[Deathblow]

How do I make an aircraft trail and loiter over the CVSG that its supposed to be protecting. For example, I've set up an E3-Hawkeye as an inflight aircraft for my Carrier to extend the radar coverage, and I would like it to just continue to loiter right over the carrier as it goes thru its maneuvers.

I try using the standard "boxes" but it usually gets the Hawkeye in trouble, because the box is usually too small and the CV will eventually move beyond it, resulting in suboptimal radar coverage by the hawkeye. I've also tried making an extensive box that the CV will never go beyond, but that also causes trouble because the hawkeye will go beyond the carriers AAW range too quickly and be at risk to be attacked.

The game doesn't really allow us to add the aircraft to a formation... Anyone got any tricks or ideas?

[LuftWolf]

I'd recommend a "rolling respawn."

You can set an area trigger on the CVBG to fire a remove trigger on the first S-3 and then fire a add object trigger for new S-3's on the way.

There is also a doctrine level command called TacticCenter, that might also be available in the mission editor scripts, try looking for it and see if you can script it for the S-3 based on a refiring area trigger for the CVBG, that would be a more elegant solution, but it might not be available, of course.

[Molon Labe]

Is there an option for an air station? Hmmm, what tactic would be assigned for that...?

You might just have to use a lot of waypoints otherwise...

[Deathblow]

[LuftWolf]

"Making missions is hard..." [whine]

Come on, be a man.

[Miika]

Use a trigger, set to re-trigger constantly, that orders the aircraft to "follow/track?... CV". (Can't remember the exact trigger.) I've used it and it works, although it needs some fine-tuning to work.

Miika

[nzm30]

The last time I tried it (some time ago, but it worked) was to use 'air station'.

[Deathblow]

[Deathblow]

Here's what I've found so far.

The Airstrip is great for E2-Hawkeye loitering where you want the plane, but its not good for scripting the plane to do any other actions (basically beyond all commands). Additionally, whenever the plane is shot down another one is not launched to replace it.

In order to script the launching of a replacement Hawkeye, the best thing I've found so far is a script tags to the demise of the original Hawkeye that will script a another Hawkeye launch. Then too my chargin, Hawkeye launches are broken and they physically can not launch off the carriers with the current physics model (their launch velocity is too low and then crash into the ocean) not a problem for jet launches, but precludes the Hawkeye launches. Additionally, its hard to predict what the behavior of the replacement Hawkeye will be since its beyond scripting.

Perhaps the best Hawkeye, loiter techinique may be just the creation of 1 in flight Hawkeye, and 3 dynamic groups, each with a Hawkeye, scripted to spawn when the last Hawkeye went down (perhaps with a 15min time delay). But that leaves the problem of "where do they spawn?" Given that a mission might cover 100miles or so, a spawn point could be far outside the range of the carrier if the game is fairly underway..... perhaps some scripting to ensure that the respawned Hawkeye seek out and follow the nearest carrier, but the details aren't well worked out and its hard to tell if it will work.

Still WIP, will keep posting on possible solutions.

[FERdeBOER]

That was many months ago and I don´t remember exactly, but, when creating a mission (never finished) and tried to make what you want of aircraft launched when something happens (detect a task force in my case) I found that the aircrafts must be on flight alert (with right click on the aircraft and "flight schedule" if I remember well).

Then, the aircrafts will launh on the time schedulled.

Hope this helps.

[Deathblow]

Hm... ok I'll give it a try to see what comes up. I ran into a little problem earlier when I discovered that the current physics engines keeps E2's from launching from the carrier. They go straight into the ocean. :doh:

Maybe with some tweaking and the launching problem resolved it can be the simple solution we're looking for.

[MaHuJa]

[Bellman]

Standard Harpoon E2 practise is for the aircraft to depart low in emcon and remain so until a standoff position
is attained possibly over 40 nm abeam the carrier. The aircraft then climbs as high as necessary to achieve the
desired radar coverage.

E2 position is a signpost to the carriers so great care is taken not to follow patterns of behaviour nor
to interpose the E2 between the carrier and any potential platform or radar coverage threat.