Question regarding Reaper drone

[markturner1960]

Hi, I have inserted one of these into a mission, loaded with hellfires and set it as ROE weapons free......it does not seem to engage anything, is there a trick to getting it working? thanks

[Mistermann]

Spitballing here....does giving it an advanced waypoint command of engage group or unit have any effect?

I've always wondered if you could get a reaper to engage.  Great question!

[Livers]

Give it a "CAS" task and some enemy ground units within range, and it should just work. I like keeping its altitude to above 8500' or so.

Reaper vs 4 T-90 tanks.miz

[Exorcet]

AI aircraft need waypoints and actions in those waypoints to function. If an AI has no waypoints or reaches the end of its waypoints, it will try to land at the closest non hostile airbase. You can find the actions by clicking ADVANCED (WAYPOINT ACTIONS) and adding them to the list. Some are added by default based on the TASK assigned to the AI.

The default CAS action is a way to get the AI to act, but I don't recommend it. Most of the default actions give you limited control over the how the AI acts and can make them do weird things.

Instead you can use tasks like Search Then Engage to give the AI a mission and better control how they operate by limited range of engagement, weapons used, targets assigned, etc. Keep in mind that the AI has to find a target before engaging. Detection abilities vary with different units. If the AI needs to search an area it helps to give it an Orbit waypoint action to make it fly around a specific waypoint or pair of waypoints.

This can be a lot to take in if you're new to the ME, but if you provide more details someone can set up an example for you easily. Or you can share a mission file and have someone add units to it.