[NO REPRO, MANUAL OVERRIDE?] F-111 odd behaviour

[MikeJ271]

I first encountered this under RC2, but have had the same with RC3 - not had the chance to try it with RC4 or RC5 yet.

Basically, as per the attached file, The F-111's I have allocated to the strike mission(s) won't fly the Lo-Lo-Hi (with high-speed dash) mission profile. In fact, I can't get the auto-planner to work for them at all. They simply amble in at high altitude and die very quickly.
Bizarrely, the F/A-18's inbound in this save-game are flying an auto-planned attack which you can see. I've tried de-allocating the F/A-18's, giving the F-111's a dedicated mission and other combinations, but all to no effect.

I also haven't been able to get the F-111's to refuel, which, unless I'm reading the info wrongly (highly possible!), I believe they should be able to do from the 707 tankers.

[mikmykWS]

Sorry this happened Mike. I did test your scenario and can see a couple of issues. Hopefully we'll have a fix in the next day or two.

Thanks!

Mike

[Tomcat84]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ271
I also haven't been able to get the F-111's to refuel, which, unless I'm reading the info wrongly (highly possible!), I believe they should be able to do from the 707 tankers.

F-111s require boom refueling whereas those RAAF 707s appear to only have drogues fitted. (The VC-10s are drogue only also btw so looks like there is no tanker for the 111s in this scenario)

[MikeJ271]

The database entry and sidebar information panel both refer to "Wing Drogue and Centerline Boom" for the tanker configuration, which is what's confusing me. Meanwhile, I've found a source that seems to confirm that it's drogue only.

[Tomcat84]

Hmmm indeed. That is actually the name of the loadout, and is incorrect in this case.

To actually see what a plane (tanker or receiver) can do you should look under the "properties" section in the DB viewer:

Tanker:


F-111:


Also the strike profile not being adhered to issue: I think it might also have to do with the fact that the range to the target is further than the loadout's strike radius, but the mission is planned with "use air refueling". If you disable that setting then it will warn you when you assign an F-111 to the mission that it's out of range etc. Maybe it's trying to make it by going hi-hi-hi because if it followed the profile it would run out of fuel?

But the devs are investigating this so they will get to the bottom of it

[ComDev]

Thanks for your report Mike, but I'm not able to reproduce this [8D]

The built-in strike planner will check if the tankers are compatible with the strike aircraft. So it refuses to make a flightplan because there are no suitable tankers.

So I'm curious if you manually ordered the aircraft to launch? In that case you have simply overridden the automated mission planning logics. And because the built-in mission planner has not been allowed to calculate fuel stuff (including reserves!) it refuses to make a strike plan. And the aircraft will fly the most economic route to the target: at optimum altitude and speed.

I ordered the aircraft in the abvoe savegame to RTB, and set them 'Ready' as soon as they had landed. Nothing. They refused to take off. Then I added 4x USAF KC-135s in the air, and the mission planner immediately created a flight plan, ordered the aircraft to take off, and executed a perfect Lo-Lo-Hi air strike as per loadout profile.

PS: we have updated the tanker loadout of the Boeing 707-338C(KC) to only say 'Wing Drouge'.

[MikeJ271]

Yeah, thanks for looking into it.

I've managed - still with RC3 - to get the F-111's to fly the correct profile with a KC-135 to refuel them inbound - once I'd got it into a suitable position that is...! (The first time out I had to manually tell the strike aircraft to go back low after topping off, though they flew the rest of the profile as expected.)

Nice work on your part, and great support - thanks again!

[ComDev]

Oki doki. Please upgrade to the latest 1.08 RC, it fixes several bugs and some shortcomings [8D]

Thanks!