Proximity Trigger: Partition By Formation

[Charon]

Summary: I propose adding a 'Partition By Formation' boolean to Proximity Triggers. When checked, the trigger will ignore proximity of objects belonging to the same formation.

 

Detail:

Currently, Proximity Triggers can be used in two ways:

 

* Linked to one object and with a coalition specified.

* Linked to multiple objects.

 

For example, you might use a proximity trigger in the first mode to detect whenever any Axis plane approaches a particular object. Or you might use it in the second mode to detect when two objects approach each other.

 

It would be useful to be able to detect when any of a group of objects is near or far from some other group. For example, you might want to detect when all planes in Flight #1 are distant from all planes in flight #2 (so you can despawn the later group to save resources). Or you might want one trigger which fires when any plane from Flight #1 is near Flight #3, and a separate trigger that fires when any plane from Flight #2 is near Flight #3, so you can trigger different behavior. Flight #1 might be fighters and #2 might be bombers, for example.

 

Doing this today requires a great deal of work from the mission author: it requires one proximity trigger per pair, and handling the inverse case is particularly tricky.

 

I propose adding a boolean field, 'Partition By Formation' to the Proximity Trigger. If unchecked, the Proximity Trigger should maintain its existing behavior. If checked, the trigger should ignore proximity between objects of the same formation. So if object linked to all planes in Flight #1 and all planes in Flight #2, the trigger would detect when (some of) Flight #1 and Flight #2 are in proximity, but not trigger on proximity between planes of the same flight.

 

Even if there isn't time for this work in the current engine, it would be good if this functionality is available in the new project.