Wingmen and Situational Awareness

[StuB]

My assumption is that something needs to be added to the vehicles.cfg file, but when flying with FSCAI generated wingmen I have noticed that although they will call out certain ground targets and threats, they do not seem to "see" any Tacpack generated SAM sites or launched missiles.

Here is a video of a test I did and it illustrates my point: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmWffxbt3F8

In the video, the Radar Warning Receiver system is working properly and detected the SAM site radar whenever it was painting the aircraft. The RWR has shown that with jamming OFF, breaking line of sight via terrain masking will cause the radar to lose sight of the aircraft....or break lock if it is in tracking mode.
 
I found it interesting that the SA-2 site went from search mode straight to guidance mode (instead of stepping through tracking mode) and launched a missile. The ECM system is not 100% effective. So far in the tests i have conducted, it generally seems to give about a 50/50% chance of spoofing the missile.

Anyway, as can be seen in the video, the FSCAI wingmen did not identify the SAM site... nor did they call out a missile launch.
Also, the wingmen were not flying in the "finger four" formation as had been commanded prior to recording the video.
For some reason, a log file was not generated, so I could not verify whether or not the AI "saw" the SAM site or any of the launched missiles.

I knew a SAM site was out there but the way I created it for the test made it so that I didn't exactly know where. So, as can be seen in the video, I had to look around for the missile once I got a launch warning. If labels weren't turned on, I would have never seen it. A warning notice of "SAM launch, 3 O'clock!" would have beeen very helpful in getting me to look immediately in the correct direction.
This is especially important for airplanes with RWR systems that don't provide an azimuth indicator....namely the A-4 Skyhawks and F-8 Crusaders.

Anyone know how we can make these things visible to the AI?

[xpel]

Interesting video and what you're up to. Two considerations here :

1. Detection range : If you want you're AI wings to detect the sam site objects further than 5-10 miles 
that is the visual detection range, you have to add them a radar to their weapons list they carry (last weapon entry).

2. Declare one, some or all sam site simobjects as "SAM vehicles" in FSCAI vehicles list : Use as a guide for this the SA-2 entry 
or similar (or an AAA entry even better maybe - you just want to be a prioritized target like AAAs are for FSCAI).
Edit the detection range and firing range to 1km or less (so they don't actually shoot FSCAI missiles from far) & potency to 0, 
so that in case of firing AN FSCAI missile it won't do damage.
Since vrs sam site sim objects are "aircrafts", you probably have to declare the atc_model instead of Title (try both cases).
In case of atc_model, you must also declare it in Teams.cfg enemy team.

Keep in mind that editing in screen may not make all changes in text vehicles.cfg, so you may have to edit manually there.
Also, generally speaking, FSCAI doesn't expect an "aircraft" to be sam. This may be a cause of trouble...

[StuB]

Unfortunately, I had stopped recording video and a log file was not created for some reason either.....but it looks like two of the three wingmen I had were shot down by the site, because they seem to have disappeared by the time I re-spawned. I don't recall seeing any messages from them that they had been hit or anything.

I figured that the SA-2 sites were not on any FSCAI list because after I re-spawned and flew over the site, the one AI wingman still following me flew within at least one mile of the SAM site at about 1000 ft altitude.... and still did not detect it.
I think the only reason the third one survived is because the site had to re-load while we were getting inside the SA-2 launch parameters.

The AI seems to be able to detect non-radiating sites (i.e. no radar), such as guns and vehicles within 5 to 10 miles.
So I am going to try adding the following entries to the vehicles.cfg and see if this makes them detectable visually.

BAR_LOCK,P-35,Radar,2,0,0,180,FSXatWarPack1_EWR_Medium_P37_ops,BAR_LOCK,,,,,,,
ODD_PAIR, PRV-13,radar,2,0,0,180, FSXatWarPack1_EWR_Medium_PRV13_ops,ODD_PAIR,,,,,,,

The Crusader vehicle entries already have radar assigned:

F-8,F8,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,F,AIM9B-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153
F-,F8D,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,F,AIM9B-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153
F-8E,F8E,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,F,AIM9B-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153
F-8EMG,F8EMG,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,F,AIM9B-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153
F-8ERG,F8ERG,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,LAU33-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153
F-8EBR,F8EBR,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,MK81-6,LAU33-4,MK12M0-4,APQ153
F-8EBM,F8EBM,Aircraft,1,0,400,160,FB,MK81-6,AIM9B-2,MK12M0-4,APQ153

I have also created a radar entry for the A-4 Skyhawk in the weapons.cfg : (it probably needs to be adjusted....but it should work for now)

APG53 ,60 ,RADAR ,A ,29600 ,50 ,99999 ,01,65,0 , 0 , 00, 0, 045,0000, 00,00 ,0,100,0000,0,*, , AN/APG53 for the A-4

and I have also added these radar systems to it... (the P-18 was already included, but I adjusted it's range/altitude)

P-12, 0,RADAR, A, 200000, 500, 24999, 01, 50, 0, 0, 00, 0, 180, 0000, 00, 00, 0, 100, 0000, 0, * , , Russian "SPOON REST A" EW/GCI Radar
P-18, 0,RADAR, A, 250000, 500, 34999, 01, 50, 0, 0, 00, 0, 180, 0000, 00, 00, 0, 100, 0000, 0, * , , Russian "SPOON REST D" EW/GCI Radar
P-37, 0,RADAR, A, 350000, 500, 25000, 01, 50, 0, 0, 00, 0, 180, 0000, 00, 00, 0, 100, 0000, 0, * , , Russian "BAR LOCK" EW/GCI Radar
PRV-13, 0, RADAR, A, 400000, 500, 85000, 01, 50, 0, 0, 00, 0, 180, 0000, 00, 00, 0, 100, 0000, 0, * , , Russian "ODD PAIR" Height Finder Radar
SNR-75, 0, RADAR, A, 350000, 500, 25000, 01, 50, 0, 0, 00, 0, 180, 0000, 00, 00, 0, 100, 0000, 0, * , , Russian "FAN SONG" EW/GCI Radar

I am researching more radar systems and will create weapons (and vehicles) cfg entries for them as well.
For the ones that don't currently have an associated model, I have been working on creating some already.....I just don't know how to make them work with Tacpack as AI...... which, based on the Tacpack SDK wiki statement in section 3.3 about creating new AI, might not be possible.