Air strikes beyond loadout range

[pmsteinm]

I've been away from Command for a while and I'm back to working on a scenario. For the AI side I'm trying to create a mission against a fixed target that is beyond the range of an aircraft's loadout. Is this possible with the new tanker logic in 1.11? Or do I need to use some LUA to launch aircraft then assign them to a mission? I see on the Tankers (AAR) combo box there is an "Allow AAR to extend combat radius" option with sounds like it should allow aircraft to launch when the target is out of range if there is tanker support.

[Cik]

it's automatic, depending on the configure tab you can set how it will work out.

changeable settings include:
% of mission fuel aircraft will start looking for gas at (will move to tanker track and enter refuel queue)
which tanker it will hit (choose a certain one or one assigned to a certain mission)
whether it will do it at all

out of the box settings work OK; generally aircraft that are stressing their fuel will do a pre-ingress refuel, head to the target, attack, then fly home direct. if you are going REALLY far then they will also need a post-egress refuel before heading home to base.

if you have enough tankers you can quite literally have a global range, just as in real life. you just have to make very certain that your aircraft will always have tankers nearby, esp. the short-legged ones like F-16s. if there's ever a break in the "tanker string" they can easily run out of fuel and have to ditch the plane.

edit: by the way if you're not using missions and microing the plane yourself there's a refuel at tanker option in the unit orders tab at the top that will achieve the same thing as the mission autorefuel.

edit2: maybe i should actually read the OP

as long as the AI craft are assigned to a mission and they are within tactical range of the tanker (something that varies depending on the aircraft, i believe) they will AAR to extend range / loiter time automatically when they reach the percentage of mission fuel they are set to seek the tanker at. generally if it's a strike they will fly their mission steerpoints (usually a ~straight line) until they reach % of mission fuel (default 65%?) and then hit the tanker, continue in, strike and if they don't have enough reserve fuel to reach home plate AAR again on the way out. if they are NOT assigned to a mission i think they may AAR anyway, due to inherited doctrine, but i'm not 100% on that.

personally if you're doing a scenario i'd just have them assigned to a mission and it will work out, unless that's not possible for some reason?

[pmsteinm]

I suppose it would help if the aircraft was actually capable of inflight refueling. Swapped out A/C type and its working great now. Thanks!

[Cik]

:^)

i'm not sure it actually tells you in the DB; just work on that encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century war platforms in particular a ton of the russian air OOB can't AAR due to doctrine and circumstances of the USSR. only of late have they started including it, and mostly only on their naval-based designs.

[Rory Noonan]

The db entries specific whether refuelling is possible, and whether boom or drogue is supported. It's under "capabilities" or similar, toward the bottom.