AI after refueling refuse to rejoin
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I believe it is. I’ve had this happen more than once.
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My wingmen always refuel quick and effcient. Both AI and human ;-).
I’d say it is a bug. Did you close the air refuel door and call quit? It has something to do with finishing the refuel sequence.My problem is that at times the AI wants to bug out to alternate - even when commanding them to stay on wing - even when the tanker is nearby and we are going to meet it very soon. There should be possibility to order the wingmen to stay because I know we have another plan.
EDIT: I think the AI does not take refuellers into consideration unless the refuelling is part of the original flight plan. Of course they refuel with you, but they can’t predict refuelling and bug out even without permission.
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there is a small glitch here
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Unable to repro this. I just tried the refueling training TE and my wingie followed me and rejoined through three separate refuel evolutions in the same visit to 3D world. Re-examine the procedure you are using to finish up tanking. If this is still happening, I’ll need a more precise description of what you are doing and at what point the AI appears to deviate from the script you expect.
Just for good measure I tried it with a 4-ship too using the IDM TE (man, that tanker is hanging out a loooong way off!). Same result though – everyone got fuel in their turn and then we cleared the tanker to startboard as a flight and rejoined no problem.
[Good practice for AAR that one because when you get there the tanker is at pretty high altitude so if you are the lead jet you get to try and hook up with the tanker in a descending turn – fun stuff! :)]
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Hi Boxer,
After reading what you wrote, I retested the refueling in the IDM TE. I flew to the tanker using TCN 29y and when within 10 miles of the tanker, gave a request for fuel call. After that all my wingmen moves towards the tanker and to the left it as I move towards the boom. Gave tanker the ready for fuel call. After refueling, gave the done with refueling call and move to the right of the tanker to wait for wingmen ai to finish their refueling. As usual they were very efficient.
I did two tests.
For the first test, my wingmen after refueling rejoined me. Just what you experienced.
However in my second test, my wingman continue to stick to the tanker.
I think I did exactly the same thing, so I am not sure what is wrong. I think I need to do the third test and try to find out why they stick to the tanker. Maybe I need to move nearer to the tanker before requesting for fuel like 3 miles out.
One thing I notice is during refueling, the wingmen drop from my datalink in HSD. After refueling, no matter what I did, I can’t get them back on data link. I press osb 6, cont using ctrl o until it is highlighted but still I can’t get them to show up in HSD.
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In the manuals it says somewhere that only the K135 supports a heading on it’s Tacan. So you would be able to know where to fly, if you miss the initial heading call or whatever the reason. I noticed however that both the KC10 and the 135 have only distance Tacan, but no heading… is this correct?
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In the manuals it says somewhere that only the K135 supports a heading on it’s Tacan. So you would be able to know where to fly, if you miss the initial heading call or whatever the reason. I noticed however that both the KC10 and the 135 have only distance Tacan, but no heading… is this correct?
wrong.
kc10 aa tacan will provide dme and bearing
kc135 aa tacan will only provide dme. -
okay, thanks
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I did another refueling using the IDM TE. This time I did not shift to the right of the tanker after refueling. Instead I stayed behind the ai wingmen after they refueled and position themselves to the starboard of the tanker. After number 4 had refueled I watch them peel away from the tanker. Previously I would have given the rejoin call as soon as 4 has refueled, but this time I didn’t and wait until they are away from the tanker. I wonder whether it is because I gave the rejoin call as soon as number 4 had finished refueling that had cause them to stick to the tanker.
Can someone check the datalink? During refueling, all the wingman symbol is gone from HSD and after that there seem to be no way of getting them back in the HSD.
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there is a known bug with ai package elements (human flts are not affected) and their datalink, after they land or got shot down, their flight is removed from the package hence from the datalink order.
in the 13th training te, f16 flt is the 4th element in the package.
in case either of the other packages rtb / vanish from 3d, f16 flight’s idm number would move up to 3, 2 and finally 1 when no other flights are left in 3d….next time something like this happens, goto ded idm page and change your ai wingies’ datalink number, say from 42 to 32 and see if no2 (given he’s alive) show up again on the datalink?
all this is completely unrelated with their refueling behavior of course…
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I agree with Moort – I think the datalink issue is unrelated. If you are tanking in that TE, you are way WAAAY off the flight plan and the mission’s timings with other flights in your package are probably the root cause there. The issue with IDM drop outs has to do with aggregation/deaggregation and fixing it would break TacEdit for which as yet there is no replacement tool so we’ve left this one alone.
For the AAR thing, yes, I would not recommend calling a rejoin until the AI clears the tanker. It’s not needed in that case because they clear the tanker pattern to starboard and as soon as they are clear more than one half nautical mile then they look to reform on you anyway. I can look at what happens when someone does call “rejoin” before they bug out of the tanker pattern…not sure what the code will do with that…could be that this hangs up the tanker state machine. Obviously for now the answer is: don’t do that!
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Send me a TE with a player jet, a single AI wingie and a tanker in which you can run into this issue 100% of the time. [A minimal TE like that helps with debug a lot by keeping the number of entities to a minimum…less chaff to work through in memory to find the wheat.] Then with that describe exactly what you do to initiate the AAR evolution and progress through that; I mean running commentary on every control input you supply that isn’t simple stick/throttle movement along with what you hear/see for radio exchanges with tanker and wingies. I can only imagine that we are doing something different and that as a result you are finding a hole in the AAR state machine. That animal is complicated and sizable. Without reliable repro case and instructions the chances of me finding a problem I can’t readily replicate are slim to hell on a chilly day.
I’d wager I’ve done more AAR evolutions than just about anyone here given how much testing goes into this to get the code to behave right. I have never seen this issue. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a black swan someplace but I need help to see it if there is and conversely my experience is that the code is pretty reliable…100% opposite of what you see apparently.
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Gotcha Boxer, lemme see if I can recreate and replicate this in a sterile environment.
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Boxer, when I posted the other thread yesterday it was after a Refueling TE sortie. First cycle went off without a hitch, second cycle was when the wingie didn’t rejoin. Instead he stayed in formation with the tanker. I’ve also seen it during campaign missions though.
I have a theory though… It seems you have to be fairly precise about the pre-contact position and when you hit Y-2 key combo and I have seen me having to hit it three or four times before being cleared to contact position. I am beginning to wonder if my own poor airmanship (not getting into proper position before asking for Y-2 permission) is a contributing factor? I guess to test it further. I need to go and fly poorly! Shouldn’t be too difficult…
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Boxer, when I posted the other thread yesterday it was after a Refueling TE sortie. First cycle went off without a hitch, second cycle was when the wingie didn’t rejoin. Instead he stayed in formation with the tanker. I’ve also seen it during campaign missions though.
I have a theory though… It seems you have to be fairly precise about the pre-contact position and when you hit Y-2 key combo and I have seen me having to hit it three or four times before being cleared to contact position. I am beginning to wonder if my own poor airmanship (not getting into proper position before asking for Y-2 permission) is a contributing factor? I guess to test it further. I need to go and fly poorly! Shouldn’t be too difficult…
You should not need ‘Y-2’ at all. After ‘Y-1’ (done when all AC in the flight are within 10 miles of the tanker) you will be cleared to pre-contact. If you are in the correct pre-contact position (gun cross on the boom and in close), you will get cleared to contact.
I can assure you that the ‘Y-2’ command is not the cause (or not a unique cause) of the AI wing-man staying in formation with the tanker.
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You should not need ‘Y-2’ at all. After ‘Y-1’ (done when all AC in the flight are within 10 miles of the tanker) you will be cleared to pre-contact. If you are in the correct pre-contact position (gun cross on the boom and in close), you will get cleared to contact.
I can assure you that the ‘Y-2’ command is not the cause (or not a unique cause) of the AI wing-man staying in formation with the tanker.
Thanks for your input. I’ll try a couple join-ups once the MotoGP qualifying is finished and report back how it goes.
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Don’t forget that pre-contact requires position and rate – if your boom-relative closure rate isn’t near zero [stable] the boomer will decide you are dangerous and won’t clear you even if you pass through the correct position in 3D space for clearance from pre-contact.
I’m sure this is written in many threads but I’ll repeat it here since I haven’t typed it in lately anywhere Y-2 is useful for one and only one very specific situation. If you are a player, it’s your turn to take fuel, you manually kicked yourself off the boom using the HOTAS AR/DISC having already taken a non-zero amount of fuel, then using Y-2 will tell the boomer that you want another go at the boom before any other aircraft in the Q is serviced. You’d issue this for example in a case where you want to practice contact over and over…get on boom, kick yourself off, Y-2, get back on the boom, rinse repeat until you are bored then Y-3 to release the tanker to move on down the Q to the next jet or return to waiting for the next flight or what-have-you.
At any other time, if you hit Y-2 all you will hear is “Roger” – sort of like my kids when they say “whatever” – hint: he’s ignoring you
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In the past week or so, I’ve done numerous refuels and haven’t hit the Y-2 combo at any time. Wingies have rejoined on me after every cycle also. It may well be coincidence, but at least I’ve not had the problem previously encountered. Maybe somewhere in the code the Y-2 before actually taking any fuel was having a negative effect on the AI somehow?
Anyway… Thanks for the heads-up Boxer