Slitherine

quote:

New patrol option: Prosecution Area. You can now define an exact area you want units to pursue contacts during a patrol. Units assigned to it will not pursue contacts outside the area. To use: add and select the necessary reference points, press the prosecution area button and add/remove reference points as you would with the patrol area function. If no prosecution area is added the mission works as it traditionally did in that there is no threshold.

Prosecution Areas (PAs) serve two purposes:

a) They act much like a forbidden zone in that contacts appearing within them are marked for interception, but they also restrict the extent at which interceptions will happen. So if you want your fighters to e.g. be triggered only by bandits within 200nm of a protected HVU instead of “waking up” to contacts thousands of miles away, PAs are the solution.

b) They act as a “leash” for assets on a patrol; they effectively determine the extent to which the patrol assets can give chase to receding targets. If the bandit moves out of the PA, the defender is forbidden to follow (though it can still engage with weapons if feasible). This solves the problem of patrol assets over-extending themselves during interception, quite often falling victims to feints/traps.

PAs are supported in the UI by modifications to the Mission Editor UI, and are populated by reference points in the same way as existing patrol areas. They are empty by default, and in this case the AI behavior is the same as before (intercept bandits far away etc.), to facilitate existing scenarios.

Units that are assigned to a patrol with a prosecution area will target & engage only contacts that are within this area (or their patrol area). If they are not on patrol or their patrol does not have a prosecution area, the existing AI rules apply.
This makes it possible to create SAM ambushes (shoot at far less than max range), divide areas of responsibility for multiple patrol forces etc.

PAs work as intended only when the “Investigate targets outside contact area” option is enabled. Also, the “engage targets of opportunity” doctrine option overrides the prosecution area restriction.