Guide - How to place a TACAN anywhere

[Pikey]

[DEPRECATED - USE THE INBUILT BEACON ED SUPPLY - this is for history now]
At the current time of writing, the Portable TACAN unit (TTS 3030) found in the Fortifications section of units in the Mission Editor does not allow the Task to enable any TACAN to be emmitted. Hence, there are some hefty workarounds to get this going and I had to scratch my head and get creative.

 

You will also note that in the Sim you are unable to put the Tacan task onto anything but a plane or a ship. This rule applies to scripting, so anyone using MOOSE BEACON class will find they get an error:

 

Quote

ALERT WORLDGENERAL: AI::Controller exception: No executor for command "ActivateBeacon" and controller "wcColumn"

if you attempt to place a tacan object on anything but a plane or a ship.

 

But you can place an AABeacon on a plane.

 

How does this help? Well a bit of imagination and of course a Late Activated object can accept tasks just like a normal unit, and low and behold I got an invisible plane and an A-A beacon. All it needed was some magic replacement to put the Tacan portable model there and it was done.

Of course, for those realists, it is an Air to Air tacan and you need Yankee mode and A-A set. So it's not what it should be, but it can do until ED finish the Tasks for the Tacan portable. End result is a few lines of copy paste, so it's not a hardship. The previous options involve modding the terrain beacons.lua file....not good, or creating a modded tacan of a plane and swapping models around, also not good for some sections of the community.

 

 

Here's the video explanation

 

 

 

 

Here's the script

 

 

--Devious TACAN workaround script by Pikey 09 1500Z MAY 2020

--WHY?
--The Portable TACAN model in DCS cannot have the task "Activate TACAN". There is no way to use scripting to add a Beacon because that type is not accepting the Task Activate Tacan. 
--Only Ships and aircraft accept a TACAN task and you can't put them where you like. You could mod, but...
--For reasons of extreme workaround the TACAN is A-A mode ONLY. There is no other way, but you get your distance and bearing anyway.
--HOW TO
--Requires a reasonably up to date MOOSE.lua version https://github.com/FlightControl-Master/MOOSE_INCLUDE/blob/develop/Moose_Include_Static/Moose.lua
--Put a Harrier where you want a TACAN, set it LATE ACTIVATED, and make it start from Ground so it is on the floor. Call it's UNIT/PILOT name a three letter code for the TACAN
--Repeat for every new TACAN you want - e.g. 'PT1', 'PT2', 'PT3' etc
--Fill out the table "HarrierList" below, with all these Harrier unit names, they become the TACAN MORSE NAME
--Create a Portable Tacan unit model and call its UNIT 'tacanPortable', set this to "LATE ACTIVATED" 
--Load MOOSE.lua on mission start
--Put this script in DO SCRIPT or have it as part of an existing script
--Tune to your tacan, remembering A-A mode is required
--MP compatible. Any issues, make sure you READ YOUR DCS.log for errors, which will most likely be a naming issue siunce Lua is case sensitive

--EDITABLE
local tacanStartNumber = 50 --you need to work out Tacan channel conflicts yourself, the beacons start from this number and go up
local HarrierList = {'PT1', 'PT2', 'PT3' } --add the UNIT/PILOT NAME of the Harrier aircraft to this list. They will become the Tacan Morse names so keep it 3 letters
local tacanPortable = UNIT:FindByName('tacanPortable') -- This is the UNIT name of your single Late Activated Tacan object. You can change this here if you really find a need to.

--NOT EDITABLE
for i=1,#(HarrierList) do
local imposterUnit = UNIT:FindByName(HarrierList[i])
local position = imposterUnit:GetVec2() -- Gets the position of the invisible Harrier
local myBeacon = imposterUnit:GetBeacon() -- Creates the beacon
myBeacon:AATACAN(tacanStartNumber+i-1, imposterUnit:GetName(), true) -- Activate the beacon
SPAWN:NewWithAlias(tacanPortable:GetName(), imposterUnit:GetName()):SpawnFromVec2(position) -- Places a Portable Tacan model where the invisible Harrier is
end

 

 

 

Happy pseudo waypointing in your Hueys and F-5's or adding TACAN to your Range, or replacing TACAN stations you miss, like Khasab, or whatever else you fancy. No, I do not know how to RSBN, yet.

 

tacanTest.lua

Edited February 17, 2022 by Pikey
adding deprecated warning

[A10Yoda]

In all honesty, this needs to be something ED adds. This is a generally simple addition that is already in the game and needs to be implemented to the mission editor.

 

I am all for community add-ons but this upgrade is so simple it shouldn't take much coding at all to get it done in game.

 

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

[Pikey]

In all honesty, this needs to be something ED adds. This is a generally simple addition that is already in the game and needs to be implemented to the mission editor.

 

I am all for community add-ons but this upgrade is so simple it shouldn't take much coding at all to get it done in game.

 

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

Sure, I think the development appears odd to us on the outside, you see the assets made then wait for another team to pickup the code. As it is, the most obvious reason this might be delayed is because unit types align to the tasks they can perform, so en masse making all units capable of tacan would be a game issue, and you can't make the tacan a plane or a ship. So it's in an odd place. I have no doubt we might wait a bit, so having the capacity of a workaround will get some life out of this.

[Sedlo]

Thanks, Pikey, I'll give it a try tomorrow!

[shagrat]

In all honesty, this needs to be something ED adds. This is a generally simple addition that is already in the game and needs to be implemented to the mission editor.

 

I am all for community add-ons but this upgrade is so simple it shouldn't take much coding at all to get it done in game.

 

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

I am sure the addition of the code is simple and could be done in a couple minutes, but to check the rest of the DCS code for dependencies, test the build and clarify new introduced bugs are/are not related to this change, etc. is a considerable effort.

So before "adding this" I would rather see the current OpenBeta ready, mostly bug fixed and stable enough to handle the next wave of changes. And that's what they currently work on, it seems.

[discwalker]

I do this simpler

 

If you can sacrifice a parking spot:

Defueled S3B Tankers do the job very well, even in Multiplayer.

We use this since 2018, mission examples for Caucasus and PG:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3621201&postcount=14

(Use X band because of DCS WIP behaviour, Y stations accessible most time on X band. AFAIK 1Y is working on Y.)

[Pikey]

Well now you dont need to use a parking spot and can have it anywhere without a plane in the way!

 

If you can sacrifice a parking spot:

Defueled S3B Tankers do the job very well, even in Multiplayer.

We use this since 2018, mission examples for Caucasus and PG:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3621201&postcount=14

(Use X band because of DCS WIP behaviour, Y stations accessible most time on X band. AFAIK 1Y is working on Y.)