A (complete) newbie's frustration

[csThor]

So ... I'm a complete newbie where the Mission Editor is concerned and I am making my very first baby steps into it, but right now I'm this close to kicking my PC in frustration since I can't get the AI to cooperate in something as simple having an AI aircraft bomb a specific area (not even specific targets since that attack is supposed to provide just a but of "athmospherical Boom") but so far both the Ju 87 and the He 111 refuse to cooperate (Stuka would be first choice, level bombers the second).

 

They follow the waypoints, I even hear the AI call out the order to attack (but then they fly to the next WP without having caused the desired Boom). Is "Attack Area" not the right choice here? I mean I got the Artillery to do what I want it to do, just the aircraft prove obstinate. ?

 

Does anyone have an idea where the spanner I don't see is sticking in the gears?

[Sketch]

You build it like this:

Ju87s are in the air (I have mine with air start at 3000m),

Ju87s move to target,

Ju87s are then given the command to attack an area forever,

Ju87s drop bombs and when two of the four are out of bombs,

Ju87s are given a force complete command to stop what they're doing even if they have bombs,

One second later, Ju87s are told to Egress

 

 

Possible issues:

Are your planes in the air?

Are your planes high enough?

Are your Ingress Waypoints high enough?

Do your planes have bombs?

Is the Command Attack Area set to high?

Is the Command Force Complete set to low?

Are the Egress Waypoints high enough?

Are the Waypoints, Command Attack Area, and Command Force Complete object linked to your plane?

 

Here's my group to reverse engineer:

Ju87 Drop Bombs.zip

 

 

Ju87s fly to their first Ingress Waypoint -> They then get the command to attack an area for 999 minutes -> Once two of the four planes have dropped all of their bombs (the 2 count counter), the bingo bombs gate fires -> The planes get a force complete command stopping everything they're doing -> 1 second later they're told to fly to the first Egress Waypoint

 

Make sure your bombers actually are in the air when they start their attack run, and that the bombers actually have bombs. For the Command Force Complete to work, the bombers must also have limited ammo.

 

Make sure your Ingress Waypoints are also set high enough. In my case, I set the bombers at 3000 meters and the waypoints at 3000 meters. Also make sure your Waypoints, Command Attack Areas, and Command Force Completes are object linked to your leader plane

 

I've set the Command Attack Area to 999 minutes, attack ground, and the highest priority. The bombers will attack the ground within the 1000 meter radius until they run out of bombs.

 

When two of the four bombers fire the event OnBingoBombs, they will then pulse the Counter MCU which then pulses my Timer MCU called 'Bingo Bombs Gate'

 

Which immediately pulses the Command Force Complete MCU. I have it set to low priority, which is the opposite of what I had for the Command Attack Area MCU. This forces all of the planes to stop attacking the area and wait for their next command. One second later, I pulse the first Egress Waypoint, giving the bombers the command to now head to that waypoint.

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Sketch

[Jaegermeister]

10 hours ago, csThor said:

So ... I'm a complete newbie where the Mission Editor is concerned and I am making my very first baby steps into it, but right now I'm this close to kicking my PC in frustration since I can't get the AI to cooperate in something as simple having an AI aircraft bomb a specific area ... 

 

Welcome to the club... it’s a gradual process and it can be frustrating. This forum is your best resource, and Sketch won’t steer you wrong. He’s very thorough.

 

 

[Juri_JS]

@csThor , just in case you haven't seen it, there are now mission editor video tutorials available in German:

It takes some time to get used to the editor, because it works more like a visual script system, but once you fully understand the logic behind it, it's actually quite fun to work with it and there are few things you can't do in the editor.

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Juri_JS

[csThor]

Thx, just wanna say I'll be looking at this another day in detail but today all I wanna do is have a hot bath and some dinner before I fall into bed. ? 

[csThor]

Okay, got them to dive-bomb. Since I did things a little differently I had to use a different counter to trigger the Force Complete (here: 3 dead T-34). 

 

Next goal: Separate the nine Stukas into three flights and have only one on the attack while the remaining circle above (then reassemble and proceed to the egress point).

Edited January 8, 2022 by csThor

[Sketch]

Instead of pulsing the command attack area from the waypoints, do it from each completed bombing run (onBingoBombs). 

 

Flight 1 -> does things a I've listed above

 

Flight 2-> ingress waypoint -> Flight 1's onBingoBombs -> command attack area

 

Flight 3-> ingress waypoint -> Flight 2's onBingoBombs -> command attack area

 

And so on...

 

[csThor]

Thx for the hint, I'll have to keep the concept in mind. However, given that I am learning the basics if the ME I stepped back from the aircraft thing (since it is but a bit of atmospherical fluff ATM) and focused a bit on vehicles and how to make them "dance". 

 

There I noticed something that confuses me: I own TC and via the command menu I can order a load of formations for "my" tank platoon. The Command Formation, however, doesn't allow for three formations that are essential to tanks but limits them to planes: Wedge (V-formation), left edge and right edge (and yes, I already tried). I mean I can order those formations in the TC command menu, but can't assign them to AI tanks via the ME? Or am I missing something? 

Edited January 9, 2022 by csThor
Smiley, because ...

[Sketch]

These are the formation commands you can use in the mission editor:

 

Obviously anything labeled vehicle can be done to any of the vehicle assets. These commands are for formations of ai that have an ai leader. If a player is the leader of a formation, the ai will do it's best to stay with the player. Examples:

 

Player is leader here, so ai will do their best to stay with the player and ignore the formation command:

 

 

There's no player in this formation, and as such the AI will follow their AI lead and the formation command:

 

The player is in this formation, but the AI is still the leader, therefore the ai will follow the command formation and the player has to keep up with the ai:

[csThor]

Yes, but if I wanted to recreate something like a company-sized Panzerkeil (or something even larger) there is no way around a wedge. Drat! ?

 

Edit: Sure, I could place them as I want them on the actual battlefield and keep them in formation with "Offroad User Formation", but if I needed them to march there from an assembly area and/or have them cross a river that possibility flies out of the window right away.

Edited January 9, 2022 by csThor

[No_85_Gramps]

If there is no player tank you can give multiple formation commands to a convoy of tanks. I have a group of 6 PZIII's that start in column formation on a road, once they reach an open field they move into it in a line abreast formation and engage some Shermans. Once the Shermans are destroyed the remaining PZIII's move back into an off road column and when they reach the road back to column formation. They then travel down the road, cross a bridge, and continue on. Of course this probably will not work having a player tank in the formation.

[csThor]

@No_85_Gramps

 

I know. But I was ranting about the lack of a wedge and left/right echelon formation for vehicles which is elementary for all armored forces. Would be nice if tge devs could add this.

[csThor]

Ok, I have a slightly more difficult idea here, but looking into the Groups thread and the ME manuals hasn't really produced something useful (apart from a ready-made randomizer). My idea is to have a kind of low-effort artillery effect on the area where either the player or other vehicles of the player side are present. So I'd use a Checkzone which triggers (through the randomizer) one of a multitude of effects "dummygroundexpl". But ... I haven't found the way to turn this checkzone -> randomizer -> effect into an eternal loop (as long as the player/player coalition is present within the checkzone, once it's empty it should deactivate). Can this be done? Given the number of real AI objects I'd like to use I'd prefer to avoid using them for such "atmospherical" stuff.

Edited January 17, 2022 by csThor

[Sketch]

Yes this is possible, and it's a great way to practice using the randomizer.

 

 

 

First start with the four way randomizer and add a Command Start Effect to each of the outputs. Then object link an effect of your choice to the Command Start Effect

 

 

 

Then duplicate that four more times so you can have 16 different explosion effects. Optional: Change the explosion effects to different types. I'm currently using Big Explosion for all of my effects.

 

 

Then connect another four way randomizer to your four groups like in the picture above.

 

 

Add a Mission Begin and a short timer to get the first explosion going.

 

Add another four way randomizer. Go back to your original four groups of randomizers and connect the outputs to that new four way randomizer.

 

This four way randomizer will randomize the time for each of the explosions. So add a timer MCU to each of the outputs and give each timer a slightly different time value. Most effects are 2-3 seconds long, so keep that in mind when setting up your different times.

 

Connect the timers into the first four way randomizer to complete the loop logic.

 

Add another Command Effect and set it to Stop.

 

Target link your input of the first randomizer to the new Command Stop Effect. Then object link all of the effects you're randomizing. This will stop the effect so that it can play again.

 

When it's done, it'll look something like this. You can then place the Effects where ever you want on the map.

 

 

Some tips to keep in mind:

- Always reset the effects to the ground

- Did you reset the effects to the ground? They're probably floating again, so reset them to the ground

- It's better to have longer pauses between explosions.  Both for performance and for catching a player's eye. I've set mind between 3 seconds and 12 seconds.

- The logic will not loop if you do not have the stop effect command to all of your effects.

 

Here's the mission example:

Random Explosion Effects Example.zip

 

 

[csThor]

Damn, Sketch. That's ... wow! I'll need time to really delve into this (and understand the inner workings). Seriously, thanks a lot! You rock!

[No_85_Gramps]

Thanks for sharing that Sketch!

[csThor]

I am slowly working through ideas and try out solutions and how to do X, Y and Z. Quick questions:

 

1.) I have a "condition" defined via three counters, which, once met, activates a disabled group of vehicles. That part works. Is it better to use Trigger Activate or Trigger Spawn here (the vehicles shall remain a "trigger once" affair, no need for repeatable spawning)?

 

2.) The vehicles spawn, but do not move. Waypoints for them have been set properly, the first gets triggered after a five second delay by the same condition that activates them. At first I thought about using OnSpawned to activate the waypoint, but I couldn't get that to work (since it wanted to link to a CMD).

Edited January 21, 2022 by csThor

[No_85_Gramps]

I would try trigger activate. Trigger Spawn requires the spawned object be enabled, plus formation commands will not work with a group using a Trigger Spawn. Can you post a pic of the logic layout?

[Sketch]

2 hours ago, csThor said:

1.) I have a "condition" defined via three counters, which, once met, activates a disabled group of vehicles. That part works. Is it better to use Trigger Activate or Trigger Spawn here (the vehicles shall remain a "trigger once" affair, no need for repeatable spawning)?

The difference between activation and spawning:

Activation:

• One time use if the entity dies. Activation and deactivation can happen multiple times for the entity, but once destroyed, there's no more activation. Good for setting up AAA over a target.
• Activated entities can have children entities that follow the commands of their parent entities. This includes Command Formation, Command Attack Area, and all of the other Command MCUs

Spawned:

• Can have the entity be spawned in multiple times after being destroyed (like a wave of fighters, then another wave of fighters, then another wave of fighters, and so on) Again, activation and deactivation can happen multiple times for the entity AND you can have the entity respawn if destroyed.
• Can use "Spawn on Me" to randomize the spawn location of a single entity with multiple Spawners MCUs. (As an example, a player hits a Checkzone and two fighters spawn in from a random location and head towards the player)
• Can NOT have children entities. Any child entity will not follow any commands from their parent. The biggest culprit being Command Formation and Command Waypoint. If you want waves of bombers to spawn in over and over again, you will have to give each bomber entity their own waypoint system. You can sort of fake the formation in this way too.

I'm sure I'm missing something else, but that's the just of it.

 

2 hours ago, csThor said:

 

2.) The vehicles spawn, but do not move. Waypoints for them have been set properly, the first gets triggered after a five second delay by the same condition that activates them. At first I thought about using OnSpawned to activate the waypoint, but I couldn't get that to work (since it wanted to link to a CMD).

To get the vehicles to move, you must connect your Spawner MCU, your entity, and the first Waypoint MCU together using the entity's OnSpawned Report function. You must also have the waypoint object linked to the entity (as you would normally). This only works for Spawned in entities and not activated entities.

[csThor]

11 hours ago, Sketch said:

To get the vehicles to move, you must connect your Spawner MCU, your entity, and the first Waypoint MCU together using the entity's OnSpawned Report function. You must also have the waypoint object linked to the entity (as you would normally). This only works for Spawned in entities and not activated entities.

 

Hold on, Sketch. Am I understanding you right that getting these vehicles to move means I'd have to use Trigger : Spawn and not Trigger : Activate? If so ... then that means a whole lot of ideas just went down the drain 'cause those would rely heavily on using them in formations and the CMDs associated with them. ?

 

Okay, major brain fart on my part. I had accidently deleted (and then re-inserted) the lead entity of the vehicles yesterday at some point so the object link between Waypoints and Vehicles had gone. It works now. *sigh* And all that just to create the illusion of an engineer platoon moving forward to clear a path through a minefield and then breach wire obstacles. 

Edited January 22, 2022 by csThor