Previously the only difference between these was the objective type:
TARCAP was for front lines and BARCAP was for everything else.
Now BARCAP is for friendly areas and TARCAP is for enemy areas. The
practical difference between the two is that a TARCAP package is like
the old front line CAP in that it will adjust its patrol time to match
the package if it can, and it will also arrive two minutes ahead of the
rest of the package to clear the area if needed.
`FrontLine` is tightly coupled with `ConflictTheater`.
Moved into the same module to prevent circular imports.
Moved `ConflictTheater.frontline_data` from class var
to instance var to allow save games to have different
versions of frontlines.
Was using the interval from mission start to latest rather than from
earliest to latest, so this could sometimes be off by a bit and cause
us to not generate enough start times.
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.
Stop using "CAP". Use BARCAP or TARCAP instead.
TARCAP no longer allowed anywhere but front lines, since that's all we
have mission planning for right now. Later will add TARCAP and BARCAP
for all objective types with different timing profiles.
Part two of the fix for
https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/210.
- the base LUA functionality has been implemented as a mandatory plugin
- the jtacautolase functionality has been implemented as a plugin
- added a VEAF framework plugin
The plugins have GUI elements in the Settings window.
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 on a per-control point basis lacked the context it
needed to make good decisions, and the ability to make larger missions
that pulled aircraft from multiple airfields.
The per-CP planners have been replaced in favor of a global planner
per coalition. The planner generates a list of potential missions in
order of priority and then allocates aircraft to the proposed flights
until no missions remain.
Mission planning behavior has changed:
* CAP flights will now only be generated for airfields within a
predefined threat range of an enemy airfield.
* CAS, SEAD, and strike missions get escorts. Strike missions get a
SEAD flight.
* CAS, SEAD, and strike missions will not be planned unless
they have an escort available.
* Missions may originate from multiple airfields.
There's more to do:
* The range limitations imposed on the mission planner should take
aircraft range limitations into account.
* Air superiority aircraft like the F-15 should be preferred for CAP
over multi-role aircraft like the F/A-18 since otherwise we run the
risk of running out of ground attack capable aircraft even though
there are still unused aircraft.
* Mission priorities may need tuning.
* Target areas could be analyzed for potential threats, allowing
escort flights to be optional or omitted if there is no threat to
defend against. For example, late game a SEAD flight for a strike
mission probably is not necessary.
* SAM threat should be judged by how close the extent of the SAM's
range is to friendly locations, not the distance to the site itself.
An SA-10 30 nm away is more threatening than an SA-6 25 nm away.
* Much of the planning behavior should be factored out into the
coalition's doctrine.
But as-is this is an improvement over the existing behavior, so those
things can be follow ups.
The potential regression in behavior here is that we're no longer
planning multiple cycles of missions. Each objective will get one CAP.
I think this fits better with the turn cycle of the game, as a CAP
flight should be able to remain on station for the duration of the
turn (especially with refueling).
Note that this does break save compatibility as the old planner was a
part of the game object, and since that class is now gone it can't be
unpickled.
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.
Make the type of the waypoint a non-optional part of the constructor.
Every waypoint needs a type, and there's no good default (the previous
default, `TAKEOFF`, is actually unused). All of the target waypoints
were mistakenly being set as `TAKEOFF`, so I've fixed that in the
process.
Also, fix the bug where only the last custom target of a SEAD
objective was being added to the waypoint list because the append was
scoped incorrectly.
