Getting long-range artillery to fire.

[Gambit21]

...anyone mess with the American M1 gun yet?

 

I've set attack area to both it's minimum 12.5 mile, and max (around 20 mile) range and it just sits there.

I also tried with "force complete"

Doesn't matter whether I use a force complete MCU either by itself or along with the attack area.

 

I even tried elevating the attack area MCU, still no luck.

For grins I put a Russian ML20 gun on the map 2 and that won't fire either.

 

Anyone have any ideas? The only other time I've messed with artillery is with medium German and Russian guns at shorter ranges and they seemed to work fine.

[LLv34_Temuri]

1 hour ago, Gambit21 said:

I even tried elevating the attack area MCU, still no luck.

And made sure that the gun can see the MCU?

[Flashy]

Seems to work on my test mission, which I originally created to test if the OnAreaAttacked command was working for artillery pieces (it isnt as far as I can tell) and which I  just quickly edited to use the M1 gun. See attached file.

 

I think the issue is one which goes back to RoF: Artillery guns dont have their real life range in the game. Their max range is usually much closer than what the actual gun would have been able to fire. I think its just a limitation of the game - maybe the devs didnt see the need to have guns firing at extreme long ranges..

OnAreaAttacked.rar

 

EDIT: the gun is only supposed to attack the area for 1 minute, so thats why it stops after a short time.. And I can confirm that moving the attackarea further away stops the gun from firing (out of range)

 

Edited October 17, 2019 by Flashy

[Gambit21]

I’ll look when I get home - thank you.

I never realized about the unrealistic range limitations.

[Jaegermeister]

@Gambit21They fire on enemy Flak position in the mission I sent you. 10 km distance. Target Area is @ 200m altitude. Sitting on the front face of a hill with view of target.

 

I"m not sure how far they can be moved back and still fire, but it would be fairly simple to just drag the group back and see how far it can go. 

[Gambit21]

Thanks Jaeger - I’ll check it out.

[DFLion]

How are you Gambit21. I just noticed your post regarding long-range artillery. I am having similar trouble with trying to get medium range German artillery to work over an 8000m range. Johnny Johnson's Spitfire Squadron moved to Grave airfield in late 1944 and quickly came under sporadic artillery fire from the German lines which I am trying to simulate - without success. I have tried everything in the book to get it working and it just won't happen. This is a pity because artillery fire is so important in this simulation, especially with the Normandy Campaign coming up. How did you go with testing it? I am looking forward to playing your campaign 'HELL HAWKS over the Bulge', should be very good.

DFLion

[IckyATLAS]

I have no problem using medium range german light artillery lefh18 to hit targets at 10'000mt. All the artillery pieces are under the command of a leader unit. The leader unit is object linked to an Attack Area MCU where Attack Ground and Attack Ground Targets are ticked. And if you want fire like hell add a force complete with setting low and there you are. In my case I have 12 pieces of artillery shelling an airfield. The artillery units are a little above ground level relative to the airfield. 

 

 

[DFLion]

Thanks IckyATLAS for your reply. I just need a little more detail. I set up my battery of light artillery (4 x lefh18) about 5000m out from the target airfield and target linked them to the No.1 gun. I then set up a 'complex trigger' and set its radius to 5000m, ticked check aircraft and vehicles - object script listed the Spitfire IXe's at the airfield and finally in the event filter ticked object entered. I then setup a 'Trigger timer' starting in 2 seconds and target linked it to a 'Activate Command MCU' which is object linked to the No.1 gun. Finally (phew) I added a 'Command Attack Area MCU' at the airfield set the 'Y' height to 500m and in the 'advanced properties' ticked attack ground targets and ground with an attack area of 1000m and a cut-off time of 5 minutes.

As you can see there is a lot more involved in setting the artillery up - and for me it still doesn't work??!! Am I doing this correctly?

DFLion?

[DFLion]

I have made it work! A huge 'trial and exercise' situation. The very sad reality about the Mission Builder is that the written instructions are very poor and they need to be improved. I followed the instructions 'to the tee' yet nothing worked. Jason, down the track you must have a closer look at the Mission builder and its instructions, it has to be made easier for the sake of this terrific Flight Simulator. Please don't think I am being critical of you and your team, (you all have enough on your plate) though I am very experienced about what I am saying.

Finally thanks for your help IckyATLAS, very much appreciated.

DFLion

[IckyATLAS]

I must admit that I am not much at ease with complex triggers (difficult to be sure how it behaves) and I tend to create the specific logic an a case by case using simpler triggers. There may be cases where a complex trigger would be the only way out but did not have encountered any yet. If somebody has a good example I am very interested.