Operation Manager Issues
Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 7:23 pm
After extensive testing I am simply unable to get the Operation Manager to work, at all. I understand that this is a recent addition, and am trying to sort out what is a bug vs. what might be user error. That said, I've read all of the available documentation and blog posts regarding the Operation Manager, and believe I understand how it is supposed to work.
For context: this is on the current Steam stable Build: 1307.3 and a save file is attached.
I'm testing using "Strike Tutorial 5 - Pealing the Onion" and my desired goal is to have one of my SEAD equipped F-16C's drop their CBUs on a radar site, then proceed to launch their HARM at a SAM site. (It is not possible to do this in a single strike mission because the WRA for the HARM is just "Radars" - I can't tell the mission to use the HARM on the SAM site's radar but not the early warning radar.)
I've set up two missions with the appropriate WRAs: one to strike the radar site, one to strike the SAM site. I've flagged a single F-16C with a SEAD loadout as "dynamic" and assigned it to both missions. Both missions are active. Neither mission has had a flight plan created yet.
This is where things start to go wrong. These all appear to be bugs:
1. The Operation Manager does not respect mission priority. If I set both missions to "triggered", "Strike Radar" is always tasked, even if I assign "Strike SAM" priority = 1 and "Strike Radar" priority = 99. I tried all permutations of priority values to see if this was a simple issue with the "Priority" column description, but nothing had any effect, the "Strike SAM" mission is never tasked.
2. When the Operation Manager creates the mission, the "Strike Radar" description changes to "Mobilized/Assigned Units [1/2]" even though only 1 unit is assigned.
3. The "Strike SAM" mission is never mobilized, so long as the "Strike Radar" mission exists. I allowed the "Strike Radar" mission to proceed, manually marked it as "satisfied" (in all combinations of: before and after the unit returned to base, with the mission marked as "active" and "inactive"). The only time I've ever seen the "Strike SAM" mission mobilized was when I manually deleted the "Strike Radar" mission.
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The above three points are my biggest concern and are the simplest test cases I could devise. While testing, I also encountered several other more complex issues that might be bugs, or might be feature requests.
4. Strike missions are NOT marked as "satisfied" when all targets are destroyed. Why not? "All targets destroyed" seems like the literal definition of a satisfied strike.
5. I cannot get the LUA template that checks for "Unit Destroyed" to work. The default template returns true instantly (I suspect ScenEdit_GetUnit is returning nil). As an aside, I'm a software engineer with 10+ years of industry experience, I should be able to figure this out. Even if I could, having to set up a LUA script that checks the status of each strike target is extremely silly - the mission should be doing this for me once all targets are destroyed.
6. While I can't get it to re-task units at all, what I really wanted was for the the Operation Manager to re-task units in flight. I suspect this isn't possible with the way that flight plans are generated.
For context: this is on the current Steam stable Build: 1307.3 and a save file is attached.
I'm testing using "Strike Tutorial 5 - Pealing the Onion" and my desired goal is to have one of my SEAD equipped F-16C's drop their CBUs on a radar site, then proceed to launch their HARM at a SAM site. (It is not possible to do this in a single strike mission because the WRA for the HARM is just "Radars" - I can't tell the mission to use the HARM on the SAM site's radar but not the early warning radar.)
I've set up two missions with the appropriate WRAs: one to strike the radar site, one to strike the SAM site. I've flagged a single F-16C with a SEAD loadout as "dynamic" and assigned it to both missions. Both missions are active. Neither mission has had a flight plan created yet.
This is where things start to go wrong. These all appear to be bugs:
1. The Operation Manager does not respect mission priority. If I set both missions to "triggered", "Strike Radar" is always tasked, even if I assign "Strike SAM" priority = 1 and "Strike Radar" priority = 99. I tried all permutations of priority values to see if this was a simple issue with the "Priority" column description, but nothing had any effect, the "Strike SAM" mission is never tasked.
2. When the Operation Manager creates the mission, the "Strike Radar" description changes to "Mobilized/Assigned Units [1/2]" even though only 1 unit is assigned.
3. The "Strike SAM" mission is never mobilized, so long as the "Strike Radar" mission exists. I allowed the "Strike Radar" mission to proceed, manually marked it as "satisfied" (in all combinations of: before and after the unit returned to base, with the mission marked as "active" and "inactive"). The only time I've ever seen the "Strike SAM" mission mobilized was when I manually deleted the "Strike Radar" mission.
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The above three points are my biggest concern and are the simplest test cases I could devise. While testing, I also encountered several other more complex issues that might be bugs, or might be feature requests.
4. Strike missions are NOT marked as "satisfied" when all targets are destroyed. Why not? "All targets destroyed" seems like the literal definition of a satisfied strike.
5. I cannot get the LUA template that checks for "Unit Destroyed" to work. The default template returns true instantly (I suspect ScenEdit_GetUnit is returning nil). As an aside, I'm a software engineer with 10+ years of industry experience, I should be able to figure this out. Even if I could, having to set up a LUA script that checks the status of each strike target is extremely silly - the mission should be doing this for me once all targets are destroyed.
6. While I can't get it to re-task units at all, what I really wanted was for the the Operation Manager to re-task units in flight. I suspect this isn't possible with the way that flight plans are generated.