Campaign Priorities and "Suicidal" Missions
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The idea behind this post is to help those interested in controlling the air tasking manager.
Before we go into the priority sliders, lets just briefly review how a mission is generated in Falcon4.1) Mission Request
A mission generation starts by a mission request (MR) call from somewhere inside the campaign. A MR may be called to several different kinds of targets, e.g. a factory, an airbase or a ground unit. Think that as a simple “form” which is filled, but no ones know at that moment if the mission will be fragged or not. The mission request is completely invisible for the user and runs automatically.
2) Mission Priority
After a MR is triggered, the engine checks/calculates the priority of that mission.
A mission can be requested by the engine with a high priority from the time it is triggered. This can be the case for tankers which are really necessary for a mission, for example.This initial priority is then used as an initial value to calculate the total priority of a mission:
Initial Priority at MR (Hard Coded)
Mission Priority
Target Priority
PAK Priority
Distance to FLOT
Random Priority: small contribution but it helps to avoid repeating missions in campaigns.The Mission, Target and PAK priorities (same weight) are defined by the sliders inside BMS (or via Mission Commander (MC), see below Section 3).
A comment about the distance to the FLOT: The closer the target is to the FLOT, the higher the priority will be. After 250km, the bonus is zero. This can be turned off/on for specific missions in MC. This is an importane flag for missions, since it allows to focus on the air war at the FLOT more than deep into enemy territory.The priority will be set to zero if the user has any corresponding Target or Mission slider at zero (left side), the corresponding mission request will be ignored. An example: A mission to strike a factory was requested, because that factory is producing supplies. However, if the slider for War Production (see Section 3) is set to zero, then this MR will be ignored.
(The PAK slider even when set to zero will not lead to a MR to be ignored because there is a minor bug in the code, in my opinion. Will send a msg to some devs to see if it makes sense.)3 ) Relation between Sliders in BMS and the priorities in MC
When the campaign is initialized, the sliders positions are calculated based on the specific priorities given by de campaign designer (several factors, which is outside the scope here). These priority values can be edited directly in MC though.
Even with all Target and Mission sliders at zero, the following priorities are nonzero, i.e. are hard-coded:
Objectives: Airstrips 60%, HART Site 10%, SAM Site 50%
Units: Supply 80%
Missions: Alert 10%, Stealth Strike 40%, Strat Bomb 40%, FAC 40%, AWACS 10%, JSTAR 10%, TANKER 40%, ECM 40%, Air Cav 10%, Airlift 10%, SAR 10%, Patrol 10%4) Effect of Sliders on Mission and Target Types
The sliders in BMS were tested in the campaign Rolling Fire under default conditions, no mods or changes.
5) Putting together the package
After the MR got a priority, the engine will try to put a package together. Several rules around it are defined in the MissionData_XX.xml, where XX is the campaign number (from 0 to 5). There is just one default setting in this file which are used by all teams in a campaign in the vanilla instal of BMS. MC allows to generate different settings for each team though. See video below for more details on how to do that.
At this point, the engine will try to find a squadron for this mission, will decide on the number of aircraft required, the number of AA and SEAD escorts based on threats at target area, whether the mission should be flown at all on the ammount of threats, etc. The list is very long and complicated to cover here.
It is important to note this is the point where most of the mission requests (with low/average priorities) are simply cancelled if one of the parameters/rules cannot be fulfilled.
See video below on how to use the MissionData_XX.xml to control the air war in the case of OCA strike missions.6) FAQ
a. How shoud I set the sliders in BMS?
In general, avoid putting all the way to the right (=very high priority). This will generate too many missions in detriment of other missions. This is specially the case with BARCAP missions. Since there are too many MR for BARCAP missions at the start of a campaign with high Initial Priority, a small slider setting will already lead to a large number of missions.
In the case of DEAD missions, this is exactly the contrary. The sliders Air Defenses and SAM Suppression should be all the way to the right in the respective PAKs at the beginning of the campaign.
See video below for more details.b. Why airmobile missions are so seldom fragged?
Original F4 code was incomplete and bugged in that part. Not sure about BMS. In general I see 1-2 airmobile missions during the whole campaign.c. Why are CAS missions so seldom fragged?
There are several conditions for a CAS mission to be fragged. (i) CAS requires that a ground unit is engaged, (ii) facing a stronger enemy ground unit and (iii) request CAS or support (via CAS or artillery). Additionally, CAS missions are fragged less than BAI in campaign, because part of the original code was still incomplete and that seems the case for BMS.
During the recording of the video below, I saw an Arty unit being engaged by an enemy armored unit. The arty unit requested a CAS mission which was promptly fragged.d. How do I avoid “suicidal” long range missions behind the FLOT?
First thing, set the PAK priority for regions away from the FLOT to zero at the start of the campaign. This will reduce the number of suicidal missions but it will happen from time to time due to bug in the code (see above). Additionally, make sure is to set a flag for the mission to avoid high threats via MC. See video below for more details. -
@tiag , very well done. Thank you !
I think it can help the newcomers but also the veterans to better understand the campaign engine.
One thing that i have missed when i started Falcon was the position on the map of the campaign objectives you must held to win. The UI lacks a search engine to find them on the map easily.
My best,
Eric. -
@ericfa2a said in Campaign Priorities and “Suicidal” Missions:
@tiag , very well done. Thank you !
I think it can help the newcomers but also the veterans to better understand the campaign engine.
One thing that i have missed when i started Falcon was the position on the map of the campaign objectives you must held to win. The UI lacks a search engine to find them on the map easily.
My best,
Eric.Campaign designers could all build the .ini that show them when you load the campaign first.
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@tiag Thanks so much for your effort - great job!
I just started watching the video and I noticed that the lines between steerpoints on the map are black. For some reason, mine are white and really difficult to see for me.How can I make mine black?
TIA!
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@efsixteenblock50
For me, only when you have a mission selected inside a squadron, the flightplan is white. All flight plans from ATO have been always black/gray though. Are you sure you get all ATO flight plans in white color too? -
@tiag Excellent work on that video tiag. Campaign engine sliders and PAKs have always been a focal point of my BMS Campaign game-play analysis, however your note on the xml files shed some additional light on these settings - Thanks for putting this video together - Really enjoyed it
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@tiag said in Campaign Priorities and “Suicidal” Missions:
@efsixteenblock50
For me, only when you have a mission selected inside a squadron, the flightplan is white. All flight plans from ATO have been always black/gray though. Are you sure you get all ATO flight plans in white color too?I’m talking about TEs. The flight(s) I add to TEs always have white lines between steerpoints. They can be difficult to see.
Actually, my real issue might be because the 2D map (and launcher) is really small. I remember seeing a tutorial by Max on installing BMS where there was a way to size / re-size the 2D window. This was an older version. So when I installed 4.36, I noticed that there wasn’t that provision in the menu of the launcher, so I’ve never been able to re-size the 2D window. Is that even possible anymore?
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I never move slider, i modify .pri file~~~.hahaha
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