Sad to see no one official has responded to your simple question yet. Guess they don't want to admit failure.
You can't get NPCs to use planes, or any vehicles for that matter (for an extended time period). They'll use helis/cars for transport and sometimes they get in to chase after player, but you can't create patrols of any kind.
So no, you can't get the AI to use planes or boats (or really any vehicle reliably).
well, that escalated quickly...
sorry for the delayed answer maks260000, we missed this thread.
It is indeed a known issue, ally and enemy NPCs can use land and sea vehicles but they never use air vehicles. Ally NPCs also cannot use sea vehicles and neutral NPCs do not use any of the available vehicles.
I'm checking with the devs incase they know a workaround, but this is unfortunately an issue that will not be fixed.
I've found that if you take both an enemy and ally, place them next to helicopters, and then have them both head toward a control zone, they'll get into a fight, and the winner will next land, and will instead just fly around to random nearby areas. And if you put the ally in an unarmed chopper, then the bad guy will never lose!
coming back with some details from the devs!
overall, the NPCs in the Editor are subject to the same limitations than in the main game (same goes with the assets), which is why sometimes it isn't as flexible as you could wish. If we take the Planes for example, in the main game, it's only a special class (archetype) of NPCs that can pilote them, most NPCs can't, and you don't really see random NPCs in the main campaign that suddenly jump in a plane to chase you. They can use the turret though.
NPCs should also be able to get in combat helicopters (but they are most likely to stay inside afetrwards)
for the boats, they can get in, but only if there is a dock for them to access it, as such:
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I was playing a solo map of an airstrip, and when I got into a plane after setting off the alarm, one of the reinforcements got into the other plane and started attacking me in the sky!
So the next thing to do would be place 2 planes and one of every type of enemy. Take off and see which one follows you! This actually makes sense because in Far Cry 4, the knife guys couldn't use the mortar..
Maybe only the higher rank officers?
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