AI Taxi to take off

[ACG_daffy_]

AI start up. They taxi out properly. They follow the chart I’ve set up. The first one always goes right where I want them to on the runway and stage for take off. Every time, always the last AI crashes into the others tail. It can be a flight of two, three, four, five etc…every so will stage properly except the last one who seems to want desperately to go to the VPP spot instead of in formation. I’m sure I’m missing something. I’ve tried everything from adjusting spaces of the chart waypoints, moving the VPP ahead, group vs non-group, different aircraft, different maps/fields. 
I have searched for this and just can’t seem to find anything. It’s always the last plane…regardless of flight size. And, it’s always the one aircraft who waits for the rest of the flight to be staged on the runway before it leaves the parking area. Forgive me if I’ve missed the answer somewhere. A link would be great. Any input as well. Thank you!  S!

Edited October 29 by ACG_daffy_

[kraut1]

11 hours ago, ACG_daffy_ said:

AI start up. They taxi out properly. They follow the chart I’ve set up. The first one always goes right where I want them to on the runway and stage for take off. Every time, always the last AI crashes into the others tail. It can be a flight of two, three, four, five etc…every so will stage properly except the last one who seems to want desperately to go to the VPP spot instead of in formation. I’m sure I’m missing something. I’ve tried everything from adjusting spaces of the chart waypoints, moving the VPP ahead, group vs non-group, different aircraft, different maps/fields. 
I have searched for this and just can’t seem to find anything. It’s always the last plane…regardless of flight size. And, it’s always the one aircraft who waits for the rest of the flight to be staged on the runway before it leaves the parking area. Forgive me if I’ve missed the answer somewhere. A link would be great. Any input as well. Thank you!  S!

Hi,

Attached a test mission with working taxying to take off (allies + axis).

Generated automaticly with a modded version of Easy Mission Generator by Vander.

I have deleted all not required groups to make the mission easier to understand.

But I myself have no experience with manually mission editing for taxying.

 

Start the mission, activate autopilot and watch what happens.

test-01-taxying.zip

[ACG_daffy_]

Thank you. I’ll check it out. I appreciate the direction. 

[Billsponge1972]

Could it have to do with the advanced settings of each aircraft? Starting with the leader being "0" and the next one "1" and so on. If they are out of order it could mess things up?

[ACG_daffy_]

That’s possible, and would be something that I’ve simply missed. I’m going to take a look later when I get a chance. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I know exactly what you’re referring to. Thank you!  

[ACG_daffy_]

Thank you to you both.  It's been resolved.  The formation position was the right direction, and I had missed it completely.  Also, the file that Kraut shared with me identified part two of my issue.  I had the flight lead object linked to the fakefield, which is unnecessary as it's already linked to the take off command.  I also moved the park position closer to the lead aircraft, and added a taxi point ahead of it, straight forward to the taxiway, and that resolved the last aircrafts tendency to go off on his own taxi program.  

Many thanks to you both.  Now I'm off to find another quirk to drive me nuts for a few days. I'll try attaching the file in case anyone in the future is looking.  

S!

TakeOffTHISONEWORKS10.29.25.rar

[Jaegermeister]

On 10/29/2025 at 9:27 PM, ACG_daffy_ said:

Thank you to you both.  It's been resolved.  The formation position was the right direction, and I had missed it completely.  Also, the file that Kraut shared with me identified part two of my issue.  I had the flight lead object linked to the fakefield, which is unnecessary as it's already linked to the take off command.  I also moved the park position closer to the lead aircraft, and added a taxi point ahead of it, straight forward to the taxiway, and that resolved the last aircrafts tendency to go off on his own taxi program.  

Many thanks to you both.  Now I'm off to find another quirk to drive me nuts for a few days. I'll try attaching the file in case anyone in the future is looking.  

S!

TakeOffTHISONEWORKS10.29.25.rar 5.11 kB · 0 downloads

Unfortunately this is how you learn the mission editor in real life. Experimenting with logic until you get it to do what you want and eventually it does. I spent 2 days trying to figure out a similar issue last week. The more you understand how it works the more it builds up until you can make it do almost anything you can think of.

[IckyATLAS]

Un additional element with taxi trajectories. You can have multiple of them on a same airfield and you can do pretty nice combination to create some animations with planes moving around. However there an element one must be careful when designing long and multiple taxi movements in parallel with the runway or in proximity to other taxi points. This means that you are taxiing say on the side of the runway and pass by the VPP (runway takeoff position). If the distance of the taxi point on which your plane is moving to the next taxi point is greater than the direct distance to the VPP point then the plane may shortcut directly to the VPP point or move erratically. And this kind of erratic behavior can also be when multiple taxi trajectories are active at the same time. Segregation of the taxiway, activation deactivation and distances between taxi points must be carefully set. Unfortunately I have not been able to understand the fundamentals how this has been programmed but my conclusion is that it has not been designed properly and is a botched application. The very simplistic way things have been programmed when planes land and disappear etc. all this shows that it was not really developed and just the bare minimum. It is a pity because we could have done very nicely animated airfields, with planes coming in and taking off, moving around and all at the same time. Let's hope they will do better with Korea.

[ACG_daffy_]

Yup.  I'm starting to get a little more into it, and have had a number of hours going back and forth until seeing the break in the logic chain.  With the active airfields like you're suggesting Icky, I am finding that most flights with "obey" a single airfield chart as long as they're initiated close to a parking area.  I'm using the timer, and multiple takeoff commands to kind of organize things to stay fluid, but leave enough space for the AI to mess up.  The last few days, I've started using event links to coordinate multiple flights taxing and taking off.  It's tedious, and probably the hard way, but it's helping me see the logic chain in everything.  Gets a bit messy though!!!