Mission debugging request.

[DarkFire]

Help! I'm trying to build a mission which sees you and your 3 wingmen defending Sochi Adler from attack by 2 x B-52H bombers and 4 x F-4E fighter sweep aircraft. As far as I can tell I've set up the waypoints and attack orders as required but the idiot bomber AI flatly refuses to attack the correct targets. So far I've run the mission 5 times, once with my flight and I actively attacking the approaching enemies and 4 times where I've done nothing except to sit on the runway and observe. The results were:

 

1. (Active defence) Enemy fighters and 1 x enemy bomber shot down. Remaining enemy bomber made bugger all effort to attack or follow assigned waypoints, it just turned due north and flew until it exited the map area.

 

2. (Passive) Bomber assigned to strike airfield buildings reached IP waypoint, turned away and ignored all further waypoints. Ignored designated target but decided to attack my EWR site with 2 of the 51 bombs it had on board. 2nd bomber got to the IP, approached to within 5Km of probably release point, turned away from what was a perfect approach vector, did a 360 and was shot down by friendly SAM.

 

3. (Passive). Bomber assigned to attack airfield buildings once again turned away ~5Km from possible release point, ignored designated targets, turned south and flew off ignoring all further waypoints. Bomber assigned to destroy runway ignored the runway and attacked my EWR site, getting shot down by friendly SA-8 in the process.

 

4. (Passive) Bomber assigned to attack airfield buildings refused to obey any waypoints, got to within ~15Km of its target, turned south and flew away, ignoring all further waypoints and refused to attack anything at all. Bomber assigned to destroy runway again turned away from what was a perfect run-in vector at ~3Km from release point, did a 360 and was promptly shot down by a friendly SAM.

 

5. (Passive) Both bombers refused to even turn in towards their targets from their IPs, turned south and flew off, ignoring any waypoints and made no effort to attack anything at all.

 

:chair: :crash:

 

Meanwhile, the fighter group in each case turned directly towards the target airfield, ignoring their first waypoint, descended from 8000m to 2500m, hit max AB and barelled in as if they could see me, not moving, at zero altitude on the runway, at 155Km range. Like the radar on an F-4E would be able to do that :disgust:

 

Could someone please take a look at the attached mission and let me know where I'm going wrong? This is getting severely frustrating, to the point where I fear for the safety of my nice mechanical keyboard :helpsmilie:

Edited August 25, 2015 by DarkFire

[Zayets]

Make sure the AI is ignoring threats on way to the designated target. If it is set to react to threats then they will try to avoid all enemy defense. Afterall this is why you add an escort for their protection. Needless to say, you may want to add some realism as well, why would anyone send bombers before neutralizing the enemy AAA?

Hope that helps.

[DarkFire]

Ah, thanks for the tip, I hand't thought of doing that. When I get the bombers to work the next step will be to add a SEAD flight and a friendly CAP flight. Work in progress :-)

[DarkFire]

Well I eventually solved the problem by swapping the B-52's with B-1B's. For whatever reason the B-52's simply did not want to attack no matter what I did. Exchanging them for B-1B's and adding the "ignore threat" option worked a treat. Now adding a SEAD flight and friendly CAP flights. I think this will turn in to a fun mission...

 

So, does anyone have some secrets for making B-52's work? I know it must be possible as I've seen them do runway and airfield strikes in youtube videos.