A non-urgent note on Carrier Bugs

[xcandiottix]

I just wanted to raise awareness of somethings pertaining to the carriers over the last few patches.

1. The lo-fi carriers repeatedly fire off the S_EVENT_HIT function by the plane taking off. If you have code that does something when something gets hit you may find that event firing 100 times in a row during the catapult ... both AI and Human players. This caused my campaign to trigger Blue on Blue damage alerts. My guess is that the gear or hook is "hitting" the deck therefore triggering the event.

2. Lo-fi carriers are invisible. If you F10->F6 a lo-fi carrier it is invisible with planes sitting on top of it. If you zoom in at specific angles, very close, in starts to render again.

3. On all blue carriers, in regards to the AI F-14, E-2D, and S-3B if both or two of each make it to cat 1 and cat 2 (the front cats on the carrier) they will never take off. I think this is because the wings of both aircraft overlap for a few feet and this probably triggers a hit box telling each plane to stay put. In multiplayer, this will foul the deck.

4. The AI SU-27 can be placed on the hi-fi Kuznetsov but it will never take off and foul the deck. It seems only the SU-33 consistently takes off from the carrier. I believe IRL the SU-27K is the only 27 variant that can take off from the carrier so maybe the in-game one can not. Perhaps pulling the getDesc for the 27 would say if it is a carrier plane or not but I'm too lazy to go through that exercise. I'm not looking for clarification here or a wiki copy and paste about the history of Russian naval planes .. just pointing this out incase anyone has the same issue.

5. When a carrier is given a waypoint to follow it will often circle that way point but never actually get to it. This may be because I have a group of 5 ships in a "dice five" formation and they all can't make the turn. I've tried adjusting speed, formation, and formation width but no luck yet in solving this. If you notice your naval group just orbiting a point you may be having the same issue.

**NEW 12/21**
6. On the hi-fi Kuznetsov, when there are three AI planes on deck preparing for take off and a fourth one lands, it noses into the lead aircraft that is trying to get to the cat and fouls the deck. Screenshots below. Note that the screenshot shows #1 for the cat rolls forward and gets stuck.

I'm not looking for answers for fixes to the above, or providing a track file, I'm just pointing them out incase anyone is experiencing the same behaviors. As a fix for my multiplayer server, I am just dropping the lo-fi carriers out of the campaign as it seems the support for them is going away and I may ditch either the E-2 or F14 to prevent fouling until a patch fixes this.

In the screenshot below these two planes have been on the deck for two hours now on the server while cats 3 & 4 have been launching planes no problem since those cats are staggered and no overlap occurs. Again, this happens on hi-fi carriers as well.

Edited December 21, 2022 by xcandiottix

[Grimes]

Hit events are somewhat common on ships in MP unfortunately. It is usually desync related. 

The Vinson has an LOD problem, but the ship is also being phased out. You may have noticed you can no longer select it in the mission editor. It simply exists in the game files but isn't meant to be placed anymore with assorted bugs seemingly accumulating over time. 

The F-14 and E-2 issue is related to runway starts. Its best to stagger the spawns of aircraft set to take-off "from runway" on the carrier either with timing, forcing use of a given catapult, or use ramp spawns. 

The Su-27 we have in game is not capable of using the carrier and the editor will not let you place it there to take-off or land. Either you have an editor mod allowing it, an aircraft mod, or you are spawning it there via scripting which won't stop you from doing it, but also won't force AI to use it as you might expect. 

7 hours ago, xcandiottix said:

5. When a carrier is given a waypoint to follow it will often circle that way point but never actually get to it. This may be because I have a group of 5 ships in a "dice five" formation and they all can't make the turn. I've tried adjusting speed, formation, and formation width but no luck yet in solving this. If you notice your naval group just orbiting a point you may be having the same issue.

I'm not looking for answers for fixes to the above, or providing a track file, I'm just pointing them out incase anyone is experiencing the same behaviors. 

Yeah I would characterize that one as urgent or at the very least important and worthy of a track/sample. AI ships have some annoying tendencies but if a ship can get stuck going in a circle then that is a problem

[xcandiottix]

51 minutes ago, Grimes said:

The F-14 and E-2 issue is related to runway starts. Its best to stagger the spawns of aircraft set to take-off "from runway" on the carrier either with timing, forcing use of a given catapult, or use ramp spawns. 

Regarding this one, the aircraft is dynamically placed on to the carrier in groups of 2-4. Their Route -> Point -> action is "From Parking Area" and type is "TakeOffParking". Helipad and linkUnit are also appropriately set. Perhaps the lo-fi carriers start the planes off on the cat and there is no parking or the parking is bugged. I'll post more next time a hi-fi carrier enters the campaign.

I'll follow-up on the track file as well.

[Grimes]

Yeah the low detailed 3d models don't have ramp spawns so it defaults to spawning on the catapults.