take the extra loop.)

The best workaround is Post #12 here (https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=111036&page=2). If you want different armament possibilities you would need to set up different client flights with the different armaments and choose the one that you would be rearming to.

You are correct; there is no way to do it. See Post #12 here (https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=111036&page=2) for the closest you can get. Basically you would need to have different pre-armed client flights (or spawnable flights) and then you would choose the one that has the armament that you want.

The only way to mimic your wingman refueling and rearming on the ground is to create a duplicate flight as a Client where you are going to land/refuel/rearm. After you and your wingman land, you can then switch roles to the new client and act as if you have both refueled and rearmed. You can give them the same Callsigns and Tail #s if you want. If you want to be more realistic you can wait until after your wingman has parked long enough to have refueled and rearmed. That's the best than can be done (at least in version 2.5.5). On the plus side this has the advantages of 1) still being able to just keep going alone if your wingman crashed, etc. You just manually refuel/rearm as usual; and 2) you get credit for any score while you are in either plane. Even with the new LandingReFuAr waypoint there is no way to get your wingman to refuel/rearm even by jumping into another plane or client. Basically once you occupy a lead plane a wingman will never act as lead, for example following waypoints. It will execute the last wingman instruction you gave him as lead (Engage Bandits, Finish Mission, whatever) before you left and then RTB and be done. If you didn't tell him to do anything, he will immediately RTB and be done. The logic is as follows: If you leave as a Client, your plane ceases to exist and the wingman acts as above. If you leave as a Player (jump to another plane), your plane will immediately RTB and the wingman will do as above. If you didn't tell him to do anything he will follow your (old) plane and also RTB. If you reoccupy your old plane before it lands and turns off electric power, the wingman will follow you as before. If you jump to your wingman's plane, your plane will act as above, and your wingman will effectively be the lead of his own flight. That is, he will never be a wingman again. If you land with your wingman, he will wait on the runway for you to do whatever you want. You can refuel or rearm if you want. And he will take off again with you if you take off, but he won't refuel or rearm. If you landed and turn off your electrical power the wingman will land (if he hasn't already), go to the ramp, park and be done no matter what you do after powering down. If you landed at an airbase different than your original Base (for example a LandingReFuAr waypoint) he will RTB (original Base) as soon as your wheels touch the ground. You can still give him wingman instructions though. If you tell him to Rejoin he will land at the airbase you did, but will act the same as above. That is, either wait for you to takeoff again or, if you turn off electrical power, park at the ramp and be done.

Has this been resolved in any way since October 2019? I can't get an inside view of any multiplayer track. The tracks for spectators (server or client) have everything recorded perfectly, but can't get inside views. The tracks for the player (whether playing on a client machine or the server) are missing the player aircraft (so of course, no inside view of it). The player's AI wingman was also missing.

I hope everyone is getting good use out of the LandingReFuAr waypoints. While it still has some glitches, I was surprised that the AI had it work better than I expected when things went unexpected in a recent mission. In particular a damaged plane ended up blocking the LandingReFuAr base, and the AI had the units divert to a nearby base and use that as the LandingReFuAr base for the rest of the mission. Way to Go! Full story here ... https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=4273450#post4273450

While we all have issues with the AI doing some broken, annoying, and/or strange things (don't get me started on my AI Wingman firing ETs from behind me while we are pressing bandits), I thought I would congratulate the amazing AI when it works better than expected. Feel free to add your own stories. :) In this case it had to do with a situation with a LandingReFuAr waypoint. While these are tricky and still have some glitches (only refueling 1 ship of a 2 ship flight at one airbase but not another - weird ), they can be very useful (see https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=247527). In this particular case the mission had an AWACS (A-50) with fighter escorts that regularly refueled/armed at Maykop-Khanskaya. However, a bandit managed to damage the A-50 before the escorts shot it down. The A-50 limped to Maykop-Khanskava (the closest airbase, but not it's home base). The escort fighters gave it priority to land - Good AI there too! but not the Amazing part. That's next ... On landing, the damaged A-50 ended up blocking the runway at Maykop-Khanskaya. The AI had the escort fighters divert to Krasnodar-Pashkovsky to land AND they continued using Krasnodar-Pashkovsky as the LandingReFuAr base for the rest of the mission (for a 2nd A-50)! (The 2nd A-50 and the escorts switching to escort it if the first A-50 went down was programmed, but diverting airports certainly wasn't!) That was completely unexpected but is a great way for the AI to handle things! Kudos! It made for an exciting mission needing to adapt to circumstances rather than ruining the mission playability or believability. Way to go DCS World AI -- You Got That One Right! :thumbup:

Parking Spots My pleasure MadDog. It makes it better for everyone, and no point having everyone re-invent the wheel. I also appreciate all the time everyone puts in on these forums, etc. A couple more tidbits ... 1) The dependence of the amount of fuel received based on plane type, amount of fuel left, refueling time and number of external tanks still takes some experimentation. It also seems to be different even for the same plane type and tank configuration, etc., in different missions. 2) You can't seem to be able to assign the Parking Spot with the LandingReFuAr waypoint, and it is not the same one assigned initially on take off. It is often (but not always) a high numbered space. So at Mozdok, for example, it ends up using the really, really far parking spots. This is a problem on refuel cycle time, but also the AI won't land a plane while one is taxiing to take off, even if it is nowhere near the runway resulting in other planes circling until they run out of fuel. One workaround is to park Late Activation aircraft that are never activated in these spots.

Some Additional Information At a LandingReFuAr waypoint, the amount of fuel loaded and the amount of time it takes to load that fuel depends on the aircraft type and how many external fuel tanks the aircraft has, but not directly as X amount of fuel loaded per minute, etc. In particular, the time it takes to refuel does not depend on how much fuel the aircraft has when it lands. It also does not depend on whether the aircraft dropped tanks or not before refueling. An aircraft that has external tanks will not refuel to its maximum initial capacity unless it lands to refuel with a very large amount of fuel (>100%, at least, and maybe even more). So a plane with external tanks that lands to refuel with <100% fuel will generally never reach its full capacity again, since taking off and circling to land and refuel again will burn enough fuel to bring it back down below 100% again even after refueling. Having multiple external tanks can increase the maximum refueled load above 100% after refueling, and it also reduces the refueling time needed to reach the maximum level. For example, for one particular aircraft type (Mig-29S). For no external tanks, 1 tank and 3 tanks, the maximum fuel load initially is 100%, 127% and 185% respectively. After refueling (starting below 100%) the maximums will be 100%, 100% and ~110%. With 3 tanks it will refuel to this ~110% level in 1 minute. With 1 tank - 1 minute = 71%, 2 minutes = 96% and 3 minutes = 100%. With no tanks - 1 minute = 38%, 3 minutes = 98% and 4 minutes = 100 %. So fueling time and number of external tanks do matter, but not very much, since landing, taxi, and takeoff takes on the order of 15-20 minutes. External tanks do, of course, add significant time before the initial refueling is needed. The exact amount of maximum refuel load and required refueling times vary by aircraft type. Finally, as previously mentioned, attempting to set a different waypoint while a group is enroute to a LandingReFuAr waypoint will cause the mission to no longer be able to refuel/rearm and treat that waypoint as a turning waypoint afterwards. Setting other options, tasks, and commands enroute to the LandingReFuAr waypoint can also cause this behavior. I haven't checked them all, but a good number cause this unanticipated behavior. Therefore, avoiding any triggered actions for the group between the last waypoint before the LandingReFuAr waypoint and actually landing is safest for predictible behavior.

Using LandingReFuAr This is a useful post on this subject: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=4007111#post4007111

Using LandingReFuAr This is a useful post on this subject: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=4007111#post4007111

Landing to Refuel and Rearm - The LandingReFuAr waypoint - 5 In my final initial post on this subject I give another potentially useful example of LandingReFuAr. That is, for staging a coordinated group strike from planes originally from other airbases. Again this could be done with delayed activations, etc., but becomes highly complicated, especially if they could encounter resistance enroute, and it loses a sense of realism if they aren't actually the same planes. To use LandingReFuAr for coordination though, the coordination needs to be done BEFORE landing since the time on the ground unfortunately cannot be set dynamically during the mission. To accomplish the coordination, the arriving Groups should circle before the LandingReFuAr base until everyone arrives (or until one of them is low on fuel). Then the Groups can land in spaced intervals in a pre-planned order that don't interfere with each other's landings. The refueling times can be present different durations by their landing order times so that they all take off again at nearly the same time (or at the appropriate times for the mission coordination). Circling to coordinate after the refueling/rearming can also be done to improve coordination, especially for larger missions, and with LandingReFuAR this can be done more effectively with refueled aircraft. An example mission is provided. Turning off RTB on Bingo Fuel, etc., is important for a mission like this. The example again uses jd_fuelAmmoTrk.lua, from the previous post, to track fuel (and ammo), and jd_fuelAmmoStatus.lua is implemented (but status messages not currently enabled) to display status if you would like. Note that this mission is just proof of concept. So additional logic would be needed to make it fully functional in a mission. For example, currently it would trigger the strike refueling if a plane went low fuel due to a dogfight enroute, not just while waiting. Again it is suggested to go to F10 and speeding up using LCTRL-Z to about 60x to watch the example mission. Two final notes on using LandingReFuAr, especially for large groups... 1) The LandingReFuAr logic does not necessarily handle ground traffic congestion well. Again this is not directly an issue with LandingReFuAr directly, more an issue with the AI in general, but it can mess up things in these sorts of missions. 2) Some types of planes have difficultly landing at certain airports. For example, in this Coordinated Strike example, if the staging airport is changed from Mineralnye Vody to Nalchik, things will go very badly. Again this is not an issue with LandingReFuAr directly, but is something that needs to be taking into account when planning missions using it. Good luck all! LandingReFuAr Coord Strike Example.miz

Landing to Refuel and Rearm - The LandingReFuAr waypoint - 4 Both of the cases in the previous post can be done more or less through spawning and/or delayed activation of new Groups with triggers, and the LandingReFuAR repeat doesn't eliminate the need for potential spawning/delayed activation if the group is destroyed, etc. However, there are other, more complex uses for LandingReFuAr that are somewhat more realistic than spawning/delayed activation would be. For example, a long mission that could be accomplished without refueling/rearming if no resistance is encountered, but with a forward refuel/rearm base available if needed. An example of this is provided in the attached Optional_LandingReFuAr_Example mission file. In this case, a two ship F-16C flight from Novorossiysk are the only resources available for Blue to strike and destroy a high value target near the Patara Enguri River. If everything goes well, they should be able to make the round trip, but their could be Red patrols along the way or CAP over the target, and/or the strike could take more fuel than ideal. While Gudauta does not have any planes available for the strike, it can be used to refuel and rearm. To implement a mission like this, a way to monitor fuel and ammo is required, and the RTB on Bingo Fuel, etc., needs to be turned off, or it will end the mission. To do this the mission uses jd_fuelAmmoTrk.lua to place the Fuel and Ammo levels into UserFlags 50001-60000 as follows for each Unit Id # (xxx): Fuel % (rounded up) = 50xxx, Gun Ammo = 51xxx, # Bombs (any type) = 52xxx, # Rockets = 53xxx, # A2G Missiles = 54xxx, # A2A Missiles = 55xxx, # Anti-Rad Missiles = 56xxx, # Anti-Ship Missiles = 57xxx, # Cruise Missiles = 58xxx, # BMs = 59xxx. This can be used to implement refuel and rearm directives (to replace RTB on Bingo Fuel or No Weapons) for people who do not want to script their own. The mission should be viewed multiple times. There is a 50% chance of a Red Mig-21 patrol on the way between Novorossiysk and Gudauta each way, and a 50% chance of Mig-29 CAP over the target. The success rate of the mission ends up being about 50% overall, with many different possibilities. Suggest going to F10 and speeding up using LCTRL-Z to about 60x. Before the target is destroyed Blue will land to refuel or rearm if necessary (less than 2-A2G or 1-A2A missiles per plane). After the target is destroyed Blue will only land to refuel if necessary. If there is a dogfight enroute to Gudauta that reduces Blue fuel below what is necessary to get to Guduata, Blue will (attempt to) Refuel and ReArm at Novorossiysk. In this example, the final landing at Novorossiysk needs to be a LandingReFuAR, not Landing! If a waypoint is set to Landing after a LandingReFuAr waypoint, the Group will (attempt to) land at the last LandingReFuAr waypoint, not the one set by the Landing waypoint. So in this mission, if successful, the Blue flight ends up landing, refueling and taking off and looping once to land again finally. There is also an issue (bug?) that causes further complications. It is not related to LandingReFuAr directly but does complicate its use, as in this example. That is, if the Flight Lead of a Group is destroyed and the Group was set to go to a waypoint by logic, that set waypoint command is erased and the flight will be routed to the next numeric waypoint instead. Therefore if a LandingReFuAr waypoint was skipped by logic, but the Flight Lead destroyed before the next waypoint, the Group will go to the LandingReFuAr base, BUT the issue (bug?) also changes the LandingReFuAr waypoint to a FlyOver waypoint. Therefore when skipping refueling stops, the next waypoint should always be close by. Additionally, a script (jd_fuelAmmoStatus.lua) that works with jd_fuelAmmoTrk.lua is implemented to be used with the UserFlags from that script to display the fuel and ammo status of all active planes every 20 seconds if enabled. It is not currently activated in the example mission. To enable it, go to the "Prime Display Trigger" Trigger and change the flag that the trigger sets to 90010 (from 90011). This will enable better following of the logic throughout the mission, although it is distracting. jd_fuelAmmoStatus.lua will display the Fuel/Ammo status of any Unit once (for 8 seconds) each time flag 60xxx (where xxx is the Unit Id #) is set. Also, a final note, there is a good amount going on in this example, and rare things can still always go strange in AI. ;) Optional LandingReFuAr Example.miz jd_fuelAmmoTrk.lua jd_fuelAmmoStatus.lua

Landing to Refuel and Rearm - The LandingReFuAr waypoint - 3 The biggest use that most people would like (realism aside) would be to have a repeating sortie, such as for AWACs, refueling planes, or patrols over a particular area, etc. The Endless_Hunter attached mission file shows an example of the minimum requirements for this: a waypoint after take off, the LandingReFuAr waypoint, and a waypoint after (which then sets the next waypoint to the one before the LandingReFuAr waypoint. This mission has a Mig-29S hunting a group of B-52Hs. The B-52Hs are not needed for the loop logic, as can be seen if you remove them or let the mission play until they are all destroyed, but they are included show that the Mig-29S is rearming each time. It is suggested to go to F10 and then use LCTL-Z to speed up to about 20x to watch the mission. Although watching the land rearm process (with F2, etc.) is also useful. Note that this minimum set-up only works if the conditions trigger an AI action enroute to the outbound waypoint (in this case the CAP task), since there is no place for a User trigger to be processed in the first loop. That is, the Group is either between waypoint the SP and Waypoint 1, or between Waypoint 1 and the LandingReFuAr waypoint (Waypoint 2). If you want the Group to possibly skip the first refuel and do something else, you need to have at least 2 waypoints in between SP and the LandingReFuAr waypoint so that a Set Waypoint command can be processed between them. Endless sorties are useful in some cases, but other times it would be desirable to have it repeat until a particular goal is accomplished. The Hunt_Until_Done mission file shows a minimal example of this. It is the same as the Endless_Hunter mission but lands the Mig-29S after all of the B-52H are gone. (The Mig-29S has more weapons in this mission so it usually only takes 3 loops to complete the goal). Mig-29S LandingReFuAr Endless Hunter.miz Mig-29S LandingReFuAr Hunt Until Done.miz