Question on Flight plan and airborne refuelling not happening

[Sundancing]

Hi there,

I recently charted a long range land strike with HARMS carrying Hornets. The flightplan that was assembled gave the fuel remaining at each leg of the journey which made it look like the Hornet's had the range. It turned out they didn't and they had to turn back halfway through, can anybody tell me why the fuel remaining column of the flightplan editor was inaccurate?

Connected to that - I suspected they'd run out of range so put a AAR mission up with a waypoint dedicated to refuelling in their flightplan intersecting it, all doctrine permissions were active, but when the flight reached the refuelling point only the lead plane separated to refuel while the others carried on ignoring the tankers before eventually having to return to base.

I've put some screen grabs below - keen to understand this as mid air refeulling seems key to a lot of successful missions, can anybody shed some light on what I'm missing?

[DWReese]

The devs have stated that they are aware of this issue, and they are working on this. While waiting, you might want to consider this:

From my testing, it may have something to do with the percentage of fuel listed in WRA. It's possible that something overrides your flight plans based on the fact that the fuel level percentage is higher than the limit listed. Moving the tankers, or altering the percentage, may help some. You can try that.

Another issue that I have observed is the amount of fueling ports available on the tanker. If the tanker has 3 ports, and the strike group has 4 planes, the process seems to have some issues. If you test using just one plane and one tanker, then it seems to work pretty well. This would indicate that the process can work, and that number of planes does have some influence as to whether they will attempt to refuel or not. What you may see is 3 planes getting refueled, and the 4th not receiving any fuel at all because the group that was just refueled has now started advancing toward the target, leaving the 4th behind. The 4th goes along with the group, even though he will soon need fuel.

Another test may have the group completely ignore the tanker if the tanker can't accommodate ALL members of the group. Again, some more testing may help to determine what works best, as we wait for the official fix.

Yes, it's very frustrating to see your strike bypass the tankers, fly a distance, and then turn around and head backward searching for the tanker. The devs are aware, and they are hopefully working on the issue.

[Sundancing]

The devs have stated that they are aware of this issue, and they are working on this. While waiting, you might want to consider this:

From my testing, it may have something to do with the percentage of fuel listed in WRA. It's possible that something overrides your flight plans based on the fact that the fuel level percentage is higher than the limit listed. Moving the tankers, or altering the percentage, may help some. You can try that.

Another issue that I have observed is the amount of fueling ports available on the tanker. If the tanker has 3 ports, and the strike group has 4 planes, the process seems to have some issues. If you test using just one plane and one tanker, then it seems to work pretty well. This would indicate that the process can work, and that number of planes does have some influence as to whether they will attempt to refuel or not. What you may see is 3 planes getting refueled, and the 4th not receiving any fuel at all because the group that was just refueled has now started advancing toward the target, leaving the 4th behind. The 4th goes along with the group, even though he will soon need fuel.

Another test may have the group completely ignore the tanker if the tanker can't accommodate ALL members of the group. Again, some more testing may help to determine what works best, as we wait for the official fix.

Yes, it's very frustrating to see your strike bypass the tankers, fly a distance, and then turn around and head backward searching for the tanker. The devs are aware, and they are hopefully working on the issue.

Thank you for that - I'll give those methods a try. Is this bug connected to the remaining fuel and leg fuel columns seeming to show enough fuel at each waypoint or am I just not reading the purpose of those columns in the flightplan correctly?

[DWReese]

In my opinion, refueling is a bit of a difficult task to perfect. There are many facets of it that could potentially be the problem

I just ran several more refueling tests. I started with a single plane, and set up a refueling segment before the attack. To me, this seems to work very well. (BTW, always make sure the Turn Point Ingress is located at #4, and then have the Refuel after that. I have not had much success with the Refuel segment appearing BEFORE the first Turning Point Ingress segment.)

Adding more planes to the attack seems to cause some strange behavior. Group refueling is the issue, in my opinion. In my second test, with 2 planes, the refuel, and attack was handled fine, but on the return, one plane was at 36k feet, and the other, for some reason, flew at 4k feet, even though they are using the same flight path orders. It's weird. Using the group by themselves, without refueling, and they work fine. But, adding refueling to the equation can create some issues.

The fact that a single plane can seem to work every well consistently indicates that the system can work, it just needs to be tweaked.

What, specifically, is "broken" is not clear to me. There are so many variables. Groups and tanker ports seem to play a role, as does the placement of various flight segments.

Try some of my suggestions to continue to play for now, at least until the devs are able to apply the appropriate fix.

BTW, some other tester even stated that the refueling worked perfectly if the game speed setting was using flame, but nothing below that. So, it's likely that some kind of a tweak to the process is needed.

[JFS737]

I have had issues with WRA settings for flights... often just the leader is changed and the other flight members are often in a different WRA, so if changing it for refueling or other purposes, it may be that the wingmen are not in the same settings. Just something to check

[TyphoonFr]

Have you changed the "Receivers start looking for tanker when down to 30 percent of mission" parameter in the Tanker plan


To refuel, the planes must have the authorization to do so, this is what you did with Waypoint 4, AND your planes must have reached a certain fuel level of 30% by default
(i.e. 6420kg x30% = 1620 kg for your f-18s)
When you authorize them to refuel, they have 3678kg (57%) left and when they have reached 30% they no longer have the right to do so.
Try with 60%

[Sundancing]

In my opinion, refueling is a bit of a difficult task to perfect. There are many facets of it that could potentially be the problem

I just ran several more refueling tests. I started with a single plane, and set up a refueling segment before the attack. To me, this seems to work very well. (BTW, always make sure the Turn Point Ingress is located at #4, and then have the Refuel after that. I have not had much success with the Refuel segment appearing BEFORE the first Turning Point Ingress segment.)

Adding more planes to the attack seems to cause some strange behavior. Group refueling is the issue, in my opinion. In my second test, with 2 planes, the refuel, and attack was handled fine, but on the return, one plane was at 36k feet, and the other, for some reason, flew at 4k feet, even though they are using the same flight path orders. It's weird. Using the group by themselves, without refueling, and they work fine. But, adding refueling to the equation can create some issues.

The fact that a single plane can seem to work every well consistently indicates that the system can work, it just needs to be tweaked.

What, specifically, is "broken" is not clear to me. There are so many variables. Groups and tanker ports seem to play a role, as does the placement of various flight segments.

Try some of my suggestions to continue to play for now, at least until the devs are able to apply the appropriate fix.

BTW, some other tester even stated that the refueling worked perfectly if the game speed setting was using flame, but nothing below that. So, it's likely that some kind of a tweak to the process is needed.

Thanks for the suggestion - unfortunately swapping in an ingress point beforehand and separating the tanker group out didn't correct it - they all moved in for refuelling and when the lead started the other peeled off and continued on route without diverting to the other available tankers or waiting to have a turn.

I have had issues with WRA settings for flights... often just the leader is changed and the other flight members are often in a different WRA, so if changing it for refueling or other purposes, it may be that the wingmen are not in the same settings. Just something to check

Thanks for the input - yes I noticed the same, having to enable it for individual aircraft as it doesn't get passed down from the flight level. Unfortunately that didn't seem to help.

Have you changed the "Receivers start looking for tanker when down to 30 percent of mission" parameter in the Tanker plan


To refuel, the planes must have the authorization to do so, this is what you did with Waypoint 4, AND your planes must have reached a certain fuel level of 30% by default
(i.e. 6420kg x30% = 1620 kg for your f-18s)
When you authorize them to refuel, they have 3678kg (57%) left and when they have reached 30% they no longer have the right to do so.
Try with 60%

Yes good thought - I did check the mission setting was set to allow tanker AAR and then in configure menu specified they should use that specific tanker support mission and at 60% fuel (which they were definitely under) in combination with the above suggestions but still exhibiting the same behaviour I'm afraid. Strangely switching around the tanker permission in the mission settings also reset the flight's AAR behaviour to 'not allowed' but didn't then shift it back meaning I had to reenable it by hand for each aircraft again.

[TyphoonFr]

Here is a save where 4 f18 take off at 13:30 and refuel without problems before going to die near Canaries

Canarys Cage, Typhoon.zip

(749.54 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

Post a save it would help

[DWReese]

It is my belief that a single plane strike with a refuel (if completed following the appropriate procedures) seems to work perfectly most of the time.

The success rate when groups of planes (more than one plane) are introduced is low, and it seems to produce the majority (if not all) of the refueling issues.

Therefore, I have to conclude that it is the existence of GROUPS that is what is causing the majority of the refueling problems.

EDIT: One last bit of advice. Make certain that your plane's path flies DIRECTLY over the tanker. To do this, use just one Reference Point. I used to send the tanker on a Figure 8, or a loop between two points, and sometimes the plane and the tanker were separated by 2 or 3 miles as the tanker turned and worked its way back to its path after turning, and then the plane would often fly right on by without refueling. As mentioned above, I have now resorted to placing the tanker on a Support mission, circling just one Reference Point. That seems to work all of the time for a single plane refuel. It still doesn't solve the Group refuel issues, but it does ensure that a single plane can be pretty certain to get fuel on a regular basis.

I hope that these tips help you while the devs work on a permanent solution.

[Sundancing]

Here is a save where 4 f18 take off at 13:30 and refuel without problems before going to die near Canaries
Canarys Cage, Typhoon.zip
Post a save it would help

Here's a save just before the attempted refuelling cycle. I've had to change each plane's doctrine to allow refuelling since for some reason the mission level doctrine and the flight level doctrine, though showing the changes, didn't pass them on to the individual units. Thanks for the save - will have a look and see if there's something I can do differently.

It is my belief that a single plane strike with a refuel (if completed following the appropriate procedures) seems to work perfectly most of the time.

The success rate when groups of planes (more than one plane) are introduced is low, and it seems to produce the majority (if not all) of the refueling issues.

Therefore, I have to conclude that it is the existence of GROUPS that is what is causing the majority of the refueling problems.

EDIT: One last bit of advice. Make certain that your plane's path flies DIRECTLY over the tanker. To do this, use just one Reference Point. I used to send the tanker on a Figure 8, or a loop between two points, and sometimes the plane and the tanker were separated by 2 or 3 miles as the tanker turned and worked its way back to its path after turning, and then the plane would often fly right on by without refueling. As mentioned above, I have now resorted to placing the tanker on a Support mission, circling just one Reference Point. That seems to work all of the time for a single plane refuel. It still doesn't solve the Group refuel issues, but it does ensure that a single plane can be pretty certain to get fuel on a regular basis.

I hope that these tips help you while the devs work on a permanent solution.

Thanks for the tips - I'll try this workaround though obviously it's onerous to route multiple single plane flights. I do hope this is fixed soon as groups and refuelling seem to be a big part of the operations in this game, as in real life I guess!

[TyphoonFr]

Since your save
I moved the WP away from the refueling zone,
and in the flight plan editor, the Tanker ARR setting of the WP4 is on 'not configured', I put it on 'Allow'

1Sans titre.png (370.02 KiB) Viewed 159 times

Not using a simulation speed higher than X15, Turbo and Double-Flame speed makes the AI ​​behavior random.

You fly your 3 tankers in formation, and by default, when one of the planes reaches the bingo, ALL the planes in the formation RTB. You have to modify the doctrine or separate the tankers.
The planes of the same formation refuel on the same tanker, they do not separate, only one tanker will be used and when it reaches the bingo, it will force the others to return when they could refuel the strike on the way back. You have to modify the doctrine or separate the tankers.

Try this at a speed of X15 max :

Canary's Cage, 2005 - refuelling issueTyphoon.zip

(1.24 MiB) Downloaded 2 times

[Sundancing]

Since your save
I moved the WP away from the refueling zone,
and in the flight plan editor, the Tanker ARR setting of the WP4 is on 'not configured', I put it on 'Allow'
1Sans titre.png
Not using a simulation speed higher than X15, Turbo and Double-Flame speed makes the AI ​​behavior random.

You fly your 3 tankers in formation, and by default, when one of the planes reaches the bingo, ALL the planes in the formation RTB. You have to modify the doctrine or separate the tankers.
The planes of the same formation refuel on the same tanker, they do not separate, only one tanker will be used and when it reaches the bingo, it will force the others to return when they could refuel the strike on the way back. You have to modify the doctrine or separate the tankers.

Try this at a speed of X15 max :
Canary's Cage, 2005 - refuelling issueTyphoon.zip

Ah thank you that worked! Understand now I think - appreciate the help.