AI difficulties

[YuriVII]

So when I am designing a campaign with rocket artillery such as the GRAD and SMERCH units, they never seem to want to launch. Any suggestions to fix this?

[Highwayman-Ed]

Make sure that they are far enough away from their targets and that you have set the waypoint type to "attack point" and adding the targets to their list. There is also a problem that you need to line up the units with the direction in which they are firing.

 

Check the mission that I have linked. http://www.mediafire.com/?cjqn9xzjjrz

 

There are 4 Grads in the mission, but only 2 of them will fire because of the conditions that I have mentioned above.

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

Most likely reasons for your GRAD not firing are:-

 

1) Not setting an ATTACK waypoint and a target using the TARGET button.

 

2) Too far away - beyond maximum range, too close - inside minimum range.

 

3) Not within angular limits, GRAD will only fire at a target within a certain angle from the way it is facing see details below. Occasionally I've had problems with rockets firing at a target directly in front, but that might have been range probs - I recall IronHand telling me GRAD and SMERCH will fire over the cab.

 

So you need to experiment with the placement of your units both in distance and in regard to which way they are facing.

 

 

Here is a bunch of info that I've deduced / collected from various forums including some stuff I got from a guy called JEFX.

 

It may help you with artillery / rockets in the Mission Editor.

 

OK, this is all stuff that I scribbled over the last 3 years in my Lockon notebook, hence some in km, some in Nm, so apologies for that.

 

ROCKETS

Smersh, Grad will fire a spill taking 40 secs / 20 secs respectively then will reload (about 15min?) before firing again.

 

 

ARTILLERY

Gvozdika - 6 rnds per min

Akatsia - 4 rnds per min

Msta - 8 rnds per min

Bereg - 10 rnds per min

Nona - 8 rnds per min

 

 

Max ranges

 

Smersh 70km

Grad 20km

MLRS 31km

 

M109 15nm

SAU Berg 18.5nm

SAU Gvozdika 15nm

SAU Akatsia 15nm

SAU Msta 15nm

SAU Nona 5.5nm

 

 

 

Naval

 

Ticonderoga 14.5km

Perry 14.5km

 

Moscow 20km

Neustrashimy 21.5km

Rezky 21.5km

Albatros 6km

Molniya 15km

 

 

Tanks - all 2400m

 

APC cannon - all 1000m

 

APC missiles

 

M2 3000m (7 shots)

BMP3 4000m (9 shots)

BMP2 4000m (5 shots)

BMP1 3000m (6 shots)

BMD1 3000m (3 shots)

 

 

AA against ground targets

 

Shilka 1800m

Gepard 2900m

Vulcan 2800m

Avenger 1300m

Tunguska 1400m

 

 

 

 

JEFX extra info

 

Some units have a minimum distance (under which they wont shoot):

MLRS has a 5 km. min. (30 km max) and a reload time of 9 minutes

GRAD a 10 km min. and a reload time of 8 minutes

SMERCH has 20 km minimum dist. and a reload time of 15 minutes

 

I am not sure but I think that the BEREG has a 10 km min too?

(still need to try?)

 

 

Then, some units have angles limitations:

 

MLRS (I think some limitation but I havent experimented with it??)

SAU Nona : only 35° Left and right are possible

GRAD : only 120° Left and 60° right

BEREG : only 120° left and 120° right

SMERCH : only 30° left or right

 

 

 

Artillery supplementary data

(experiments made June 11, 2007)

by JEFX

 

GROUND ARTILLERY

 

-All ground artillery units shoot their maximum number of rounds in 2 bursts (one big one and one small one), separated by approx 1’30’’ of waiting time.

 

-All of them take approx. 40 minutes to reload, ad infinitum.-All of the SAU family shoot approx. 8 rounds/min. while the M109 is roughly only one round/min.

 

-All three multiple launchers have been discussed before.Here is the number of rounds for each artillery unit between reloads :

 

SAU-Msta : 50 rounds

SAU-Akatsia : 46 rounds

SAU-Nona : 25 rounds

SAU-Gvodzika : 70 rounds

SAU-Bereg : 48 rounds

M109 : 56 rounds

 

 

SHIP ARTILLERY

 

-All ship-based artillery units have the same behavior : they shoot a 41 rounds burst, wait for a variable number of seconds, (see below) and shoot 41 rounds again, this pattern repeated a total of 5 times (except for the Perry, 4 times). For some of them, the last time is a smaller number of rounds (about 10). Then they all stop to shoot forever…

 

-All of them shoot at an approximate rate of 1 round/second (some faster, Molnya and Albatros, most of them a bit slower than 1 round/sec)Here are the peculiarities of each of them and the number of seconds between 41 rounds bursts:

 

Oliver Perry : 30 sec. wait

Ticonderoga : 30 sec. wait, 2 cannons simultaneously (one at the bow, one at the stern)

Molniya : 30 sec. wait (shoots faster)

Albatros : 13 sec. wait

Neustrahimy : 45 sec. wait

Rezky : 45 sec. wait, 2 cannons simultaneously (side by side at the stern)Moscow : 45 sec. wait, twin barrel cannon

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

Another thing to consider is the number of units you have firing, whether they are individual units each in its own group or if they are all in one group, and how many targets they are firing at and whether those targets are individuals or all in a group.

 

I was having problems with some Bereg naval artillery units firing at a ship.

 

I could not make them do what I wanted, only one Bereg seemed to fire, so I decided to do some tests. I set up a GROUP of three SAU Beregs, targeted at a ship. Only one of them (1 of 3) fires on the ship.

If I add a 2nd ship target (a smaller ship so it will sink faster), then 2 Beregs fire, one at each ship. As soon as the smaller ship sinks, the 2nd Bereg (2 of 3) stops firing. Similar with 3 ships.

 

Then I changed it so that the Bereg's were each in their own GROUP (1 of 1), and of course it takes longer to target each of these on the single ship target. Now they will all open fire on the ship.

With two ship targets, they all fire at the first ship till it sinks, then all swap their fire to the second ship.

 

So to sum up all that I deduced, if you want some arty to bombard a town/airfield to add colour to a mission,

1) target a co-ordinate, so the arty keep firing until the ammo runs out. If you target a building, once it is destroyed, then the arty stops firing.

2) if your arty is all in one group, then have the same number of targets as arty units to ensure each arty in the group has a target to fire at.

3) if you mix the arty types (bereg, msta, nona, etc) then they fire at different rates and looks nicer.