How can I fix this trigger?

[falken76]

Hi all. I'm very new to the ME. I have been learning as I just experiment and have been learning random things from posts here and trying them. I had some questions.

 

1. I learned how to barely use Push AI Task from another thread. I used this to keep aircraft visible on an airfield and not do anything until a trigger was hit. When I first tried I was using late activate which worked fine, but I wanted them visable. I just have my ai planes flying CAP through a series of waypoints.

 

I read on another thread that 2.5.1 has a bug with AI Task Push. I'm using 2.5.1 right now and AI Task Push worked to have these planes start on a trigger, but they only follow waypoints and do cap. Is there a lot more AI task does that isn't working?

 

 

This is supposed to start the F15 group when the ace pilot of the previous group gets shot down, it also plays a sound. This seems to work

 

 

 

This is supposed to Spawn a group of M2000s and a group of F16s when the F15 group is killed. and this seems to work also.

 

 

 

This is supposed to set a flag when you kill the M2000 and F16 groups, it also plays a sound and posts a message telling you to RTB, this also works.

 

 

 

And this one is supposed to set a timer to wait 120 seconds from the flag that was set above, then it will send a message saying that enemy ground forces have appeared, rearm and refuel, bring ground attack etc and plays a sound. It also spawns a series of ground units. This one might work but I don't know. When we got to this part, it seemed to take a long time, way more than 120 seconds. I'm pretty sure this trigger tripped via glitch since the editor seems to do a lot of that. I'm not even sure it's working. Is this one set up correctly? I set the flag to 101 because I have no idea how many flags are being used in this since I just started editing a through the inferno mission. Is there a way to see how many flags have been used?

 

 

I tested this online with a friend to see if it worked as I hoped it would. For the most part it does, but how would I fix this? All these AI planes are tasked to take off from the airport, I wanted to see how my friend would play this naturally in a MP game. He immediately went in to attack the aircraft on the ground. He hit and destroyed one of the F15s and I think this broke my setup because I didn't account for this. With one of the F15s damaged, it never takes off so it never gets killed, since it never got killed, it never tells the M2000 group or the F16 group to take off, so we ended up killing them with an SU25. What could I do to avoid it completely breaking the flow like that? I guess use an OR and put ground percent left alive? But if I do that, won't it always trigger on the % alive and never on dead because % alive will always come before group killed. I'm just really new to this, don't completely understand it and am learning slowly. How could I make it so that attacking the planes on the ground first wouldn't break the trigger/events I had set up and is the time since flag in seconds? I assume it is, what else could it be? My trigger took longer than 120 seconds to go off if it wasn't an unrelated glitch all together.

[feefifofum]

Normally, you can use AI TASK PUSH to trigger any of the same options you set through advanced waypoint actions. You can order planes to fly to a specific waypoint, transmit a radio message, change their ROE, attack a particular target, or any number of other tasks. These are the problem children in 2.5.1.

 

The main issue in your particular case is once you have a dead F-15 on the taxiway, other aircraft won't move around it; at that point the airport is effectively out of commission. If you want to be able to scramble multiple aircraft from there, your best bet is to move it outside of the immediate area where you'll be flying and fortify the area with enough long range SAMs that it becomes difficult to reach it. If it's something where you don't want to wait for aircraft to close the distance, you might be better off using air starts.

 

The other contingency which you haven't run into yet is if planes bug out. The way I work around this is by setting a flag true when the plane exits the airport, then looking for either the unit being dead or moving slow enough that it must have landed. You wind up with something like this:

 

1 ONCE (Bandit takes off, NO EVENT)

-

UNIT OUTSIDE ZONE (Bandit 1, airport)

-

FLAG ON (1)

==================

1 ONCE (Bandit 1 neutralized, NO EVENT)

-

UNIT DEAD (Bandit 1)

OR

FLAG IS TRUE (1)

UNIT'S SPEED LOWER THAN (Bandit1, 5)

-

MESSAGE TO ALL ('Bandit 1 has been neutralized', NO EVENT)

 

An alternate approach, if you know they won't be attacked near their home base, is to create a large trigger zone that represents your engagement area and then checking if the unit has exited. This is a little quicker than waiting for them to land but more prone to problems if you don't have a simple combat area.

1 ONCE (Bandit enters AO, NO EVENT)

-

UNIT INSIDE ZONE (Bandit 1, Engagement Area)

-

FLAG ON (1)

====================

1 ONCE (Bandit 1 dead, NO EVENT)

-

UNIT DEAD (Bandit 1)

OR

FLAG IS TRUE (1)

UNIT OUTSIDE ZONE (Bandit 1, Engagement Area)

-

MESSAGE TO ALL ('Bandit 1 has been neutralized', 10)

 

For multiship flights, I like to use a flag as a counter for each aircraft that is destroyed or bugs out, here's quick example for a 2-ship.

 

1 ONCE (Bandit group 1 enters AO, NO EVENT)

-

ALL OF GROUP IN ZONE (Bandit group 1, Engagement Area)

-

FLAG ON (1)

================

1 ONCE (Bandit 1-1 neutralized, NO EVENT)

-

UNIT DEAD (Bandit 1-1)

OR

FLAG IS TRUE (1)

UNIT OUTSIDE ZONE (Bandit 1-1, Engagement Area)

-

FLAG INCREASE (101, 1)

================

1 ONCE (Bandit 1-2 neutralized, NO EVENT)

-

UNIT DEAD (Bandit 1-2)

OR

FLAG IS TRUE (1)

UNIT OUTSIDE ZONE (Bandit 1-2, Engagement Area)

-

FLAG INCREASE (101, 1)

================

1 ONCE (Bandit group 1 neutralized, NO EVENT)

-

FLAG EQUALS (101, 2)

-

MESSAGE TO ALL ('All bandits in group 1 have been neutralized', 10)