Ground battle tips/tricks?

[SageOT]

So with GCI/CAP and various other triggers I can make the air part of my missions feel pretty fluid.

 

What I suck at is setting up decent ground battles. I have plenty of knowledge on unit sizes/composition and RW tactics, but getting it to look/feel cool in game is just not happening the way I would like.

 

Looking for what works for others. What mission editor cheats (setting groups invulnerable that kind of thing ) or other things you all do to get a decent realistic battle going on and not just striking convoys or static units?

 

If you use scripts awesome, can you link and say what they do? I couldn't script my way out of a wet paper bag, but I can sure as heck make a do script file trigger. ; )

 

Thanks for any ideas you are willing to give.

[ESAc_matador]

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2939891&postcount=1

 

Check this.

[SageOT]

I had not seen that one. Bookmarking that bad boy. Thanks.

[SageOT]

So Matador's new project is pretty cool. No one else have any methods they use that they're proud of and I can steal? :)

[feefifofum]

You've pretty much got the idea, already, sounds like.

 

As far as infantry goes:

 

The FIRE AT POINT command will generate tracers without necessarily directly targeting enemy troops.

 

Set AI skill to average so that they miss most of the time or the fight will be over fast.

 

Setting a small group of outnumbered friendlies as invulnerable against a larger force will give you a few minutes of gunfire before everyone runs out of ammo. The fight will be over fairly quickly if it's 4 invulnerable guys vs. 4 guys who can be shot, so time it out a few times and see what ratio works with your combination of terrain and lighting.

 

For vehicles:

 

Be forewarned, there is currently a bug in the stable DCS build. If you use LATE ACTIVATION and VISIBLE BEFORE START multiplayer clients will never see vehicle movement, only the server host will. LATE ACTIVATION still works when used independently of VISIBLE BEFORE START.

 

As a workaround, you can use GROUP HOLD and GROUP RESUME if you want vehicles to stop driving but still be able to fire.

 

If you want them to stop doing anything, GROUP AI OFF and GROUP AI ON will switch them off and on, turrets included.

 

Forcing a red alarm state will get SAMs to turn their RADARs on if you're trying to make SEAD targets easier to locate and engage. Opposite also holds true i.e. UNIT OUTSIDE MOVING ZONE (SEAD 1, SAM 1) -> AI TASK PUSH (SAM1, alarm green, ROE hold)

 

Those are most of the tricks I use. Hardest thing is coming up with an idea more interesting than "hey, there's some tanks over there, get them!"

[SageOT]

Awesome stuff. Thanks much. Ideas I have aplenty, making them look cool is the tough part for me. ;)

 

I don't think I have seen an infinite ammo option for ground units, but that would help now that I think about it.... hmmm have to check the scripts wiki....

[ESAc_matador]

There is a way to reload them via script I think. I dont know how...

[SageOT]

So just recently I put down a bunch of trigger zones haphazardly around the FLOT. Then set it to if the player planes were in a zone of the FLOT and below x altitude then a continuous trigger ran with random values to cause explosions and white smoke markers in the zones. It worked, but only sometimes. I'm sure it had to to with my trigger logic layout being off, I just need to stare at the trigger list until my eyes bleed to see where I went wrong.

 

When it did work though, it looked really freaking cool flying over it. Like there was an actual tank/artillery battle going on.

 

Edit: Follow on question. Does an explosion set to a zone happen in the middle of that zone no matter the size of the zone? I couldn't tell. Follow on, follow on question: I've been searching the forums for info about the explosion value in the ME. Unfortunately it's some pretty generic search words so the returns are large... If there is one, would someone mind linking a post/doc/etc. that has some decent detail on explosion value= to warhead size?

 

Thanks again guys. Really enjoying, and at the same time hating myself for trying, learning the ME. It all -almost- makes sense to me now. :)

Edited November 7, 2016 by SageOT

[Panhead]

Does an explosion set to a zone happen in the middle of that zone no matter the size of the zone?

Look at this MIST function for getting a random point in a zone

[SageOT]

Cool thanks