DML - Mission Creation Toolbox [no Lua required]

[shinobi61]

I'm assuming im being dumb, ive spent alot of time trying to get zones to go Neutral when units are destroyed only seem to be able to capture them from red > blue or blue > red and not blue > neutral > red. I think ive tried everything, but obviously something eludes me

here is a zone example and config
nullnull

Had good fun today although this little thing brain drained me lol, the Reaper module is amazing with the L2MUMs on the kiowa, i was wondering is there a way for the reaper to either be able to "step" to next target somehow or just to have a priority for example SAM > AAA > ARMOR >TECH.

Regards and thanks for all, got to sleep now

Edited June 8, 2024 by shinobi61

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, shinobi61 said:

'm assuming im being dumb, ive spent alot of time trying to get zones to go Neutral when units are destroyed only seem to be able to capture them from red > blue or blue > red and not blue > neutral > red. I think ive tried everything, but obviously something eludes me

Well, I think the only unverified assumption you made is that a zone would turn neutral when there are no units around. By default, it doesn't (just like your flat doesn't suddenly become public property when you leave it ). To turn on this ability, use the 'numKeep' attribute (please see the "shockBlock"):

Keeping an Owned Zone
By default, a faction keeps a zone that they conquered until it is conquered by the opposing faction. However, mission designers can require that the holding faction keep a minimum amount of ground units inside the zone lest it loses the zone (in that case the zone becomes NEUTRAL, and requires capture again). You can control this with the numKeep attribute in the config zone (which defaults to 0).

Hope this helps,

-ch

[Edit - it seems that your mission does set the numKeep attribute as requested. Please PM the miz to me, for analysis. Also, it may help if you told me what you did, and what you expected to happen so I can reproduce and fix any bugs.]

Edited June 9, 2024 by cfrag

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, shinobi61 said:

i was wondering is there a way for the reaper to either be able to "step" to next target somehow or just to have a priority for example SAM > AAA > ARMOR >TECH.

Please stop reading my mind, my thoughts are private -- I'm testing this, but there are some performance considerations that made this feature lower-priority.

[shinobi61]

4 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Please stop reading my mind, my thoughts are private -- I'm testing this, but there are some performance considerations that made this feature lower-priority.

lmao, the step feature would be amazing and probably the best thing in DCS along with l2mums haha, about my miz i "think" that i fixed the issue somewhat i had the numKeep in the global config and not in the local zones, quick test seemed like that was the issue!!!
Now to make sure production stops when its neutral, i didnt progress too much more because was hung up on that for a while and ofcourse after some sleep fresh mind i saw the mistake

[shinobi61]

is it possible to give a clone template orders such as attackOwnedZone etc, im trying to make multiple template for randomness when a factory produce cycle triggers, i can do it via templated units having waypoints but was unsure if its possible this way or only with factory production strings?



 

Edited June 9, 2024 by shinobi61

[Recluse]

10 hours ago, cfrag said:

Please stop reading my mind, my thoughts are private -- I'm testing this, but there are some performance considerations that made this feature lower-priority.

Don't know if it would be helpful or not, but the JTAC (REAPER) functions in FOOTHOLD have this ability. You can step to the next target or have them prioritize the type of target with the F10 Menu. Seems to be included in Zone Commander.

[shinobi61]

Step would be so awesome, with priority in the background, options are great but radio menus get cluttered so easily in missions when for example you need 1 feature from a script but it comes with like 13 features i've not read through the full documentation yet but there is probably a way to omit things from radio menus already using DML lol

[CidTheViking]

Hello cfrag,

Im having an issue with factory spawned attackers where they only place a short way point towards the enemy and never gets to the owned zone nor move again until the next restart with persistence. Is there a setup that I am doing wrong with them? What I am going for with this mission is a COIN like operation. Currently while I was learning I just made all the zone cloners now I am going back and trying to make those zones capture-able, setup factory zones, and make the two sides kinda fight each other. But the attackers spawn and make a way point a very short distance and just stop and never make it to the zone to capture. Is distance a limiting factor or did I miss something?
 

Thank you

Cid

OH58_COINv1.miz

[cfrag]

23 minutes ago, CidTheViking said:

Im having an issue with factory spawned attackers where they only place a short way point towards the enemy and never gets to the owned zone

Thank you for attaching the miz (which looks very interesting indeed). From a cursory inspection, I'm not sure that I can tell you what your issue is, but I'm suspecting that it can be a mix of some of the following points:

• A factory zone requires the 'factory' attribute. I did not find a factory zone, and myriads of clone zones. 
• Cloners clone groups with routes and orders as defined in ME. Cloners do not support DML's "attackOwnedZones" orders
• Factories can control clone zones, and spawn units similar to Spawners.
• Spawners support orders. Spawners work very differently from Cloners.
• Owned Zones must have an 'owner' attribute to be identifyable for DML as targets for "attackOwnedZones".
• Factories must be owned zones, so factories must have the "factory" and "owner" attribute 
• MOOSE is not required to use DML. I'm no MOOSE expert, and I don't know if your issues may relate to MOOSE.

If possible, instead of showing me a big, complex miz like the one that you are currently working on, can you create a small example that illustrates the issue you are facing, and we can then work out the solution? It will probably make resolving this much easier. I'm not sure that I can divine what you are trying to do from a miz with more than 90 trigger zones. If sure things will become much clearer to me once we boil that down to a few trigger zones and a clear goal.

[cfrag]

On 6/9/2024 at 2:07 PM, shinobi61 said:

is it possible to give a clone template orders such as attackOwnedZone etc

Not at this moment. Cloners clone groups, with their routes and special actions intact. I could change that, and simply erase the route and add them to groundCommander if a cloner has an 'orders' attribute. Let me experiment with this, but it may take a couple of weeks and not be guaranteed to work (cloners support units other than ground, I'll have to make sure that this somehow works across the board)

On 6/9/2024 at 11:23 AM, shinobi61 said:

lmao, the step feature would be amazing and probably the best thing in DCS along with l2mums

and

On 6/9/2024 at 9:38 PM, Recluse said:

the JTAC (REAPER) functions in FOOTHOLD have this ability

Reapers now have a brand new 'cycle target' ability. That required a complete rewrite of Reaper's menu handling, but it works now. For performance, there is no prioritization, but the expanded 'status' command gives a list of all vehicles in the group, so you can cycle until you have your favorite smitee targeted.

I'm currently trying to get this to work with the Kiowa's fantastic L2MUM system (which apparently is an ingenious hack from the kind people at PolyChop, and something I hope that I can match, even if it's hellishly fugly Windows 95-esque interface makes my eyes hurt  ). It currently can't work with individual targeted units (PC seem to have stated that individual targeting in L2MUM requires DCS core changes), but just having a look at the target helps a lot). If I can make that works, the Kiowa is the place to be in in missions like "Expansion" (which heavily uses DML). 

[CidTheViking]

Hello again,
Thank you so much for a quick response. I am uploading a much much smaller version where you can see the issue far more clearly. Sorry about that. It didn't occur to me how much to wade through as I have been looking at for 3 or 4 days now and gotten use to it all. Akrotiri is the zone I have setup for the factory and CSAR. Should I separate those two things out as best practice?

Cid

OH58_COIN_FactoryStuck.miz

[CidTheViking]

I think I see the Error now. Here is the screen shot of the log when it happens. Everything was running so smooth I forgot to check the logs for errors. Not sure if this helps or not but I will post it here anyway.

[cfrag]

Interesting. Those do not look like DML messages, though. DML always either 'prints' to the screen, or stops with a dialog. Forcing mission designers to wade through logs isn't my idea of QoL, so I don't use it (...much).

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

I'm currently trying to get this to work with the Kiowa's fantastic L2MUM system

Yeah. Almost 12 hours wasted. Not being familiar with L2MUM or the technology used by PC, I had hell of a time to get the video image working. All I got looked like static, making me (wrongly) deduct that there was something wrong with the frequency, modulation, or task assigned to the drone. I wrote a lot of code to resolve this.

This morning it (literally) dawned on me that the reason that I couldn't get a clear picture was... clouds! Those reapers were on top, and silly me expected that their sensors would be able to see through. They aren't. So I set up better weather, and had the reapers fly beneath the cloud layer. And yeah, there they were: nice juicy targets.

The good news: "Reaper" now works with Kiowa's L2MUM in DML. As I see it right now, using L2MUM is incredibly cool; I've not (yet) found a way to control the UAV's camera zoom from the Kiowa, nor found a way to force the drone to target a particular vehicle (but I was able to force it to target a group, with the UAV then choosing a vehicle by itself). 

[shinobi61]

4 hours ago, cfrag said:

Yeah. Almost 12 hours wasted. Not being familiar with L2MUM or the technology used by PC, I had hell of a time to get the video image working. All I got looked like static, making me (wrongly) deduct that there was something wrong with the frequency, modulation, or task assigned to the drone. I wrote a lot of code to resolve this.

This morning it (literally) dawned on me that the reason that I couldn't get a clear picture was... clouds! Those reapers were on top, and silly me expected that their sensors would be able to see through. They aren't. So I set up better weather, and had the reapers fly beneath the cloud layer. And yeah, there they were: nice juicy targets.

The good news: "Reaper" now works with Kiowa's L2MUM in DML. As I see it right now, using L2MUM is incredibly cool; I've not (yet) found a way to control the UAV's camera zoom from the Kiowa, nor found a way to force the drone to target a particular vehicle (but I was able to force it to target a group, with the UAV then choosing a vehicle by itself). 

lol that is funny Well i already had the L2MUMs working with DMLs reaper, i assumed (probably incorrectly) that if you were able to impliment a cycle target feature/command to say radio item, then when you "step" or "shift" target via a command it would just shift the video feed, can we download the new module with cycle ability already? im working on a small mission for kiowa / apache practice for buddy lase and drones

regards

Edited June 11, 2024 by shinobi61

[cfrag]

39 minutes ago, shinobi61 said:

lol that is funny Well i already had the L2MUMs working with DMLs reaper, i assumed (probably incorrectly) that if you were able to impliment a cycle target feature/command to say radio item, then when you "step" or "shift" target via a command it would just shift the video feed, can we download the new module with cycle ability already? im working on a small mission for kiowa / apache practice for buddy lase and drones

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple nor good - neither Kiowa nor scripting can set the unit that the drone *AI* is looking at or lasing. But what the Kiowa can do is show *a* vehicle from the group that the UAV is looking at (no documentation available on which one, but I'm guessing it's the first. DCS documentation unfortunately is quite abysmal here). If you "cycle" the target in DML, L2MUM's display will not change, the UAV's AI is still targeting the same group. The reaper script, however, which generates its own laser pointer, will jump to the next target in the group and tell you which one. This can be a bit confusing, yes, but it's still better than nothing. Maybe (hope against hope) the kind people at ED update their drone tasking API (snowflake in hell's chance for that). 

What now is updated (what I discovered during testing) is that if there are more than one enemy groups in the vicinity of an UAV, the AI will (by itself) target a group. And that can be a different group from the one that the reaper script targets. In that case, L2MUM shows the wrong group (it shows the one that the AI is looking at, and the AI knows nothing about the reaper lasing script). The update now forces the drone to engage the "correct" group (the one that the laser script is looking at), and in L2MUM you then see *a* vehicle from the correct group (probably not the one that the drone is looking at). Cycling the target for a drone is currently possible with DML and DML's laser targeting script. But changing the target for a drone's *AI* is currently not possible with scripting in DCS, and likely the reason why the Kiowa can't do it either.

So, yeah, L2MUM shows *a* vehicle from the group that the AI is engaging, but not necessarily the one that the reaper script is lasing. Cycling a target is possible in DML, but is not reflected in L2MUM. That is currently impossible to do. As mission designer you could try using single-vehicle groups, but then cycling won't work because cycling happens inside the group that the UAV is targeting. A bit Catch-22.

1 hour ago, shinobi61 said:

can we download the new module with cycle ability already? im working on a small mission for kiowa / apache practice for buddy lase and drones

You are very brave if you really want to do that. I'm still testing, and that script still has more bugs than the Indonesian Rain Forest...

[shinobi61]

Ah i see, i think for kiowa specific missions then the best solution "should" be single unit groups if the script now forces the drone to engage same group, and then omit the shift feature.
Unfortunate but still with that method (if works correctly) you can theoretically design a mission to suit, trust DCS to mess up such a cool feature lol

edit: also another thought, paired with the forced targeting (if i understand correctly) + single unit groups you could use multiple channels (drones) in one area for this kind of thing, actually could be kinda realistic this way too, have to really be hot with your laser codes and comms though.

null

As the kiowa supports multiple drone channels could be kinda fun this way to be honest! Its like manually shifting target by changing channel + code

Could get messy with larger OwnedZone / Capture type missions becuase alot depends on Groups
Going to have a mess around with this now!


Edit2: i made a mission to test a little but i think i need the updated script with the forced correct group because at the moment if you put 4x single unit groups (tank, truck, shilka, bmp) as example and then 4 drones above, then all 4 have the same video feed (AI targeting same one) and at the same time, all DML scripts lasing the same one too (albeit not the matching one lol)


 

L2MUM REAPER TEST.miz

Edited June 11, 2024 by shinobi61

[cfrag]

On 6/7/2024 at 2:22 PM, shinobi61 said:

I have noticed one thing regarding WP arty module seems to not be working with Kiowa 2 versions of smoke rockets.

Now it does  (Willie already supported the Hydra M156, now it also supports the M259) - thanks again!

 

[CidTheViking]

Hello again,

Is there a way to hide the groupName from the recon script when it finds the Group and just do a salt report?
 

[shinobi61]

@cfrag

small spelling error in doc

HOW GROUP TRACKER WOKS <----
Simply put, a group tracker works like this:

[Chess96]

Hello again @cfrag!
I've come to this place with yet another problem !

I have put together a mission to try out the CSAR capabilities of DML and I ran into a few issues.

First on some CSAR mission that are generated, the ELT signal will cut out randomly and i won't be able to home on the signal anymore. Other will be blasting away for hours !
But more interestingly when i arrive at the location of the csar missison and I land next to the guy, noting happens ... yet if I try hovering above him it works. Which really puzzles me ...

Have you had anyone else report something similar ?

If you need the miz file or something else let me know. As it's kind of a big project I work on I dont want to post it in a public forum

Cheers, 

Chess

[cfrag]

On 6/13/2024 at 7:58 AM, CidTheViking said:

Is there a way to hide the groupName from the recon script when it finds the Group and just do a salt report?

There is now: a new 'groupNames' attribute for the config zone. Will be part of the upcoming release. If you want to help testing, use the below script and add it to .

Enjoy,

-ch

 

reconMode.lua

16 hours ago, shinobi61 said:

HOW GROUP TRACKER WOKS

thanks! (corrected)

[cfrag]

12 hours ago, Chess96 said:

First on some CSAR mission that are generated, the ELT signal will cut out randomly and i won't be able to home on the signal anymore.

These signals are standard DCS radio transmissions. DCS does model terrain occlusion, meaning that distance and line of sight are a factor. If you are (as you should ) flying at low altitude, the radio signal can easily cut out, especially if the transmitter is located in a ravine.

Also, if a downed pilot dies, their signal dies with them.

12 hours ago, Chess96 said:

But more interestingly when i arrive at the location of the csar missison and I land next to the guy, noting happens ... yet if I try hovering above him it works. Which really puzzles me ...

That is highly unusual, and yours is the first report of this occurring. Do you have any mods running with DCS? Since the last DCS update, many MODs are acting up and create unpredictable results. To verify, please remove all mods from DCS and try again.

If all else fails, I'm happy to take a look of course.

[CidTheViking]

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

There is now: a new 'groupNames' attribute for the config zone. Will be part of the upcoming release. If you want to help testing, use the below script and add it to .

Enjoy,

-ch

 

reconMode.lua 40.53 kB · 1 download

thanks! (corrected)

Works Great, thanks for the quick update.

[Chess96]

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

These signals are standard DCS radio transmissions. DCS does model terrain occlusion, meaning that distance and line of sight are a factor. If you are (as you should ) flying at low altitude, the radio signal can easily cut out, especially if the transmitter is located in a ravine.

I get that ! But just to test I was flying nice and high and the transmission cut when I was approx 10nm from the downed pilot. And the screen you see is that very same pilot. I was on the ground next to him and no beacon sound on the ADF. I could still hear a Squelsh sound on the frequency but no homing info and no sound. 

 

 

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

Do you have any mods running with DCS?

I do not. But the mission contains quite a few DML modules. I will share it with you privately