How to fire flare before take off?

[Monty_Thrud]

First trys at ME, I have 4xplanes taxi to runway, a jeep drives to Airfield prior to take off, the "command to take off" should tell jeep to fire flare when planes are on runway ready to take-off but doesnt, I've used Prangsters mission setup guide, I know its a bit old now maybe things have changed in an update?

 

Any mission builders have a clue what I'm doing wrong?

 

The idea is to have the jeep drive to the runway as the planes taxi to take-off, fire flare to inform planes to take off, then the jeep drives off and then drives back to runway when Its time to land so it can fire a landing flare...simples 

 

 Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

Edit* This is for Single player mission, I know Prangster guide is for Multiplayer, maybe it needs a different setup to his guide?.

Edited June 12, 2021 by Monty_Thrud
Missing info

[JG7_X-Man]

How did you test your mission to see if the jeep knows when all the aircraft are lined up? My guess is that it doesn't.

There are several ways to do this - i.e. make the flare come from the Jeep but the trigger the flare by:

1. Timer on Mission/Engine start event (after testing how long it takes for the planes to line up).
2. Area Trigger
   1. when all for planes cross a defined threshold on the runway with a timer.
   2. when the 4th aircraft is in a certain spot on the runway for a specific time. [This would be by choice - based on my current knowledge LOL]

There are several ways to do this - just look at all the event commands at your disposal.

 

I am sure one of the other guys here that know more than I can help you with details if you don't want to play around with it yourself (...that's how I learn)

When you have exhausted your knowledge, ask the big guns! LOL (I am not one FYI).

[namhee2]

1 hour ago, Monty_Thrud said:

First trys at ME, I have 4xplanes taxi to runway, a jeep drives to Airfield prior to take off, the "command to take off" should tell jeep to fire flare when planes are on runway ready to take-off but doesnt, I've used Prangsters mission setup guide, I know its a bit old now maybe things have changed in an update?

 

Any mission builders have a clue what I'm doing wrong?

 

The idea is to have the jeep drive to the runway as the planes taxi to take-off, fire flare to inform planes to take off, then the jeep drives off and then drives back to runway when Its time to land so it can fire a landing flare...simples 

 

 Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

Edit* This is for Single player mission, I know Prangster guide is for Multiplayer, maybe it needs a different setup to his guide?.

Place where the planes get together a triger complex, with the name of the last plane (ex Plane-4) and Object entered alive, measure the time how long it takes until they start and transfer the time to a timer that will trigger the flare.

[Jaegermeister]

I use a Checkzone activated by mission start and placed on the runway where number 4 lines up for takeoff. It would be object linked to number 4, and target a timer which I would adjust after testing how long it takes number 1 to start rolling. This is assuming that the number 1 plane is AI and lines up in the same place every time.

 

The timer triggers your Command Flare MCU, which must be object linked to your Jeep or other Linked Entity vehicle, per the manual instruction.

 

The takeoff command will start the planes taxiing to the runway unless you have "no taxi take off" checked. 

 

A complex trigger will work also, but might be overkill for that purpose.

 

To get the Jeep to fire a flare when the planes return is a different thing, but not much different. Set a Checkzone to activate the Jeep and the waypoint at about 4000 meters, which is roughly visual range. When it arrives at the end waypoint, have the waypoint target the flare command and fire it. 

 

Don't underestimate X-Man, he's just being modest...

 

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by Jaegermeister

[JG7_X-Man]

@Jaegermeister Dude you one of the guys on the forum that have taught me everything I know! I am still a A Padawan LOL

@Monty_Thrud I agree with Jaegermeister - the Complex Trigger is very powerful but it is a resource hog. For this task, go with the smallest Checkzone area idea and think about this too:

• Make the Checkzone fire only once and deactivate it.
• For the return flight,  make a waypoint (close to the runway threshold) to trigger the Checkzone just like Jaegermeister noted above. If you want to get cute, you can use the same Checkzone trigger to spawn an ambulance and have it race down the runway along side a damage aircraft if any of the returning aircraft  have over XX% damage. @Sketch taught me that.
• This is important, always use the MCU Translator: Subtitle to validate your command actually fires before moving to the next step - it will save you a time in troubleshooting issues. @Gambit21 taught me that.

Use @JimTM's Manual:

 

Edited June 13, 2021 by JG7_X-Man

[Jaegermeister]

4 hours ago, JG7_X-Man said:

@Jaegermeister Dude you one of the guys on the forum that have taught me everything I know! I am still a A Padawan LOL

• For the return flight,  make a waypoint (close to the runway threshold) to trigger the Checkzone just like Jaegermeister noted above. 

 

Be aware of this then, you will.

 

Make sure your Checkzone fires before the object linked plane (player, leader, whoever) has been cleared to land. Planes lose their identity after getting landing clearance and will no longer be an object to trigger an event.

[Monty_Thrud]

Thanks greatly all for your help and input, managed to get the flare to fire on #4 plane, now just attempting to get flare jeep and now Ambulance sorted, will report back in  awhile if/when I succeed.

 

Did at one point have a flare for each plane when it settled into take off position...which was nice, much needed after each attempt of shut down game open up ME...rinse and repeat. Seem to remember a learning curve with IL2 46 ME, just not as steep....

 

[Jaegermeister]

1 hour ago, Monty_Thrud said:

Seem to remember a learning curve with IL2 46 ME, just not as steep....

 

 

Yeah... it takes about 3 minutes to exit the game and restart the ME, depending on how long the mission takes to load. on the Rheinland map, that can be 2 more minutes to load.

 

The curve is steeper and much longer with this ME, but it can do a lot more also.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 6/16/2021 at 8:29 PM, Jaegermeister said:

 

Yeah... it takes about 3 minutes to exit the game and restart the ME, depending on how long the mission takes to load. on the Rheinland map, that can be 2 more minutes to load.

 

The curve is steeper and much longer with this ME, but it can do a lot more also.

You can load both the mission editor and the game at the same time. A warning message will pop up saying that glitches may occur, but you can just continue. As for the glitches, they may occur but by far most of the times it's OK. What I found works best, is to first load the level in-game and only after that load it inside the editor. That way, if any graphics problems occur, it's usually limited to the 3D view inside the ME, which isn't all that important anyhow since in the bugfixing stage you're usually interested in mission logic rather than the 3d placement of objects.

[jollyjack]

You swap program activity then by using alt-cntrl-del (via task manager)? Slim Fer!

[Monty_Thrud]

On 6/14/2021 at 3:21 AM, Jaegermeister said:

 

Be aware of this then, you will.

 

Make sure your Checkzone fires before the object linked plane (player, leader, whoever) has been cleared to land. Planes lose their identity after getting landing clearance and will no longer be an object to trigger an event.

Still think the take-off command should trigger the flare, also It would be great if the Planes would remain instead of vanishing after landing, it would feel like a mission success, unfortunately I'm now struggling with getting the second flight to land...onwards and sideways as they say...

[AEthelraedUnraed]

8 hours ago, Monty_Thrud said:

Still think the take-off command should trigger the flare

In what way is that any easier than having the command that also triggers the take-off command trigger the flare?

Edited August 18, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed