'Down' aircraft

[Lace]

Not sure if this a feature already requested, but could mechanical failures of aircraft be implemented? This would necessitate the allocation of 'spare' aircraft in mission planning, if there was the chance of one or more aircraft becoming unavailable due to a unforeseen failure during pre-flight (or even the transit phase). Given older aircraft are susceptible to failures, and certain nations having better maintenance procedures (or more lax go/no-go criteria), plus absence of hard data I guess it could be a difficult feature to add. That said I do find the fact that all aircraft readied are available with 100% success somewhat unrealistic. After all, weapon malfunctions are incorporated into the sim.

[stww2]

It's an interesting idea , but I think this is something that is better left up to scenario designers to implement in a manner that makes sense for their scenario. See Kushan's El Dorado Canyon (in the CSP), for example.

[thewood1]

The game has always had a maintenance loadout that puts individual aircraft out of the action. A scenario designer can easily work in random aircraft being offline and back online. But, as stated, its a scenario designer job to do that.

[Lace]

Yeah, I know pretty much anything can be scripted in by a scenario designer, but it would be good to have as standard.

Also, as i understand it, the [maintenance unavailable] tag is static, and no matter what length the scenario, that unit will remain unavailable. A nice way to accurately reflect real life squadron composition, but fairly useless from a gameplay POV.

[kevinkins]

Hi Lace,

I could be wrong, but the [maintenance unavailable] tag can't be changed directly. It's seems static like you said. You can set the a/c ready time to say 30 days and then use something like ScenEdit_SetUnit({side="NATO", unitname="ZEPPELIN #1", TimeToReady_Minutes=5}) to bring the a/c to life. The ready minutes is whatever is called for by the designer. The function can be run randomly or based on an event happening. A non lua point and click way to set up and simulate any number of system failures on the ground or in the the air might be in the works and down the road. The [maintenance unavailable] tag may be a placeholder for something like that. Check out the lua forum for possible example code that can be used right now.

[thewood1]

A simple lua script in an event can easily change the state of a maintenance down aircraft. To me, this is not something controlled by the player. They should have no control over maintenance issues. This is the scenario designer's role. A designer can change the loadout on any aircraft through a simple script that can be activate by a user action, special key press, or scenario event. Aircraft components can be set to randomly fail at any point the same way.

Again, the player shouldn't have any control of it. It should be designed into the scenario.

[tylerblakebrandon]

I'm sure SeaQueen would advise us that given the average scenario length that the number of aircraft set to maintenance should cover the expected number of airframes not available for the mission due to equipment failures.

For longer scenarios a LUA script combined with use of aircraft damage should cover airframes in the hangers due to both battle damage repairs and general equipment failures.

[kevinkins]

I looked through the lua functions for CMO and did not see one that would activate a maintenance unavailable a/c. That does not mean it's not there. What did you find? From the manual ... "Aircraft are armed or set to reserve, so players know to add munitions. Aircraft that are not to be used are set to maintenance."

Here is a thread that deals with adding loadouts to reserve a/c.
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... e#p4570312

Possible ways to disable units via script might be in this search
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/sear ... 0%5D=10236

Looks like the properties of ready and reserve a/c can be manipulated and the designer has to look through the lua functions to see if anything will help render units unavailable for combat missions.

[thewood1]

I'll have to check, but I thought they added that a couple years ago.

[TitaniumTrout]

I had a script that would do this by "damaging" components on the aircraft. Then it would enter the repair queue and be available eventually. In flight failures happened as well, but I found it didn't add as much to the scenario as I hoped so I shelved it.

[thewood1]

This is the one I was thinking of. I thought there was a loadout code for Maintenance now. It might be part of the beta. I think a couple years ago, I used Reserve for the same function, but much simpler.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... e#p4978627

[kevinkins]

I saw that as well. If the designer can only use lua against a/c in air operations having a ready or reserve tag, it's not a big deal. Just set the ready time of a reserve a/c so it becomes ready and send a message to the player: "Aircraft Ranger XYZ at Aviano AB is coming out of final maintenance and ready for operations in 15 minutes." Maybe this thread will save someone time fooling around with a/c having the maintenance - unavailable tag. ScenEdit_SetUnit({side="NATO", unitname="ZEPPELIN #1", TimeToReady_Minutes=5}) is straight forward and can be randomized.

[Kushan04]

I looked through the lua functions for CMO and did not see one that would activate a maintenance unavailable a/c.

SetLoadout
http://commandlua.github.io/#ScenEdit_SetLoadout

Loadout 4 is always the number for maintenance
Loadout 3 is always the number for reserve

If it where me making a long scenario, over day. I'd just have an event that fired every 24 hours that would randomly set aircraft to available or maintenance. Could even have it check for certain DBIDs so aircraft that where historically hanger queens, looking at you F-111, would have a higher chance to be down vs other aircraft.

[kevinkins]

Yep, numbers 3 and 4 do toggle an a/c between maintenance and reserve status and you can directly set the loadout knowing its number in the DB. Thanks for the tip.

Kevin

[thewood1]

If you wanted to turn this into an endurance simulator, you can track the total time in flight and endurance to set up regular maint. and increase likelyhood of specific failures.

[Gunner98]

In the interest of simplicity, I just try and pin down a reasonable % of AC that will be down for maint at any one time and set that for the scenario duration. For instance if 25% of all AC of a type should routinely be down, set that number in a maintenance status and assume that over time all AC cycle through. If you're trying to track the actual airframe that is in maint it can be done with Lua, but - why?

[thewood1]

This...

"In the interest of simplicity, I just try and pin down a reasonable % of AC that will be down for maint at any one time and set that for the scenario duration"

Also, as a player in a single player game, just roll dice on every ready request and not use that airplane. Probably the simplest solution.