General FME Questions #1

[JimTM]

Hi All,

 

Here are some general FME questions I ran into while working on the manual. Please chime in if you know the answers.

 

 

1. Is the Move command implemented? If so, how does it work?

 

    Partial answer here. I will follow up.

 

2. How does the AI POI translator work?

 

    Answered here, but example needed.

 

3. I can add entries to the "Damage" list in the properties dialog of objects such as blocks, but what do these entries mean? I read the RoF FME manual, part 7.2.4, but how do I know the number of parts in an object, where these parts are located, and what does the damage level number mean?

 

    Answered here. Follow-up question 1 here, replied to here. Follow-up question 2 here.

 

4. How do you use the "Multiple" option in the damage command?

 

    Answered here. 

 

5. What's the difference between event OnKilled and OnPlaneDestroyed for a plane?

 

    Possible answer here. Answer here.

 

6. For event OnPlaneBingoFuel, how is bingo fuel determined? To my knowledge, bingo fuel occurs when a plane has enough fuel to make it back to base, with some reserves. Does BoS implement this somehow with respect to airfield objects?

 

    Answered here.

 

7. Airfield objects have Callsign and # in the advanced properties AND in the Plane Settings dialog. I'm familiar with SP use of callsign/# but are these fields valid for MP and if so, how do they work?

 

   General answer here. Follow-up here and reply here and here.

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

Jim

 

 

P.S. Second set of questions here.

Edited August 22, 2016 by JimTM

[=LG/F=Kathon]

Ad3. You can damage an object. Structure ID is the object index and damage is the percentage of damage from 0 to 1 (0%-100%). If object is complex it has many Structure ID (sub-objects). You have to add damage manually and check in ME what sub-object was damaged. 

 

Ad5. Not sure but maybe onKilled is for Pilot and onPlaneDestroyed is for an aircraft.

[JimTM]

Ad3. You can damage an object. Structure ID is the object index and damage is the percentage of damage from 0 to 1 (0%-100%). If object is complex it has many Structure ID (sub-objects). You have to add damage manually and check in ME what sub-object was damaged. 

 

Thanks for the reply. The damage level appears to have an effect only above 0.5. Anything below that appears to cause no damage and anything above causes total destruction of the structure. Is that your experience?

Edited June 17, 2016 by JimTM

[SYN_Haashashin]

Jim my experience withh RoF is that there is only 2 level of damage, 0 and 100%. And as far as I saw when destroying cities for ambience is the same with BoS, will test and see.

[JimTM]

Another Q3 follow-up: What is the meaning of the "Damaged" list in the properties for an airfield object? The object does not represent physical objects other than potential planes for MP participants. I thought that damage may make the airfield unavailable, but in tests, neither structure 0 or 1 had any effect with damage 1.

[coconut]

7. Airfield objects have Callsign and # in the advanced properties AND in the Plane Settings dialog. I'm familiar with SP use of callsign/# but are these fields valid for MP and if so, how do they work?

 

I think the airfield call sign is used for ATC radio chatter with the AIs (also in MP). The plane callsign is also used with players in some radio chatter, for instance when you approach a spotter. The spotter will contact you when you approach them, give you incorrect information about wind direction and might give you the location and type of enemy aircraft it sees. Or it might tell you to go ahead with your mission or to return home. It's very moderately useful, so not much of a feature at the moment, IMHO.

Edited June 19, 2016 by coconut

[JimTM]

I think the airfield call sign is used for ATC radio chatter with the AIs (also in MP). The plane callsign is also used with players in some radio chatter, for instance when you approach a spotter. The spotter will contact you when you approach them, give you incorrect information about wind direction and might give you the location and type of enemy aircraft it sees. Or it might tell you to go ahead with your mission or to return home. It's very moderately useful, so not much of a feature at the moment, IMHO.

 

Thanks!

 

Re. Q7, the attached extract from my FME manual covers what I know about the SP use of the ground control callsign and player plane callsign. I'm not sure how I can set up the scenarios you mention for MP so I'll have to play around with it some more.

 

FME Manual Extract - Make a Ground Controller Report Enemy Planes in an Area.pdf

 

 

[JimTM]

Answer to Q4 from Han:

 

"Multiple" selection becomes active if several CMD_Damage are selected and they have differ values of "Damage type" setting.

If you will not touch this setting in case of multiselection of several CMD_Damage (you keep "Multiple" variant) - every CMD will keep it's option value which it have had before selection.

If you will set "Damage" or "Repair" value in case of multiselection - all CMDs will have this value of the option.

 

So this technique gives you a way to set multiple damage command MCUs to the same value.

[JimTM]

Answer to Q5 from Han:

 

OnKilled - plane life is triggered to 0. This may be in case if pilot is dead or if plane is inoperative (too much damaged, out of fuel, in fire and so on)

OnPlaneDestroyed - triggering in case when plane becomes inoperative, without relation to pilot life.

 

 

 

Answer to Q6 from Han:

 

In same moment of RTB decision of AI plane is triggered. There should be a friendly airbase with entity on the map.

 

The RTB decision is enabled in the plane advanced properties. From my manual:

 

AI Return to Base Decision

 

Make an AI plane return to the nearest friendly airfield object if it is critically damaged (50% damage or more), runs out of ammunition, or runs low on fuel.      <-- I'll have to test the fuel to confirm behaviour

 

Note: 

 

- If you select this option, you may need to restrict your "air spawn" AI planes to points over runways. An AI plane that is returning to base may land on the ground under that air spawn point.

 

- This option works with an object in a formation, but the reactions of the other formations members is unpredictable. Sometimes one or more members follow the plane that is returning to base and sometimes none of them do.

Edited June 19, 2016 by JimTM

[coconut]

Thanks!

 

Re. Q7, the attached extract from my FME manual covers what I know about the SP use of the ground control callsign and player plane callsign. I'm not sure how I can set up the scenarios you mention for MP so I'll have to play around with it some more.

 

FME Manual Extract - Make a Ground Controller Report Enemy Planes in an Area.pdf

 

I did not know you needed an attack area MCU linked to the spotter. Just reporting that in case you were using a AAA unit for your tests. These units typically have an attack area MCU linked to them, but I did not know it was relevant to the spotting functionality.

 

There was a time when in MP the game behaved as if there was an implicit cover MCU between the players and the spotter triggered when you approached the spotter. I'm not sure if it still works that way. In a new MP mission I built yesterday I'm using a spotter and I don't remember it reporting enemy plane positions.

 

Also, in SP, I'm not sure the radio chatter and the spotter radius are related. It would be natural if there were, but I think I had cases when the spotter reported enemy planes via radio despite having a very small spotter radius.

 

Lastly, with icons enabled, the color of the icon for a distant object is decided whenever it is within spotting radius, even if it's far from the player's plane (maximum range is still about 10km or so).

[JimTM]

Thanks for your thoughts Coconut. For some reason, my test radio reports mission that worked a few months ago has stopped working. I don't get ground control reports anymore. More troubleshooting required. I'll reply to your points above a bit later.

Thanks again!

 

Edit: No luck in getting the ground control to work. I tried removing the attack area command and also reducing the spotting radius to 10m. I guess I'll have to pull this topic from the manual until I can find a solution.

Edited June 22, 2016 by JimTM

[JimTM]

Update above.

[JimTM]

Dev reply to question #1:

 

It's rudimental.

 

Not sure if this means that move is worth documenting and whether it works or not. I will follow up.

 

Dev reply to question #2:

 

It's attractor object for AI planes (allready) and vehicles (in future) in case when they have no any other mission commands at the 

moment.

So, if plane have a command - he will perform it.

If plane have no command - he will fly to AI POI and do what is predicted by AI POI settings.

If plane have no command and there is no matching AI POI - he will fly circles around current point.

 

So far, no luck getting this to work. I asked for an example in question #1 here.

Edited August 22, 2016 by JimTM