Air Intercept/VID questions

[HomeFries]

In attempting Flight Tutorial 6 (AAW-4), I have to intercept multiple groups of aircraft to determine whether they are bandit/hostile or civilian traffic. I am getting frustrated because I'm at the point where I task the F-16s to intercept a group, but I don't want to use the "Engage Target" commands because that will automatically designate the group as hostile. However, selecting the group as a waypoint for the F-16 doesn't seem to provide intercept instruction, and manual waypoints make it such that either I'm herding cats or (worse) the F-16s go to the waypoint fat, dumb and happy and allow themselves to get in a disadvantageous position that gets them killed once the group is VID'd as hostile. ROE is Weapons Tight.

So my questions:

1) Is there a command or process to have aircraft intelligently perform an intercept without designating the target as hostile?
2) Is there a way to have a section or flight of fighters go "eyeball-shooter" if VID is necessary to designate a target as bandit/hostile?
3) Is there any reason NCTR is not a player in these tutorials, and does NCTR make this issue a moot point in some other scenarios?

Thanks,
HF

[Rory Noonan]

To have aircraft launch and ID unknown contacts my go-to is a air intercept mission with RoE set to weapons tight.

Once the bogeys are identified either visually, through NCTR or other means your aircraft will either engage, move on to the next nearby unknown contact or RTB as relevant.

NCTR and other means of long range ID are taken into account when determining contact ID.

[HomeFries]

Thanks for the quick reply, Apache.

So if there isn't a specific command, the best bet is to create air intercept missions from ready-on-the-ramp aircraft? If a section or flight is already airborne, and based on their weapons loadout (e.g. BVR capable) I want them on a high priority intercept, should I just vector them in that general direction and let their radar pick up?

Sorry to be a pedantic pain; just trying to understand the nuances of the interface and AI.

[Rory Noonan]

No worries, glad to help.

Another option for airborne aircraft would be to set the unit's RoE to HOLD and use the F1 auto-attack command on the contact of interest. This will result in the same behaviour. You could also assign (temporarily or permenantly) an airborne aircraft to an air intercept mission as previously described. You can control their EMCON status as you would for any other situation using the F9 menu or mission options.

If I'm playing a scenario I like to 'micro' a lot so I generally plot a manual course to somewhere ahead of the bogeys implied path of intended motion. You can get quite technical with this and use rel/vel etc to come up with a solution, I've done this before and it can be quite satisfying.

You're not being a pain at all; let me know if you need any further clarification.

[redboot]

Following this thread with interest, as I'm constantly trying to figure out what behavior to expect with different commands. So once you've used an air intercept to ID an unidentified bogey and kill it, will the mission aircraft automatically target other unidentified bogeys to do the same at any distance? What do you do if you don't want them to do that? Just reassign or RTB them? Or is there a way to set that in the mission editor?

[Rory Noonan]

Hey redboot,

Yes the mission aircraft will then automatically pursue any bogeys within range, with some conservatism to reduce going after targets on the absolute edge of the engagement range. To avoid this you could use the WRA (winchester) settings to allow only a single engagement; this could be done either at a side, mission, group or unit level.

[HomeFries]

Great call with the Weps Hold ROE. I'll definitely try that.

For those who don't know (it's a common misconception), Weapons Hold will allow you to fire in self defense or defense of others, so it's not a complete nerf. If you don't get the ROE back to Tight in time, the section/flight can still return fire.

And if any devs are monitoring, I think a great feature would be that if you assign a waypoint directly on a contact, that should be interpreted as a vector to intercept.

[Rory Noonan]

ORIGINAL: HomeFries
And if any devs are monitoring, I think a great feature would be that if you assign a waypoint directly on a contact, that should be interpreted as a vector to intercept.

I really like that. Feature request added [:)]

[HomeFries]

[&o][&o][&o]

[redboot]

I've noticed that when you use an air intercept mission to intercept an unknown (yellow) contact, the mission automatically converts the target to hostile. With Weapons Tight, won't that result in an automatic attack before the target is actually verified, thus defeating the purpose of the mission. Or (more likely), am I doing something wrong?