[1706] Aircraft do not spread across tankers when refueling

[caelunshun]

Multiple aircraft are choosing the same tankers, which in the provided scenario results in aircraft having to wait too long to refuel and thus ditching. Another symptom of the problem is that the tankers always say "Refueling queue: 0" even when there are many aircraft in their queue. Furthermore, some aircraft seem to erratically fly around in their patrol area without even attempting to refuel.

Expected behavior: the groups of F-15Es spread across the tankers so that they are not waiting for another group to finish fueling before they can start. If the expected behavior works then there should be no aircraft lost when this scenario is played for 20 hours or so, as there is no shortage of tankers for the F-15s to use....

[blu3s]

Thanks for the report

Logged: 0016263

[Nikel]

In case is useful, compared 1662 with 1676.

1662: 4 F-15E losses, 0 in the mission and 4 while RTBing at the end of the scenario.

1676: 24 F-15E losses, 12 in the mission and 12 RTBing.

Edited, because the scenario ended before landing, if you continue more losses until all of them land.
e

1662.png (35.29 KiB) Viewed 530 times

1676.png (48.72 KiB) Viewed 530 times

Some of them RTB even though there is not enough fuel, they should refuel before doing it, is it because they are part of a group and the leader has enough?

P10.png (10.97 KiB) Viewed 524 times

[blu3s]

The problem when ACs are on station seems better now in the current internal construction.

I strongly recommend using the maximum number of aircraft per queue to avoid further problems.

The problems when RTB aircraft are being inspected

[caelunshun]

Still an issue in 1706 - 19x F-15Es ditch while on the mission, another 2 on RTB.

[Nikel]

Besides the bad results in the refueling, in B1706 I notice significant slowdowns in the simulation.

Perhaps related with 4 errors in the exception log? Only 1 coincide with the errors displayed in B1676.

In 1676 the simulation is completely fluid, 2 errors.

[caelunshun]

Yes, I'm noticing a lot of stuttering as well. I haven't tested if it's specific to this scenario or not.

[Nikel]

OK must be relevant and needs a new thread, I will create it with your save.

[CHM]

I've not noticed any slowdowns but the tanker problem still persists in build 1706

[Ryzo90]

Air to Air refueling has been comically bad for some time.

Can I suggest that a first step to resolving this is to simply playtest Wooden Leg and continue bugfixing until Air to Air refueling at least works on a simple scenario. This should allow reasonably quick turnaround, rather than "release, bug report, fix bug report, release, bug report etc", where the issue is never root caused.
If it works on a simple scenario atleast the beta testers can focus on checking if it works on complex scenarios

[thewood1]

I'm not saying there aren't any issues with AAR, especially complex missions. But I just ran Wooden Leg from scratch for the first time in years. Kept it simple as a priority.

1) Built a land strike mission of primary F-15Ds and assigned the PLO targets
2) Turned on AAR and said to use any nearby tanker. I also looked at ranges and saw that it would be tight with the provided AAR mission location and refuel settings. So I moved the AAR mission a little closer to Sicily.
3) Launched mission
4) Killed most of the PLO targets (I think in my real play through I sent the back up F-15s to clean up.)
5) All aircraft returned to base.

Ranged from Triumph to Average depending on if I left a couple targets alive or not. The only changes I made from a clean scenario was built a six-unit strike mission and adjusted the location of the AAR mission. Could have adjusted the refuel distance, but I was trying to keep it simple. I attached the saved scenario. You should be able to hit start and the PLO mission launches, refuels and attacks.

If I were playing this from scratch without the pre-positioned AAR, I might have either had two different AAR missions or spent more time on the details of loadout fuel levels/refueling distance.

edit: A quick comment as an afterthought is the refueling distance can be critically important if you are on a very long haul and using a single point AAR. Picking nearest tanker vs one between target and unit is almost as important. Thats just from experience and school of hard knocks.

[Ryzo90]

Thanks thewood - That seems to work for 6 aircraft (I was using flight sizes of 2, and launching all 8 aircraft across 2 missions, 6 in the first and 2 in a follow up, with the intention that both tankers would be used optimally) but still has issues with refueling on the latest beta.

- All aircraft cluster on the same tanker
- A single KC707 Saknayee can refuel all 6 F15D's at the same time(???). Must try a greater number of aircraft when I get a chance and see if there's a limit

[thewood1]

And thats why when I build my own missions I never use more than a tanker per AAR mission. I also build my flights around those AAR missions. Its a best practice in CMO and sort of real life. In wooden leg, to do it right, there should have been two seperate AAR missions. Unless you intervene, units want to drain the first tanker they come to. I used to screw around a lot with max queue a lot and always ended up screwing something up and messing up timing. My default now is aligning AAR missions as a tanker per flight with some extra steps for multiple flights.

I have a friend that retired as a Marine Corps general and flew AV-8s and F/A-18s. I have had more than a few conversations about AAR practices in real life. In CMO and in RL even the simplest mission with AAR is VERY complex to plan and execute. He said the premise for AAR planners is making it as simple and straight forward as possible. Minimize the refueling queue. Single tankers in missions and on station. Do a lot of planning around individual tanker capacity. Speed and altitude discipline are crucial in CMO and RL.

[thewood1]

I went in and rebuilt the AAR mission(s) to how I would have done it. Although still not to the level of perfect planning I like to do, it provides a significant safety factor while consuming the same tanker resources.

Note I changed the AAR altitude based on the thread in the main forum.

I think a couple more changes I would have done are maybe having the tanker missions on execute once and I would still optimize a little more distance to tanking inbound and outbound. (One other thing I do is try to keep missions to flight size of either 2 or 4. 6 was just to make it faster and simpler.