Rendezvous with Bombers bug

[-332FG-Hank_DG]

Hey guys, I'm having an issue with AI bombers. I get up to altitude with my flight as the leader and rendezvous with bombers for cover, but they just keep flying in circles and never start their route. Anybody have these issues?

[Murleen]

Are you flying icons off? If you miss any of the waypoints on the way to the rendezvous, then you'll get that behaviour. I have an update for this in my dev branch, when I get some time I'll submit it to @PatrickAWlson for review.

[Yogiflight]

I had this issue, too, in a former version, and I found out, according to what Murleen posted, it was the first waypoint after takeoff, I had left out, because you usually don't fly so far straight on after takeoff. Another point might be, this was mentioned some time ago by Blacksix for a similar issue in the game's carreer, you need to reach 200m altitude after takeoff, or the game won't recognize you as airborne. So if the first waypoint is very near you might cross it, but not being high enough to get recognized as airborne and therefore for the game not flying.

[PatrickAWlson]

6 hours ago, Murleen said:

Are you flying icons off? If you miss any of the waypoints on the way to the rendezvous, then you'll get that behaviour. I have an update for this in my dev branch, when I get some time I'll submit it to @PatrickAWlson for review.

 

Start the cover from a MissionBeginUnit instead of chaining it to the waypoints?  I did something similar with attack mcus for bombers with mixed results.  It works, but quite often the attack triggers before I would like it to.  In the case of attack MCUs I might be triggering on coalition and not planes in the flight, which is a mistake.

 

Even set up perfectly there are scenarios where independently triggering could cause problems.  The first that I am thinking about is when the rendezvous takes place close to the player's home field.  You could trigger the cover when you are only a few hundred meters off the ground and end up tail chasing the bombers in a climb while they proceed with their mission ... stuff like that.

[Murleen]

22 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Start the cover from a MissionBeginUnit instead of chaining it to the waypoints?  I did something similar with attack mcus for bombers with mixed results.  It works, but quite often the attack triggers before I would like it to.  In the case of attack MCUs I might be triggering on coalition and not planes in the flight, which is a mistake.

 

Even set up perfectly there are scenarios where independently triggering could cause problems.  The first that I am thinking about is when the rendezvous takes place close to the player's home field.  You could trigger the cover when you are only a few hundred meters off the ground and end up tail chasing the bombers in a climb while they proceed with their mission ... stuff like that.

 

I've set it up using a proximity MCU activated after takeoff, to trigger the cover based on getting close to the bombers. It's worked in the testing I've done, but I've not tested enough different scenarios to check that there aren't corner cases (e.g. as you point out if the bombers start over your airfield, the cover might trigger as soon as you take off)

[-332FG-Hank_DG]

So essentially after hitting the first waypoint and my character has called out flight airborne, i can take any route to the rendezvous to the bombers? Or do i need to fly hit every way point?

Edited June 14, 2019 by II./JG77_HankDG

[PatrickAWlson]

51 minutes ago, II./JG77_HankDG said:

So essentially after hitting the first waypoint and my character has called out flight airborne, i can take any route to the rendezvous to the bombers? Or do i need to fly hit every way point?

 

At the moment you have to hit every WP.  The cover command is not triggered until the last WP is hit, which is not triggered until the previous WP is hit, etc.

[Yogiflight]

4 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

 

At the moment you have to hit every WP.  The cover command is not triggered until the last WP is hit, which is not triggered until the previous WP is hit, etc.

@PatrickAWlson, what is the radius around the waypoints, you have to hit to trigger it. In earlier campaigns I was pretty sure to have been at least very close to the waypoints, but no escort covered my flight? Second question, does the altitude at the waypoints, especially at the rendevouz waypoint play a role to trigger my escort?