Target distribution through mission planner

[TwarVG]

Hey guys, I hope this is the right place to ask this, if not just give me a shout and I'll shift it.

So I was playing the Hit Hard Hit Fast scenario in the Shifting Sands campaign and after about an hour and a half of careful mission planning with a pen and some paper and setting up missions for the airfield strikes, I launched my aircraft, marshalled them, and sent them on their way in waves about a minute apart. My aircraft armed with anti runway munitions went first and were each assigned to a land strike mission which only contained one target each which was either the runway or runway-grade taxiway so those worked fine and my aircraft hit their targets. Next I grouped together all of the revetments and tarmac space on each airfield and set up strike missions and assigned enough rocket armed aircraft so that each aircraft was attacking a single target as I was going to employ each aircraft's entire payload against its assigned target as per its WRA, and did the same with hangars and bomb armed aircraft which I repeated for every airfield I was attacking. Now what I hoped would happen is that the mission editor would see 16 revetments in my target list, and 16 aircraft all in individual groups of 1 aircraft each and automatically assign each aircraft a target to attack. However, what happened was all 16 aircraft focused on a single target until that target was destroyed and then they all focused on the next target until that one was destroyed and so on. So instead of 16 revetments each getting a full salvo of rockets which would easily destroy the parked aircraft inside but not the revetment itself, I ended up with a few destroyed revetments and the rest completely untouched because nobody attacked them.

I've got nearly 800 hours in this game so I get how most of the missions work, but I rarely use the land strike mission as I prefer to manually plot courses and assign weapons etc. But a strike of this size, well over 100 aircraft, is simply too large to do it manually when the land strike will handle all the ingress and egress automatically. So I was wondering is there some button, checkbox, or doctrine setting that I've completely missed that'll automatically distribute targets evenly amongst the assigned aircraft or will I have to manually do it? The only thing I can think of is using the land strike mission to automatically plot courses and simply unassign each aircraft from their mission once they're nearly there and plot the ingress, speed, altitude, weapons release, and egress manually but I'd much prefer if after nearly 2 hours of plotting and waiting I could put my feet up and watch the show unfold rather than babysit each aircraft and strike just so they actually hit their individual targets.

Thanks for taking the time to read guys, any help would be appreciated. [:)]

[thewood1]

I think WRA would take care of 90% of this wouldn't it? At least that is the easiest approach I would take. Its still up to the AI about assigning aircraft to individual targets, but it will spread the pain out and provide the AI some flexibility in attacking until destroyed.

After that, if it doesn't work the way you want, it becomes tinkering with targets in the mission planner.

[TwarVG]

I've tried messing around with the WRA and nothing seems to change their behaviour, they all beeline for one target until it's totally destroyed before even bothering to think about the others. Unassigning them from their missions prior to ingress and manually plotting out the ingress, strike, and egress is the only way to get a result I'm happy with but it's very time consuming and tedious for large strikes. Hopefully a better strike planner comes in the near future.

[thewood1]

I have done this before and will look at how I did it.

[thewood1]

Here is the mission inbound. 8 Mirages with 2 500kg bombs per Mirage. I set a basic mission of 8 aircraft with the 8 revetments at Bir Al-Thamadah. I set WRA for land structure to 1 flight targeted to a target (the second column of choices). The first pic is the flight inbound. Note the targeting from each flight to a revetment.

[thewood1]

This is basically a BDA of the results. Note that all revetments were either destroyed or damaged. Is this what you were trying to do?

[thewood1]

Sorry about the sizing. I was doing it fast.

Here is a pic of the mission.

[thewood1]

To me, the biggest issue is determining how many flights you want to assign to each target. I didn't try it, but I suspect you can maybe let the AI do it through the defense value.

[TwarVG]

I've retried it about a dozen times on as many scenarios trying to get a different result as well as changing flight sizes and whatnot and yet nothing seems to work. All aircraft assigned to the strike will beeline for one of the listed targets, employ their weapons against it, and ignore the rest until the first target is destroyed irregardless of the shooters per salvo WRA setting for their given weapons. [&:]

[thewood1]

Well...put a save up and let us look at what's going on. First rule of the tech forum.

[TwarVG]

Unfortunately I don't have the save anymore, I finished up the scenario manually and moved on. Plus I'm quite new to the whole forum thing so I don't really know how to do much other than post and reply. Thank you very much for you time and help, but I'll try and figure something out on my own time rather than waste any more of yours. [:)]

[thewood1]

Well that was kind of a waste of time.

[thewood1]

Looking back at the original post, a strike size of 100 aircraft is pretty big. I don't think I have ever set up a strike of more than 25 aircraft. So anyone potentially looking at this, I would also suggest breaking up any large strike like that into 3-4 strikes tasked with separate targets and roles. Not doing it for this issue, but just to better control who is hitting what.

[TwarVG]

I had a few missions per airbase (runway, taxiway, revetments, tarmac space, hangars) going for the 4 airbases in the Sinai and 2 near the canal. No single mission exceeded 16 aircraft. I tested out assigning 1 shooter per target then and with fresh scenarios and still nothing changed.

[thewood1]

NOt sure what you're doing wrong. I got it working in about 10 minutes.

[TwarVG]

Well all I assume I need to do is change the shooters per salvo to 1 unit for the weapon being used and the target it's being employed against. Both in the side doctrine and mission doctrine just to be sure.

[thewood1]

Had you done that in the missions you had the problem with?

[TwarVG]

Of course, I tried it repeatedly in different circumstances, different scenarios, tried unassigning and reassigning the aircraft etc, nothing seemed to make a difference.

[thewood1]

OK, I am confused. The post above made it sound like you hadn't tried it. This is why a save is important. Well, if you see it again, save it and post it. It will save everyone some time.

[TwarVG]

I've copied your mission plan exactly, 8 Mirages going for 8 revetments on a basic strike mission with the mission doctrine set to 1 unit shooter per salvo and it still didn't work. I think I've managed to attach the save game.