Bombing not possible above 2000 mtr?

[Naj-Treg]

Hi,

 

I recently discovered the b-29 and the b-17 mod wich i really love! Now am trying to create a simple mission where a formation of bombers drop their payload on a assigned waypoint. I am not very good mission builder but i can create simple missions.

 

now my problem.

I created a formation of b-17's. Give them a ground attack function and set the waypoint (with the triangle) where i want the attack. If the altitude is 2000 mtr or lower the planes drop their bombs as i want it to.

 

in real life b-17's dropped their bombs from 8 to 10 km high. When the altitude is above 2000 mtr the bombers turn away from the target and dont drop their bombs. Am i doing something wrong?

 

With the high altitude i made a longer attack waypoint because the bombs need to be released farther away from the target because of the long drop. This did not work either.

 

Does anyone know a solution for this problem? I did find some threads on how to set op bomb runs but they did not help.

 

Some help will really be apriciated.

 

Naj-Treg

[DarkFire]

Might be a problem with the AI. Some bombers seem to flatly refuse to bomb point targets. I tried using a B-52 for this exact thing and it just refused to bomb the assigned target. As soon as I swapped it for a B-1 it behaved.

 

AI woes I guess...

[Naj-Treg]

Thanks for your reply. Gonna try if i can make a work around. not much fun having a formation at 2000 mtr.

[DarkFire]

The other thing that may be worth trying is to give the bombers plenty of distance between their IP and target. Try giving them 15-20 Km between the "attack" waypoint and the actual bombing target and see if that helps.

[Stonehouse]

Seems like something has changed in the last patch or so. Previously working missions where mod introduced bombers like the B17 bombed from above 2000m now don't seem to work. Typically when the planes turn around like that it means it's been given an invalid waypoint action.

 

At present no idea of how to fix it or even if I can fix it. We're just finishing up the DC3 so may have some time to go back and see if it can be fixed and also try all the mods like PBY, B29, HE111 and B17 etc to see if any work above 2000m.

 

Temporary (hopefully) workaround via a script. See here for details http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2360128&postcount=121 and here for latest version of bombing script http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2418128&postcount=142

 

Note B29 lua download in above two links is out dated and should not be used.

Edited July 22, 2016 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

I did some checking over the last few days and it was quite strange. Friday evening I could bomb from any height with the B29 but the B17 just refused to co-operate. Yesterday evening I had the B17, G4M, He111 and PBY all bombing from 5000m without much trouble but the B29 just turned away. So I think it is working for the mod aircraft but is just very picky. It probably means something is not quite right with them so that the band of "right" conditions for bombing is narrower than for a stock aircraft like the B52. I will keep looking at it on and off particularly as the next mod aircraft is apparently going to be another bomber (Ju88 ) so I will be looking at the same sort of setups. I know for instance that getting the pylons in not quite the right position in the lua will cause the refusal to bomb so I can review the co-ords again.

[Naj-Treg]

Thats very weird. I think it has something to do with the triangle you get when setting up your bombing waypoint. I now working with scripted explosions on the ground. much work and not as beautiful as when u see the bombs getting dropped. But the mission is about escort/intercept the B-17. So for me it's not a big problem. Also for some reason the B-29 does not work any more.... or makes DCS not wanne startup when mod is enabled. P-38, DC3, PBY, G4M Betty, Raiden HE-111 and the B-17 are working well. tried to re-install the B-29 mod without any luck.

 

BTW i use the DCS 1.5 with the latest offical update.

 

I did not try any mission in the Nevada map so I cannnot compare things.

[Stonehouse]

It worked on Nevada in the past but I haven't tried it for months. Strange for the B29 in respect to making DCS not start. Have you edited any of the lua files? If so a typo may be causing the issue although usually all that happens is that you don't get the B29 in game and everywhere you have put it in the mission changes to an A10. All my tests are on latest stable DCS world too.

 

I still have a feeling that a patch has changed something because I haven't revised any of the released mods on my install because I'm busy looking at the WIP ones but I have found missions I built previously for testing the B17 that did work now don't. I did note that there was a change in AI bombing buildings to stop a crash bug in the last patch.

 

Anyway at this point I have no concrete ideas unfortunately so will just have to continue to look that the problem as spare time allows and will advise if I find any way to make it more dependable or identify a root cause.

[Stonehouse]

Small update on this. I was fiddling around testing the B29. For runway attacks (the actual waypoint task not the role) it works fine from above 2000m if you keep the flight path in line with the target - so if you have say 3 waypoints numbered 0,1,2 and the runway attack action is on waypoint 1 you need to keep the line between 0,1 and 2 straight with the target roughly on the flight path and that works with about 20kms run in from waypoint 1 to target.

However for ground attack role and the bombing action I seem to be seeing a relationship between bombing altitude and the distance between bombing action and target of about 10+ to 1. IE same as above example. Waypoints 0,1,2 with a straight flight path again but this time the waypoints are at 8000m and the action is bombing with a ground attack role. The distance between waypoint 1 and the target triangle seems to need to be about 80kms or more and then it works. The aircraft still seems to twitch when it hits waypoint 1 with the action so I would be careful of too close a formation. Perhaps moving it to 15 times alt might stop the twitch too, don't know. Anyway if the attack order was at least 80km from target then the bombing seemed to work every time at 8000m.

Edited July 28, 2016 by Stonehouse

[Naj-Treg]

Got it working as you explained in the post above :thumbup: Thanks for sorting this out. still one little problem left....this works if the formation is on the same level...But the planes in a combat box had different heights... so it's very hard to get all the waypoints right and to keep the formation. But thank you very much to get me this far :thumbup: now i need to find out how to setup mist and FLAK mod. next challenge :helpsmilie: :music_whistling:

[Stonehouse]

The flak script is reasonably straight forward and the example mission I included in the package for it covers all the different types. You do need to get the latest version of mist off the github location however. You can find the link over in the Mist thread but for your reference it is always here if you wish to bookmark it https://github.com/mrSkortch/MissionScriptingTools/releases/latest