How to make Aircraft Loiter
 

How do I make an aircraft trail and loiter over the CVSG that its supposed to be protecting. For example, I've set up an E3-Hawkeye as an inflight aircraft for my Carrier to extend the radar coverage, and I would like it to just continue to loiter right over the carrier as it goes thru its maneuvers.

I try using the standard "boxes" but it usually gets the Hawkeye in trouble, because the box is usually too small and the CV will eventually move beyond it, resulting in suboptimal radar coverage by the hawkeye. I've also tried making an extensive box that the CV will never go beyond, but that also causes trouble because the hawkeye will go beyond the carriers AAW range too quickly and be at risk to be attacked.

The game doesn't really allow us to add the aircraft to a formation... Anyone got any tricks or ideas?

I'd recommend a "rolling respawn."

You can set an area trigger on the CVBG to fire a remove trigger on the first S-3 and then fire a add object trigger for new S-3's on the way.

There is also a doctrine level command called TacticCenter, that might also be available in the mission editor scripts, try looking for it and see if you can script it for the S-3 based on a refiring area trigger for the CVBG, that would be a more elegant solution, but it might not be available, of course.

Is there an option for an air station? Hmmm, what tactic would be assigned for that...?

You might just have to use a lot of waypoints otherwise...

Looks like that may be the only option :shifty: :-? .
Plus maybe some option to spawn another E3 with the first is destroyed, the CV launched another aircraft to replace the E3 but ahead of another E3 it was a F18.... not quite what's needed for battlefield radar surveillance.... :88)

Work it progress to get this all right. Makes coordinating a *reasonably* oschestrated CVSG pretty much a jimmy-rigg with overly complicated micromanagement scripting.

"Making missions is hard..." [whine] :P

Come on, be a man. :cool: :)

A Suggestion
 

Use a trigger, set to re-trigger constantly, that orders the aircraft to "follow/track?... CV". (Can't remember the exact trigger.) I've used it and it works, although it needs some fine-tuning to work.

Miika

The last time I tried it (some time ago, but it worked) was to use 'air station'.

But.... but.... it *IS* hard :( :oops: . Getting these captains and pilots to act right is sometimes like trying to get a 2 year old to eat brussel sprouts. :damn: ah well, WIP, will keep trying

Thanks Miika I'll give it a try.

I'll try that as well. Thanks

My ultimate goal is to create a template script for CVSG so that they behave and respond appropriately to most attacks/enemies so that in the future, whenever a CVSG is needed in a mission, the scripts, triggers, tatics, and groups have already been worked out.

So far stuff that I need to work out is...
1. Consistent utilization of the E3-Hawkeye as its appropriate EAW platform. The CV should also re-launch a new Hawkeye appropriately whenever the current one gets shot down. Have to work out a reasonable scripts, maybe a trigger as Miika or Nzm suggested above to get the Hawkeye to fly right and then a spawn trigger with a time delay whenever the current hawkeye is downed.... maybe. It should probably always be escorted with fighter responding appropriately.
2. Appropriate use of air strikes, not just two or three fighters flying above, but maybe a trigger to spawn a figher wing of 8-10 planes whenever a enemy reaches X nm and is properly detected (either positively identified, or even just a scant ambiguous sensor contact if the threat levels are high enough). The strike group would have to be able to fly in, attack a target and then return to base afterwards. Gotta work out the triggers as well.
3. Escorts that act like escorts. Shouldn't be too hard, but sometimes I see the DG and CG actually going the other way from the CV they are supposed to be escorting! :o :stare: :hulk: , WIP

hm... that should probably do it for starters. Will take awhile to work it out, but hopefully will be a nice template for whenever a CVSG is needed in future scenarios. Got some campaign ideas that should be interesting and replayable.

Here's what I've found so far.

The Airstrip is great for E2-Hawkeye loitering where you want the plane, but its not good for scripting the plane to do any other actions (basically beyond all commands). Additionally, whenever the plane is shot down another one is not launched to replace it.

In order to script the launching of a replacement Hawkeye, the best thing I've found so far is a script tags to the demise of the original Hawkeye that will script a another Hawkeye launch. Then too my chargin, Hawkeye launches are broken and they physically can not launch off the carriers with the current physics model (their launch velocity is too low and then crash into the ocean) not a problem for jet launches, but precludes the Hawkeye launches. Additionally, its hard to predict what the behavior of the replacement Hawkeye will be since its beyond scripting.

Perhaps the best Hawkeye, loiter techinique may be just the creation of 1 in flight Hawkeye, and 3 dynamic groups, each with a Hawkeye, scripted to spawn when the last Hawkeye went down (perhaps with a 15min time delay). But that leaves the problem of "where do they spawn?" Given that a mission might cover 100miles or so, a spawn point could be far outside the range of the carrier if the game is fairly underway..... perhaps some scripting to ensure that the respawned Hawkeye seek out and follow the nearest carrier, but the details aren't well worked out and its hard to tell if it will work.

Still WIP, will keep posting on possible solutions.

That was many months ago and I don´t remember exactly, but, when creating a mission (never finished) and tried to make what you want of aircraft launched when something happens (detect a task force in my case) I found that the aircrafts must be on flight alert (with right click on the aircraft and "flight schedule" if I remember well).

Then, the aircrafts will launh on the time schedulled.

Hope this helps.

Hm... ok I'll give it a try to see what comes up. I ran into a little problem earlier when I discovered that the current physics engines keeps E2's from launching from the carrier. They go straight into the ocean. :doh: :stare: :-?

Maybe with some tweaking and the launching problem resolved it can be the simple solution we're looking for.

Re: How to make Aircraft Loiter
 

Educated guessing galore:

I believe USN doctrine specifically states that an E-2 should not do that. Simply because that would pretty much be to tell the enemy "we're here" well beyond the radar horizon of the ship itself.

On the other hand, the mission editor tends to place the E-2 well below standard operating altitude, giving it a rather close radar horizon. Placing it higher and further away might still give it better radar coverage to the opposite side than it would have low and close.

Perhaps you won't need to have it move its station.

Standard Harpoon E2 practise is for the aircraft to depart low in emcon and remain so until a standoff position
is attained possibly over 40 nm abeam the carrier. The aircraft then climbs as high as necessary to achieve the
desired radar coverage.

E2 position is a signpost to the carriers so great care is taken not to follow patterns of behaviour nor
to interpose the E2 between the carrier and any potential platform or radar coverage threat.

here is a simple test scenario where I tried to built some "realistic" opérations on the carrier deck =>

http://okof4.free.fr/missions/DW/tes...raft_loiter.mu
how to use it =>
use show truth and time X16, select the carrier in 3D and look at it : first you will see the viking taking off, then 2 FA18.
Use show history for each platforms : you will see they will all stay in the defined patrol areas.

I used "aircraft with launch time", then I could give a specific pattern to each planes.
When the plane will take off, even if the carrier is far away from the starting position, the aircrafts will go exactly at their patrol waypoints.

So, using aircraft with launch time make you able to define realistic patrol area, previously defined.
this is quite usefull and makes everything quite real.

This way, you could define patrols for each group, let them take off and landing at a specific time and use "rolling patrols", taking off and landing on the carrier (about landing : I didn't tested it .... in the badest case, you could destroy them after their patrol if it doesn't work)

Unfortunatly, whatever I tried (and I tried a lot of different parameters), this is impossible to make the E2 taking off the deck of a carrier, he will always dive into the sea just after the take off :shifty:
A specific bug for the E2 as stated above ...

But you could see you can have something close to real operations on this test.

I just tried several way to land the planes, but even when it works, the plane will take off again shortly after

So, finally, I used a more simple way to simulate the RTB =>
when it's time to RTB, I used a "suicide attack" on the carrier, and, at 2 miles from him, a remove this platform instruction =>

http://okof4.free.fr/missions/DW/tes...off_landing.mu

So with both test mission, you could built something close to a real carrier operation :

you could make your planes taking off from the carrier at the time you want, making them doing patrols exactly where you want and for the time you want, and let them come back to the carrier when you want.

This simulate quite good a real carrier activity.
So, if you want to make a biiiig scenario, during lots of time, you just have to create all futures patrol areas for each plane, with appropriate launch time (see 1st scenario example) and recovery time (see 2nd scenario example), then you will have a quite realistic carrier operations.

Is that what you wanted ?