AI aircraft purchase decisions are now driven by the missions that the
flight planner was unable to fulfill. This way we're buying the aircraft
we actually need instead of buying them at random, in the locations we
need them, in the order they're needed.
There's a bit more that could be improved here:
* Unused aircraft could be ferried to where they would be more useful.
* Partial squadrons could be completed rather than buying a whole flight
at a time.
* Aircraft could be ranked by their usefulness so we're not buying so
many Hueys when a Hornet would do better.
* Purchase a buffer of CAP capable aircraft in case too many are shot
down and they are not available next turn.
https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/361
To have an effect on turn zero these need to be enabled in the wizard.
Since the last page was getting quite full I've split it into two pages:
one for the objective generation options and a second for the difficulty
and player assist options.
I also added an option to set the inital budget for opfor.
The procurement AI now uses the same system as the players. Orders are
placed and take a turn to fulfill.
This has a few advantages:
* We no longer need special case purchase logic for the turn 0
population of opfor airbases.
* Players using auto-purchase can cancel orders they don't like.
The allows the players to use the same auto-purchase mechanics that the
AI uses. The behavior is very bad, but it's no worse than what OPFOR
deals with.
There's a lot that needs to be improved before this is really a good
choice for the player:
* Option to adjust budget balance between front lines and airbases.
* Disallow negative budgets (which incidentally will cause more aircraft
to be purchased, since the armor purchases currently accidentally
spend the aircraft budget).
* Buy less randomly: https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/361.
* Obey parking limits.
* Use the delivery events rather than instant delivery (also allows the
player to cancel orders they don't want).
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/362
For now this is mostly behavior preserving. I slightly improved the
ability to buy units when multiple front lines exist by removing full
bases as candidates, but it should be a minor change at best. A larger
improvement will come later.
This is also written such that it will work for the player as well. The
procurer currently runs for the player but with all the options off, so
it does nothing. The next patch allows adds options for the player to
use auto-procurement.
This adds both player and enemy income multiplier options. Note that
previously the AI was only getting 75% of their income. I've changed
that to give them their full income by default since the player can now
influence it.
Repairing a damaged runway costs $100M and takes 4 turns (one day). The
AI will always repair runways if they can afford it. if a runway is
damaged again during the repair the process must begin again.
Runways are still operational despite what the UI says. Preventing the
player and AI from using damaged runways (except for with helicopters
and harriers) is next.
Removed always True "event successful"
Add `AirWarEvent` as the primary game `Event` applied to every miz
Cleanup of `FrontLineAttackEvent`
Change `Operation.is_awacs_enabled` to two bools for each side red/blue
Currently controlled by whether an AWACs is available for the faction
(and only ever true for Blue)
Generated units are added to this during mission generation so we can
map destroyed units back to the data that generated them. Currently only
implemented for aircraft as a proof of concept.
Breaks save compat, but we need to have this knowledge outside the UI so
we can know whether or not we can ferry aircraft to the airfield without
overflowing parking.
The AI isn't making use of these yet, but it's not smart enough to do so
anyway.
Would benefit from an icon to differentiate it on the map.
I'm stretching the definition of "control point" quite a bit. We might
want to put a class above `ControlPoint` for `AirSpawnLocation` to
represent types of spawn locations that can't be captured and don't have
ground objectives.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/274
`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.
* Move the UI code out of the plugin logic.
* Add types where needed.
* Move into game package.
* Improve error handling.
* Simplify settings behavior.
* Don't load disabled plugins.
* Remove knowledge of non-base plugins from game generation.
Fixes https://github.com/Khopa/dcs_liberation/issues/311
Capturing bases is sometimes really annoying because of the DCS unit
AI and our non-optimal ground victory heuristics. Add a cheat option
to allow the player to move on without the tedium.
Weather and exact time of day information is helpful during mission
planning, so generate it at the start of the turn rather than at
takeoff time.
Another advantage aside from planning is that we can now use the wind
information to set carrier headings and takeoff runways appropriately.
- load plugins when loading a game
- moved plugins scripts to resources/plugins (for pyinstaller)
- removed vanilla JTAC and JTAC_smoke options and settings GUI
- call JtacAutolasePlugin in armor.py
- made a dictionary of INSTALLED_PLUGINS
- removed NIOD from the VEAF plugin
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.
