This Pull Request lets users plan Tanker flights.
Features:
- Introduction of `Refueling` flight type.
- Tankers can be purchased at airbases and carriers.
- Tankers get planned by AI.
- Tankers are planned from airbases and at aircraft carriers.
- Tankers aim to be at high, fast, and 70 miles from the nearest threat.
(A10s won't be able to tank)
- Tankers racetrack orbit for one hour.
- Optional Tickbox to enable legacy tankers.
- S-3B Tanker added to factions.
- KC-130 MPRS added to factions.
- Kneeboard shows planned tankers, their tacans, and radios.
Limitations:
- AI doesn't know whether to plan probe and drogue or boom refueling
tankers.
- User can't choose tanker speed. Heavily loaded aircraft may have
trouble.
- User can't choose tanker altitude. A-10s will not make it to high
altitude.
Problems:
- Tanker callsigns do not increment, see attached image. (Investigated:
Need to use `FlyingType.callsign_dict`, instead of just
`FlyingType.callsign`. This seems like it might be significant work
to do.).
- Having a flight of two or more tankers only spawns one tanker.
- Let me know if you have a solution, or feel free to commit one.
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/74509817/120909602-d7bc3680-c633-11eb-80d7-eccd4e095770.png
UI isn't finished. Bulk transfers where the player doesn't care what
aircraft get used work (though they're chosen with no thought at all),
but being able to plan your own airlift flight isn't here yet.
Cargo planes are not implemented yet.
No way to view the cargo of a flight (will come with the cargo flight
planning UI).
The airlift flight/package creation should probably be moved out of the
UI and into the game code.
AI doesn't use these yet.
https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/825
Still a work in progress (the missions don't actually perform their task, just orbit). Currently:
* AEW&C aircraft can be bought.
* AEW&C missions can be planned at any control point and at front lines.
* AEW&C will return after 4H or Bingo.
On station time for CAP is only 30 minutes, so plan three cycles to give
~90 minutes of CAP coverage.
Default starting budget has increased significantly to account for the
greatly increased aircraft needs on turn 1.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/673
Fighter sweeps arrive at the target ahead of the rest of the package
(currently a fixed 5 minute lead) to clear out enemy fighters and then
RTB.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/348
Previously we were trying to make every potential flight plan look
just like a strike mission's flight plan. This led to a lot of special
case behavior in several places that was causing us to misplan TOTs.
I've reorganized this such that there's now an explicit `FlightPlan`
class, and any specialized behavior is handled by the subclasses.
I've also taken the opportunity to alter the behavior of CAS and
front-line CAP missions. These no longer involve the usual formation
waypoints. Instead the CAP will aim to be on station at the time that
the CAS mission reaches its ingress point, and leave at its egress
time. Both flights fly directly to the point with a start time
configured for a rendezvous.
It might be worth adding hold points back to every flight plan just to
ensure that non-formation flights don't end up with a very low speed
enroute to the target if they perform ground ops quicker than
expected.
We estimate the longest possible time from mission start to TOT for
all flights in a package and use that to set the TOT (plus any delay
used to stagger flights). This both cuts down on loiter time for
shorter flights and ensures that long flights will make it to the
target in time.
This is also used to compute the start time for the AI, so the
explicit delay option is no longer needed.
Also fixes the CAP racetracks so the AI actually stays on station.
Waypoint TOT assignment happens at mission generation time for the
sake of the UI. It's a bit messy since we have the late-initialized
field in FlightWaypoint, but on the other hand we don't have to reset
every extant waypoint whenever the player adjusts the mission's TOT.
If we want to clean this up a bit more, we could have two distinct
types for waypoints: one for the planning stage and one with the
resolved TOTs. We already do some thing like this with Flight vs
FlightData.
Future improvements:
* Estimate the group's ground speed so we don't need such wide margins
of error.
* Delay takeoff to cut loiter fuel cost.
* Plan mission TOT based on the aircraft in the package and their
travel times to the objective.
* Tune target area time prediction. Flights often don't need to travel
all the way to the target point, and probably won't be doing it
slowly, so the current planning causes a lot of extra time spent in
enemy territory.
* Per-flight TOT offsets from the package to allow a sweep to arrive
before the rest, etc.
Avoids crowding the taxiways, and adds some life to the end of the
mission.
Later on, this will happen more naturally because we can delay
takeoffs to align with the package's DTOT.
This still isn't very good because it doesn't work well for anything
but the automatically planned package.
Instead, should be a part of the Package itself, generated the first
time it is needed, and resettable by the user.
Mission planning has been completely redone. Missions are now planned
by right clicking the target area and choosing "New package".
A package can include multiple flights for the same objective. Right
now the automatic flight planner is only fragging single-flight
packages in the same manner that it used to, but that can be improved
now.
The air tasking order (ATO) is now the left bar of the main UI. This
shows every fragged package, and the flights in the selected package.
The info bar that was previously on the left is now a smaller bar at
the bottom of the screen. The old "Mission Planning" button is now
just the "Take Off" button.
The flight plan display no longer shows enemy flight plans. That could
be re-added if needed, probably with a difficulty/cheat option.
Aircraft inventories have been disassociated from the Planner class.
Aircraft inventories are now stored globally in the Game object.
Save games made prior to this update will not be compatible do to the
changes in how aircraft inventories and planned flights are stored.
