Help with Helicopter AI - ground attack

[breakneckPace]

Hello ME guru's. In creating my mission I want a moment to be triggered with some helicopters attacking the ground with a barrage of weapons. I've hit my peak of know-how with the ME (which admittedly isn't substantial at the moment) and figured it's time to turn here for the proper method/set up. here's kind of the basic run down of how I want it to go:

 

 

 

• pilot/user enters a trigger point telling the late activated helicopters to spawn in.
  
• helicopters (almost) immediately attack the ground in front of them. <i don't necessarily need them to hit a specific target, I just want the effect of them launching a bunch of munitions (preferably propelled weapons, not dropped bombs or anything) in a general area.>
  
• once out of ammo, they continue flying along their designated waypoints to their specific landing area.
  

seems simple enough, right?! I've got no problem getting them to spawn in late, and even follow their flight path. the biggest hurdle I'm encountering is getting them to do an all out attack on the ground.

 

I've tried giving them different weapons to use. ie rockets, missiles, guns, and what not. I've had them attack "map object" and I've also tried placing in a few ground units just to give them specific targets to shoot at. The BEST result I've come up with so far is the lead chopper will fire a single rocket at its target, then move on. Not quite the big cinematic moment I've been looking for.

 

 

So this is where I'm hoping someone much smarter than I can help. how do I get a group of 4 helicopters to all launch a smattering of rockets or missiles in a general area? Thanks in advance for the help.

 

 

 

~J

[Breaklight]

One option could be,

Not to actually have the choppers go full monty (which is proving difficult) but beef it up with "cinematic effects" as it where.

 

So for example,

 

Spawn choppers.

Choppers fly route

 

chopper fires its single rocket (as you stated worked)

 

When that 'weapon type' is in zone, that triggers the explosion effect in a given zone.

 

You can add as you said ground units, and have these explode as well when certain conditions are met.

 

It might feel a bit fake, but consider if the player(s) are going to notice this at all ?

 

What they wil see, is a chopper fly, a chopper shoot, and badass explosions.

 

Effect you wanted achieved!.

 

I've spent hours trying to get ai do stuff as in the real world, but actually come to the conclusion that the player wont even see or notice any of it. Which ultimately gave me an easier solution.

 

 

 

 

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G930F met Tapatalk

[nomdeplume]

If you set the group's task to 'Ground Attack' then you can add a waypoint action 'Perform task -> Bombing' which allows you to set the weapon type (rockets), release quantity (All) and enable the 'Group attack' option to have all units in the group carry out the attack.

 

 

You do need to permit a bit of space for them to organise the attack and for a rocket run they'll probably ignore any height you specify and just do what they want.

[breakneckPace]

just posting a bit of an update (in case someone has a similar issue and this can be helpful at all) I've managed to get a little bit closer to the effect I was looking for, but still not the full "Michael Bay movie" I was intending, which is probably good, that means what I have is more realistic. haha. Similar to what nomdeplume was saying above, the distance from chopper to target played a bigger role than I expected. There were still issues with some of the choppers turning away from the target while others would fly up and shoot that took some fiddling to sort of deal with, but here's basically what I did:

 

• In the general area I wanted the helicopters to attack, I put a group of friendly units on the ground (or enemy units from the helicopter's perspective) and gave the ground units of "hold" command so they wouldn't run away after the first volley of attacks.
   
  
• I have the helo's spawn in and at a nearby waypoint 1 I gave the command to "attack group" and selected the ground group. (I also tried "attack unit" and duplicated that command for each unit in the ground group which had a sense of success as well.)
   
  
• From there I would run the mission as spectator and watch the helicopters. if they didn't attack I would go back to the mission editor and position them further away, and run it again. a sort of trial an error method. yes, it's tedious. haha. I would do this until I got them far enough away that the choppers would all attack the ground group instead of just turn and fly a different random direction.
   
  
• from my experience, it took them about 30-40 seconds from the time they spawned in, to the time they got to a position where they could launch rockets at the ground targets. If I tried to pop them in right at their 'firing point' or closer to it, they would just change course and fly off into the sunset.
   
  
• then to set it up in the mission I just had a trigger point set up somewhere that when your jet flew into it, it would trigger the choppers to spawn and run their route.
  

 

so ultimately it's still not the look I wanted. but it got me closer at least. My hope was that when you, the pilot was flying by some markers (in this case some buildings in the UAE) that seemingly 'out of nowhere' a group of helicopters would appear, roughly within view without needing to turn your head much, attack the ground right in front of you, and bugger off. What I have now, they spawn in, but they need that 30 seconds or so to get to their firing point so they're a bit more noticeable. and by the time they fire at their targets, the helicopters are at about your 9 o'clock. so it's not QUITE as obvious that the shots are coming from them.

 

ah well. I'll keep working on it and see what fun things I can come up with in the future.