veafSkynetIadsHelper — Skynet IADS Integration¶

Module ID: SKYNET | File: veafSkynetIadsHelper.lua | Lua table: veafSkynet

See it in game: step 06 “Integrated air defence (Skynet)” of the demo mission.

Purpose¶

Skynet-IADS is a third-party script that drives ground-based air defence radars to optimise their survivability and lethality by staying dark as much as possible. It simulates an IADS (Integrated Air Defence System) in which Early Warning Radars (EWR) scan the sky and share detections with SAM sites, allowing those sites to activate only when they can engage a contact.

veafSkynetIadsHelper automates the construction of these networks from the groups present in the mission, and provides tools to monitor, control, and tie them to mission objectives.

Requirements¶

The Skynet IADS script must be downloaded separately and loaded before veafSkynetIadsHelper
Configure via mission.yaml (recommended) or in mission-script.lua for advanced options not available in YAML

Configuration (`mission.yaml`)¶

modules:
  SKYNET:
    enabled: true
    include_red_in_radio: false   # show RED network status in F10 menu
    debug_red: false              # verbose Skynet logging for RED network
    include_blue_in_radio: false  # show BLUE network status in F10 menu
    debug_blue: false             # verbose Skynet logging for BLUE network
    dynamic_spawn: false          # also integrate groups that appear during the mission
    spotter_network: false        # ground units see aircraft and pass the word along
    spotter_radio_range_km: 20    # how far one unit can relay
    spotter_propagation_speed_kmh: 3600  # how fast an alert crosses the network
    spotter_view: "off"           # "off" | "on" | "radio" — F10 map view (the quotes matter)
    last_line_of_defence: true    # a dark site keeps a short radius of its own and lights up inside it
    last_line_of_defence_min_radius_km: 10
    last_line_of_defence_max_radius_km: 15
    last_line_of_defence_persistence_s: 45
    coverage_refresh_interval_s: 10

Field	Type	Default	Description
`enabled`	boolean	`false`	Enable Skynet integration
`include_red_in_radio`	boolean	`false`	Add RED IADS status to F10 radio menu
`debug_red`	boolean	`false`	Enable verbose Skynet debug for RED coalition
`include_blue_in_radio`	boolean	`false`	Add BLUE IADS status to F10 radio menu
`debug_blue`	boolean	`false`	Enable verbose Skynet debug for BLUE coalition
`dynamic_spawn`	boolean	`false`	Also integrate groups that appear during the mission — see Groups appearing during the mission
`spotter_network`	boolean	`false`	Enable the spotter network — see Spotter network
`spotter_radio_range_km`	number	`20`	How far one group can relay an alert, in kilometres
`spotter_propagation_speed_kmh`	number	`3600`	How fast an alert crosses the map, in km/h
`spotter_view`	`"off"` \| `"on"` \| `"radio"`	`"off"`	F10 map view of the network — see Seeing what happens, on the map
`last_line_of_defence`	boolean	`true`	A dark site keeps a short radius of its own and lights up inside it — see Last line of defence
`last_line_of_defence_min_radius_km`	number	`10`	Lower bound of that radius, in kilometres
`last_line_of_defence_max_radius_km`	number	`15`	Upper bound of that radius, in kilometres
`last_line_of_defence_persistence_s`	number	`45`	How long the site stays lit after the last pass, in seconds
`coverage_refresh_interval_s`	number	`10`	Interval between two sweeps of the coverage graph, in seconds (`0` = never)

Activation (via `mission-script.lua`)¶

if veafSkynet then
    veafSkynet.PointDefenceMode = veafSkynet.PointDefenceModes.Skynet
    veafSkynet.GroupIntegrationMode = veafSkynet.GroupIntegrationModes.Strict
    veafSkynet.DynamicSpawn = false
    veafSkynet.DelayForStartup = 5
    veafSkynet.initialize(
        false, -- includeRedInRadio
        false, -- debugRed
        false, -- includeBlueInRadio
        false  -- debugBlue
    )
end

How it works¶

The module scans all groups in the mission at startup and adds eligible ones to the Skynet IADS networks. Initialisation is delayed by DelayForStartup seconds to let other modules finish first. Late-activation groups are included; dynamically spawned groups are not (unless DynamicSpawn = true).

The module always creates two Skynet networks: one for blue coalition, one for red.

Only groups DCS still holds are enrolled. The distinction matters: DCS keeps listing a group for a short while after destroying it, and this module initialises just after every combat zone has cleaned itself out at startup. Such a group used to appear in the network as a SAM site whose radar never existed — counted as radar destroyed on the IADS status page for the rest of the mission.

What a network SAM does and does not see¶

This is the mechanic that surprises people most, and it has already been reported as a bug while working exactly as designed. A SAM site under network control has its radar switched off. It sees nothing by itself.

The two ways a site lights up¶

	What triggers it
An EWR informs it	An early-warning radar sees the aircraft and hands the contact over; the site goes live if the contact enters its own firing envelope
Its last line of defence	The aircraft enters the short radius the site keeps for itself — see Last line of defence

Proximity alone is not a third way. Outside the last-line-of-defence radius, an aircraft can fly directly overhead a battery and nothing will react, if no EWR has seen it.

Losing the EWRs makes the remaining sites more aggressive¶

It is counter-intuitive, and it is the expected behaviour. A site left with no EWR to inform it turns autonomous: Skynet hands it back to the DCS AI, which lights everything up, all the time. Destroying the early-warning radars therefore does not disarm the defence — it makes it blind and aggressive.

"Covered" does not mean "informed"¶

The status page lists, under each EWR, the batteries it "covers". Coverage is a flat 2D distance between the EWR's radar and the battery's, compared against the EWR's detection range. It ignores the horizon, the terrain and altitude.

In other words it says the EWR is near the battery, never that it is feeding it. A single 55G6 can list eighteen batteries under its coverage while seeing no aircraft at all.

The four ways a group joins a network¶

Two identical batteries behave in opposite ways depending on their origin.

Where the group came from	Joins the network?
Mission Editor (late activation included)	Yes
Combat zone	Yes, whatever `dynamic_spawn` says
VEAF spawn command (`_spawn`)	Only if the command carries `skynet`
Third-party script, or any other spawn	Only if `dynamic_spawn: true`

See Groups appearing during the mission for the detail and for skynet false.

Giving a site permanent watch duty — the `ewr` option¶

A spawn command can put the ewr keyword on a group:

_spawn group, name SA-10 skynet ewr

The site then becomes a watch site: it keeps its radar on permanently and sees for itself instead of waiting to be informed. It also informs the other sites of the network.

What it costs: permanently lit, it is visible and targetable — a HARM will find it. That is the price of the watch, and it is why the advice is to sacrifice a short-range battery rather than the system being protected.

Up to Skynet 3.5.0 the option had no effect at all on SA-10, SA-6, SA-5, Patriot and Hawk: two internal sweeps put those five types straight back to watch-off just after marking them. They have been removed.

Diagnosing: why does this site not light up¶

Setting debug_red: true (or debug_blue) shows the network's status page. Three readings, three different conclusions:

What the page shows	What it means
The EWR has no contacts	Nobody sees the aircraft: masked by terrain, or out of range. The network is working
The EWR has contacts, but the site stays `ACTIVE: false`	The aircraft is seen, but outside the site's firing envelope. The network is working
The site is `AUTONOMOUS`	It has no EWR left to inform it and has been handed back to the DCS AI — the inversion described above

After the fact, when nobody thought to switch debug on. The status page is wiped on every cycle, but the module keeps a history of spotter-network wake-ups that survives it: the last 200 per coalition, each with its mission time. It answers the question asked the next day — did the network wake anything last night? — without the measurement having to be planned in advance.

One line per wake-up, not one per check. A site holding the same aircraft for twenty minutes writes a single line; if it loses the contact and is woken again by the same aircraft, that is a second line. So an evening of flying fits in the 200, and a site that keeps flapping shows up as what it is.

for _, entry in ipairs(veafSkynet.getSpotterWakeUpLog(coalition.side.RED)) do
    env.info(string.format("%d s: %s", entry.at, entry.line))
end

Global properties (set before `initialize`)¶

Point Defence mode — `veafSkynet.PointDefenceMode`¶

Identifies SAM sites capable of intercepting anti-radiation missiles and assigns them as point defences for nearby network elements.

Value	Description
`veafSkynet.PointDefenceModes.None`	No point defences (default)
`veafSkynet.PointDefenceModes.Skynet`	Point defences managed by Skynet (recommended if enabled)
`veafSkynet.PointDefenceModes.Dcs`	Excludes point defences from the IADS network — handed to DCS AI (always on, more effective but more vulnerable)

Group integration mode — `veafSkynet.GroupIntegrationMode`¶

Controls which DCS groups are added to the Skynet networks.

Value	Description
`veafSkynet.GroupIntegrationModes.Strict`	Only groups composed entirely of Skynet-known units are integrated
`veafSkynet.GroupIntegrationModes.Lenient`	Groups containing at least one Skynet-known unit are integrated (default)

In Lenient mode, a convoy of tanks and trucks escorted by a SA-19 will be integrated. In Strict mode, it will not.

Groups appearing during the mission — `dynamic_spawn`¶

Set from mission.yaml (dynamic_spawn), or before initialize with veafSkynet.DynamicSpawn.

Value	Description
`false`	Only groups present at startup are integrated (default)
`true`	Groups appearing during the mission also join the existing networks

What it costs. Once on, the module watches every unit birth in the mission to spot eligible groups. That is why it is off by default: turn it on when the mission spawns SAMs while it runs (a dynamic campaign, a third-party script), not as a matter of course.

What it fixes. Without it, a SAM appearing during the mission joins no network at all, and nothing says so.

Combat zones do not need it. An air defence a combat zone puts back on the map joins its coalition's network whatever this setting says: content the author placed inside a zone is not a spawn nobody asked for. Without that, belonging to the network came down to scheduling luck — a zone's activation and the start-up enrolment are scheduled for the same second, so a zone's battery joined the network if the activation happened to run first, and never rejoined it after the zone was cycled. Only elements that stay put are concerned: a convoy driving through the zone has no business in an air-defence network. The criterion is the one the alarm state uses when no #alarm= tag is stated — an explicit tag changes the alarm state, not the network membership.

Who decides, group by group. A spawn command's skynet option stays in charge: skynet false keeps the group out of every network (which is what the convoy shortcuts carry), and skynet <network name> sends it to that network rather than its coalition's. A group no VEAF command declared — placed in the Mission Editor, created by a third-party script — joins its coalition's network, which is exactly what this setting is for.

The two integration paths are exclusive: when the target network integrates spawns, it does the work; otherwise veafSpawn does it as the group appears. A group is never integrated twice.

Scoped per network. The setting belongs to each network. Switching integration off on the red side — or deactivating the red network — leaves blue working.

-- during the mission, network by network
veafSkynet.setDynamicSpawn("red iads", false)

Spotter network — `spotter_network`¶

A ground group that sees a hostile aircraft reports it, and the report travels from group to group over the radio, one hop at a time. A SAM site that receives it does not light up: it holds the contact and waits, exactly as it would for an early-warning radar, and goes live only when the aircraft enters its firing envelope. It is a distributed early-warning radar, not a wake-up trigger.

When the spotter loses sight of the aircraft it sends a cancellation along the same path, and the defence goes quiet again.

Off by default, because it changes the balance of every existing mission.

Value	Description
`false`	Nothing changes (default)
`true`	Ground groups see aircraft and pass the word along

The group is the unit of reasoning. One DCS group is one spotter however many vehicles it holds: eleven trucks parked in the same place are not eleven independent radio stations. A group sits at the median point of its live vehicles, and it sees as far as whichever of them sees furthest — so a group mixing a MANPADS with a Shilka sees 10 km, the Shilka being blind.

The median point is a deliberate approximation: a group strung out over several kilometres — a convoy on the move — still has one point, so its range and its radio position are wrong by up to half its length. Nil for a stationary group, and small against ranges of 3 to 20 km.

Who sees what. The detection range depends on the type of unit, and each unit draws its own once for the mission, within ±20 % of the table value; the group keeps the best of them. Terrain counts: an aircraft following a valley is not seen by the spotter behind the crest.

Unit	Sees out to	Relays
Aeroplane	30 km	yes
Helicopter	15 km	yes
Ship	12 km	yes
MANPADS	10 km	yes
AAA, air-defence vehicle	8 km	yes
Infantry	4 km	yes
Armour, artillery, trucks	3 km	yes
SAM site, EWR, AWACS	—	yes
Statics, buildings, everything else	—	no

Seeing and relaying are two separate properties. A SAM site relays but never spots: its own detection is already its last line of defence's job. That is what produces the domino — a battery that is warned lights up and passes the word, so a line of batteries wakes in the direction of the penetration. EWRs and AWACS are excluded for the same reason: they already feed Skynet.

A consequence that was accepted deliberately: a player flying for the network's coalition becomes a spotter, and a friendly patrol feeds the ground defence.

The radio range decides whether the network exists at all. Measured over a 1 000-unit mission: at 10 km the largest connected pocket covers 5 % of a scattered map — an alert never leaves the group that raised it. At 20 km it covers all of it on most layouts. That is why the default is 20 and not below. On a map whose contents are spread very thin the network stays a set of islands at any range, which is the honest limit of the idea.

A speed, not a period. One hop covers the radio range, so exposing both would let you widen the range and double the speed of the alert without noticing. The hop period is derived: range ÷ speed, so 20 s at the shipped values. At those settings an alert crosses a 200 km front in four minutes, against thirteen for a fighter to fly it.

Reading what happens. With debug_red or debug_blue set to true, the module writes a status page into dcs.log every minute: how many units and links, how many pockets — the answer to "why did my alert not travel" — the live alerts with their age, who saw what since the previous page, and which site was woken by which alert.

That trace is not decoration: once this feature is in service a site can light up for three reasons — an early-warning radar, its last line of defence, or a spotter. Without the page the question has no answer.

Seeing what happens, on the map¶

The module can draw the network on the F10 map. One square and one circle per group, and each colour means one thing only:

	Grey	Blue	Orange	Red
The square — what the group knows	nobody has told it	it has been told	—	it is a battery, and it is live
The circle — what it sees	it sees nothing	—	it has an aircraft in sight	the live battery's firing range

The square is about what it has been told, the circle about what it sees for itself. The two do not go together, and that is the heart of the feature: a truck warned over the radio is blue with a grey circle, because it knows without seeing anything.

A dark battery draws no circle at all. That is deliberate: in grey, grey would mean two things at once — this battery could fire and nobody has told it and these eyes are looking at nothing — and you would no longer know which of the two circles you were looking at.

A post that sees, and one that sees nothing

Everything in one view: the orange circle of the post that has the aircraft in sight, its blue square, the warned position to the east whose squares are blue too, the line joining them — and just below, another post with a grey dashed circle, seeing nothing.

On top of that: a red cross on each aircraft being tracked, a grey dashed line between two groups that can talk to each other over the radio, and a solid red line wherever an alert actually travelled — which is what makes the path of a report readable at a glance.

spotter_view takes three values:

Value	Effect
`"off"`	Nothing is drawn (default)
`"on"`	The view is shown from the start of the mission
`"radio"`	A Show / Hide the spotter view switch appears in the F10 menu, under SPOTTER NETWORK. The view starts off: that is the point of a switch, and it is the cautious choice given what the view shows

⚠️ Quote the value. YAML reads a bare on or off as a boolean, not as a word. Both are accepted and understood (spotter_view: on works), but spotter_view: "on" is the spelling that stays correct whatever happens.

The menu switch belongs to one coalition: red pilots do not see the blue network's. It is also added without a group restriction, because a game master has no group — a group-only radio command would never reach one, and a game master is exactly who this menu is for.

From mission-script.lua, the same thing:

veafSkynet.showSpotterView(coalition.side.RED, true)

⚠️ It is a coalition view, and it cannot be anything narrower. DCS can only draw for everyone, for a coalition, or for a group — and a game master has no group. So every pilot of that coalition sees these markers, which on a red network hands red pilots a live tracker of blue aircraft. Keep it for testing and for missions where that is what you want.

The network lives inside the Skynet module and does nothing when Skynet is off: there is no fallback mode for missions without an IADS.

One alert, from start to finish¶

⚠️ This is not what a pilot sees. The pictures below show a mission in diagnostic mode, with two displays switched on at once: the spotter view (the squares, the circles, the lines) and Skynet's own banner at the top right, which counts the batteries and says how many are live. Both are off by default: they are for setting a mission up, not for playing it.

To get these views in your own mission:
modules:
  SKYNET:
    enabled: true
    spotter_network: true
    spotter_view: "on"    # the squares and circles; "radio" for a switch in the F10 menu
    debug_red: true       # the status banner top right, and the trace in dcs.log
Then, in game: close and reopen the F10 map after the mission has loaded. A drawing placed by a script does not appear on a map that is already open — by far the most common reason for "it draws nothing".

The five pictures below are one single alert, followed through a demonstration mission shipped with the tools (test/veaf-tools/spotter-network-dense), seen from the red side. The time given is how long the mission has been running.

The setting: a hostile aircraft comes in from the north and flies along a line of six observation posts 17 km apart; behind them, two defended positions, each with its armour, trucks, infantry and anti-aircraft battery. Two patrols and a radar aircraft orbit overhead.

1 — Nothing has happened yet¶

The network at rest

Everything is grey: nobody has seen anything, and the map says so without having to be deciphered. The aircraft has not arrived.

This is a good moment to say who sees what. Each group has its own sight range, and it depends on the type of its vehicles — the table above gives the values. A group sees as far as whichever of its vehicles sees furthest: a group mixing a shoulder-launched missile team (10 km) with a blind anti-aircraft gun sees 10 km, not the average of the two.

Two things that surprise people the first time:

some vehicles that look made for the job see nothing. A piece of an anti-aircraft site, a self-propelled gun: their detection is already the site's own business, so they relay without spotting. A plain truck sees further than a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun;
terrain counts. An aircraft following a valley is not seen by the post behind the crest, even when it is within range. It is not only a matter of distance: there has to be a line of sight.

The squares with no circle at all in this picture are the radar aircraft and the early-warning radar: they relay and see nothing, because what they see already feeds the defence by another route.

2 — One post sees it, and the battery it warns lights up¶

(1 min 20 later)

The first wake-up

The northern post turns orange: it has the aircraft in sight. It passes the word, and the battery 22 km further east — which has seen nothing at all — lights up: a red square, and its red circle shows how far it can shoot. The rest of the map is still grey, so there is no ambiguity about what just happened. The banner at the top right confirms it: SAM: 3 | On: 1 | Off: 2.

This is the whole idea of the feature in one picture, and there are two distinct mechanics in it.

How the word travels. Two groups can talk to each other if they are less than 20 km apart — that is the spotter_radio_range_km setting. A report does not jump from one end of the map to the other: it moves from neighbour to neighbour, one hop at a time, and a hop takes about twenty seconds. Two groups 25 km apart cannot hear each other: the network breaks into separate pockets, and an alert raised in one will never leave it. That is why this mission's posts are 17 km apart and not 25.

What a warned battery does. It does not light up because somebody talked to it. It holds the information and waits, exactly as it would with an early-warning radar, and it only switches its radar on when the aircraft enters its own firing range. That is what happens here: it was warned, the aircraft was already inside its 25 km, so it lights up. In the same picture the other batteries got the same report and stay grey: the aircraft is not inside their range. The spotter network is a distributed early-warning radar, not a switch that wakes everybody up.

3 — The word goes round the front¶

(1 minute later)

The alert crosses the front

The squares have turned blue across 95 km, all the way to the southernmost post. But their circles stay grey: they know, they see nothing. The red lines draw the exact path the report took, from neighbour to neighbour.

This is the difference between the square and the circle made visible: twelve groups know, one is looking at the aircraft. The domino effect reads here too — a warned battery passes the word on in its turn, so a line of defences wakes up in the direction of the penetration.

4 — The aircraft leaves, the defence goes back to sleep¶

(1 min 20 later)

The defence goes quiet

The aircraft has left the firing range: the battery goes dark, its red circle disappears, and the banner drops back to On: 0. The north has turned grey again — it has forgotten — while the south is still blue.

When a spotter loses sight of the aircraft it does not let the information rot: it sends a cancellation, which travels the same path at the same speed as the alert. That is what is caught here mid-flight — the north is already cleared, the south not yet. Without it, a defence would stay on alert for an aircraft that left long ago.

A spotter does not drop the aircraft at the first blink, though: one that disappears behind a crest for a few seconds is still tracked. It has to be lost properly for the cancellation to go out.

5 — The patrols take over¶

(1 min 45 later)

The patrols take over

It is now the helicopter and the fighter patrol tracking the aircraft. The big orange circle is the fighter: it sees 30 km and it moves.

Aircraft in flight see much further than anything on the ground — 30 km for an aeroplane, 15 for a helicopter — because nothing masks them and many carry a radar. A deliberate consequence: a player flying for the network's coalition becomes a spotter, and a friendly patrol feeds the ground defence without having to do anything in particular.

Last line of defence — `last_line_of_defence`¶

A dark site still keeps a short virtual detection radius of its own, inside which it lights up by itself. That is what stops an aircraft flying under the early-warning radars' horizon from crossing an air defence untroubled.

Ships on, and that is a change of behaviour: before Skynet 3.5.0, a site under network control was entirely blind between two EWR hand-overs.

modules:
  SKYNET:
    enabled: true
    last_line_of_defence: true                # set to false for a purist IADS
    last_line_of_defence_min_radius_km: 10
    last_line_of_defence_max_radius_km: 15
    last_line_of_defence_persistence_s: 45
    coverage_refresh_interval_s: 10

Each site draws its own radius between the two bounds, once, at the start. A front therefore does not present a uniform ring a pilot could learn.

The limit, stated honestly: the radius is measured flat and deliberately ignores the firing envelope. A short-range piece can therefore light up for an aircraft it cannot reach. That is a choice: the radius says "something is passing over my head", not "I can shoot it down".

Persistence is how long the site stays lit after the last pass through its radius. At 45 seconds it does not re-light on every round trip.

The coverage sweep is how often Skynet rebuilds the "which EWR covers which battery" graph. It is there for sites that move; at 0 it never happens.

The two bounds go together. Skynet refuses the pair whole if the upper bound is below the lower one — and it refuses it in silence. Writing last_line_of_defence_min_radius_km: 20 on its own is enough to hit that, since the upper bound stays at 15: the shipped values then apply, not the one you asked for. If you widen the radius, move both bounds.

The module reads back what it set and says so in the log when a setting was not taken:

WARN SKYNET [red iads]: the last-line-of-defence radius (min/max, in metres) was refused —
     asked for 20000/15000, Skynet stands at 10000/15000. Check the value in mission.yaml

These four settings are global to both coalitions. Only dynamic_spawn is per network.

Startup delay — `veafSkynet.DelayForStartup`¶

Seconds to wait before initialising networks (default: 1). Increase if other modules initialise groups with a delay.

Vanished-site sweep — `veafSkynet.SecondsBetweenVanishedSitesSweeps`¶

Seconds between two cleanup passes over the networks (default: 60).

A site whose group leaves the mission without being destroyed — which is what happens when a combat zone is deactivated and takes its air defences with it — used to be kept in the network until the end of the game. It inflated the status page, was walked on every detection cycle, and held its group name: the module refuses to enrol a group the network already lists. The sweep removes those sites and frees the name.

Worth stating, because the distinction matters: freeing the name is not enough to bring back a group that reappears under the same name within the sweep interval. Enrolment happens on the birth event, which has already fired and been refused, and nothing retries it afterwards. This does not affect combat zones: they give each respawn a fresh name, and above all they tell the network themselves about the air defences they put back — see Groups appearing during the mission.

Sites the player destroyed are kept: they are what the Raddest and Destroyed columns of the status page count, and that is how a successful SEAD reads.

Unreadable radar range — `veafSkynet.DelayForRangeRecheck` / `veafSkynet.MaxRangeRechecks`¶

Seconds between two readings of a radar's range (default: 5), and how many readings to try (default: 3). At 0, nothing is re-read.

Skynet reads a radar's detection range once, at the instant the site joins the network. If DCS does not hand it over at that precise moment, the range stays at zero for the rest of the mission: the site detects nothing, never goes live — not even when an aircraft flies over it — and the status page counts it under Raddest, as though its radar had been shot. A site in that state is therefore asked again, and its coverage is rebuilt as soon as a reading succeeds.

Such a site leaves a line in the log (RADAR RANGE ZERO, then RADAR RANGE RECOVERED or RADAR RANGE STILL ZERO), carrying the site's radar and launcher counts. A mission whose sites all answer normally writes nothing.

Command Centers¶

In Skynet, a Command Center is a unit or static object that a network depends on. If all Command Centers of a network are destroyed, that network switches to autonomous mode (all elements remain on permanently, but still benefit from Skynet intelligence, in particular HARM evasion).

This mechanism provides concrete mission objectives: destroy the command center to disrupt the air defence network.

-- Add a Command Center to a network (can be a group, unit or static)
veafSkynet.addCommandCenterOfCoalition(coalition.side.RED, "CommandCenterRed")

-- Destroy (explode) all Command Centers of a network
veafSkynet.destroyCommandCentersOfCoalition(coalition.side.RED)

Deactivating a network¶

Deactivates a Skynet network and sets all its elements to a defined state before handing them back to DCS AI.

veafSkynet.deactivateNetworkOfCoalition(coalition.side.RED)
-- or with a specific state:
veafSkynet.deactivateNetworkOfCoalition(coalition.side.RED, veafSkynet.SkynetElementStates.Dark)

State	Description
`veafSkynet.SkynetElementStates.Autonomous`	Autonomous mode per each element's individual configuration
`veafSkynet.SkynetElementStates.Live`	All elements switched on (default)
`veafSkynet.SkynetElementStates.Dark`	All elements switched off

A deactivated network stays deactivated. Spawning a SAM into it no longer wakes it up: the group is still attached — that is what skynet true asks for — but the network does not come back on its own. Before, one spawned SAM was enough to restart a network you had just switched off.

Bringing it back up is a deliberate call. Everything attached meanwhile comes up with it:

veafSkynet.activateNetworkOfCoalition(coalition.side.RED)

Deactivating one network leaves the other alone: the blue network keeps its state and its integration of dynamic spawns.

Accessing generated networks¶

After initialisation (which is deferred), access the Skynet network objects via a scheduled task:

local assignRedIadsTaskId = nil
local myRedIads = nil

local function AssignRedIadsTask()
    if not veafSkynet then
        veaf.removeFunction(assignRedIadsTaskId)
        return
    end
    if veafSkynet.initialized then
        veaf.removeFunction(assignRedIadsTaskId)
        local veafSkynetNetwork = veafSkynet.getNetwork(veafSkynet.defaultIADS[tostring(coalition.side.RED)])
        myRedIads = veafSkynetNetwork.iads
    end
end

assignRedIadsTaskId = veaf.scheduleFunction(AssignRedIadsTask, {}, timer.getTime() + veafSkynet.DelayForStartup + 1, 10)

Example — Mission-objective-driven autonomous switch¶

This example creates a Command Center from a template group, then exposes functions to enable/disable the network as the mission progresses.

local function SkynetNetworkEnable(iCoalition)
    local veafSkynetNetwork = veafSkynet.getNetwork(veafSkynet.defaultIADS[tostring(iCoalition)])
    local iads = veafSkynetNetwork.iads
    if #iads:getCommandCenters() > 0 and iads:isCommandCenterUsable() then
        return -- already active
    end
    local sTemplateName = "SkynetCommandCenterRed"
    local ccData = mist.cloneInZone(sTemplateName, "SkynetCommandCenterZone")
    veafSkynet.addCommandCenterOfCoalition(iads:getCoalition(), ccData.name)
end

local function SkynetNetworkDisable(iCoalition)
    veafSkynet.destroyCommandCentersOfCoalition(iCoalition)
end

This example calls mist.cloneInZone, so it needs MiST — which is no longer injected into every mission. Put the snippet in one of your own src/scripts/*.lua and the build sees the mist. call and injects MiST for you; see MiST: injected only when you need it.