Eccentric F-15E AI behavior on ingress; can someone take a look?

[Bahger]

I'm making a mission that is quite a large set-piece battle. In "laying the groundwork" for the Hogs, I have two flights of Tordados flying SEAD against a pair of SA-19 batteries and two flights of F-15Es timed to ingress a few minutes later. One of these flights (named Anti Artillery Strikers) is tasked with flying over the AO at 27,000ft and doing a "one pass, haul ass" attack on two large artillery batteries with cluster munitions. The problems are as follows:

 

- The anti-artillery pass is extremely effective and looks great, when it happens, but the Strike eagles take a ridiculously long time setting up for it, turning and burning and varying their altitude and airspeed for no apparent reason at their IP. This delay is goofy and throws off my desired timing for the mission. I have tried every type of threat reaction behavior ("No Reaction", "Passive", etc.) in case the F-15s' behavior is some sort of maneuver against the remaining AD, but they behave like this even when all the AD has gone and SA-19s cannot reach up to their briefed altitude anyway. All this pre-strike messing about looks idiotic and I'd love to get rid of it. The attack itself seems effectively programmed.

 

- The other F-15E flight (named F-15 CAS) is supposed to orbit at altitude picking off ground targets of opportunity. I have experimented with many ways of getting it to engage ("Search and Engage in Zone" etc.) but it will not engage, even when I reduce its target types to armor only. It flies directly over several armor groups without engaging. I suppose I could bully it into engaging by tasking it against a specific group but I want there to be more unpredictability to the mission and enable this Strike Eagle CAS flight to find its own targets.

 

These are two aggravating AI fails. It's possible I've not set things up optimally so could someone please take a look? I'm out of ideas. You can run through the .miz very quickly by selecting one of the A-10 client flights that are on the ground and jumping around in F10, F2 and other views, speeding the sim up if necessary. I'd really appreciate it, thank you. Mission attached.

Crossroads_05.miz

[Ripcord]

By eccentric, do you mean wearing those funky-cool checkered ascots while flying?

 

Only thing that I can even think of here that MIGHT be even remotely useful would be the speeds of the Mudhen flights at the various altitudes. Maybe they are having trouble hitting the speeds being assigned, at the assigned altitudes, or maybe the opposite is true -- maybe they want to go faster and cannot and therefore act wierd.

[Bahger]

I had forgotten what an English concept "eccentric" is...

 

You make a very good point. I am hopeless at choosing the right airspeed for diffferent aircraft at different altitudes and cannot convert IAS to TAS (additionally I'm not sure which type is indicated in the ME planner interface anyway). Can you advise re. what you condiser an appropriate mil (i.e. non-burner) airspeed, as plotted in the ME, for an F-15E at 27,000ft?

[Grimes]

F-15C CAS might be having issues detecting valid ground targets. By that I mean they are flying to high and the enemy isn't moving or firing for the AI F-15Es to be able to detect the targets. You might have to just give them specific attack group/unit commands which will allow the F-15E CAS flight to "know" exactly where the units are at. And yes, there are instances when AI are unable to detect targets!

 

The other flight issues appear to be caused by waypoint speed and placement. On the ingress WP the flight speed is at the right speed that the wingman can't really decide if he needs to break off and re-form or if he should just slowdown/speed-up where he is at. Usually if an AI is flying at a pretty high alpha that means it is struggling to maintain the specified speed, when this happens wingmen will have issues maintaining formation. I only ran the mission unchanged once, and in that running the F-15E flight simply flew west a little bit at the IP and then back east with a nice lineup on its two bombing targets. I simply increased their speed for that WP and they maintained formation to the WP.

 

I also played around with the group attack and attack quantity settings, but it didn't make much of a difference. As it is setup by default the lead aircraft has enough bombs to do both bombing objectives by itself, and for me, it executed both bombing flawlessly. The wingman sort of sits back and waits to see if the lead accomplishes its task or not.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Grimes

[Bahger]

Thanks, grimes. I pushed the airspeed to the (post-IP) WP 3 up to 350kts (IAS?) at 25000ft, what did you put in?

[Grimes]

I'd increase their speed over their whole flight plan... 200kts is just way to slow for an F-15E, especially at the higher altitudes.

[Exorcet]

Thanks, grimes. I pushed the airspeed to the (post-IP) WP 3 up to 350kts (IAS?) at 25000ft, what did you put in?

The ME uses TAS only. For a fighter, 425 is usually the slowest I have them go.

[Bahger]

Trouble is, the TAS/IAS relationship varies enormously by altitude. I haven't yet found a usable conversion calculator. Are you sure the ME uses TAS, not IAS?

[Banditman99]

How about:

 

 

TAS = IAS * [1 + (Altitude/1000 * .02)]

 

Altitude in feet

 

Or, TAS = IAS + 2% per 1000' altitude.

 

BR

 

Bandit

[Eddie]

Can you advise re. what you condiser an appropriate mil (i.e. non-burner) airspeed, as plotted in the ME, for an F-15E at 27,000ft?

 

At least 500 KTAS at that altitude. I'd go for around 550 (340 KIAS), depending on weapon load and role of course.

[Ripcord]

This is a really really good post for anybody building missions in the ME. Probably this explains a lot of wierd AI behavior in missions that many of us are working on, or have been working on.

[Bahger]

Very helpful, gents, thanks. it's aggravating to have to trial-and-error airspeeds at altitude.