ESCORT for Support and Patrol Missions.

[JFS737]

I would like the ability to be able to assign escort for these missions, mainly for the AI side to present the player with some challenges. It's less needed on the player side as I generally don't send them into harms way or can assign one manually using the F3 waypoints setup but might be a nice tool.
I have some rather large MPA patrol areas and think it would be useful for scenario design to have escorts for both types of mission, indeed any actually.
I'd like to see options for "close" (within 1nm?) and maybe a box to enter distance or station as in the formation editor? Altitudes independent of the HVAC would be good. I'd also like to be able to turn off/on Sensors at waypoints as we can now command units to change alt/speeds at waypoints, this would be a nice addition for design as well.
Thoughts?

[thewood1]

In both scenario design and play I stopped using escorts on missions. I have some of the RPs in a patrol/support mission set as RPs for the escort mission. I then adjust speed, altitude, EMCOM, prosecution, distance, weapon range, etc. on the escort mission. Sometimes I'll even disable/enable escort missions depending on whats going on around the area. That allows me to easily adjust mission parameters depending on what enemy units are detected or where they are detected. You can use a simple approach or make very complex, all without Lua.

[JFS737]

Thanks. Having the same RP's would work for small areas or if the mission was not "random" but "continuous loop".. but what if it's a large area. The designer would not know where the units go once they hit the patrol area, and thus the escort would not be functional.
Many small patrol areas? Only use continuous loop? Maybe a mix of all this, an imperfect solution. On the design side I see a need for more than I did when I simply played the game.

[thewood1]

I view it as the existing escort "out of the box" function is a simple and limited function that gives a simple and limited solution. As with anything, add more complex capability and you now move beyond the simple solution capability. To me, you have the simple solution that covers the 80/20 rule. The tools are all there for more complex solutions to more complex problems. Of course, just an opinion and the devs can sort out their investment in time.

And as to large vs small areas, I use the prosecution zones for exactly that. I have also used separate RPs tied to patrol/support unit too. But thats more limited.