DCS Organic Panic - OPN (Beta Stage)
DCS Organic Panic (OPN) is a script for Digital Combat Simulator that enhances the AI behavior of ground vehicles when under attack, and simulates vehicle crew. By integrating this script into your DCS missions, you can expect a more dynamic and realistic response from AI-controlled ground units, making your simulation experience more immersive and challenging.
This is the first public release of the script, and it's on a beta stage, so it might have bugs and issues. Please reference the project's Github for instructions, limitations and submitting issues.
Features
DCS OPN tracks ground units stress over time, and changes the unit behavior based on the amount of stress.
This script offers several key features that enhance the AI behavior of ground vehicles in DCS missions:
Each ground unit stress level is tracked during the mission. Stress level decreases automatically over time, but can be increased by:
Being hit by a weapon.
Being close to a weapon impact
Being close to a friendly unit being hit or destroyed
Losing hitpoints
The amount of stress added or removed depends on:
Unit type (tank, APC, IFV, light armored, air defense, cargo truck, transport truck or car)
Distance to the weapon impact.
Distance to the friendly unit being hit or destroyed
Amount of damage received
When a unit's stress level starts to rise it will move and disperse. Each subsequent attacks near or on the unit will make it change position.
If a unit's stress level rises and reaches a certain threshold, the following will happen:
The unit will panic and move away from the attack zone.
Then it will stop for a while, and then move to the vehicle fallback zone.
Once in the fallback zone, the unit will stop and wait for a while before returning to the attack zone. If it has less than 70% health, it will stay in the fallback zone. IMPORTANT: At the present OPN version, units will not continue with their previous tasks after being attacked.
If attacked again while in any of those states, the unit will always change positions, and may panic again.
Ground unit crew is also simulated by the script:
If a unit loses over 70% of its health or catches on fire, it's considered disabled, so it won't move or attack anymore.
If a unit is disabled / on fire, the crew will dismount and later retreat to the infantry fallback zone.
Different types of units have different crew sizes, and the crew will be spawned as infantry units. There's a 7% (configurable) chance that a crew member will spawn as a MANPADS.
The amount of crew members spawned may vary between 0 and the max crew size of the unit. This is to simulate crew losses during the attack.
There's a 30% (configurable) chance that units placed in the Mission Editor will spawn without a crew (to simulated parked vehicles). However it's possible to force a unit to have no crew or max crew size, by changing the name of the group (described below).
Limitations
Group Composition: Each group must consist of only one unit to be compatible with OPN's control mechanisms.
Fallback Zones: Limited to one fallback zone for vehicles and one for infantry, per coalition.
Waypoint Adherence: Units will abandon mission editor-defined waypoints upon entering a panic or dispersed state and will not resume them.
Multiplayer Compatibility: OPN should work in multiplayer missions, but it wasn't tested yet. It's possible that some features may not work as expected. Since controlled units won't return to their tasks after being attacked, the compatibility with other scripts might be affected.
Community Contributions
DCS OPN is completely open to community contributions and ideas. At the moment, the script is on Open Beta stage, so a lot of things might change in the future. Having feedback from the community is extremely important for this proccess!
Usage Rights
Feel free to modify and redistribute DCS OPN. It's currently licensed under GPLv3, so the only restriction is that if you use DCS OPN, your product / project has to be open source. If you need to include it in closed source code, please get in contact so we can discuss it together.
How to use it?
DCS OPN is not a mod. It's a script you must include in you missions by using the DO SCRIPT or DO SCRIPT FILE triggers in the mission editor. Minimal setup is required in the mission for it to work. Please reference the documentation available here for full instructions.
dcs-opn-v0_84beta.zip
