[IMPLEMENTED PRE-1.09] Separate Patrol and Response Areas

[guanotwozero]

At present, patrols have the options of whether or not to investigate outside the area.

While the concept is good, in practice it can be problematic; patrolling units can chase off after enemies far beyond where we'd like them to. Conversely if we turn it off, enemies can approach our patrol boundary and throw in munitions, to which our patrolling units will only engage defensive.


A possible solution would be to have:

a) a patrol area where our units loiter, and

b) a response area where enemies entering will be engaged offensive.


That way enemies outside can be safely ignored and, assuming sensible boundaries, patrolling units can respond to any threat.

It also allows ambushes where, say, patrolling units loiter behind high ground and then pounce on any enemy entering the ambush area.

How to implement it in terms of UI? Maybe just by using two RP listboxes instead of one in the mission editor.

A further enhancement could be to have an ENCOM trigger, so that units could stay silent when patrolling but switch on their radars/sonars when responding.

[spookyer]

Yes being able to define a patrol area and a response area would be good.

[mikmykWS]

Thanks Guanotwozero for taking the time to explain your request in detail. I've added it to our request queue and we'll take a look.

Mike

[dandin384]

Baloogan came up with a great temporary work around for this in regards to the AAW patrol mission. Create the standard mission with the patrol box over the area you want to intercept enemy aircraft, then assign your planes to the mission. Instead of having them enter the box give them a course behind the box(make sure ignore plotted course when attacking is on). Now if any aircraft enter the box your plane will get a targeting vector and break off to engage. See the attached picture for a good visual.

[renders]

hell of a baloogan!

[mikmykWS]

That is a great solution with what currently exists!

Baloogan thanks again buddy!

[RoryAndersonCDT]

[:D]

[Dimitris]

That's really a great solution.

A possible alternative is to define a patrol zone and a forbidden zone that triggers intruders as unfriendly or hostile.

[KewDok]

Is it possible for the patrolling aircraft to have radars and jammers off, but switch them on when reacting to a contact when using "Baloogan's method"? [:)]

I have not found a way, but there are a lot of people smartert han me out there....

[Tomcat84]

See also my request from a couple weeks ago in the private forum:
tm.asp?m=3505111

I suppose there's no reason why I can't repost the content of that here so:

ORIGINAL: Tomcat84

I've listed this in various other threads in bits and pieces but figured I'd condense it and put it together into one single source request for something I'd like to see added at some point. In short, the ability to designate Engagements zones, or No engagement zones. Either in general or for a certain mission (ie a patrol).

There is one tactical situation that I want to solve and it can be done with either of the two options I will describe, but that doesn't mean that they don't both potentially have their uses in other situations, this is just the one I will use to illustrate, because it's the one that made me think about it.

Situation is as follows, very simple, in this case Taiwan - China. I have my area I want to defend (Taiwan), with bad guys coming from China. They aren't too far away, and I don't want to actually go offensive cause they have a ton of SAMs, I just want to patrol my area and attack them if they actually come my way.

Looks like so:


You can see my group of F-16s, I simply want them patrolling between the Reference points. If enemies start heading out towards them I want them to engage, risking flying into the SAM rings but on the fringes of them. However, I dont want them to randomly bust out towards China.


Other than manual control (which I do a lot for my own side, but I want to be able to posture my AI sides in an appropriate way as well) I currently have the following courses of action, and I will tell you what works and what doesn't work that well for me, and how I think the engagement zones would help.

First:

AAW Patrol mission with the two reference points, and investigate contacts outside the patrol area checked.
As long as nothing enemy is airborne they will CAP between the RPs just as I want, but as soon as a hostile is airborne anywhere they will chase him till the end of the world, not how I want:



Having the same two RPs and turning investigate outside area off means they never do anything, obviously, since there really isnt an area:




Alright, so how about setting 4 RPs to define the area where I do want them to do stuff, keeping them out of the heart of the SAM envelope, and having investigate contacts outside patrol area off then.

Yes, this will keep them inside the patrol area but there's two big downsides. The first one is the routing, basically the assigned units will randomly roam through the patrol area. This may be as desired in some cases, but for a defensive mission like a BARCAP or something it really doesn't make a lot of sense and is unlikely what you would see as a realworld tactic. As long as the unit is grouped it's not ideal but so so, but to the bottom screenshot I have the Vipers but also assigned 4 F/A-18s and had the AI launch them, and they aren't grouped up so you get four super hornets running around at random in the patrol box. (which brings me to another request: anyway to get an "assign selected units as group" option? Maybe as a separate button? That would be awesome ):



The other big problem with this setup is that they literally will not engage outside the patrol zone. Which would be fine if they were hanging around on the friendly side, but due to the roaming routing they might be scraping the western border and not engage the J-11s until he crosses the line, which is a bit of an awkward situation:



You would hope that Buckshot #2 might be a bit worried about the fourship of J-11s cruising 10 miles off his right. He will go engaged defensive if fired on (and automatic evasion set to yes) but if the missiles miss he'll be happy again to do nothing else.


Next option, that I only recently thought of and might be the best for now, is to assign fighters to a 2 RP Support mission and set engage opportunity targets to yes. They will fly the CAP, wont race out to a contact 400 miles away, and only commit when a target comes within approx 2 x their max employment range for their longest range weapon. Problem is in this specific geographical case, their AIM-120Ds have a 75nm range listed so they will still commit at 150nm already, which from the 2 RPs I had, is well into China, so I have to artificially place their patrol almost east of the Taiwan mainland, also not something I want to do as they wont be in firing range until much later than wanted.

So after all that, how can I see this improved.

Two ways I came up with. One, which may be the simplest (bearing in mind that I know nothing of programming or how the software works internally, just what my mind would think is the simplest haha):
For no navigation zones, add two checkboxes, one that says "No Navigation" and one that says "No engagement". If you tick the first one, it behaves as it does now, if you tick only the second one, units might enter it but would not engage enemy units there, and if you add both boxes, units will neither enter it, nor engage units in it. The only problem you might get is if you are fine with your SAMs shooting in there (if they can) but not your aircraft etc, so the "Applies to" would still be valid, and maybe an Applies to a certain group or unit(s) would help as well. Then you risk cluttering things up with lots of these things though. (maybe allow them to be shaded as well?)

The other option I could think of, is in the patrol mission editor, you add a bit on the bottom right where you control the engagement area with RPs.

Patrol area describes the route they will patrol, and the engagement area is the RP area in which they will actually engage targets. This way you can have full control, and you can keep the standoff as well with a realistic CAP that doesn't roam around and maintains its range to the threat, without going balls out into the SA-20 WEZ.



The latter could potentially even work for a specific non strike escort, anchoring the patrol RPs off the unit to be protected and the engagement area as well.

Hope this makes sense and if you guys like it. Of course anyone feel free to add suggestions/comments etc.