BAI is used for attacking ground vehicles as opposed to buildings like
strike does, and not air defenses like DEAD does. Unlike strike, BAI is
tolerant of moving targets.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/216
This was also needed in other parts of the UI and is easier to implement
in the target class anyway.
Note that DEAD is now properly restricted to air defense targets.
Also added error boxes to the UI for when planning fails on an invalid
target.
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.
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
This also removes ascend/descend waypoints. They don't seem to be
helping at all. The AI already gets an implicit ascend waypoint (they
won't go to waypoint one until they've climbed sufficiently), and
forcing unnecessary sharp turns toward the possibly mispredicted ascent
direction can mess with the AI. It's also yet another variable to
contend with when planning hold points, and hold points do essentially
the same thing.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/352.
(cherry picked from commit 21cd764f6625db0784059a0b59a1e8a72a7a699d)
We were calculating the TOT based on travel time to the *flight's*
target, but the ingress point based on the travel time to the target
area. If the difference in travel time between the center of the
target area and the first target were different then we'd calculate
the start time incorrectly even for single flight packages.
Seems to fix https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/295
The increased precision that we had everywhere except the UI and the
interface with DCS was causing issues with ASAP creating barely
negative start times. The main cause of this was that we'd compute the
earliest possible TOT, it would result in, for example, 23:10.002.
When we then set the QTimeEdit for the TOT, we have to round because
it does not support (nor do we really want to display) sub-second
values, which then caused the previously 0 start time to be -0.002.
Instead, since the sub-second values aren't really interesting anyway,
we now just round TOTs up and start times down. This should prevent
negative start times from occurring (except when they've been manually
planned as such), and also prevents start times of 00:00:01.
Also rounds the package waypoint times to avoid the same issues, but
it's not really important which direction we round these.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/295
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.
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.
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.
Pointing the race track 90 degrees away from where the enemy is
expected means the radar can't see much. CAP flights normally fly
*toward* the expected direction of contact and alternate approaching
and retreating legs with their wingman.
CAP missions should be between the protected location and the nearest
threat. Find the closest enemy airfield and ensure that the CAP race
track is between it and the protected location.
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.
