I think when you make a mission at PH, you are then going to get whatever campaign units that are scripted at that location, in your play. You might want to experiment with missions out in the boondocks first. Start simple.

Second, I wouldn't waste time trying to change the behavior of the aircraft. We just don't have a way to do it. It's a submarine operations game; enemy aircraft are going to attack you when they see you. That is the way the game was built. The pilots don't have an elaborate target priority list. I would place my sub on the far side of the big ships, or even underwater. That should help.

It's not necessary. Aircraft will attack ships. It's just that if they see your sub first, or maybe even at the same time, they are apt to attack your sub. Iow, there is no checkbox on the aircraft "ignore player submarines".

IJ aircraft will attack US ships, too. I had to make a mission of this nature to test aircraft physics recently, so I know it happens.

I have no idea why sfc would have trouble getting them to attack ships. He might want to double check what kinds of loadouts the aircraft have. If they have depth charges, they might want to attack subs. I would try some variety of a/c. See if they all behave the same.

Btw, I used RFB+RSRDC in my missions. Maybe that has some effect here.

Hmmm...........

When I was testing my a/c, I used mostly merchants, as I didn't want AAA taking out the a/c. I also used a few DD's, at first. I had the target ships sitting still. As far as I could tell, not moving, or docked has no effect; the a/c attacked every time, Vals too. Sometimes, they would not drop on the first pass, but make 2 or 3 before they liked the set-up. That seemed odd to me, but they eventually attacked.

One thing- I had most of the a/c coming in at low altitude, probably less than 3,000 ft. in most cases. If yours are high, they may indeed have trouble seeing the targets.

If you do figure out what the problem is, update the thread. This would be good to know.

I didn't try to test every model of a/c. I tested a representative cross-section using every type; dive bomber, level bomber, torpedo bomber, fighter-bomber.

IIRC, most a/c had a choice of loadouts. Some maybe only had a 'basic' load out. That would mean guns only, so they could only strafe targets.

The problem I found that I couldn't fix, is that the torpedo bombers didn't work. I was able to get the Kates to drop torps properly (instead of dropping like bombs), but the torps themselves wouldn't explode, so they can never get hits.

I tried to modify the a/c to make their physics more realistic, but couldn't really change very much. Most things seem to be hard-coded, but they did attack -either my sub, or any allied ships present.

HERE is the thread, post #199 and thereabouts.

If you are trying to make a Dec. 7 war-start event, there might be some issue with the IJ planes not considering the ships enemies yet?

I assume you are using v1.5 of the game. All my work was with this version.

IIRC, in RSRDC, the basic load out planes are fighters, like the zero, which would not usually have bombs, or such. About stock, I have no idea.

If you haven't already done so, it would probably be worthwhile to look into RSRDC files and see how lurker changed things to get the load out he wanted. Apart from messing with the aerial torps, I didn't want to make any changes there.