Spawning a column of tanks that move after an other vehicles destroyed; missing the logic

[VBF-12_Stele]

Hey guys,

 

I am hoping someone can help me with this.

 

I am working on a dogfight mission (right now a singleplayer mission for testing). I'm hoping to have 3 areas that need to be cleared, each containing vehicles that need to be killed, before spawning in a friendly tank column that must move to a final objective to win the map.

 

I got as far as having the art icon clear once a sufficient number of ground targets are destroyed (4 out of 6 that are triggered by counters), and a subtitle that indicates the area was cleared.

 

As a test for now, I'm having just one area cleared so that friendly tanks spawn in along a road and start moving to a town. I was able to have the friendly tanks spawn in once the enemy ground targets are killed, however they are not moving. I tried copying the exact logic I need from the editor manual (waypoints, formation, etc), however I think my Translator Mission Begin might not be setup correctly, which is why they aren't moving.

 

I have a link to my mission if someone would take a look. I would appreciate any tips or suggestions. Thanks.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7fj1ca2wj8gcs2n/Smolensk-Advance.rar?dl=0

[LLv34_Temuri]

If you want the tank column to act as a group, do not use the spawner mcu, use the activate mcu, and have the tanks "not enabled" (in the Advanced Properties) when designing the mission. You've also used the player tanks (_t34-76stz), use the AI ones without the underscore (t34-76stz).

[Sketch]

 

In the most basic form, here's the logic you're looking for.

 

• The original vehicles have an onKilled connection to a counter (in my case, I have it set to four) ->
• The counter has a target connection to a short timer (2-3 seconds) ->
• The timer has a target connection to an activate trigger ->
• The activate trigger has an object connection to the unenabled vehicle entities.

 

As @LLv34_Temuri stated, make sure the vehicles are not enabled and use an activate trigger (not a spawner).

Edited August 7, 2018 by [TWB]Sketch

[Thad]

Could this work with the 'Activate to turn vehicles on' MCU only connected to the Lead vehicle?

[JimTM]

3 minutes ago, Thad said:

Could this work with the 'Activate to turn vehicles on' MCU only connected to the Lead vehicle?

 

Yes

[Sketch]

In all fairness, I made the image at 5am this morning before going to the gym. I hadn't had my coffee yet!

[Gambit21]

Sometimes you have too much blood in your coffee system, no worries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I borrowed that from Johnny Cash)

He got up from a session one day and said to everyone "Excuse me gentlemen, there's too much blood in my coffee system"

 

 

[Thad]

43 minutes ago, [TWB]Sketch said:

In all fairness, I made the image at 5am this morning before going to the gym. I hadn't had my coffee yet!

In all fairness, there are often many different ways to achieve ones desired mission results. ?

[VBF-12_Stele]

Thanks. I'm able to get the tanks to spawn with this logic, however they still aren't moving. I switched to the AI tank and unchecked Enabled; I even tried another tank model to be sure. Still no movement. I'm following the waypoint logic on page 68 of the manual (Chapter 5: Making Objects Move). All waypoints are "object" to the lead tank and the trigger waypoints "target" to the next waypoint. The "command formation" is "object" to the tank.

 

Is my Trigger Activate suppose to do something else other than activating the tank?

[Gambit21]

4 hours ago, Thad said:

In all fairness, there are often many different ways to achieve ones desired mission results. ?

 

Yep!

Often more than one way to skin the cat.

[Thad]

1 hour ago, VBF-12_Stele said:

Thanks. I'm able to get the tanks to spawn with this logic, however they still aren't moving. I switched to the AI tank and unchecked Enabled; I even tried another tank model to be sure. Still no movement. I'm following the waypoint logic on page 68 of the manual (Chapter 5: Making Objects Move). All waypoints are "object" to the lead tank and the trigger waypoints "target" to the next waypoint. The "command formation" is "object" to the tank.

 

Is my Trigger Activate suppose to do something else other than activating the tank?

Check out Creating a vehicle convoy in Prangsters Mission Building Guide. Page 36.

 

Prangsters Mission Building Guide

Edited August 8, 2018 by Thad

[VBF-12_Stele]

Thanks. That did the trick!

[Preacherman]

How did you manage to check that ALL Targets have been killed? I understand you are using a counter for that? So far I use a complex trigger checking for "OnEventKilled". The problem is that it triggers as soon as ONE (and not ALL) targets are killed. 

[Thad]

37 minutes ago, Preacherman said:

How did you manage to check that ALL Targets have been killed? I understand you are using a counter for that? So far I use a complex trigger checking for "OnEventKilled". The problem is that it triggers as soon as ONE (and not ALL) targets are killed. 

See image below.

 

The Activate mcu is not connected but it could be attached to your chosen vehicles/column to get it moving. No complex trigger used for this.

 

Each vehicle has a Onkilled event to the Trigger Counter. See second image. When all five of my vehicles are reported killed and it reaches 5 the Trigger Timer above it goes into effect. etc.

 

I hope this helps.

 

Edited August 18, 2018 by Thad

[SAS_Storebror]

One question now that I see your screenshot with trucks linked to the counter, @Thad...

I seem to remember that somewhere in the ME Manual I've read that due to the possible simultaneity of events, it would be a good idea to add timers with increasing delay to the link between multiple objects triggering an event and the counter counting those events.

IIRC it's like if you drop let's say a 2.5tons bomb on that column, all trucks might fire a "killed" event at the same time and the counter might count only one of them because they all came in at the same time.

Am I remembering something wrong?

Or is this something you just didn't depict here for simplicity?

 

Mike

[coconut]

38 minutes ago, SAS_Storebror said:

IIRC it's like if you drop let's say a 2.5tons bomb on that column, all trucks might fire a "killed" event at the same time and the counter might count only one of them because they all came in at the same time.

Am I remembering something wrong?

 

Thankfully, that is not (longer) the case. You can trigger a counter several times in the same cycle and it will count properly. I tested that with static groups. Every killed object in the group will increase a common counter appropriately when you drop a large bomb on the group, killing several buildings at once.

[SAS_Storebror]

Oh that's great news, thanks for the heads up coconut!

This means I can eliminate a lot of complexity from my current mission set... nice 

 

Mike

[Preacherman]

@Thad: thank you ever so much. Your solution seems way easier than the way I tried to do it. One more Question though: i dont really understand the difference between "Spawn" and "Activate" Triggers and whats more: since we normally use waypoints or Timers as triggers, what do we Need an "Activate" trigger for? Or in more simple words: is there a difference between an activate trigger and for example timer trigger???

[SAS_Storebror]

"Activate" triggers activate objects where the "Enable" trigger isn't set.

In this case you have your truck column created (statically, once) when the mission starts, but they're not yet there, because they're not "enabled".

They get enabled (and therefore become visible) once you trigger them from the "Activate" trigger, that's what it's there for.

 

The difference to the "Spawner" trigger is that when you assign a "Spawner" trigger to an object, the object will not get created (statically, once) at mission start time, but instead it will be created (dynamically) whenever the "Spawner" trigger gets triggered (which can be 0, 1 or multiple times).

The thing about "Spawner" triggers though is that you can't spawn formations that way, neither vehicles nor planes.

If you spawn formations dynamically with a "Spawner" trigger, the formation members will not accept commands given to the formation leader, which results in the leader doing what you thought he would, while the others will just stand still (or circle around the spawn point in case of airspawned planes).

 

Mike

[coconut]

1 hour ago, Preacherman said:

Or in more simple words: is there a difference between an activate trigger and for example timer trigger???

 

Activate enables an object or a node (e.g. a timer, counter).

A trigger sends signals to the node it's connected too.

Activate does not send signals by itself.

[Thad]

10 hours ago, SAS_Storebror said:

One question now that I see your screenshot with trucks linked to the counter, @Thad...

I seem to remember that somewhere in the ME Manual I've read that due to the possible simultaneity of events, it would be a good idea to add timers with increasing delay to the link between multiple objects triggering an event and the counter counting those events.

IIRC it's like if you drop let's say a 2.5tons bomb on that column, all trucks might fire a "killed" event at the same time and the counter might count only one of them because they all came in at the same time.

Am I remembering something wrong?

Or is this something you just didn't depict here for simplicity?

 

Mike

This is a possibility. If the number of vehicles was higher I would be more concerned about dual same time kills. I would also consider making the counter only require 4 killed to activate, just in case. As you indicated there is a more complicate timer kill delay method. I just didn't need or desire it for my simple training mission.

 

As in many mission building cases, there are often more than one way to get a mission to play out the way one wants. 

Edited August 19, 2018 by Thad