Lead Tank In Convoy Getting Killed Stops Others from Moving?

[DD_Friar]

Salute,

Would appreciate a nudge in the right direction with the above issue.

 

I have a group of 4 tanks heading towards the enemy.

I have made them a formation by target linking them via "Set Via Dialogue".  This gives me the lead as formation element 0, the next 1, the next 2 etc.

My issue is that if the lead tank (formation element 0) gets killed, all the other tanks in the formation stop at that point.. I thought that by linking them this way, if the lead got killed, the next tank in the formation took on the instructions? but the way I have set it up this does not appear to do this?

 

Advice and guidance from those in the know would be much appreciated.

 

 

 

[Sketch]

4 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

I thought that by linking them this way, if the lead got killed, the next tank in the formation took on the instructions?

I assume it should work that way - as the plane entities work like that. I wish I could help, but I don't own the tank module. I'd try to make a simple test where the tanks move to a waypoint at high priority. Destroy the first tank and see if they continue towards the waypoint. If so, then the formation designation is working as intended. If not, then you may have found a bug and you should report it, along with your mission files and findings, to the devs.

 

A side note: I would not use special characters in naming your entities. In your picture, your tanks are named: T34#2.3. I would remove the special characters and only use letters and numbers.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Sketch

[No_85_Gramps]

I have a mission I am working on with a tank convoy. So I ran a test. 6 PZ iii's in a column formation on a road. When they reach the 1st waypoint they turn onto open ground and form in line abreast. I flew in and took out the lead tank while it was still on the road, the other 5 tanks continued on and at the waypoint they turned onto the open ground and formed correctly line abreast. I did not use "set by dialogue", I just target linked tanks 1-5 to tank 0.

[No_85_Gramps]

At what point in your logic are you triggering the "formation" command? I know common practice is to make sure the convoy starts moving before the formation command is triggered. So, when the waypoint triggers the lead vehicle there should be a short delay, 2 or 3 seconds, before the formation command triggers. JimTM's manual has some good information on working with convoys, and the formation command.

[Deacon352nd]

Gramps,

How did you get the tanks to form and move line abreast?

[No_85_Gramps]

Here's the setup:

MB to 20s timer to activate convoy, +2s to activate WP, +4s to trigger formation. Upon reaching the 1st WP, it triggers both the 2nd WP and a new formation command, line abreast. The 2nd WP also triggers the attack area command. I'll export the group and upload it, then you can look at it in the ME.

tankconvoy.zip

Edited December 10, 2020 by No_85_Gramps

[Thad]

Salutations,

 

Creating a convoy is covered in our Mission Building Guide. Starts on page 36.

 

http://IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles Mission Making and Mission Editor Prangster's IL-2 BoS Mission Building Guide

 

[DD_Friar]

I do have that guide and forgot to check it - I tend to always use THE other one

Thanks

Friar

[Jaegermeister]

On 12/9/2020 at 5:33 AM, DD_Friar said:

I have made them a formation by target linking them via "Set Via Dialogue".  This gives me the lead as formation element 0, the next 1, the next 2 etc.

My issue is that if the lead tank (formation element 0) gets killed, all the other tanks in the formation stop at that point..

I thought that by linking them this way, if the lead got killed, the next tank in the formation took on the instructions? but the way I have set it up this does not appear to do this?

 

I would advise the following;

 

As Sketch said, get rid of the special characters in your vehicle names. That's asking for trouble in more ways than one.

I'm not sure about the details regarding "set via dialogue" but I do not have a problem with convoy members following waypoints. I would suggest you just target the leader from the following vehicles through the object menu and "add target" 

Make sure your vehicles are disabled to start and activated, not spawned. If you spawn them, they will not continue after the leader dies.

I would not recommend a delay before triggering the formation command after making the vehicles move. You will get erratic behavior that way until the Formation Command takes place. I always Activate - 1 second delay - Command Formation - 2 second delay - Trigger Waypoint. That way the formation command is in place before they start moving.

 

Your tanks will stop for 30 seconds to a minute after the leader is killed, but they should continue after that with a medium waypoint priority. 

[No_85_Gramps]

1 hour ago, Jaegermeister said:

 

I always Activate - 1 second delay - Command Formation - 2 second delay - Trigger Waypoint. That way the formation command is in place before they start moving.

 

 

I found out that this worked when I first set-up the convoy, but it was mentioned on the forums, and in the manual, to activate the WP first and then the formation command (could be that was just for planes). Either way, it works!

[Jaegermeister]

It depends on the formation command.

 

If you activate the waypoint first, the planes and vehicles will begin moving with the default formation. With planes, that's trail formation with staggered down altitude., For vehicles, it's off road user formation, safe distance. They will begin changing formation to the default, then the formation command activates and they change again. It can create some problems with ground vehicles running into each other and with planes it appears as excessive jostling for position right after they activate. I have seen that jostling for position cause the AI planes to crash into each other, particularly if the formation is not aligned correctly with the 1st waypoint.

 

If you activate the formation command first, you don't have any of these problems.

 

Obviously it's up to you which you choose. As you mentioned, they both work. Sort of.   

[No_85_Gramps]

Thanks for the info! Good to know.

[JimTM]

1 hour ago, Jaegermeister said:

It depends on the formation command.

 

If you activate the waypoint first, the planes and vehicles will begin moving with the default formation. With planes, that's trail formation with staggered down altitude., For vehicles, it's off road user formation, safe distance. They will begin changing formation to the default, then the formation command activates and they change again. It can create some problems with ground vehicles running into each other and with planes it appears as excessive jostling for position right after they activate. I have seen that jostling for position cause the AI planes to crash into each other, particularly if the formation is not aligned correctly with the 1st waypoint.

 

If you activate the formation command first, you don't have any of these problems.

 

Obviously it's up to you which you choose. As you mentioned, they both work. Sort of.   

 

Thanks for the valuable feedback Jaegermeister. Your recommendation seems to be the way to go. I added a note to that effect to my never-ending-work-in-progress manual (that adjective is for Thad). I'm not sure why I made the original recommendation; it may have been based on the AI behaviour back in 2016, or perhaps it was based on a forum post or something else.

[Jaegermeister]

@JimTM,  Happy to help!

 

Your manual is frequently a help to me so anything I can contribute to improve it is good for all of us. 

 

I think we have all found logic groups that work in more ways than 1, but some combinations are better than others. The one I keep seeing that really does make a mess is when people activate the 1st Command Formation with the 1st waypoint. What did they think was going to happen before the vehicles got there?

[Stoopy]

On 12/11/2020 at 3:13 PM, Jaegermeister said:

As Sketch said, get rid of the special characters in your vehicle names. That's asking for trouble in more ways than one.

 

Just out of curiosity, any idea of what problems could occur?  I do this fairly frequently and it's in several groups that I re-use. I agree looking at it now in retrospect that it's not clean hygiene (particularly when written to XML) and I will clean my stuff up based on this advice. Just wondering how it manifests itself.

[JimTM]

I have seen a few instances of a apostrophe in a name preventing a mission from being loaded into the editor.

[Jaegermeister]

Yes, or resaving.  If it’s in the mission file name, that’s easy to change but getting a corrupt mission file from an object name would be a little harder to repair if it did not open correctly. That seems to be coming up a lot lately with the recent updates to the game engine requiring resaving files.

 

Special characters like #$&@%?~<> have been recommended not to be used in mission names and text. I believe it can conflict with the binary file.

 

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Jaegermeister

[Gambit21]

Complex tanks don’t always like ‘on road’ formation logic it seems. Had to resort to “off road” formation and more waypoints to solve a “I think I’ll stop here for no damn reason” issue. 

[Jaegermeister]

10 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

Complex tanks don’t always like ‘on road’ formation logic it seems. Had to resort to “off road” formation and more waypoints to solve a “I think I’ll stop here for no damn reason” issue. 

 

@Gambit21

 

The new complex vehicle logic has implemented a 30-60 second "thinking" period. When an enemy or other conundrum is encountered, they stop, consider, and then react. As a player, it gives you a certain amount of time to react if you know about it. Also once your forward machine gun starts firing in a tank, your own AI has detected a threat, meaning that the enemy vehicles have "woken up" and are tracking you, about to fire. They are in that 30-60 second zone.  Before the last update, the German vehicles reacted instantly to detected threats, and with their faster loading time, they could fire about 3x faster than the Allied vehicles. It's much more even now.

 

With on road column in effect, and a medium priority waypoint, the AI will stop, fire, and then move while reloading. If the lead vehicle is stopped, the following vehicles will wait. If they have an angle, they will fire too. The 30 second delay is only in effect with a new target. They usually miss the first shot and then adjust, but that now depends on AI intelligence level. Low, Normal, High, etc.

 

The Complex AI applies equally to all Complex vehicles, so they all react the same, with variations for mechanical differences like speed, loading time and precision.

 

There are still a lot of areas where the AI will not follow waypoints very well. Certain terrain features combined with the formation make the autopilot basically useless and you have to adjust the route to make it work. We have to isolate the issues in a simple test mission to get it addressed by the Devs. They don't want to look at errors in a complex mission because there are too many variables. If you have specific examples, post a test mission and I will bring it up. Or you can post it in the tester forum. They are responding quickly to issues with Tank Crew right now since it was just officially released and it's on Steam now.

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Jaegermeister

[Gambit21]

Jay, thanks for the info.

This 'on road' waypoint was set to "high" FYI, if that helps any troubleshooting/reporting later - and I think they just plain stopped (never resumed)

but I'll check that again.

[Jaegermeister]

1 hour ago, Gambit21 said:

Jay, thanks for the info.

This 'on road' waypoint was set to "high" FYI, if that helps any troubleshooting/reporting later - and I think they just plain stopped (never resumed)

but I'll check that again.

 

If you still have the example, I  would be happy to look at it. I have found a few incidents of vehicles that won't follow a waypoint for no particular reason other than terrain. The KV-1 seems to be the worst about it.