Feature Request: CAS Gunship module

[dmorchard]

When AI-piloted, the armed Blackfish (VTOL gunship) is useless to a Zeus player. It needs a dedicated CAS module that will force it to circle a target area counter-clockwise, at an appropriate combination of radius and ASL height that allows its gunners can track and fire on enemy units.

This is possible using Achilles, but only through a combination of Zeus actions on a vehicle that has already been placed:

• the "Patrol/Loiter" module assigns a loiter waypoint adjacent to the vehicle's current location. Zeus must manually set these parameters and also drag the loiter waypoint to the desired map location...
  
• the "Change Altitude" module is used to manually specify an ASL height, although planes seem to be incapable of completely ignoring terrain and flying in a flat circle...
  

It's tricky to initiate though. You need to apply both actions to an existing vehicle, but once it starts to move that gets frustratingly difficult. Once it's in the air forget it!

Default AI behavior can also prevent the desired outcome, i.e. despite setting the group behavior to "combat" the gunners don't seem to want to engage enemy infantry unless there are vehicles present - and then, they cease fire once the vehicle is disabled/destroyed. If Zeus intervenes by issuing an attack order, the loiter waypoint gets deleted and the pilot starts flying a "bombing run". At this point you may as well delete the plane and start over.

What I'd like to have at minimum is a single "Gunship CAS" module that spawns the Blackfish some ways away, has it fly to the target area and loiter for a predetermined time, firing on all targets of opportunity, and then exiting the AO before despawning. But even better: being able to adjust certain parameters of the CAS mission on the fly, ideally by double clicking a CAS marker on the ground or map (similar to these)...

...to access a menu where I can do the following:

• Change fire orders: hold or free, switch weapons, concentrate on a specific enemy unit
• Abort the mission and RTB
• Adjust/reset the remaining "on station" time.
• Change altitude and/or radius; ideally limit these so that one can only set a radius that is complimentary to the current altitude and vice-versa, by which I mean the combination results in the target area being near the center of the guns' view ranges.

[Kexanone]

Achilles' advanced CAS module could serve as a possible basis for such a module. It is applicable to Blackfish, but doesn't allow much modifications apart from the gun and number of rounds used. One problem is that the Blackfish AI does not target a target logic properly. You need to determine a correction vector in the plane's frame of reference in order to improve the targeting. With variable radius/altitude thing will get even more complicated. I would say we stick with a fixed altitude+radius in the first implementation.

[dmorchard]

For an initial fixed altitude+radius combo I suggest something like Alt = 750 above sea level and R = 1000. This seems to keep the ground surface at the pivot point of the turn nicely within the guns' ranges of motion.

To accommodate even the most extreme terrains maybe altitude should include an adjustment, i.e. Alt = (750 + TTH), where TTH is target's terrain height.