Is this possible?

[Panzerlang]

To have air units randomly spawning throughout the duration of a mission (triggered by the loss of planes elsewhere, to keep the numbers within CPU limits)? As far as we can tell everything gets spawned at the beginning of a mission and if stuff isn't encountered quite early on (close to waypoints) the rest of a patrol is pointless. I think units are triggered by flying close to waypoints but only those specifically set to do so. Random elements would add an extra dimension but I have no idea if the ME can be set to do that.

[PatrickAWlson]

While it may be possible, it would be very, very complex.  Somehow PWCG would have to keep track of what was activated and what was not.  It would be made more complex because the activated but not yet encountered planes would have to have a deactivation mechanism to remove them.  So, theoretically - maybe.  However, lots of potentially nasty consequences like having planes suddenly spawn on top of you because another flight went out of range.  Also, how to avoid three flights spawning at the same time once space was cleared when there is only room for 1.

[Panzerlang]

It's a shame they can't take off from airfields, that would make for more possibilities.

 

[PatrickAWlson]

2 hours ago, Hetzer-JG51 said:

It's a shame they can't take off from airfields, that would make for more possibilities.

 

 

They can.  It's a resource balancing issue.  If I had my way I would have flights taking off and landing at staggered times throughout the mission, but it would bring your machine to a crawl.  I have written a lot of code to restrict the amount of stuff in a mission.  Once you start doing that you find side effect upon side effect, which I have dealt with over the years ... with yet more code.  If the game could handle 100+ planes I could make the whole front active and delete thousands of lines of code in the process, but that is not reality.

 

[Panzerlang]

Thanks Pat. Lord knows what goes on with this engine of theirs. CLoD and so many other sims can do this stuff without crippling the CPU.

[Panzerlang]

Would it be possible to make AI flights fly for longer maybe? AI planes seem to fly very short missions and return home with still 75% fuel in their tanks (rough estimation). Ground attackers I get, they do a specific attack and in reality would RTB immediately, but fighters on patrol 'should' be flying until their fuel is used up.

Fingers crossed, lol. 

[PatrickAWlson]

AI fly full flights with a bit of lead time to represent planes in the air when you take off.  Others might not be moving until after you are in the air.  The only thing they do not do is take off.  When they spawn they will have a fuel and ordnance level appropriate for where they are in the mission.