In-flight refueling (IFR), tankers and tanking

[eeustice]

The answer to your guys question from last night is: Yes you can launch a refuel store from a tanker, You can add a range to the refuel store in the db, However since the db will not allow a speed input (box grayed out) the refuel store just drops. I have found this out the hard way. A couple of times I accidently left the speed of a missile at 0 and couldn't figure out why it launched but then disappeared. The good news is that it didn't blow up my base.

[TonyE]

35. Better in-flight refueling/tanker modeling. Even if it is a kludge, maybe something like permitting up to 10 refueling rendezvous before the tanker is empty.

We did some chatting on IRC tonight.

 

Situations:

1. Two different classes of tankers are a part of the group, say KC-135 and F/A-18 with buddy store, in addition to the planes to receive fuel. The KC-135 will offload all fuel before the F/A-18 offloads any fuel. This is working from the theory that the F/A-18 will go closer to the target with the strikers. In fact, the KC-135 will even top off the F/A-18 if there is enough fuel.

 

2. Two different classes of recipients are a part of the group. Say 4 x F-16 and 2 x F-15. The F-16s will be fully topped off before the F-15s receive any fuel. The rule here is to first offload to the largest subset of like aircraft on the theory that they are the main body of strikers. If there were 4 x F-22 and 2 x F-35, the F-22 would receive fuel first since there are more than 2 of them.

 

Discussion welcome about these and other cases.

[donaldseadog]

For multiple tankers, so long as they are not in the same unit, then there is the possibility of getting fuel from one tanker at a time.

One of the features I put into my tool box allows you to easily split off a given number of planes from a unit and then rejoin (thru the set course for new group standard game feature) . This is what I do if I want to get multiple refuels from say two kc-135s.

I think a more more powerful refueling controller would be written using exportDLLs although I haven't looked at it more than a glance to see that the function is there.

Don