Infantry - Possible to have them stand at rest?

[DD_Friar]

Salute,

I have started to see what is possible with the infantry.

 

When at rest they currently are in a kneeling position. I can get them to walk and I can get them to run.

 

I would like to have them be standing when at rest, is this possible?

 

I have tried adding a "Force Complete" set to both low and high with no difference?

 

Any one else being doing work with them?

 

Would be nice to be able to put them in a scenario where they are just standing around and then "move out".

 

If they could stand at rest they could also be placed "on parade" at a camp to add a bit more life to a map

 

Way too late to request a static static standing option? (if not already thought of)

 

DD_Friar

 

 

[Jaegermeister]

They are a vehicle. Try various formation commands at waypoints and see what happens. Vehicle stop, panic stop, etc. 

[Sketch]

Agreed. I haven't messed with them yet. What do they look like if they have no waypoints at all but are active?

[DD_Friar]

1 hour ago, Sketch said:

What do they look like if they have no waypoints at all but are active?

They are in a kneeling firing position. Which will be useful, but a standing (in the same pose that they have when walking) would have been good to have as well.

 

Perhaps the transition could have been using Force Complete, Low = standing (doing nothing), Medium = kneeling in firing position, High = walking / moving

 

 

[IckyATLAS]

At this point in time infantry has only two configurations: running and kneeling aiming their rifle.

If you slow them down then they will run like in a high frame movie played at normal speed. It makes kind of running on the moon.

At zero speed they kneel and take aim. The is no standing and walking configuration.

 

We could have walking say up to 1.4 mt sec  (beware these speeds translate differently in game) with rifle on the shoulder and then running up 2.8 m/sec with their full gear, rifle in hands like we have now.

At zero speed or without any waypoint, ideally we should be able to choose standing with the rifle on the shoulder straps, kneeling aiming and or firing, or lying down aiming and firing if needed. The Command formation could have the additional parameters for that. I am pessimistic that we get this because as you saw Jason seems to be opposed to it. To finish on this a cherry on the cake would be to have a single soldier vehicle. But I need to stop dreaming.

 

Infantry is a vehicle but does not respond to all vehicle commands. You can link the infantry units (5 per unit) and they will move like a convoy but formation orders do not really work well here. In my short experience (I may be wrong) what works is Stop, Forward, Continue, In all my tests I wanted a battalion to follow a road so I had waypoints and formation ON Road but they will only go straight to the next waypoint like an OFF Road only formation. You can make them follow a road but then you need to put multiple waypoints along the roads and the curves, the result is very nice and you have the wanted effect. Only be careful to have enough distance between each 5 soldier unit or squad. 

 

They have a collision bubble around the 5 men unit that will stay abreast. When they move there is some randomness so as to make the unit move more naturally and each soldier seem to have various speeds but they stay between an overall distance to each other. If you link them in convoy and they are too near they start turning as a full unit trying to avoid the unit in front and that becomes completely weird behavior.

 

I did a battalion of soldiers moving behind three tanks in a row and it needs a lot of testing to get tank speed and infantry speed to work seamlessly at least on a certain distance.

 

I tried proximity command to adapt the infantry speed to tanks but it will not work. Tanks acceleration and speed is not compatible with infantry reaction time. This means that you cannot have soldiers very near behind the tanks first because they will bump in them or move laterally to avoid the tank. In other case the distance between tank and soldiers will grow continuously. 

 

One other possibility is to have the column of vehicles being Tank leader and infantry units linked to that tank. I have not tried that yet. The reason is that I wanted to have the two things separate to control them separately on the battlefield.

 

I have also tried to have a beach landing and that works fine. Once the barge has hit the sand (you need to carefully set the speed and your final waypoint) and the you spawn the units in a loop with a certain timing in front of the landing vehicle like if the front door was down. Each Spawned unit has its own set of waypoints and yo you can create a very nice animation of all this units coming out of the landing barge running towards the trees in front of the beach in a dispersal mode. You can add machine guns in the trees that will fire on them once they are landed. I have yet to try that, to see if one can neutralize a unit with a Force Complete High, or have them fire at the enemy as they run between two waypoints in case of Force Complete Medium (at the enemy shooting at them) or Low (at any enemy in the area).

 

Still a lot to do to master this properly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by IckyATLAS

[Gambit21]

It's a drag that there's no walk mode...that's the most useful thing to do with infantry (for a flight sim) - airfield scenery.

So this addition to the game is basically useless for me personally.

 

 

[JG27*PapaFly]

Do they lie flat to take cover when e.g. strafed?

[Zooropa_Fly]

26 minutes ago, Gambit21 said:

It's a drag that there's no walk mode...that's the most useful thing to do with infantry (for a flight sim) - airfield scenery.

So this addition to the game is basically useless for me personally.

 

 

 

Mine must be super-fit, they can run for ages.

However, once the 'beasting' starts to kick-in I want them to : bend over ; put their hands on their kness ; start wheezing and puking in all directions.

 

Failing that, I'd settle for German Uniforms at this stage..

 

S!

 

 

[IckyATLAS]

54 minutes ago, JG27_PapaFly said:

Do they lie flat to take cover when e.g. strafed?

They lie only when killed.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

18 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

At zero speed or without any waypoint, ideally we should be able to choose standing with the rifle on the shoulder straps, kneeling aiming and or firing, or lying down aiming and firing if needed. The Command formation could have the additional parameters for that. I am pessimistic that we get this because as you saw Jason seems to be opposed to it.

I don't think Jason ever said anything to suggest that he's opposed to something like this. What he did say, is that there's a limit to what the Devs can do, and also a limit to the amount of time they can afford to spend on the infantry.

 

18 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

I tried proximity command to adapt the infantry speed to tanks but it will not work. Tanks acceleration and speed is not compatible with infantry reaction time. This means that you cannot have soldiers very near behind the tanks first because they will bump in them or move laterally to avoid the tank. In other case the distance between tank and soldiers will grow continuously.

Instead of adapting the infantry speed, did you also try Stop/Continue commands? I.e. you make the infantry walk a tiny bit faster than the tanks, and whenever the distance gets less than a certain value (let's say 10m, Proximity MCU), issue a Stop command. When the distance gets more than another value (let's say 20m), issue a Continue command. I haven't tried this with infantry yet, but I have successfully used this logic with vehicles.

[IckyATLAS]

2 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Instead of adapting the infantry speed, did you also try Stop/Continue commands? I.e. you make the infantry walk a tiny bit faster than the tanks, and whenever the distance gets less than a certain value (let's say 10m, Proximity MCU), issue a Stop command. When the distance gets more than another value (let's say 20m), issue a Continue command. I haven't tried this with infantry yet, but I have successfully used this logic with vehicles.

Yes I tried, but infantry behaves differently than tanks. The Sherman tanks I used when they are at very slow speed they do not work well, they start moving by jumps or like a stepping motion, which is visually disturbing, you need a minimum speed to have them move smoothly and this minimum speed is already not so low for infantry, this is why it is difficult to coordinate both. 

[DD_Friar]

6 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Instead of adapting the infantry speed, did you also try Stop/Continue commands? I.e. you make the infantry walk a tiny bit faster than the tanks, and whenever the distance gets less than a certain value (let's say 10m, Proximity MCU), issue a Stop command. When the distance gets more than another value (let's say 20m), issue a Continue command. I haven't tried this with infantry yet, but I have successfully used this logic with vehicles.

 

Salute Sir (apologies for the min-hijack) Any chance of sending me / posting image of your logic blocks for this "follow" please? I would like to try and implement it for a scenario I am working on?

[Stonehouse]

Not sure if it will help you but in case it does - some info from the game files.

Infantry group is created by defining a 5 turret tank with a bot in each. One bot is defined as the driver and uses the standard tank AI bot to drive the "tank". One of the definitions for this bot is IgnoreRoads = true

 

From the actual infantry "vehicle" definition you get the below which may have some interesting info like width and length etc that may help with formations in mission building. Note infantry can cross water < 1.5 m in depth without harm. Not sure how the transmission stuff impacts infantry movement but guessing probably this is the issue with keeping tanks and infantry together. Different gear ratios etc = different accel rates

 

Spoiler

PrioritySpeed = 3.2            // 10 km/h running speed + margin for static control error.
PrioritySpeedRoad = 3.2        // No road/off road difference
PrioritySpeedDropOnTurn = 1.0    // Tight turn speed limit, relative parameter
Mass = 100.0                // Gross weight of the tank
WidthTrack = 9.633            // Full gauge (in the case of infantry - the width of the system)
LengthTrack = 2.0            // Track contact length
StartEngineForce = 1.0        // The throttle response of the engine, with an increase, the maximum power also drops by the same amount
MaxEngineForce = 500.0        // The maximum possible power of the engine, it is better to adjust so that on a flat surface at max speed the gas is 0.95, then the exhaust effect will correspond to the idea
MaxTransmissionKoeff = 2.0    // Gear ratio at zero speed, adjust the minimum possible with an accuracy of 0.1 so that in the \Missions\Test\Tank_adjust_HillMax.Mission mission it would somehow go uphill
TransmissionTresholdSpeedK = 2.0    // The threshold speed, below which the increase in TransmissionKoeff from 1.0 to the specified one at zero speed, is equal to TransmissionTresholdSpeedK*PrioritySpeed
MaxTransmissionKoeff2 = 3.0    // Zero speed gear ratio, optional (used to increase traction at very low speed for steep slopes)
TransmissionTresholdSpeedK2 = 1.0    // The threshold speed, below which the increase of TransmissionKoeff2 from 1.0 to the specified one at zero speed, is equal to TransmissionTresholdSpeedK2*PrioritySpeed
TrackDistance = 17.28        // The length of the caterpillar pull in one animation cycle. Equal to the stride length (0.72m) in the running animation multiplied by the number of steps (24) in the loop.
WheelRadius = 0.5            // The radius of the road wheels, for calculating the rotational speed.
CrrExt = 4000.0                // Air resistance coefficient proportional to the speed of movement
Crr = 100.0                    // The coefficient of resistance to movement, proportional to the speed of movement
CrrOffRoad = 100.0            // Off-road drag coefficient proportional to speed. Adjust so that the gas at max off-road speed on a flat surface is 0.95.
Cdrag = 50.0                // Air resistance coefficient proportional to the square of the speed of movement
Csf = 0.1                    // The coefficient of dry friction on the surface is proportional to the mass, in theory it depends only on the type of chassis (wheels or tracks)
CsfOffRoad = 0.1            // Off-road dry friction coefficient. Pick up together with CrrOffRoad.
Crt = 10.0                    // Not used
Cbraking = 10.0            // Brake efficiency factor
Cang = 30.0                    // Damping coefficient of angular velocities
MaxTurningAngle=90,15,2,0.1,0.3    // Max. angle of rotation of "control wheels" speed=0, at PrioritySpeed, shifting speed (rad/s), rate of start of descent of the angle of rotation, rate of completion of descent (K2*PrioritySpeed)
OrientSmoothParam = 0.01    // Smoothing angular rotations on sharp vertical bends/cliffs
FreezeOnDestroy=true        // Behavior after destruction, true - freezes in place, if not - physically moves on collisions

Firing=0.0                    // The rate of combustion of ammunition from a fire, fractions of Life per second
SmokeStartHealth = 0.0        // Engine life at which engine smoke starts
MinFiringHealth = 0.0        // Life of ammunition at which a fire will start
MinMovementHealth = 0.01    // Life, which will stop driving
MinAttackHealth = 0.01        // Life of the object at which it will stop shooting

ExplosionScript = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/explosions/Detonation/TankExplosion.txt"    // Эффект при полном взрыве
OnDropLandScript = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Emitters/DustBlow3.txt"            // Эффект при падении на землю
OnDropWaterScript = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Emitters/WaterSpray3.txt"        // Эффект при падении на воду

CriticalWaterLevel = 1.5        // Gulbzhe starts to die
CriticalHeigthLevel = 3.0        // Will die when falling from a higher height
DivingSpeed = 0.8                // Dive speed
 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Stonehouse

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 8/31/2022 at 1:40 PM, IckyATLAS said:

Yes I tried, but infantry behaves differently than tanks. The Sherman tanks I used when they are at very slow speed they do not work well, they start moving by jumps or like a stepping motion, which is visually disturbing, you need a minimum speed to have them move smoothly and this minimum speed is already not so low for infantry, this is why it is difficult to coordinate both. 

You could try the inverse, i.e. have the Shermans move at the lowest speed they work well, which is probably faster than the infantry runs. Then have the Sherman stop whenever it gets further ahead than, idk, 50m or so, and continue when it's close enough again.

 

19 hours ago, DD_Friar said:

Salute Sir (apologies for the min-hijack) Any chance of sending me / posting image of your logic blocks for this "follow" please? I would like to try and implement it for a scenario I am working on?

Yes of course.

B needs to move faster than A here. Whenever B gets within 50m of A, it stops until the distance is 100m. The Activate/Deactivate MCUs aren't really necessary, but they're a trick to *very slightly* reduce CPU usage by avoiding double proximity checks where it isn't necessary.

[IckyATLAS]

I used the double proximity check system but it did not work well. My objective was to have the infantry at 20mt max from the tanks, the idea is that they take cover behind the tanks. If you allow a distance between 50 to 100 meters than it is a different scenario and you have much more buffer zone to coordinate..