Der Zeitgeist
Posts: 280
Joined: 9/5/2013 Status: offline
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As everyone probably has read by now, I'm pretty passionate about including some sort of waypoint control for the AI-controlled missions in CMANO, especially for air missions. That would allow us to better control ingress paths to avoid SAM threats, for example, and prevent the default predictable flight paths from the airbase to the target. This would especially benefit the AI opponent in any scenarios. There is, however, a crude capability to influence AI pathing already in the game, and that is with navigation zones. You can set them up by dropping reference points, selecting them, and then selecting "Unit orders"-->"No-navigation-zones"-->"Create new from selected refpoints". A window will open where you can further edit the zone, to rename it and to select for which type of units it should apply. So what can we do with these zones? In my tests, I used them to create a corridor through which a SEAD mission would pass on their way to the target: The SEAD mission was created as a SEAD patrol covering the main Danish island of Sjælland. I assigned 8 SU-24D armed with AS-11 Kilter anti-radar missiles to the mission, stationed on an airbase near Kaliningrad. If I would have just started the mission without any navigation zones, the planes would have overflown Swedish airspace, and we can't have a diplomatic incident with neutral Sweden in the middle of World War 3. Instead, as you can see, they kept to the navigation corridor just north of Bornholm island and started firing their missiles on the Danish I-Hawk batteries once they got in range. Interestingly, they didn't hesitate to fire the missiles across Swedish territory and through the no-nav-zone, but luckily, no Swedes were hurt in the making of this scenario. Zoomed in, we can see the first AS-11 as it is about to impact, with others following, all targeting the I-Hawk aquisition radars in the vicinity of Kopenhagen. The I-Hawk handled itself pretty well in this engagement, and shot down a number of the anti-radar-missiles. For the actual scenario, I will probably add some Badger J's providing stand off-jamming to the SEAD strike.
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