[1328.15] Strike not following flight path

[thewood1]

Switch to Iranian side. Watch Mission Char Maritime Strike from Char AB with 11xJF-17s.

No flight plan has been generated until launch. Once they detect the US surface group, they will launch and fly straight to the US ships without firing missiles. They ignore the flight plan completely and make a beeline to the target. The mission should launch just a few minutes after scenario start.

This worked perfectly yesterday and the prior three years. Its only under .15 that it breaks. I'll play around with other scenarios. If this is a broader problem, it will break a lot of scenarios that need flight plans.

Screenshot 2024-02-26 162357.jpg (760.41 KiB) Viewed 1536 times

[thewood1]

After a little digging...

For the ROE setting of "Ignore Plotted Course When attacking":

The mission ROE says No, as expected.

The airbase ROE says No, as expected.

The Side ROE says No, as expected.

The unit says Yes, not as expected.

That was not set that way yesterday. I was just testing the scenario late last night with no issues. I have no ideas how you could even change the ROE on aircraft at airbases without lua. There is no lua in this scenario. I am at a loss to how the mission ROE doesn't override the unit settings. I am at a loss as to how to set based aircraft ROEs on their own. I am at a loss as to how much work it will be to go back and check every mission and make sure they don't ignore the flight plan... every scenario.

[thewood1]

Just checked on my second laptop running .14. It runs as it should. Something changed in the relation between Mission ROE and Unit ROE. Somehow the unit's ROE is getting chnaged and the mission isn't overriding it.

Same scenario, same unit, same mission in 1328.14

Screenshot 2024-02-26 183055.jpg (56.69 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

Same scenario, same unit, same mission in 1328.15

Screenshot 2024-02-26 183237.jpg (57.28 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

[blu3s]

Hi thewood1,

I can't replicate the issue with another scenario.

I changed on .14 version a mission ROE ignore plotted course to Yes, the unit ROE display Ignore course, Yes on both .14 and .15

If I open the scenario attached with .14 I see that Char Maritime Strike has the Ingore plotted course when attacking to Yes.






Might be the scen saved under .15 hence the change in mission ROE?

[blu3s]

Logged 0015617

It ignores the Flighplan even with Ignore plotted course set to No

[thewood1]

Actually, if you hit the "Reset affected units" button prior to start they do start to follow the path. But is weird regardless. The workaround is a player would have to go through all missions and reset them to work.

I have found other mission behavior oddities moving from .14 to.15 and will create another thread.

[boogabooga]

Actually, if you hit the "Reset affected units" button prior to start they do start to follow the path. But is weird regardless. The workaround is a player would have to go through all missions and reset them to work.

Are you saying that there is a fix somehow?

In all of my saved strike missions, both land strikes and air intercepts, the aircraft are taking off and heading either due north or southwest. They seem to ignore the target altogether, unless they happen to stumble upon one. Are you observing that, too?

[thewood1]

Its not the same issue. Mine go on to attack. They just don't follow the flight plan.

[thewood1]

I have gone back to .14 to continue building out a couple of my scenarios. But I was wondering if the .15 flight plan issue is a general issue or specific to the posted scenario. There are a couple fixes in .15 that I want to take advantage of, but don't want to put the effort into it if flight plans are an issue broadly.

[boogabooga]

I have gone back to .14 to continue building out a couple of my scenarios. But I was wondering if the .15 flight plan issue is a general issue or specific to the posted scenario. There are a couple fixes in .15 that I want to take advantage of, but don't want to put the effort into it if flight plans are an issue broadly.

No, there are big problems with strike missions in .15. A few posts above, the attachment demonstrates that if you load a mission with queued strike flights on a land strike mission, they ignore the flightplan COMPLETLY and fly off in an arbitrary direction. I have another ticket showing that the same thing happens on all air intercept missions as well.

[thewood1]

This appears fixed in .16.

[thewood1]

This is now not fixed. It seemed fixed up to .17. In .18 its all kinds of screwy. Watch the mission called Char Maritime Strike on the Iran side. The entire mission is a mess. Sometimes one of the three flights will attack. The others just loiter. Sometimes they will eventually move towards their targets and then loiter again. Its almost unpredictable. Can I suggest trying it at various speeds? It seems to me it behaves differently at times and the only factor I can see is time settings.

One thing I did catch was one of the flights got some kind of recall and was told the mission was "Called Off". You can see that in the unit status. I have never seen that before.

Screenshot 2024-04-03 150707.jpg (1.23 MiB) Viewed 1117 times

My final comment on this is that I am somewhat baffled at missions being so broken. The entire game depends on them to function properly for the player, but especially for the AI. Even when fixed recently, they seem very temperamental and fragile. Many great things have been added in the last few years that give great creative abilities through missions. But I am wasting valuable hours going back and constantly testing and rebuilding missions in previously complete scenarios because of negative changes in new builds. Normally I would just go back to the release exe, but that had a major mission issue around flight plans and targeting.

The short of it is that as a player, and a scenario builder, I need certain core things to operate in a stable manner. The top one is mission logic. Whether its targeting, emcon, WRA, flight plans, etc. In the last year, it seems like at least one of those core functional pieces of missions has issues. Patches address specific issues, but there always seems to be one coming up right behind it. I can't even keep track of the missions issues and fixes at this point. I'm just going to have to set the game aside until I can get stable missions.

My suggestion is a round of internal and beta testing on complex missions that include all the above until the team is satisfied that mission behavior is minimally viable.

[boogabooga]

My final comment on this is that I am somewhat baffled at missions being so broken. The entire game depends on them to function properly for the player, but especially for the AI. Even when fixed recently, they seem very temperamental and fragile. Many great things have been added in the last few years that give great creative abilities through missions. But I am wasting valuable hours going back and constantly testing and rebuilding missions in previously complete scenarios because of negative changes in new builds. Normally I would just go back to the release exe, but that had a major mission issue around flight plans and targeting.

The short of it is that as a player, and a scenario builder, I need certain core things to operate in a stable manner. The top one is mission logic. Whether its targeting, emcon, WRA, flight plans, etc. In the last year, it seems like at least one of those core functional pieces of missions has issues. Patches address specific issues, but there always seems to be one coming up right behind it. I can't even keep track of the missions issues and fixes at this point. I'm just going to have to set the game aside until I can get stable missions.

My suggestion is a round of internal and beta testing on complex missions that include all the above until the team is satisfied that mission behavior is minimally viable.

+1

I feel similar.

[blu3s]

Hi thewood1

Tested with x15, Flame, flight Plans are WAD and following the waypoints, it's weird, when you open the doctrine menu for the mission is it set to "Ignore Plotted Course" to Yes? This can cause the flight plan not behave correctly, fixing this.

https://imgur.com/a/LyGvfLN

Seeing issues when running in double flame speed, checking.

[thewood1]

I tried it both ways. I was using .18.

[mikerohan]

My final comment on this is that I am somewhat baffled at missions being so broken. The entire game depends on them to function properly for the player, but especially for the AI. Even when fixed recently, they seem very temperamental and fragile. Many great things have been added in the last few years that give great creative abilities through missions. But I am wasting valuable hours going back and constantly testing and rebuilding missions in previously complete scenarios because of negative changes in new builds. Normally I would just go back to the release exe, but that had a major mission issue around flight plans and targeting.

The short of it is that as a player, and a scenario builder, I need certain core things to operate in a stable manner. The top one is mission logic. Whether its targeting, emcon, WRA, flight plans, etc. In the last year, it seems like at least one of those core functional pieces of missions has issues. Patches address specific issues, but there always seems to be one coming up right behind it. I can't even keep track of the missions issues and fixes at this point. I'm just going to have to set the game aside until I can get stable missions.

My suggestion is a round of internal and beta testing on complex missions that include all the above until the team is satisfied that mission behavior is minimally viable.

+1

I feel similar.

With this cycle I feel the same.
I understand the issues with .15, .16 and so on, as they are "betas", new features are being introduced, tested, debated...
Usually I keep an official installation for "playing" and the latest beta for trying out the new features.

The problem, this time, is that .14 has several issues that are affecting gameplay. The potential corrections to those bugs *should* be (IMHO) a hotfix (or call it whatever you want) that addresses ONLY those issues, so the official release can be the fallback option.

That does not mean that I'm asking for a bug free, 100% perfect, official release. Software allways has bugs. But there are bugs and bugs. Addressing those bugs with a "beta" that, at the same time, introduces new features and/or modifies mechanichs is entering a spiral of doom

[thewood1]

For a time a few years ago, rapid betas and patches were the thing. You found a major issue that impacted many units broadly across wide timespans and it got fixed and released within days. But there were a few players that couldn't handle the pace and complained about it. But stuff got fixed fast. Now we wait weeks for betas and months for patches even if there are impactful issues. To me, as an amateur, issues with mission execution, broad sensor performance, broad-based weapon effectiveness, etc. should be hot-fixed on their own or in smaller focused patches. Anything with new features should be a separate track.

IOW, hotfixes and betas should be separate. Hotfixes address actually fixing something important. Betas should be be about fundamental sim changes and/or new features. Everything else around tweaking or address a narrow issue can go either way.

I have a hard time complaining about this because I love the pace of change. But when you start having a fundamental and differentiating part of the game, like missions, having continual issues, I think it might be time to rethink.

btw, I always keep a beta and a release version of the game operating. I have been leaning to the betas because of a couple issues around sonar and flight sizes in .14 were impacting scenarios. The last month or has been spent going back and forth.

[thewood1]

btw, anyone have insight into the "called off" message on missions? Who called it off? And why? This is the first time I noticed that message.

[DWReese]

btw, anyone have insight into the "called off" message on missions? Who called it off? And why? This is the first time I noticed that message.

I've actually seen that quite often.

I believe that it is always associated with the Mission Editor and Flight Path. Apparently, the Editor plots out a path and, due to things that have occurred (altitude/speed/etc., either the fuel or the WRA/Doctrine is no longer available to accomplish the mission, so it aborts.

So, in answer to your question, most of the time it is either WRA-related, or fuel-related.