Novan

When setting up the tanker, especially the recovery tanker it would be nice to be able to limit how much fuel the tanker will give each plane. For example one Tomcat taking on fuel while in the holding pattern completely drains the S-3 when all it needed was a thousand pounds of fuel to keep from crashing before landing.

I've been trying to set up a mission for AI to attack a train but so far have been unsuccessful. CAS seems to be the only tasking where i can target the train group but none of the attack options seem to work. I've tried with different models and loadouts for helicopters and planes, has anyone been able to get this to work?

Ran the mission, unfortunately the Harrier never refueled. Changed waypoint 1 to initiate refueling and it worked as you described. On the plus side it worked, on the down side that would be a lot of triggers to create for every unit assigned to land at on a carrier in even a small mission. I'll have to figure out a way to identify units fueling off specific tankers and see if I can apply the same logic in scripts instead of triggers, but there is still the issue of multiple places in a group. The push task is going to impact the entire group as it is a group command. If there is more than one plane in the group the only one impacted by the limit is the unit the trigger is set around. Once that unit meets the requirement the group will move on leaving the other units either full or with no fuel added depending on sequence. I still think being able to set a fuel transfer cap on a tanker would be the easiest all-around solution. Being able to set it by unit or group would be even better.

Is there a way to limit how much fuel the AI takes on during recovery operations? Currently they fill up completely which is not realistic and makes the recovery tanker useless after only 1 or 4 planes depending on how much fuel the plane can hold. I've been looking in the scripts for a way to interrupt the process, once the fuel level is about 20%, but have not found anything I can use at the unit level. Ideally when setting up the tanking task on the tanker there should be some kind of option to limit the maximum amount of fuel it will give each aircraft.

And it is exhausting.....

This has worked for me in the past. I created a function called NewPoint and used it to build a list of points to add to a route. NewPoint = function(UnitType, X,Y,Alt, Action, Type, Speed, WPname) -- AIRPLANE = 0 -- HELICOPTER = 1 -- GROUND = 2 -- SHIP = 3 -- TRAIN = 4 local points = { ["y"] = Y, ["x"] = X, ["alt"] = Alt, ["action"] = Action, ["speed"] = Speed, ["type"] = Type, ["formation_template"] = "", --["speed_locked"] = true, ["name"] = WPname, ["task"] = { ["id"] = "ComboTask", ["params"] = { ["tasks"] = { }, -- end of ["tasks"] }, -- end of ["params"] }, -- end of ["task"] } return points end Sorry this is not for MOOSE, this was just me coding without third party tools.

Please make sure the water depth in the port areas is deep enough to allow plotting waypoints to enable ships to dock (or at least appear to), thanks.

HeloCago.trk

B52 400.trk https://forums.eagle.ru/attachment.php?attachmentid=241168&d=1593281769

Track File B52 330.trk

B-52's are supposed to be able to cruise at 442 knots with a max of 552. Anytime the speed is on a waypoint is set to more than 330 knots the plane will not climb until the waypoint speed is set back to 330 regardless of what altitude it is at.

Unit 4 crashes into unit 3 when taxiing from Al Dhafra AB. Repeatable.

The altitude issue is related to speed, your planes are going too fast. I struggled with the same thing using B-52's where it would not break 3000 feet. I thought it had to do with the bombing task as it would head to the correct altitude at the next waypoint after the bombing run, but after a lot of experimenting it was speed. Even though the B-52is capable of cruising at 442 knots with a max of 550, the DCS flight model for it appears to like a max speed of 330 knots otherwise it will refuse to gain any altitude if set for anything higher regardless of altitude.

[REPORTED]AI Helicopters Failing to Pick Up Cargo The video below shows what is happening when an AI helicopter goes to pick up cargo. At about 1:08 into the video the helicopter will quickly pop into the air at the point where it would normally start the sling animation. After that it lands next to the cargo spinning the rotors until it runs out of fuel. Once the helicopter has landed it no longer accepts any commands including reset task. Here is what I have noticed:It happens every time the mission is run It does not make a difference what kind of cargo is used It does not matter what kid of helicopter is used Cargo heading or weight has no impact on success rate The only thing that appears to correct the behavior are to modify conditions that force the helicopter to take a different approach to the cargo. The conditions are: Wind direction and speed Way point position relative to the cargo Cargo position Helicopter altitude at the time the cargo pickup task is set

At this point I have given up on trying to get AI groups with their wingmen to behave in the manner I am expecting them to given how erratic the wingmen fly and their fuel use. Has anyone else tried using scripting to get two single unit groups to behave like wingmen for the AI since ? I've been experimenting with creating the wingmen as different groups and assigning them to escort each other and so far have gotten much better fuel management and formations that stay close together even when flying low to the earth and making lots of altitude changes.

I think the issue is that the wingmen keep getting out of formation with each waypoint turn and then go burn through AB to catch back up after they have flown an extra 10 miles and a dozen altitude changes to course correct and catch back up. Wouldn't the quick fix be to have them cheat by basically copying the inputs of the lead plane once they were in formation until told to break, came under fire, were told to attack or there was damage preventing them from having the same perfomance or were about to hit something?

ED, I love the planes that have been added over the years, terrain and features like the super carrier, have spent a lot of money on modules, but at some point my battles with getting the AI to work as programmed will result in me shelving the game. Building a mission should not be dependent on me having to script my way around the AI not doing what the editor settings say it should be doing. I purchased the game because I love flight sims, but after making a large invest to get back into the game I seem to get more satisfaction out of building missions than going through the learning curve of getting proficient at flying. 2 weeks ago I set about building a large scale battle on the Persian Gulf map. After spending over well over 60 hours on it, I’m still less than 1/4 of the way in getting mostly just the red side set up. While a handful of those hours were spent re-learning LUA how it is used in DCS and switching to VS Code as my editor, the bulk of it has been spent trying to get the AI to complete a mission with no opposition without killing themselves. Much of my time has been wasted repeatedly re-running the missions to identify errant AI behavior. Even with time acceleration it is an extremely time-consuming process. Here is a list of the issues I’ve encountered: Helicopters taking damage from cargo when picking up cargo Helicopters hovering over cargo, quick drop in altitude, suddenly popping up twice as high as they dropped and then landing next to the cargo with rotors spinning until they run out of fuel Cargo continuing to move after it has been dropped. I had one piece of cargo travel about 10 miles offshore before it finally stopped moving Helicopters stuck over the drop zone, not dropping the cargo and eventually crashing when they run out of fuel Mi-8 helicopters landing mass at Havadarya crashed into each other at the end runway when one brakes to make the turn off the runway effectively shutting down the base None of the docks along the Iranian coast (have not checked the other coats yet, but I imagine it is the same) having water deep enough to allow a ship to pull into a slip even though the static ships already docked are considerably bigger, i.e. Rajaei Port Helicopters did not reliably pick up troops. One or two would board, the rest would remain outside and the helicopter just sat there until it ran out of fuel Flight of 4 B-52’s taking off from Al Dhafra AB consistently resulted in plane number 4 crashing into the back of plane number 3 as they were about to turn towards the runway B-52’s set to either Pinpoint Strike or Ground Attack with cruise missiles flew at an altitude of 3000 feet until after the strike way points were completed regardless of what the altitude settings were. After the strike they would then follow the altitudes specified on the way points. If I started the mission with the B-52’s in the air at the desired altitude, things worked as expected F14’s starting out in a hangar opened their wings while still in the hangar and blew up as they tried to exit F14’s landing at a base with hangars had their wings torn off when going to park in a hangar Planes still attempted to dock with refuel planes that had no more fuel. I'm assuming the refueling plane had no more fuel as it did not deploy the drogue even though it had with the previous set of planes. The result was the planes would settle in directly over the refuel plane in the same formation as if refueling with the probe deployed until they ran out of fuel and crashed into the refuel plane. This happened with the KC-130, KC-135 and IL-78 No fuel management. For example, I had F14’s with external tanks flying 450 miles which is well within the combat radius of the planes, but the wingmen almost always crashed due to no fuel. The leads would crash if I had them engage a target. There should be a hard stop with the AI (when set to RTB on bingo fuel) when the fuel state reaches the minimum required to get back to base. Between this issue, the hangars and refueling, Havadarya become the only base I could use reliably for the F-14’s in quantity Planes heading towards parking after having just landed crashing into a plane already parked in the spot while it was going through start up Vehicles not following the designated path. I had 4 M113 (was just testing) set to follow a road on Tunb and it teleported about a mile offshore on the other side of the island Many the issues I’ve written about have been expressed in some variation by other users, but I wanted to add my voice to the list of people raising concerns about the dysfunction in the AI because it is a game breaker that will end in rage quitting.

Am I doing something incorrectly in that dynamically created units do not appear with the correct name on the debrief screen or is this still an open bug?

Several hours later I finally have all pickups working. I originally had them making a low level run along the coast at 150 feet, moving the entire route up to the pickup waypoint up to 500 feet seemed to give the AI enough altitude to find the right approach vector.

I managed to get around the issue of the cargo damaging the helicopter, now I’m just struggling to get them to consistently pick up the cargo. I’ve spent hours trying to get this to work correctly and have tried everything from different pilot skill levels to the heading of the cargo. This video shows the issues I’ve been dealing with in trying to get this to work. Just by changing the wind direction and speed I got completely different results. The ones that are failing settle over the cargo and then bounce up before eventually just landing next to the cargo. It seems that how the helicopter approaches the cargo determines success which is why I believe changing the wind direction changed the results. The steps I took in building this were: 1. Worked with the MI-8 until I got the route programed to work consistently 2. Copied the route changed the helicopter to the CH-47 and made changes to the route until that one worked also 3. Wrote scripts to duplicate the first group at an interval of 60 seconds 4. Once that was worked consistently added the second group Anyone have any success in getting AI cargo pickup to work on a large scale?

Using just the mission editor I'm having an issue with AI cargo pickup of large and small containers using both the CH-47 and Mi-8. In short what is happening is the helicopters are taking damage from the containers when they land next to the container. The pilots are set to Excellent for their skill level. With the Mi-8 it is taking off the tail rotor. With the CH-47 it is damaging the body sometimes to the point of making it no longer able to fly. A. Why are the helicopters landing instead of just hovering over the cargo? B. If they have to land, why are they landing practically right on top of the cargo instead of a few meters away? The length of the cargo + 1-2 meters as a radius should form the buffer area around the cargo My work around has been for the CH-47 has been to change the rotation of the container until the helicopter no longer collides with it. For the Mi-8 I've had to move around the container until the collision with the tail rotor no longer occurs. The problem with both these workarounds is that edits to other waypoints or other changes in the editor can alter the approach of the helicopters resulting in collisions again. I know there are scripts people have written for cargo handling or I could write my own, but I'm hoping there are some settings in the editor that I can apply to have this work consistently without script intervention.

Now that I have spent some time tinkering around with the DCS control files I can see that what I want is not possible (At least not with my current level of knowledge). As a poor man's alternative I decided to program my Logitech G15 keyboard instead. Here is the code I used: local NavMode = false local AtAMode =false local AtGMode = false local Msg = "" function OnEvent(event, arg) Msg = ""; if event=="G_PRESSED" and arg==1 then SetMKeyState(1,"kb"); NavMode = false; AtAMode = false; AtGMode = false; Msg = "Keyboard Reset." ; end if (event == "M_PRESSED" ) then if (arg == 1) then if NavMode == false then Msg = "Nav Mode enabled" ; NavMode = true; if AtAMode == true then PressAndReleaseKey("a"); end if AtGMode == true then PressAndReleaseKey("g"); end AtAMode = false; AtGMode = false; end; end if (arg == 2) then if AtAMode == false then Msg = "ATA Mode enabled" ; AtAMode = true; PressAndReleaseKey("a"); if AtGMode == true then PressAndReleaseKey("g"); end NavMode = false; AtGMode = false; end; end if (arg == 3) then if AtGMode == false then Msg = "ATG Mode enabled" ; AtGMode = true; PressAndReleaseKey("g"); if AtAMode == true then PressAndReleaseKey("a"); end NavMode = false; AtAMode = false; end; end end OutputLCDMessage(Msg, 5000) end The downside of this method is that it can get out of sync with the game so I made G1 a reset key back to Nav mode and can use the keyboard commands to reset the modifiers. So far I've not had to do a a reset mid mission. I could have opted to use programing in my joystick, but I like that I can quickly see my current state at a glance based on the highlighted M key. With the joystick there would not have been any indicators to tell me what mode I was in.

Something else to keep in mind, there are two different oil rigs, there is one under Structures which appears the be the one that can be destroyed in game and there are the ones under Sea Shelf Objects which will show up as dead, but have no damage model.

Thanks, changing the quantity did it and now it also works with more than just bombs. I never got the same graphic as in your video for a destroyed rig, but the mission summary did show the rig as "dead" after about a 20 hits.