Vehicles and Trains fail to defend themselves

[SAS_Storebror]

Hi Mission Editor Experts,

 

A new problem I'm facing:

For some reason I yet have to understand, since some time on a previously working mission, all vehicles and all trains fail to defend themselves.

For instance, I have cars with flak in a columns of trucks.

The formation proceeds across the street, the proximity trigger triggers (I can see all cars do their "panik stop" right and left to the road), but none of the flaks in the columns shoots a single bullet.

Same for trains: They run across the track but none of the flaks on the carriages bothers to shoot a single bullet.

 

Waypoints are all "medium".

AI level is "normal".

Panic Stop formation command works, which means that the proximity trigger works as well.

Am I missing something here?

 

Mike

[ALA13_Yren]

If you want flak vehicles start firing at planes aproaching them, you need to add and attack zone - target air objetives to the Flak vehicles. Do it large enough or activate several with WP. In this way, flak vehicles will aim incoming planes and start firing as soon as were in range.

 

If no, vehicles will wait till be attacked before return fire.

[SAS_Storebror]

Hm...

I'm wondering what the performance impact of this will be.

If for instance a car column is moving across the map for 100km, you have the choice of either creating a massive attack zone or flood the mission with many small ones.

Sounds odd.

Nevertheless, thanks for the hint, I'll give it a try.

 

Mike

[JimTM]

Here's a revised version of the sample mission for "Example: Attack a Russian Truck Convoy" on pg. 87 of the editor manual. I fixed the AA truck response by adding two force complete commands; one to enable the AA (priority: Low) and one to disable the AA (priority: High). No attack area MCU is required but adding one or more may increase the AA response if needed.

 

FMEManualAttackARussianTruckConvoyFIXEDAA.zip

 

Each force complete command must be object linked to the AA truck (or multiple AA objects) and none of the AA objects can be the leader of a formation. If you link the force complete command to the leader, they will forget the waypoint that they were commanded to drive toward.

 

The strength of the AA response is a bit hit or miss, if you'll pardon the pun. It may take a little while for the AA to get going. Also, I found that on the second pass within range, the AA took a long time to start and they took long pauses in between volleys. You can also set the Enable AA force complete command to Priority: Med but that setting may not give a good response.

Edited September 12, 2018 by JimTM

[SAS_Storebror]

Thanks for the hint, never knew that AA equipped vehicles could be activated/deactivated from "Force Complete" commands, I always thought this would only apply to Searchlights and Landlights.

Now the question is: What to do with trains? I've got no access to their carriage.

 

Mike

[JimTM]

55 minutes ago, SAS_Storebror said:

Thanks for the hint, never knew that AA equipped vehicles could be activated/deactivated from "Force Complete" commands, I always thought this would only apply to Searchlights and Landlights.

Now the question is: What to do with trains? I've got no access to their carriage.

 

Mike

 

I haven't investigated the proximity scenario with respect to trains and AA. However, try linking the force complete to the train object and retriggering the waypoint as the last step after the plane goes out of range.

Edited September 12, 2018 by JimTM

[SAS_Storebror]

I must say from a quick test the "force complete" command didn't seem to change much.

It's been more or less the same like what I've had before, the flak would start shooting split seconds before it gets killed itself.

However in conjunction with "attack area" commands it seems to work well.

 

On the train, I have put "attack area" commands without "force complete" along the route, because "force complete" didn't seem to do anything but to actually stop the train.

Funny enough, the "attack area" command seems to work in parallel with the waypoint command.

I would have expected that any overlapping command issued to an object would kill the previous one, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

So... for the moment the issue seems to be sorted for me "sort of", except for the performance impact.

Two trains and two car columns, together with their additional "attack area" commands being activated along the route now (with radius 2-10km, depending on how far the waypoints are from the other), add another 2 units on the Tick Delay for me.

 

Mike