[1115.9 Rollback - NCR] Flight Ops - several issues I thought were fixed show in 1115.9

[IainMcNeil]

@Thewood1, Mavfin admitted he overacted and apologised and there is no need to say any more. We are all passionate about Command and sometimes that passion clouds our judgement and we're all guilty of it so lets be friends and move on. We consider the matter closed!

[Dimitris]

mavfin < Is there some "reference" scenario (related to flight plans & waypoints) that we can check against when we (try to) fix existing issues? We don't like having stable things breaking any more than you do, but currently we don't have a reference yardstick.

[mavfin]

ORIGINAL: Dimitris

mavfin < Is there some "reference" scenario (related to flight plans & waypoints) that we can check against when we (try to) fix existing issues? We don't like having stable things breaking any more than you do, but currently we don't have a reference yardstick.

For air ops tests, I've been using the Basic Air Operations, 1983 from CMANO, updated to either DB3K 478 (highest CMANO) or DB3K 480 (current highest CMO). It's already set up to do various air mission types, but it lets you do one type of thing at a time, and observe the results. Yes, I've been told, I guess, that it's 'old' as a 'tutorial' but it works for testing as you have a variety of targets, and you can run against air defenses, or try stuff after the SAMS are dead.

Gold star for whoever wrote it. Simple, but flexible to test with. Also, you can toss a LOT of ordnance at the 3 zillion revetments for a while if you want to try bomb drops, flight patterns, etc, under mission control.

Yes, you have to make your own missions, but, I *like* that in this case. There's standoff weapons, iron bombs, and LGBs, as well as antiradar missiles. Old crappy antiradar missiles, but they work for this.

The only thing it's short on is aerial targets. Only 8. But, while Air Intercept has some isssues with early RTB, you can micro around that till it's fixed by just unassigning and re-assigning to get them on task. I can work around, imo, smaller grouping issues as well for now, since I know they're logged. If you need more saves on that, I can probably do better in another scenario or two.

When four planes stacked from the deck to 36000 feet in the same group, and dropped iron bombs at 36000 feet, scattering across 40 acres, that was pretty unworkable, to me, and so far, 1115.8.1 took care of the really nasty stuff. You do still have some issues in the grouping code, as DWReese submitted, but they're (to me) not 'unplayable'.

The air scenario I mentioned, as well as the sub and ship counterparts from CMANO are useful for highlighting various pieces so you can test them mostly alone before combining them with other things simultaneously, and make sure you get expected results.

Also, if I keep running the same scenario, I can tell what changed from revision to revision, but not take forever to run.

Run it with the same missions and general order in 1115.7 and 1115.8 and 1115.8.1 and differences should be pretty obvious. Tacview makes it more visible, especially with in-group height problems.

There are far more complex scenarios to run against, of course...but there you get into too many things going on at once, and you can't point your finger at where the problem most likely lies. Too many mechanisms going at once.