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Clarification on Combined Arms Please.


Zimmerdylan

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   I have owned CA now for it's entire existence. When I purchased I thought that I understood what I was purchasing but over the years I have long since abandoned ever using it. I think that I have been under a misconception about it. I would like to clarify this and better understand if it is CA that's causing my woes of mission creation or if the fault lies in bugs with the ME and have nothing to do with CA itself. So I would like to ask a few question about creating mission and the role that CA plays in that, if any under (lets say)minimal conditions. I have only attempted to create very simple scenarios but things go terribly wrong from the very first placement, tack, order, or whatever. 

 At the present, I find CA to be counter intuitive, lacking in usability, and it does not perform assigned tasks with any accuracy whatsoever. I have yet to create even the simplest of missions that actually work. 

 So if anyone could please indulge me on this and answer a few questions:

 The first question is pretty cut and dry. Can I create missions where I use triggers, set parameters for planes, tanks, or other vehicles to follow using only the ME? 

 

 2. If I go into the ME and place 4, B-17's to take off from an airfield, Set up waypoints from the runway to an objective target area, and then order them to fly back to the base. Say I set the cruising altitude to be 20,000 ft. So I increase the altitude of the formation at different waypoints to get them up to 20,000 feet without them going pretty much straight up to 20,000 at insanely slow speed. None of this matters however as they never fly by my orders. I find them at 6000 feet, or 10,000 feet but never at the 20,000 I set. The same goes for their air speed or any other parameters I set. They just won't follow. 

  Is this the ME or CA?

 

3. I set troops on the ground. I set them to move to stratigic areas on the map. They stop at every obstacle. They get hung up and in most cases, never get to their destination. Lots of times they don't go anywhere. 

 Is this CA, or the ME?

 

 I guess that I am not sure where the ME comes in and where CA  ends. I have no idea where the line is. My assumption would be that CA is for complex, on the fly commanding while CA sets up the basic placement and conditions of a mission. But if this is the case, if the ME doesn't work right, would that not make CA pretty useless?

 

  I want to like CA and not have grievances, but the truth is that I cannot set up simple missions because either CA, or the ME doesn't work right. I guess that I should mention that there was a time (around when the Huey came out) that I could set up simple recon, or Dust off type mission where I would go out and evac soldiers while under fire and such. It seems like it all went down the tubes when the embark feature quit working all those years ago, shortly after and is sometimes working, and sometimes not. Since then it has always been touch and go as to what worked and what did not. 

 

 I am willing to bet that there are others who have this same problem. Not really knowing the differences between CA and ME.

 

                                                         Thanks!

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1) Yes you can.

2) Probably just the DCS AI being the "A" instead of "I" as usual. The DCS AI is very, very lacking.

3) Again, just DCS AI and it's bad pathfinding.

CA is not useless per se. You can still command units, drive tanks and do stuff. I'd almost say CA itself works pretty well, it's the AI that makes life much more difficult than it should be.

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If everything you described was set up in the Mission Editor, then that has nothing to do with CA, afaik. CA is for commanding vehicles in the F10 map while the mission is running or driving them yourself.

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On 1/24/2022 at 2:09 PM, Zimmerdylan said:

 

   I have owned CA now for it's entire existence. When I purchased I thought that I understood what I was purchasing but over the years I have long since abandoned ever using it. I think that I have been under a misconception about it. I would like to clarify this and better understand if it is CA that's causing my woes of mission creation or if the fault lies in bugs with the ME and have nothing to do with CA itself. So I would like to ask a few question about creating mission and the role that CA plays in that, if any under (lets say)minimal conditions. I have only attempted to create very simple scenarios but things go terribly wrong from the very first placement, tack, order, or whatever. 

 At the present, I find CA to be counter intuitive, lacking in usability, and it does not perform assigned tasks with any accuracy whatsoever. I have yet to create even the simplest of missions that actually work. 

 So if anyone could please indulge me on this and answer a few questions:

 The first question is pretty cut and dry. Can I create missions where I use triggers, set parameters for planes, tanks, or other vehicles to follow using only the ME? 

 

 2. If I go into the ME and place 4, B-17's to take off from an airfield, Set up waypoints from the runway to an objective target area, and then order them to fly back to the base. Say I set the cruising altitude to be 20,000 ft. So I increase the altitude of the formation at different waypoints to get them up to 20,000 feet without them going pretty much straight up to 20,000 at insanely slow speed. None of this matters however as they never fly by my orders. I find them at 6000 feet, or 10,000 feet but never at the 20,000 I set. The same goes for their air speed or any other parameters I set. They just won't follow. 

  Is this the ME or CA?

 

3. I set troops on the ground. I set them to move to stratigic areas on the map. They stop at every obstacle. They get hung up and in most cases, never get to their destination. Lots of times they don't go anywhere. 

 Is this CA, or the ME?

 

 I guess that I am not sure where the ME comes in and where CA  ends. I have no idea where the line is. My assumption would be that CA is for complex, on the fly commanding while CA sets up the basic placement and conditions of a mission. But if this is the case, if the ME doesn't work right, would that not make CA pretty useless?

 

  I want to like CA and not have grievances, but the truth is that I cannot set up simple missions because either CA, or the ME doesn't work right. I guess that I should mention that there was a time (around when the Huey came out) that I could set up simple recon, or Dust off type mission where I would go out and evac soldiers while under fire and such. It seems like it all went down the tubes when the embark feature quit working all those years ago, shortly after and is sometimes working, and sometimes not. Since then it has always been touch and go as to what worked and what did not. 

 

 I am willing to bet that there are others who have this same problem. Not really knowing the differences between CA and ME.

 

                                                         Thanks!

All really good questions, and I think your right, there are probably a lot of people wondering about the same, or many other questions like them.

Most of what your talking about though is really getting to know the Mission Editor, especially when it involves getting Ai ground units (vehicles/infantry) to do what you want. You just have to play around with it a bit to see what works best for your situation.

Regardless of whether you want to make use of Combined Arms or not, you start by creating a mission in the Mission Editor. You add Combined Arms functionality to the mission by hitting the "Battlefield Commanders" button on the left side of your screen. Looks like 2 flags. Click on that and select the number and type of Combined Arms slots you want to add to your mission (Game Master/Tactical Commander/JTAC/Observer).

In other words, you place ground/air units on the map in the Mission Editor. You add whatever logic you want to run during the mission from within the Mission Editor (triggers/way points/script files), but if you want to also control the ground units while the mission plays out you have to first add the Combined Arms slots you want using the button that looks like 2 flags.

Combined Arms lets you move your ground forces around while viewing them on a tactical map (F10) like a Tactical Commander would, or you can take direct control and drive around in the game world. So Combined Arms is all about controlling the ground forces you placed in the Mission Editor. You can assign way points to a ground unit in the Mission Editor, and during the mission before the ground unit reaches its final way point, you can take direct control of it and drive off in a completely different direction. The Combined Arms module is an incredibly powerful piece of software in terms of what it adds to the SIM. It completely changes the way you interact with the game world. If you are playing with 3 other people (two blue, 2 red), assign at least 2 blue and 2 red combined arms slots to accommodate everyone.

Regarding your second question, this might be a settings issue. 20000 feet is about 6000 meters. I know I have been fooled before myself by setting an altitude in the Mission Editor for a plane to fly, but when I view the Ai plane in the F10 map, it appears to be flying at a different altitude. Just make sure you have the SIM set to show the readout you want.  

When working with ground units, play around with the different types of formations available (On-road/Off-road/Custom ect...), the distance between grouped units ( with Off-road/Custom way points), and their speed.

You can generate some really unique behaviors by simply playing around with these variables. Remember, when using the On-road formation to assign way points, vehicles follow one another at a preset distance, which makes sense because they are on a road. The Off-Road formation is the same as On-road except you can change the distance between units. Formations like E.Rt, E.Lt, wedge ect... are meant for Off-road movement and also have a preset distance between each unit. The Custom formation is the most flexible as it can be used to travel both On-road and Off-road at the distance you choose. When moving ground units over complex terrain, zoom into the map so that you can see fine detail like trees and building and place your way points accordingly. 

I have really enjoyed trying to figure out the logic the Dev's programmed into the Ai units, and have made a few videos to demonstrate some of what I found.

Here are a couple that might help in case you haven't already seen them.

In this video, I show faster moving vehicles passing slower moving infantry who are passing a group of parked vehicles. 3 lanes of traffic.

 

In this video, I show a small infantry group providing support for a PzIV using a mix of On-road/Custom/Off-road way points.

 

In this video, I show how distance between each unit using Custom way points affects Ai behavior and the path they follow.

 

This video might help better address your first question. The action you see in the video is the Ai just following the way points I assigned in the Mission Editor. The Ai fire on their own because the ROE was set in the mission editor to fire when an enemy unit is spotted. The mission also includes Combined Arms slots, so while the mission is playing out, I can also either change the way points, speed, or ROE assigned in the mission editor for any unit, designate targets, or take direct control and drive around in the game world myself. 

 

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  Woah.......Thank you so much for this elaborate explanation. I certainly appreciate it very much. You explained a lot to me and I have a better understanding now. Although I may never use CA, I at least have learned that most of my issues are with the ME. 

 I will go over all of this stuff in the ME and maybe I can create more elaborate missions to fool around with. 

 

                                                                                                   Again: Thanks a million!!!

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