Artillery (The ship kind and the land kind and the anti-air kind)

[paul_leonard]

 

So in my ship convoy post I noted how brutal and effective the anti-aircraft artillery on ships were and how to mute that... a little bit.

A forum peer pointed out a couple of ways to further manage that I thought worth pointing out.

An option within properties in the Actor tab of the menu (right-click on a ship) is the SLEEP option. It has 2 boxes, one for hours and one for minutes. This enables the mission builder to put the ship gunners to sleep for the designated period of time. The maximum period of time is actually 12 hours or 720 minutes. Why would you want to do this? Several reasons come to mind.

Reason 1
You want to suppress those killer gunners from shooting down your player on the first pass, but a few minutes later wake up and if your dear player dares to go in for a second pass, well look out!

Reason 2
You build a convoy with 50 plus ships and you only want a few of those ships to actually fire their guns because like 50 ships gunning for your players aircraft is just not fun. Think gameplay trumps history.

Reason 3
You build a convoy with 50 plus ships, or perhaps a historical map with hundreds of AAA sites, and all those individual AI's thinking about targeting your player just overwhelms your CPU and causes your framerates to tank.

SLEEP

I think about all reasons but experience Reasons 2 and 3 a lot. So here is what I do. This will require mission builders to start to get used to the idea that part of what you do is in the Full Mission Builder and part using an editor, either Notepad (meh) or Notepad++ (an awesome FREEWARE editor as easy to use as Notepad but so so so much better). Start with Notepad and then when you realize it is limited, graduate to Notepad++. That was my personal journey.

So to deal with Reasons 2 and 3 I go into the ".mis" file and mass REPLACE the option "/sleep 0" with "/sleep 720".

This turns off the AI (saving CPU) for every ship in the convoy. Then I go back into the FMB and turn back on the individual ships I want to have gunners. This creates the AAA environment I want and manages CPU, also what I want.

TIMEOUT
The equivalent with land-based artillery is the timeout option in the Static Actor tab. Same thing different name. Go figure.

So to deal with Reasons 2 and 3 I go into the ".mis" file and mass REPLACE the option "/timeout 0" with "/timeout 720".

RHIDE
Another option on the Static Actor tab for land-based artillery is Rhide in metres. This suppresses the gun from firing at maximum range (whatever that may be) and causes the gunner to hold fire until the aircraft gets within the metric range of the gun. Apparently this might be useful for missions where the gunners’ side is outnumbered, and will allow them to wait until they have a good shot at the target without revealing their position too early. I just don't understand how to build missions where that option might be useful. But if you know, go ahead and use it.

The option within a piece of artillery looks like this:
Static202 Artillery.3_7_inch_QF_Mk_I gb 46932.46 181602.97 195.00 /timeout 0/radius_hide 0

So you can REPLACE using Notepad (or better yet Notepad++, more on this later) "/radius_hide 0" with "radius_hide XXXX) where the X's are the metres.

If you come up with a reason for all of this radius hide stuff, please post in this thread. My cynicism doesn't change my desire to learn.

For budding mission builders out there, get used to spending half your life in the FMB and the other half in Notepad++. The crazy part is that both lives can be rewarding.

When the VR/Visual Update is done, I'll be able to post geolocated and historically accurate AAA maps for all of Britain and France. Lots of opportunity to turn on/off guns.

Lenny

[BENKOE]

Lesson learned. What makes a flight simulator a flight simulator?

 

When the VR/Visual Update is done, I'll be able to post geolocated and historically accurate AAA maps for all of Britain and France. Lots ofopportunity to turn on/off guns.

[paul_leonard]

The Mark 1 brain behind the eyes?

 

Lenny