George and LOAL, single player. Help please.

[Hippo]

To try and practise this I've set up some targets around 5km from a ridge.  I will be in the pilot's seat througout.  I'd like to arrive behind the ridge, pop up, get George to scan for targets, select a target, drop back behind the ridge, launch the hellfire, then pop up at the last moment to lase the target, thereby minimising my exposure.

Firstly, have I just misunderstood; is this even a use case for LOAL?

So, anyway, CP/G George is setup for LOAL HI, I arrive at the ridge, pop up, get George to scan for targets and select one from the list, I then drop back behind the ridge.  When I give George consent to fire, he confirms he's engaging but does not fire.

Very well, onto plan B, I pop up and ask him to fire, which he does, and drop down behind the ridge with the intention to pop back up, hopefully he'll reacquire the target and the missile will guide.  Nope, when I drop behind the ridge, he says something like "laser off" or "laser lost", and does not reacquire the target once I'm hovering above the ridge again.

So it seems that for this to work George needs to be lasing the target continuously from before launch all the way through to hitting the target... aka LOBL?!

Am I doing something wrong?  Am I just being my usual thick self?  Should this even work at all? Is it something that is still to be implemented by the devs?

I did check out this:

 

but, 1. I'm getting somewhat lost following this, why does the pilot have to even do anything with weapons, waypoints, acq?  And if that is the sort of rigmarole you have to go through then I think I'll pass.  2. He seems to need lase throughtout engagement, so what is the point of LOAL?  My apologies to the poster if this sounds harsh or ungrateful, especially if I've misunderstood, on the contrary many thanks for posting that video and the effort put in to do so.  It's just that it's all going over my head.

Grateful for any replies.

Edited May 28, 2022 by Hippo

[NeedzWD40]

21 minutes ago, Hippo said:

Firstly, have I just misunderstood; is this even a use case for LOAL?

Yes, it can be used that way.

22 minutes ago, Hippo said:

So, anyway, CP/G George is setup for LOAL HI...

George does not properly utilize LOAL modes yet.

23 minutes ago, Hippo said:

but, 1. I'm getting somewhat lost following this, why does the pilot have to even do anything with weapons, waypoints, acq?

There are situations where the pilot may be set to fire at a pre-planned point, ie defilade fire, where they will need to set acquisition sources and engage independently or in tandem with the CPG. The crew are intended to be fluid as the situation dictates.

26 minutes ago, Hippo said:

2. He seems to need lase throughtout engagement, so what is the point of LOAL?

You can leverage higher trajectories and get additional range and/or angles on a target.

To use George in an LOAL bobup context, you'll have to take control of the HELLFIRE yourself and set a point up as your acquisition source. You can either direct George to find a target and drop a point where he's looking via the TSD or you can pipe in coordinates via the KU. Once this is done and you have your point set as your acquisition source, get within firing parameters, fire, then wait til your missile TOF is within ~15 seconds of impact. Bob up, direct George to search, find your appropriate target, tell him to track it. If you've done it right, the missile will acquire in the terminal and hit.

This is convoluted, but it's the only workaround at the moment without buddy lasing or a human CPG.

[Floyd1212]

The purpose of designating an ACQ source is for an LOAL shot is so you can align the helo in the right direction to give the missile a chance of even seeing a laser on the way down.  if you fire a LOAL shot off 90 degrees from the lased target, it will not see it and guide itself in.

One thing you might try is to use the "long-down" press for George to recall the previous list of targets, then select the one you want after you unmask to a point where he can see it.

1. WAS missiles yourself in the back seat
2. Set LOAL with the desired trajectory
3. Rifle
4. Unmask and press long-down to pull up the list and select your target
5. George lases it for you
6. Shack

You might be able to pull up the list when the target is originally in sight and find it in the list and have the correct one highlighted before masking for your shot.  Not sure if you WASing missiles away from George will cause him to clear his list.

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

The laser hellfire does not know where the ACQ is. The ACQ is for the pilot's reference only. The LOAL missile simply flies the selected profile in the direction the Apache is pointed at regardless of ACQ. It then looks for the lased target. You give it the best chance of it finding the lased target by pointing your nose at the target (with the help of the ACQ if you need to) when you launch.

I've tested and find the sim's hellfire quite good at acquiring the lased target even if you launch it at an offset angle (L/R) or changed the lased target halfway in flight provided you have enough distance between you and the target for the missile to search and make flight path corrections. 

George is WIP. He can only lase what he can see in line-of-sight and will fire when commanded if he can lase it (and is within the other launch parameters). He reacquires (lases) target quite well when the target (eg tank) moves behind tress and is obstructed momentarily. But going back down behind the ridge, I think his current AI brain quits lasing and the target altogether.

For me, I find the long press down does not work well. It often commands "undesignate" instead of "search again". So I usually use forward press to get the target list again. I've wondered why the list has to disappear after every target selection but that's the way they have implemented it.          

Edited May 29, 2022 by GrEaSeLiTeNiN

[Floyd1212]

Yes, if he has lost sight of a target, or you start pushing long-up to have him scan again, the old list goes away. 

But if I'm hovering just behind a hill, and there are 6 targets in the list, I can work through them all using the long-down option to bring the list back up again.  For the last item in the list, when you long-down he goes directly to it; you don't get a list of one target.