Intercept Mission all targeting same aircraft

[GeneralVikus]

Hey guys,

Can anyone tell me how to fix the problem of all the aircraft on an intercept mission going after the same target? What's really peculiar to me is that I've been keeping notes, and those notes say that I solved this problem by changing the "shooters per salvo" setting, which makes perfect sense. About a month later I came back to what is (as far as I can tell) the same save and the same game build (1776,) and now I've run into the same problem again, but changing the weapons / shooters per salvo (either in the mission or in the side doctrine) definitely doesn't fix it.

In this context, it wouldn't make sense for any new or different bugs to be present. I suspect therefore that I'm simply forgetting a crucial piece of information about how I fixed this last time, or did not record the solution correctly.

Edit: Attached is a save file, showing all interceptors pursuing a single target despite all of their doctrines being set to single shooter / single weapon per target. This is true across different save files and is not affected by whether or not the targets are grouped.

[Mark352]

Could it be the doctrine/WRA for the fighters needs to be updated too? So it matches the mission doctrine. You may have already thought of that.

[GeneralVikus]

Could it be the doctrine/WRA for the fighters needs to be updated too? So it matches the mission doctrine. You may have already thought of that.

I'm not sure I know what you mean, could you explain?

[Mark352]

I'm not sure I know what you mean, could you explain?

I'll try.

IIRC Doctrine/WRA settings separately apply to the side, a mission(s) and the unit(s). Mission settings once setup may not always match the current unit settings. To remedy that, after setting the Doctrine/WRA for a mission click the "Reset affected units (inherit from above Doctrine)" button in the Doctrine window and the "Reset affected units (inherit from above WRA)" button in the WRA window. That will update the units assigned with the mission doctrine and WRA.

I often find myself double-checking Doctrine/WRA for the mission and the units assigned to the mission to make sure they match.

Hope his helps.

[GeneralVikus]

I'm not sure I know what you mean, could you explain?

I'll try.

IIRC Doctrine/WRA settings separately apply to the side, a mission(s) and the unit(s). Mission settings once setup may not always match the current unit settings. To remedy that, after setting the Doctrine/WRA for a mission click the "Reset affected units (inherit from above Doctrine)" button in the Doctrine window and the "Reset affected units (inherit from above WRA)" button in the WRA window. That will update the units assigned with the mission doctrine and WRA.

I often find myself double-checking Doctrine/WRA for the mission and the units assigned to the mission to make sure they match.

Hope his helps.

Thanks! Just tried this and it definitely doesn't fix the problem, but I appreciate the help nevertheless.

[Tcao]

if it is a Patrol Mission, there is a setting allow you to decide the # of AC investigate unknow target and # of AC engage a hostile target. But this option doesn't exist for an intercept mission.

[GeneralVikus]

if it is a Patrol Mission, there is a setting allow you to decide the # of AC investigate unknow target and # of AC engage a hostile target. But this option doesn't exist for an intercept mission.

Yeah, I know. I just thought that I had found the way to make interception missions work, but now I'm thinking perhaps I was wrong. If interception missions are only able to target one unit at a time then they are useless, and it seems unlikely that they would have been deliberately implemented like that, so maybe it's a bug. Regardless, if nobody knows how to make them work, then is there a way to make patrol missions activate when a contact enter the patrol area / exclusion zone, with LUA or something?

Otherwise, how do people do the job (when designing scenarios) which an intercept mission should theoretically perform, i.e. automatically launch aircraft which already exist in the scenario (rather than being spawned out of thin air,) in numbers corresponding to the number of targets, and only when the threat appears, without player intervention?

[Mark352]

Are you still having issues with this?

I played your scenario file and all the bombers are shot down or damaged. Two Backfire get through and are shot down by the FFG 7 Oliver Hazard Perry and I had to point one F-14 towards four Badger that slipped through.

Initially what I saw was all the fighters indicating they were engaged against Bomber #70 (a Backfire) but, when they started launching missiles the missiles were targeted against different aircraft. Once the fighters disposed of the Backfires they moved to the Badgers. I did shorten the Automatic Firing Range up a little so the AAM weren't all being fired at max range.

So for me, the intercept mission worked. I've never used an intercept mission with that large a number of aircraft (32).

Hopefully this is working for you now.

[GeneralVikus]

Are you still having issues with this?

I played your scenario file and all the bombers are shot down or damaged. Two Backfire get through and are shot down by the FFG 7 Oliver Hazard Perry and I had to point one F-14 towards four Badger that slipped through.

Initially what I saw was all the fighters indicating they were engaged against Bomber #70 (a Backfire) but, when they started launching missiles the missiles were targeted against different aircraft. Once the fighters disposed of the Backfires they moved to the Badgers. I did shorten the Automatic Firing Range up a little so the AAM weren't all being fired at max range.

So for me, the intercept mission worked. I've never used an intercept mission with that large a number of aircraft (32).

Hopefully this is working for you now.

Yeah, clearly the problems are minimized when the targets are grouped together like that, and you're using long range weapons to boot. It would still be more efficient if the interceptors split into two groups to engage the two groups of bombers, but either way in this case the problem is not severe. If you separated the bomber groups, though, and had them attack from different directions, it's a different story - 2 bombers out of 3 would penetrate, even if there were only 3 bombers in total.

That scenario was just a random example I pulled - my real problems started when I was trying to engage many, dispersed targets using short ranged weapons. All of the aircraft assigned to the mission will engage one target at a time, and the target selection is random, so aircraft which are right next to a cluster of 10 targets will turn around and fly 100nm to engage a lone target.