Ripcord

Good point. I agree, would be nice to have.

I want an SDK for third party devs to make new maps/terrains. Then this whole thing will really get going in the right direction. Until then, we're just hanging around participating in goofy polls like this one, and griping about stuff that never gets fixed. So while I'm here, I will vote F-16.

No right answer here, is there? The OP is spot on. And yet Sith is correct as well. I can tell you this -- I would like to 'develop' for DCS as a content creator but I need a stable platform. So I play with it from time to time, until I realize that I cannot do the things that I really want to do, or until what I created gets broken by the next iteration of DCS. Now some will say 'oh who the hell are you' to think that I have something of value to offer - and to that I will say, maybe I don't, but if there are 99 others out there just like me, then pretty soon the talented ones will begin to emerge, and ED and the whole community benefits. It is a bit frustrating when you look at what we have and imagine what it could be. Just not sure it has to be that way. I found MOOSE to be very interesting, in what it can do now and what it can potentially do. I still think its time is coming yet. I hope we'll see more of this in the future. Anyway..... I suppose opinions are like 'you know what' (everybody has one).

Sven, step away, take a break. Get in a good place, find some balance, get your RL under control. Nobody benefits here without a healthy happy Sven. But don't stop completely. What you are doing is big, and it's time is coming -- just not today. DCS still has too much ground to cover to get to a stable environment, but I do believe they will get there. Let them get the DCS worlds merged and see where we are. Some items can continue to be developed in the meantime. MOOSE totally changed the way I look at mission building and I see a future for it. But don't continue trying to do all the work yourself. Build a team and keep it moving forward. Thanks for all you have done so far.

We all love a good weekend update.

Good gouge Raven, thanks for pointing this out. Wasn't aware that LN sims was actively involved in map/terrain development. Those guys have an established track record already, so naturally I feel encouraged about the prospects here.

At what point will a third party dev get a chance to develop a map or a region? I suppose that is part of the post 2.5 merge reality?

Outstanding! I want those then!

Well, that is a fact right there. Gotta want what you got. Can't always get what you want.

Ok so it has been 3 years, and I have just now discovered this (haven't really been delving much into ME for a variety of reasons). MBOT, this is brilliant! I tried it out last night but I got an error, so I didn't get the really play with it myself. But this is exactly what I am looking for. In fact, DCS should just implement it and built it right into the ME. I wonder, do you have this little gem working now in 1.5.3 or 1.5.4 or whatever we have these days?

I noticed these the other day and I wondered what they were. I thought they might be something new to be used with helicopters, but now I suspect they are probably going to be related to WWII era combat.

There shouldn't be too much online. A real proper explanation of callsign usage would be big-time classified information and it would/should land you in jail (unless you are running for public office, then it's fine). Sure there are some everyday unit callsigns that are out there and they are used, but in a real no-kidding tactical environment, I think you can expect those to be changed - particularly if there was an organized adversary out there that might be listening. BTW, our forces practice this (did it myself). Perhaps some RL pilots that flew in the sandbox will chime in here.

Use Moose. There is a way to do that using SET Groups, AFAIK.

Master Z, I like your idea about the tracked bridge-layer. I had that thought as well. Actually a simpler thing to implement would be for ED to add bridges as static objects. Then we could simulate 'engineering' units in the fields, using mobile units that we already have, and throw in a trigger to two and voila! You know have another quick and easy mission objective. (a) eliminate the engineering forces before they can construct the bridge, and (b) failing that, take out the bridge before forces can cross. Fun to play and not hard to create in ME (assuming we had a bridge object to place on the map, of course).

I suspect this is further up river.

That would be a cool idea. Then you'd have to really hustle to hit them before they got airborne.

Hmmm, I thought the AI nose-picking was broke in the last release. Will have to try this. Or maybe I am confusing it with something else. : )

So this is going to sound like a really stupid question, but after all these years messing with ME, I've never really found a spot on the Inguri River, south of the main bridge at Zugdidi, where units can cross. Or maybe there used to be some places and now it is no longer possible? Getting old -- might be imagining this but it did seem there was one real narrow point downriver where motorized troops could get across. Not finding that place now, and maybe it was never there. Anybody care to share some tribal knowledge on this subject? Is there basically no way to launch a major invasion south of that bridge? It looks like you have to want to launch a major offensive from Abkhazia in to the Samogrelo region of Georgia, then you have 3 options: * go over the bridge (easy if nobody is shooting at you), * go around up river, through Dzhvari, * Airmobile/airborne methods. Am I not assessing this accurately? If I am, then it presents an interesting tactical puzzle, does it not?

Spent most of yesterday getting up close and familiar with MOOSE scripts, particularly spawn scripts. One idea I has was to spawn a number of units using various other spawn functions, like scheduler and randomized route. Give these units one, max two waypoints to allow for the random route variation, and have them set up in a manner where they converge on a zone (call it a staging zone). This produces an effect of massing troops for a major offensive. Then later in the mission (give them a few minutes to arrive), we can run another script file to detect how many of these units actually arrived in that 'staging zone'. So I guess we can use some form of SET GROUPS to gather up all these units into a single group, which we can call RED_FORCE1 for this post. That should then allow us to use this little gem right here: Group_RED_FORCE1:TaskRouteToZone( ZONE:New( "Target Zone" ), true, 40, "Cone" ). I love this one -- takes your predefined GROUP and tells them to march straight for the objective. Doesn't matter where you are at on the map, they will go right there. LOTS of cool implications with this. So you can have multiple ground forces massing in three different staging zones, one on each size of a target objective zone. Get them there however you prefer as mission builder, using other spawn commands, then GROUP them once they get into staging areas. Then you trigger the attack, and wherever they are located at that instant, they turn and go right for the objective. Today I am going to try to implement this in my test missions, having learned bits and pieces of it. Basically I need to master the SET GROUP now, and I should be able to cobble it together.

Thank God for Grimes and the rest of you guys that are do dedicated and committed to making this thing better.

This is so true. About once a year I get the itch to build something worthwhile in the ME, and it usually lasts about 10-14 days until I realize that it just isn't worth the time and effort. Not that I cannot create something decent/good right now, but I know that it is only a matter of weeks/months before it will 'break' in the next DCS version. My creative impulse gets turned into a scientific bug tracking exercise. So here I am back again, hoping that now we are getting close enough to the BIG MERGE that the ME is being made more stable.

Yes, I have a thought. We can spawn AI ground units within a zone. This is their initial placement on the battlefield, or if you prefer, along the FLOT. How can we instruct those groups to move out of that zone and advance into another zone? Is there a way to do this without creating waypoints for each group?

Hmmm, OK I get it, sorta. The second question is perhaps more important then -- for the consumer of the end result, the player, do they require anything to run the mission, other than just the mission itself? Do they have to install any lua files or add-ons to play the mission? Or is it all nice and self-contained in the mission? This is important for me to understand. As designers we can use whatever kitchen equipment we want while we are doing the cooking. We can bake, we can shake, we can roast or toast or us a blender. But when it is ready to consume, we should be able to put it on a plate and serve it. The consumer should not have to choose between one set of utensils or another in order to eat it. Is MOOSE (or MIST) a scripting tool that we use while we are still in the kitchen only? Or does the consumer/player need to have it as well, in order to eat the meal?

I watched it again. I liked the way you used the smoke colors to illustrate the spawn behavior in game. What might be useful here is to give some interesting examples how this might be used. In my mind, I think it is an efficient way to deploy large groups of forces. Say we have a template of a regiment of forces, consisting or armor, motorized rife, artillery, air defenses, logistical support, and so on. Instead of manually arranging all these units on a map, we can instead set up a series of zones where we want them to spawn, and let the game place them dynamically/randomly inside those zones. Then do a separate set for reinforcements to spawn in another set of zones, as the mission progresses. You'd never have exactly the same mission twice, but yet as mission designer, you can still set up your FLOT by simply moving/adjusting your zones. Would save a LOT of time. Question -- Could you filter placement of objects within a zone by other variables, such as by altitude or elevation? For example, let's say I have several groups tanks and artillery that I want to spawn randomly in a large zone, but I do not want them on the side of a mountain. Foothills are fine, but only up to certain elevation. Could I use elevation as a filter or a limit?

Sven, simple question. Can a MIST user also run a mission that has MOOSE scripts embedded in it? Or vice versa? Do the MIST/MOOSE lua files have to be distributed along with missions when shared, or do all the scripts really and truly get fully embedded in the mission file itself (eg, with no need for additional files to distribute)?