A mission editor option for making units "teleport" to another waypoint instead of travelling there

[Fisherman82]

A mission editor option for making units "teleport" to another waypoint instead of travelling there would be a big gamechanger for creating missions with random placement of SAM-sites for example. If you want to have risk of running into a SA8 somewere in Syria for example you need to place a great number of them to make this happen because they travel so slow that they cant move very far from their starting position, plus, they wont be able to launch while travelling.

If there was a "skip to waypoint" option in the ME, kind of similar to "switch waypoint" but where the unit just moves to the other location it would make it possible to just use one unit and have the possibility to have it appear in 20 or more different locations. That would reduce the number of units in a mission and the time to edit the mission, if you have some more advanced triggers and zones for SAM-sites you have to set those up for each of the 20 different placements now. If there was a "skip to waypoint" option you would just need one set up.

[cfrag]

I'm not sure if I read you correctly, but can't you achieve this 'teleporting' behavior by simply adding another SAM site and setting their 'late activation' flag?

Instead of teleporting a group to a waypoint (which is a known location), simply place a new group there, and deactivate it. It won't appear in-game. When the time comes to 'teleport', simply activate the late activate group at that waypoint location, and perhaps deactivate the group that would move there. 

Edited January 21, 2022 by cfrag

[sirrah]

15 minutes ago, cfrag said:

I'm not sure if I read you correctly, but can't you achieve this 'teleporting' behavior by simply adding another SAM site and setting their 'late activation' flag?

Instead of teleporting a group to a waypoint (which is a known location), simply place a new group there, and deactivate it. It won't appear in-game. When the time comes to 'teleport', simply activate the late activate group at that waypoint location, and perhaps deactivate the group that would move there. 

 

Exactly

Either I'm not understanding the OP, but you can simply do this by (de)activating units

In general though, it would be very welcome if ED added some means to create randomness without the need for scripting.. Such as a "set random flag between 1-10" trigger

Edited January 21, 2022 by sirrah

[VeeSPIKE]

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

I'm not sure if I read you correctly, but can't you achieve this 'teleporting' behavior by simply adding another SAM site and setting their 'late activation' flag?

Instead of teleporting a group to a waypoint (which is a known location), simply place a new group there, and deactivate it. It won't appear in-game. When the time comes to 'teleport', simply activate the late activate group at that waypoint location, and perhaps deactivate the group that would move there. 

 

 

Adding to Cfrag's answer, you can also set script flags to spawn units on events. So if you wanted to have a SAM unit go active if a boundary is crossed, it can be done that way.

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, Fisherman82 said:

A mission editor option for making units "teleport" to another waypoint instead of travelling there would be a big gamechanger for creating missions with random placement of SAM-sites for example. If you want to have risk of running into a SA8 somewere in Syria for example you need to place a great number of them to make this happen because they travel so slow that they cant move very far from their starting position, plus, they wont be able to launch while travelling.

If there was a "skip to waypoint" option in the ME, kind of similar to "switch waypoint" but where the unit just moves to the other location it would make it possible to just use one unit and have the possibility to have it appear in 20 or more different locations. That would reduce the number of units in a mission and the time to edit the mission, if you have some more advanced triggers and zones for SAM-sites you have to set those up for each of the 20 different placements now. If there was a "skip to waypoint" option you would just need one set up.

I don't see a point to the teleport option, as it isn't realistic and I'm not sure what your reason for using it is. In the AI there is a flag called random which I believe also includes the possibility that a unit won't appear in a mission and then there is the option to set flags. If your goal is to ensure a player can't go around a SAM then I would check to see what can be done now with a if player in zone then activate sa-8 triger.

Edited January 21, 2022 by upyr1

[Fisherman82]

4 hours ago, upyr1 said:

I don't see a point to the teleport option, as it isn't realistic and I'm not sure what your reason for using it is. In the AI there is a flag called random which I believe also includes the possibility that a unit won't appear in a mission and then there is the option to set flags. If your goal is to ensure a player can't go around a SAM then I would check to see what can be done now with a if player in zone then activate sa-8 triger.

 

Imortal and invisible is not realistic either, yet they are there in the ME and serve their purpose for those that use them. Depends on how you design the mission. I like to set the SAMs up so that each of them operates in one of three random modes.

1. The normal way without any scripting.

2 Time based so that they can come on after a while and then turn of after a random time and then on again and so on.

3. The most leathal, they only turn on when the player is within their WEZ, providing that another radar, an EWR for example had the player detected at the time. (there is a script for setting a flag when a radar had detected a unit, I cant understand that there isnt a stock condition for when a unit has detected another, thats another wish).

To set this or similar logic up for multiple units just so that the one you want can appear in different loctaions is very time time consuming, being able to change the location by teleporting them randomly at missionstart to simulate that you dont know where they are even if you designed the mission yourself would reduce the workload like 10 times or more. It would be a huge gain.

Edited January 21, 2022 by Fisherman82

[cfrag]

53 minutes ago, Fisherman82 said:

being able to change the location by teleporting them randomly at missionstart to simulate that you dont know where they are even if you designed the mission yourself would reduce the workload like 10 times or more [Emphasis cfrag]

Now that's an important distinction. I read your original post that you wanted a group to teleport around the map during the mission using waypoints, magically jumping from one place to another. Hence the "unrealistic" comments. But if I read you correctly, that's not what you want at all: you want one specific group to appear at one of multiple possible locations, and stay there, "merely" randomizing group placement to simplify a mission's unpredictability (which currently requires a lot of redundancy and busywork). The waypoints that you referenced in your OP were simply the means to facilitate such a random feature: used to pass the different possible locations from ME to DCS; they were not intended as a route the group was to follow in-game using teleportation. The game was to pick one of them, and transport the entire group there at mission start. If that is what you are suggesting, then yes, a 'randomize start location' is indeed something that I would like  (and let's not speak of 'teleportation' again ) 

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, Fisherman82 said:

Time based so that they can come on after a while and then turn of after a random time and then on again and so on.

I think This will be added with the iad network that eagle has planned.

 

7 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Now that's an important distinction. I read your original post that you wanted a group to teleport around the map during the mission using waypoints, magically jumping from one place to another. Hence the "unrealistic" comments. But if I read you correctly, that's not what you want at all: you want one specific group to appear at one of multiple possible locations, and stay there, "merely" randomizing group placement to simplify a mission's unpredictability (which currently requires a lot of redundancy and busywork). The waypoints that you referenced in your OP were simply the means to facilitate such a random feature: used to pass the different possible locations from ME to DCS; they were not intended as a route the group was to follow in-game using teleportation. The game was to pick one of them, and transport the entire group there at mission start. If that is what you are suggesting, then yes, a 'randomize start location' is indeed something that I would like  (and let's not speak of 'teleportation' again ) 

I would love a random start location as well 

[Tippis]

2 hours ago, cfrag said:

Now that's an important distinction. I read your original post that you wanted a group to teleport around the map during the mission using waypoints, magically jumping from one place to another. Hence the "unrealistic" comments. But if I read you correctly, that's not what you want at all: you want one specific group to appear at one of multiple possible locations, and stay there, "merely" randomizing group placement to simplify a mission's unpredictability (which currently requires a lot of redundancy and busywork). The waypoints that you referenced in your OP were simply the means to facilitate such a random feature: used to pass the different possible locations from ME to DCS; they were not intended as a route the group was to follow in-game using teleportation. The game was to pick one of them, and transport the entire group there at mission start. If that is what you are suggesting, then yes, a 'randomize start location' is indeed something that I would like  (and let's not speak of 'teleportation' again ) 

Even if it were used post-start as well, it would still have its uses.

Realism doesn't really matter because this is something the mission creator has both all the freedom in the world, as well as the responsibility, to deal with as they like. It's one of those behind-the-curtains tricks that all missions use — a programming sleight of hand to just make the whole thing work better.

A teleport would let you massively reduce the unit count in a number of situations and AI is one of those things that we have very few methods of tweaking. If the same (decorative or fully functional) group could patrol both the starting airport and the one the mission ends at, and/or the one you have to defend half-way through the mission, or whatever, that means cutting the unit count in half (or by two thirds), which is pretty significant. And the player won't notice because it'll happen when they're not looking. A lot of the same results could be done with scripting — disabling and spawning units — to much the same effect, but with a slightly higher overhead since you'd then have to deal with the scripting trigger checks. Granted, those don't account for a lot, but still…

The only downside I can see is that it wouldn't be as applicable for those post-start uses in MP, simply because more eyes = more people that you have to hide the teleport from. Whereas a spawn/despawn script would just deal with it by spawning a new group for the people in front while the laggards in the back delay the despawning of the first group, a teleport would look ugly for one or the other since the units in the front would be the same as the units in the back, and one of the two would notice them suddenly appearing or disappearing.

The randomised spawn point thing would just be icing on the cake — a lot of the issues with the current randomisation schemes is the ugliness of the “Condition” predicate logic is what drives the need to do it via scripting instead and this kind of thing would definitely help with creating a different means of having randomisation and unpredictability directly in the game logic without having to go the lua route.

[cfrag]

9 hours ago, Tippis said:

It's one of those behind-the-curtains tricks that all missions use — a programming sleight of hand to just make the whole thing work better.

Agreed, and  I'm not opposed to the idea. Being a somewhat stickler for details, though, I find it advantageous to identify the root cause for a change request - the "why" before the "what", so to speak. "Never end up with the means", my prof used to tell me (much too) long ago. We actually don't want universal teleportation for groups in this case, we want randomized starting locations for groups, and teleportation is merely a means to achieve that. It was important for me to understand that. As I see it now, this wish-list item is squarely about giving groups randomized start locations (hence my somewhat unfortunate "let's not speak of teleportation again" quip).

I also note that we already have some limited teleportation  in DCS: when you crash, you are teleported back to the airfield that you departed from, when you enter a zone, a KC-130 teleports in (is activated) so we can top off - and we all acknowledge that this is acceptable in the context of DCS. So no contest there; anything that makes a mission better (i.e., more fun - I do not prioritize realism over fun in games) is acceptable to me. I still would prefer if ED solved the root cause 'randomized starting location' rather than giving us a hack-ish work-around. As wish-list items go, randomized start locations figures on mine quite prominently too

 

[Fisherman82]

13 hours ago, cfrag said:

Now that's an important distinction. I read your original post that you wanted a group to teleport around the map during the mission using waypoints, magically jumping from one place to another. Hence the "unrealistic" comments. But if I read you correctly, that's not what you want at all: you want one specific group to appear at one of multiple possible locations, and stay there, "merely" randomizing group placement to simplify a mission's unpredictability (which currently requires a lot of redundancy and busywork). The waypoints that you referenced in your OP were simply the means to facilitate such a random feature: used to pass the different possible locations from ME to DCS; they were not intended as a route the group was to follow in-game using teleportation. The game was to pick one of them, and transport the entire group there at mission start. If that is what you are suggesting, then yes, a 'randomize start location' is indeed something that I would like  (and let's not speak of 'teleportation' again ) 

Exactly, now you understand me. When placing manpads it would also be great, you could place one team in a city and quite easily make them appear at 15 different locations, random every time you start the mission. That way you dont know where they are, if you have two places you might remember if you did the mission yourself.

Now you have two options either make 15 units in the mission or use switch waypoint and make them run the distance, takes a while and the pathfinding for multiple units with the same setup all over Syria would make the CPU go down to fps 1. 

 

[Fisherman82]

Im no programmer, but what Im requesting is the switch waypoint command but without the CPU taxing actual movement, seems like something that should not require new AI technology to make happen but I might be wrong.