Hi,
Everytime I get invested in CLoD I seem to always get completely brought down by the fighters returning to base behaviour. It is such a HUGE issue. A couple of years back as I was messing with scripts I looked at the task that was happening. I made a thread here:
https://theairtacticalassaultgroup.c...638#post364638
Now I've been back and making some missions and getting a bit more understanding I made some more test scripts.
I set up a mission with a fighter escorting a bomber, and myself in a fighter.
First observation: Fighters escort a bomber all the way unless they engage the enemy, i.e. they ignore all waypoints after the first escort. They will follow hte bombers until they get to their landing waypoint, then the bombers 'task is complete' and the escort stops. This is actually quite cool in a way, you don't need to set waypoints following the bomber group. I wish I had known that before making 24 missions and laying out all those escort routes.
Second observation: The fighters then go fly straight to their landing waypoint. Whch is ok in the scenario where they encounter nothing. But is totally rubbish when they have a short battle and disengage (providing they have fuel/ammo left, otherwise it makes sense to fly home)
Third observation: The fighter group's 'next waypoint' actually changes to their landing waypoint at the point they start the escort. So if landing happens to be point 7 and point 3 is the escort, as they start the escort their next waypoint becomes 7. This agrees with observaiton 2 above.
Fourth observation: They go into DEFENDING task when escorting, then ATTACK_AIR when they fight something.
Fifth observation: When they lose sight they go to RETURN task. and this is what I think breaks everything.
Now I tried to just set their task to FLY_WAYPOINT but it kept switching back, which was before I realised their next waypoint had jumped to the last one.
So I used the recently aquired knowledge (from this forum, thanks) on how to set a new set of waypoints to give them a full set at the point they drop out of ATTACK_AIR. And this did direct them to fly to the new waypoints, but, they were dumb. They would not fight back, some wiggle but no bite. I'd kept away from shooting opportunities as I evaded them so I doubt it their ammo was out, but admittedly I did not test for that.
So my theory is that the b***** point where they set to RETURN as a task makes them stupid. For ever. Even if you give them nice new waypoints that they fly normally.
Please could you do something about it? Stop whatever gets tripped at that point? Or give us the ability to reset it with script/method?
Personally with my naive thinking I think it needs:
1) An airgroup to only have it's next waypoint jump to be 'the next non-escort task waypoint' if there are any remaining. If there are none, then next waypoint becomes the landing one (current behaviour).
2) When a fighter flight ends it's AirAttack by losing sight , instead of clicking into RETURN task it just does NORMFLY / fly waypoint unless ammo/fuel is an issue then it can do the RETURN behaviour.
Here is some of my console output from my test, right at the point the escorting fighter lost sight of me.
I was printing the airgroup and its task every 10 seconds
The current (next) waypoint integer
The last waypoint integer before it started Defend/Air attack behaviour, and then there was another output kind of duplicating the task in the first line.
So below, 'Last is 1', is just where I logged that the escort started at waypoint 2, so the last normal fly waypoint was 1.
Landing waypoint for the fighter was 4 and you can see in the first bit it has already jumped to that In teh first bit
And you can see some text I was printing saying it was attacking here, which matches the task in the first line.
Then it loses sight, the task changes to RETURN. Grrrr.
Ping is where my script changed all the waypoints and its task changes to FLY_WAYPOINT and the current waypoint is 1 as well, all as I had anticipated. But sadly, it was dumb and neither me finding it again, or a Gloster GLadiator I had set up on a hea don on it's course between waypoint 3 and 4 (which it duely followed) were of any interest to it.
Spoiler:
I know there is the thought that we can keep setting nearest target somehow but that strikes me as areally wewrid way of approaching it and, please for the love of all that is good, could you look at disabling this RETURN drone-mode unless low fuel/no ammo, and, maybe also stop the waypoint jumping to landing after escort, if at all possible?S oemthgin must be blocking an aircraft entering attack air again even when given brand new waypoints.
Thanks.
Caveat: maybe I've made a huge mistake in my tests and really haven't a clue in any of this.
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