Beware of Updates Changing Your JTAC Settings

[shyjonathan1588]

Mission editors beware: I had hundreds of units set to unique callsigns and FM frequencies for JTAC purposes in 1.2.6. When I updated to 1.2.8, I was horrified to see this new JTAC stuff in the mission editor, with EVERYTHING reset to defaults of Axeman 1, on 133.00 AM. Groan...

 

[derelor]

Ouch!

[Flagrum]

Just out of curiosity - what do you do with hundreds of JTACs?

[shyjonathan1588]

Just out of curiosity - what do you do with hundreds of JTACs?

 

I have between six and ten per mission, and 100 missions in a campaign. All infantry. They are linked to unit inside moving zone triggers with a zone radius equal to infantry engagement range. I have them walk on roads with unpredictable gauntlets of enemy insurgents, and only if/when a firefight breaks out, they radio the player requesting CAS. It makes for unpredictable and replayable SP gameplay.

 

Here's an example starting at 3:25 of a highlight video of one such mission:

 

[Flagrum]

Ah, ok, several missions - could have thought of that by myself. :o)

 

And the concept sounds very interesting.

 

Did I understand you correctly, the JTAC contacts the flight by himself? How do you do that?

[shyjonathan1588]

Radio Call: I used the existing JTAC speech files, but edited them to say "this is [callsign] [number], tasking available." I threw in some random cadence and volume differences, as well as some static and small arms fire, to make it interesting.

 

Triggers: I make one trigger zone with a 500m radius (approximate infantry engagement range). I make a trigger for each infantry platoon. Each trigger has hundreds of "or" conditions, one for every enemy unit on the map, of the type "unit inside moving zone" where the zone is centered on the platoon leader. There is no quick way of doing that. It took me many months to make about 75,000 of those "or" conditions for my campaign project. When activated, (1) a radio message specific to that platoon plays, and (2) a triggered action makes the platoon start its JTAC task.

[Flagrum]

Radio Call: I used the existing JTAC speech files, but edited them to say "this is [callsign] [number], tasking available." I threw in some random cadence and volume differences, as well as some static and small arms fire, to make it interesting.

 

Triggers: I make one trigger zone with a 500m radius (approximate infantry engagement range). I make a trigger for each infantry platoon. Each trigger has hundreds of "or" conditions, one for every enemy unit on the map, of the type "unit inside moving zone" where the zone is centered on the platoon leader. There is no quick way of doing that. It took me many months to make about 75,000 of those "or" conditions for my campaign project. When activated, (1) a radio message specific to that platoon plays, and (2) a triggered action makes the platoon start its JTAC task.

Nice! Something I will try to remember, thanks!

[Yurgon]

Each trigger has hundreds of "or" conditions, one for every enemy unit on the map, of the type "unit inside moving zone" where the zone is centered on the platoon leader. There is no quick way of doing that. It took me many months to make about 75,000 of those "or" conditions for my campaign project.

 

Wow, that sounds like an interesting campaign! :thumbup:

 

Just in case you never considered any alternatives: Using Lua scripts most probably could have helped you there. There are of course all kinds of different ways to achieve the goal.

 

One possibility would be to place the names of all units in some sort of a configuration table and then periodically iterate through all units in a loop in order to check whether they are now in range of enemy units and then trigger the corresponding action.

 

With a change like the one you described, you would have "simply" had to adjust the configuration table. And if you placed that table in an external script, you'd only have to do it once (and possibly edit every mission once to include the new script).

 

Even if you're not into scripting and programming languages, I'd consider investing a few hours to get an overview and see if it'll help you with future projects. Personally, I'd go nuts putting up that many triggers in the ME. :music_whistling:

 

Shameless self-promotion: Tutorial: Introduction to Lua scripting :D

 

There are also some incredibly helpful libraries like the Mission Scripting Tools that can perform many scripting tasks with a simple function call so you don't have to re-invent the wheel for every task. Specifically, mist.GetUnitsInMovingZones could be one of the functions you're looking for. :thumbup:

[shyjonathan1588]

Thanks. I'll have to study that and go in that direction.