Operation Ghost Riders

[MauriceB]

The goal in doing this scenario was to completely plan out the operation and create missions to execute the plan, with (eventually) no intervention on my part. Let's see how it went.
- C:MO Version is Build 1500
- I'm running the scenario with all defaults in the Scenario Options screen.

Part One: Planning and Launch
- I've set up 2 AAR Support Missions. Gold Station for the British tankers, and Juno Station for the Canadian tankers:

AAR Stations

Screenshot 2024-11-17 074336.png (1.19 MiB) Viewed 921 times

- For now the Strike Mission is just a Support Mission to the point where they turn west towards the AAR stations. I'll manually plot their courses after they are under way. (more detail on the Strike Mission in Part Two)
- After running multiple test flights to see where the AAR stations could be and how long all of the "legs" would take I came up with this a plan to get the Tankers on their AAR stations about 15 minutes before the Strike got there:

Mission Plan

GR Mission Planning.png (112.44 KiB) Viewed 927 times

The first problem I ran into is I put Time On Stations in for the 2 tanker missions (07:25Z and 0:945Z), and a Take Off Time (05:30Z) for the Strike Mission. But everything launches as soon as it can (Gold AAR and Strike Mission launch immediately, and Juno AAR launches after they are readied, 2 hours into start of scenario). Here is the save file with all the missions using Time on Station for tankers and Take Off Time for Strike package:

GR Str-TOT Tkrs-ToS.zip

(52.22 KiB) Downloaded 15 times

Next I just removed launch and time on stations from the 3 missions and used Activation Times for all 3. That worked, the planes launched when the mission hit it's activation time. Here is that save file:

GR Str-ActT Tkrs-ActT.zip

(52.6 KiB) Downloaded 13 times

So the only question in Part One is why aren't my Launch times and Time on Station settings working.

[Kushan04]

Flightplans must be manually enabled for patrol and support missions. Without that enabled, TaOT and ToS will not work.

[MauriceB]

The "Create (or UPDATE) flightplans" button is disabled on these missions though.

[Kushan04]

The "Create (or UPDATE) flightplans" button is disabled on these missions though.

Wrong setting. Go to Mission Settings. On the right there are two tabs Speed / Alt and Flight Plan. Select Flight Plan and then check the Use Flightplans checkbox.

Take Off Time, Time on Target, and the Generate Flightplans button will then be enabled for the mission.

[MauriceB]

Well crap. I coulda played CMO for 3 more years and never noticed that Flight Plan tab. Especially when the Flightplan button is on the Units tab for a Strike Mission.

Also you implied with your last statement that Take Off Time and Time on Station will now be enabled, unfortunately they weren't disabled at any point. I could enter a time into either field, it would even save it with the mission if i brought it up again, but the mission just never used the times. Maybe those should be disabled in the UI when N/A.

[Kushan04]

Also you implied with your last statement that Take Off Time and Time on Station will now be enabled, unfortunately they weren't disabled at any point. I could enter a time into either field, it would even save it with the mission if i brought it up again, but the mission just never used the times. Maybe those should be disabled in the UI when N/A.

Takeoff Time and Time on Station won’t work unless Enable Flightplabs is checked. They’re not greyed out, and you can fill them in, but they won’t be used.

[Kushan04]

Love the mission planning spreadsheet by the way. Hope you enjoy the scenario.

I've done it in the mission planner twice. Once with unlimited fuel and once playing normally. The first refueling can be enroute, second one I did as a standard refueling orbit. The trick with the enroute refueling is to make sure the tankers and fighters are at the same point when refueling needs to happen. Speed differences where my biggest frustration, and aircraft automatically adjusting speed. I added a hold after the pre-strike refueling to get the timing down properly. I had better results using Takeoff Time rather then Time on Target.

[MauriceB]

Yah that's why i did the mission planning sheet, to get the timing of when the strike aircraft reach each AAR station and timing the tankers to get there on station 15 minutes before the strike aircraft show up. The only problem I had coming up with it is that it was 100% experiential, I could not "math the shit out of it" to calculate travel times between points (yah, i tried), so I had to fly test flights between the points (for strike and tankers ) to get flight times (or Durations on my sheet). God rest the souls of the strike aircraft test flights, I had no tankers for them.

I'm a little overwhelmed by the flight planner though, and after watching numerous videos I see that tutorial videos only delve into the flight planner to "show" the flight planner, but any mission videos seem to always state "I'm not going to use flight plans for this, I'll manually fly the strike".

And then add the tanker refueling oddities that i keep seeing to the complexities of the flight planner and I start to get a little frustrated.

I was going to re-tool my playthrough above to have the tankers use flight plans but i aborted that idea as it seemed to be overkill. To get the station arrivals timed right I'll just have the mission inactive and use activation times. Next step is to us the flight plans for the strike aircraft. May take a day or two. I'll need to deep dive into flight plans, but wish me luck.

[thewood1]

JUst my say...

The flight planner is almost a game unto itself. To me, there are three ways to run a mission:

1) Do it manually with direct control of all the units and follow all the way through to RTB. Outside the stupidity of the player, you can generally get good results. It requires significant micromanagement and some people are just built to not brook any ambiguity. But this is difficult to scale to larger battles.

2) Use the old fashioned mission builder, sans the flight planner. You take off, fly the mission, RTB. No ingress waypoints, no turn waypoints, no weapon waypoints, etc. Relatively simple and scales fairly well to large battles. The main downside is lack of granularity in planning. You can't fine tune avoidance of SAM areas, off-axis attacks, etc.

3) Go all in on the flight planner. Spend hours fine tuning the mission to set it up in detail the way you want the mission to execute. This is basically building the mission for complete hands-off execution. It scales very well for large battles, but requires a lot of planning and being willing to accept that you and the AI aren't perfect, leading to mistakes being made and virtual lives being lost. Thats actually pretty close to real-life. The main issue with using the flight planner is I personally only trust it 80-90%. Thats just enough skepticism to keep me from using it in certain types of missions.

There is a sort of fourth approach in the Ops Manager. Its the next step beyond using the flight planner and linking missions and engaging lua to help coordinate large and complex missions. I find the Ops Manager works pretty consistently. Its downside is trusting the flight planner and the complexity of using lua.

I don't want to patronize anyone with this post. I have been working on something like this for the updated doc file and wanted to throw it out there.

[MauriceB]

JUst my say...

thewood1, that post was well stated. It shed some light on the layers behind playing C:MO. For context, I bought the game on Oct 3, so I've only been at it for 6 weeks. In those 6 weeks I've come to roughly the same conclusions although i could not have stated them as well as you did. Allow me to dive in a bit...

1) Do it manually with direct control of all the units and follow all the way through to RTB. Outside the stupidity of the player, you can generally get good results. It requires significant micromanagement and some people are just built to not brook any ambiguity. But this is difficult to scale to larger battles.

These days i guess we could call this the "Sea Power" method of playing a scenario. Scale is a big concern here, I don't want to be forever limited to battles of 6-10 units per side. I will say though that this method is ideal for 1-2 subs vs. an ASW Group. Some of my best experiences in C:MO have come from these battles.

2) Use the old fashioned mission builder, sans the flight planner. You take off, fly the mission, RTB. No ingress waypoints, no turn waypoints, no weapon waypoints, etc. Relatively simple and scales fairly well to large battles. The main downside is lack of granularity in planning. You can't fine tune avoidance of SAM areas, off-axis attacks, etc.

This is fast becoming the sweet spot for me (as it stands currently). The Missions are ideal for AEW, ECM ASW, CAP zones. When it comes to strikes though I fall back to micromanaging them (ala, option 1) because I'm just not confident in the flight planner yet. I see where it has merit (like the oft-overlooked Target Priority screen) and someday my strikes may be there. This brings up the question I've had about creating scenarios. How do authors create strikes that the AI executes? It looks like It's just strike missions with no targets, and the AI will launch when something matches the strike type? I see some flexibility in max rage to strike, but I don't see a way to add a strike "prosecution zone"?

3) Go all in on the flight planner. Spend hours fine tuning the mission to set it up in detail the way you want the mission to execute. This is basically building the mission for complete hands-off execution. It scales very well for large battles, but requires a lot of planning and being willing to accept that you and the AI aren't perfect, leading to mistakes being made and virtual lives being lost. Thats actually pretty close to real-life. The main issue with using the flight planner is I personally only trust it 80-90%. Thats just enough skepticism to keep me from using it in certain types of missions.

Well your opening statement "The flight planner is almost a game unto itself" could not be more true. I had illusions of playing the game like you described, 99% of my time planning the mission, and 1% watch it unfold perfectly. I say 99% because most of the planning seems to be trial and error, "oh shit, i didn't expect that" then go back to tweak the missions & flight plans. I've been maybe too focused on the flight planner and Air to Air refueling (i.e. Wooden Leg and the above scenario) and my head hurts from the inter-relationship between the flight planner and AAR oddities.

There is a sort of fourth approach in the Ops Manager. Its the next step beyond using the flight planner and linking missions and engaging lua to help coordinate large and complex missions. I find the Ops Manager works pretty consistently. Its downside is trusting the flight planner and the complexity of using lua.

I'm a software developer so diving into LUA is something I'm looking forward to digging in to, but the Ops Manager is on the list of "I can't deal with this yet". A question about LUA, do most scenarios use LUA? it looks like scoring almost needs it.

Again, thanks for the response.

[Kushan04]

I could not "math the shit out of it" to calculate travel times between points (yah, i tried), so I had to fly test flights between the points (for strike and tankers ) to get flight times (or Durations on my sheet). God rest the souls of the strike aircraft test flights, I had no tankers for them.

The Flightplan Editor tells you the Leg Distance, Total Distance, Leg Time, Hold Time (if applicable), along with fuel.

[thewood1]

"A question about LUA, do most scenarios use LUA? it looks like scoring almost needs it."

I rarely use lua. Only when no other method works. I find using too much lua leaves one open to play methods and approaches you never considered.

As to planning and watching. I rarely...I mean really rarely touch individual units or groups. Any on-the-fly changes during execution I almost always do by adjusting doctrine or missions.

[Kushan04]

A question about LUA, do most scenarios use LUA? it looks like scoring almost needs it.

I use Lua for everything these days. I no longer use the non-Lua event actions unless there is no other choice. Scoring, events, etc are all Lua based in my scenarios. Why have 100 separate scoring triggers/actions when you can have one that handles everything? It's easier to setup, easier to maintain, easier to make changes and not inadvertently change something else.

[MauriceB]

Two experts (can i use that word?) of C:MO and two wildly different answers. I think that's a good thing. No one right way to do it.

[Kushan04]

Two experts (can i use that word?) of C:MO and two wildly different answers.

My job requires me to know everything there is to know about Command, at some level.

I think it's fair to call thewood an expert too.

I think that's a good thing. No one right way to do it.

Of course there's a right and wrong way. My way is the correct way. Everyone else is wrong.

That was sarcasm if it wasn't obvious.

[thewood1]

"That was sarcasm if it wasn't obvious"

You're wrong. Thats not sarcasm. (I see your sarcasm and raise you one)