Shipping strike issues

I've been revisiting one of my old missions intending to update it to 2.5 standards. Part of the old mission involved FW190s loaded with SC500s set up for an anti shipping strike against a convoy consisting of the old Russian civilian ships that have been in the game for ages.

However after seeing the missing textures issues on them I switched these ships to the Samuel Chase from the WW2 asset pack and began testing the mission. I noticed very quickly that the FW190s now just overflew the convoy made up of 8 Samuel Chase ships and did not attack despite an attack group order.

I tried several different things including eventually adding a Harrier to the mission with anti ship missiles. This worked and the Harrier happily killed the Samuel Chases. I changed the load out to pure bombs and found that the Harrier also refused to attack the Samuel Chase with bombs.

I then added one of the old civilian ships back and added a FW190 with an SC500 and a shipping strike task and straight away the FW190 happily attacked the old ship. The aircraft missed by quite a bit but attacked without any issue or hesitation. Note this was on the new Caucasus map

So there appears to be an issue with shipping strikes, bombs and the Samuel Chase and (while unlikely) possibly some interaction of these with the new map that needs to be investigated by the dev team.

At the moment however aircraft do not seem to want to perform bombing attacks on the Samuel Chase even when properly tasked in the editor. It was very reproducible at my end. If I get time I will try a repeat experiment on Normandy but I'm guessing I will get the same results.

<edit> checked and reproduced on Normandy so the issue is not map related.

<edit2> rechecked after 7/2 patch and hotfix and still an issue.

<edit3> rechecked after hotfix2 and the issue still exists

One other funny AI thing I noticed, I discovered that the German truck from the WW2 asset pack will very cheekily drive over a HAS if it happens to be on it's path. Maybe not a bug really but was certainly surprising!

Tested again after hotfix 3. Issue still exists for the Samuel Chase, LST and LHA1 Tarawa. It looks like it is the same problem as with community mod ships where the AI for a shipping strike doesn't recognise these new ships as valid targets for a bomb attack. I saw the aircraft either turn and fly away when they reached the waypoint with the attack advanced waypoint action or simply over fly the target straight and level.

Tested again after Update 4 and the hotfix of 15/3. Aircraft now bomb the Samuel Chase, LST but still ignore the LHA1 Tarawa.

I tried the FW190 scenario and also one with the Harrier loaded just with bombs.

...And broken again. Easily reproducible, take a LS Samuel Chase and a FW190 armed with a SC500, task the FW190 with a shipping strike role and give it a few waypoints and on say the first waypoint for an air start tell it to attack the ship. The aircraft just overflies the target vessel without attacking it.

Post latest open beta patch both the Tarawa and the Samuel Chase are still not valid bombing targets for AI aircraft set up with Anti Ship strike and specific advance waypoint action instructions to bomb these targets.

Checked this again after this weeks patch. Tarawa and Samuel Chase are still not being attacked by AI aircraft set as Anti Ship strike and correct waypoint actions if armed with bombs. They will attack ships if they are "old" ships like the dry bulk carrier and tanker.

This means at present that all WW2 missions involving bombing attacks on Samuel Chase ships do not work. Also even for modern era missions attacks on the Tarawa will not work if the AI aircraft are loaded with bombs only.

So the problem is an overall issue with AI and attacking armed ships. Appears that the Samuel Chase is just above whatever threshold there is for AI to engage with dumb munitions. Weirdly if you use a modern aircraft with guided munitions and unguided munitions the AI will attack with the guided ones and then ignore the target once it has dumb weapons remaining. It even extends to static objects of the ships.

Yes agree, I have tried using a Harrier with several different loadouts and if the AI only has bombs it won't attack or stops attacking after using up it's missiles. I didn't realise it extended to other armed ships however, so the issue is actually a bit worse than I thought. Last I checked the LST was ok after one of the recent patches, I haven't checked it again yet though.

Tested it again after today's patch and it still has not been fixed. Completely and easily reproducible and very much breaks WW2 anti shipping attacks as well as anything modern attacking a ship when it just has bombs.

Issue persists after latest patch

Well for what it is worth this issue still is present after the last open beta patch. AI aircraft tasked to a shipping strike with a bomb only loadout will not generally attack armed ships but will attack things like the old lomac era freighters and other generally unarmed or lightly armed ships. Put them up against the Samuel Chase or a frigate or a CV etc and they refuse to attack and simply fly over. Doesn't seem to matter what aircraft you use be it a WW2 aircraft or something modern. 100% repeatable. Hopefully it's been passed to the dev team as it makes WW2 anti shipping missions generally not possible or at least not believable as modern freighters don't look much like ones from the 1920s & 30s as a lot of this type of ship was during WW2.