AA Machine Gun Behaviour

[JimTM]

Hi All,

 

In the attached mission, I'm testing the behaviour of a couple of mg34-aa machine guns defending a fuel depot against a player IL-2. The defenses appear when I enter an area and are deleted when I exit the area. During the first three or four cycles of entering and exiting the area, the guns put up a good defense, both firing almost continuously. However, at a certain point, they appear normally upon entry but they do not defend the target as before; they fire sporadically when I make a close attack run.

 

Is there something going on with the attack area command or the guns that I'm not aware of? Does this behaviour happen with other AA objects?

 

The entry/exit logic uses two check zone triggers driving a spawner trigger and a delete trigger, object linked to the guns. The attack area command is set to High priority. The guns AI is set to Low.

 

JimTMTestTargetDefenses.zip

 

Thanks for any help!

 

Jim

Edited June 16, 2016 by JimTM

[coconut]

Did you try to give them infinite ammo?

[JimTM]

Did you try to give them infinite ammo?

 

Yes

[SYN_Haashashin]

Hi Jim,

 

I took a quick look as I dont have time right now but I didnt see nothing wrong but I wont use the spawn in any case. I use activate/desactivate MCUs.

 

Here take a look, its set for SP but you know what to do if you want it for MP, no biggie

 

Edit: Its AAA not Mgs.

Russian AAA.zip

[JimTM]

Hi Jim,

 

I took a quick look as I dont have time right now but I didnt see nothing wrong but I wont use the spawn in any case. I use activate/desactivate MCUs.

 

Here take a look, its set for SP but you know what to do if you want it for MP, no biggie

 

Edit: Its AAA not Mgs.

 

Thanks Haashashin. I notice in your attached group that you use spawn/delete MCUs for the guns and activate/deactivate for the check zone triggers. Is that a "before" group then and you would replace the spawn/delete with activate/deactivate?

Edited June 16, 2016 by JimTM

[SYN_Haashashin]

Now you have me in doubt...will look and tell you.

 

Edit: You were right, spawn for the vehicules...

 

My bad, that happens when you actually didnt built the logic but SYN_Vander and forget how it works, just copy and paste :lol:

 

Let me know if the same happens, maybe is a bug or something so I can report it to the team (compiling a report meanwhile I built something)

[JimTM]

Eureka! I realized that I was testing late in the day (mission time) in order to see the tracers better. I needed a searchlight a bit later in the mission to direct the ground fire. Once I put in the light, the AA was persistent. My world makes sense again. 

 

Thanks for helping out guys!

 

Jim

Edited June 16, 2016 by JimTM

[JimTM]

Continuing with my AA defense test, I ran into a problem with repaired AA guns reappearing without a gunner and not resuming their target defense.

 

In the attached mission, I am testing a similar scenario as the OP. In my latest test, I activate/deactivate the AA instead of spawn/delete it, and I now have a damage command that repairs the AA after 30 seconds if they are killed or damaged. However, the damage command only makes the gun reappear, not the gunner, and the repaired gun does not fire at the IL-2. I tried deleting the gun object in the editor and recreating it, which temporarily solved the problem, but the problem soon reappeared.

 

Does anyone have an idea as to what the problem is or is it an AI bug? I'm trying to document a good method for saving mission resources by turning AA on and off and allowing defenses to be repaired after some time rather than just being respawned when a SEAD strike leaves the AA zone and the bombers enter the zone.

 

JimTMTestDamageCommand5.zip

 

Thanks!

Edited June 22, 2016 by JimTM

[[DBS]Tx_Tip]

Just looking at the Post #8 Mission Jim.

 

ID #43 Timer has 4 Targets but is not targeted itself. Probably something you unlinked as the rest seems to activate and deactivate want you wish.

 

You could try activating and deactivating the Command Attack MCU ID # 29 "Output Defense" within your loop so it finds the newly activated/repaired AA each time. But if the gunners don't show I don't see how the piece would fire.

 

Perhaps have

ID #33 Deactivate ID #29

and ID #26 Activate ID #29

 

Honestly I've never tried using the Repair Command for AA so... Good Luck with that.

 

Additionally I've found, at least in MP, that having AA set to low means sporatic or no firing at all a large percentage of the time. I keep the Command Attack MCU at Normal and bump up the AA itself to High if I wish for more accurate and voluminous flak.

[JimTM]

ID #43 Timer has 4 Targets but is not targeted itself. Probably something you unlinked as the rest seems to activate and deactivate want you wish.

 

ID#43 is an optional input timer to turn the target defense switch off. In this case, I didn't use that input.

 

 

You could try activating and deactivating the Command Attack MCU ID # 29 "Output Defense" within your loop so it finds the newly activated/repaired AA each time. But if the gunners don't show I don't see how the piece would fire.

 

Perhaps have

ID #33 Deactivate ID #29

and ID #26 Activate ID #29

 

I tried deactivating and activating the attack area command as you suggested, but got mixed results--sometimes the gunner appears, sometimes he doesn't. I used separate deactivate/activate MCUs since the ones you mention affect the check zone triggers. 

 

I think that there is a bug with the repair command used with AA (assuming it's meant to be used with AA in the first place and it's meant to repair a killed object). I'll log a bug report.

 

 

Additionally I've found, at least in MP, that having AA set to low means sporatic or no firing at all a large percentage of the time. I keep the Command Attack MCU at Normal and bump up the AA itself to High if I wish for more accurate and voluminous flak.

 

In my testing with the AI Low setting, I found that the AA guns fire a pretty steady stream of bullets which appear to be almost ace-like. I haven't turned Invulnerability off for my IL-2 yet to see how long I last.

 

Thanks a bunch for the reply!

[JimTM]

Logged bug report called Mission Editor - Damage Command Repair of AA Unreliable.

[coconut]

There are two ways to disable a gun: destroy it completely in one pass (e.g. with one bomb), or destroy it partially, triggering the run away animation. Maybe once the run away animation has been triggered, the operators don't come back.

 

As for the saving resources with AA, I have posted a group I'm pretty happy with, which uses spawn/delete.

Edited June 23, 2016 by coconut

[JimTM]

There are two ways to disable a gun: destroy it completely in one pass (e.g. with one bomb), or destroy it partially, triggering the run away animation. Maybe once the run away animation has been triggered, the operators don't come back.

 

As for the saving resources with AA, I have posted a group I'm pretty happy with, which uses spawn/delete.

 

Interesting point about the AA gunners running away when the gun is damaged. Maybe I can test using a damage command to inflict various levels of damage and another damage command to repair. I'll set up a camera to see the action close up, rather than high above in an IL-2.

 

Thanks for the reminder about your AA group; I took a look. I assume your 1 minute timer is just for test and it would be set to something like 20 minutes in a real mission (time for a raid to come and go).

 

Earlier today, I tried adding delete/spawn logic to the repair part of my target defense switch, while still leaving the activate/deactivate in place for the check zone logic. To my amazement, the check zone logic stopped working and the AA never appeared, even though the check zone logic and repair logic were not directly connected. There must be something evil going on behind the scenes on that one. Another idea in the trash heap.

 

Thanks again!

 

Jim

Edited June 24, 2016 by JimTM

[coconut]

 

 

. I assume your 1 minute timer is just for test and it would be set to something like 20 minutes in a real mission (time for a raid to come and go).

 

No, 1 minute is right. It works like that: every 50s the check zone MCU is activated to check if there are enemies in the area. If there are, the 1min timer is (re-) started. As long as there are enemies in the area, the 1min timer won't be allowed to time out. It's only after the area is clear that it can time out and trigger the despawn logic.

 

It's pretty important to understand that detail, as to my knowledge it is the only design that works well in a multiplayer scenario. The SP-centric principle of despawning when the player leaves the area doesn't work in MP.