Troops occupying buildings

[Kang]

1 hour ago, Exorcet said:

Depending on how DCS is coded the troop embarkment from helicopters and such could just be copy-pasted.

Ah, yes... well, funny story that one... (Is there even reasonably working embarkment code in place?)

No seriously, you are probably quite right that making certain buildings at least be able to 'host' infantry and have them use their weapons from inside is decidedly easier than revamping how ground units as a whole act within urban environments.

[Kappa-131st]

Troops occupyng building must be a games-changer for DCS !
ED need to inspire to another game : Wargame Red Dragon

[epoch]

The problem with troops in buildings in DCS is that the buildings have no 'in'.

 

 

[upyr1]

6 hours ago, Kang said:

Ah, I see I misunderstood what you meant there. I thought you meant adding further ground assets in general as a paid pack.

No,the desire is to see playable ships and better playable ground vehicles. 

2 hours ago, epoch said:

The problem with troops in buildings in DCS is that the buildings have no 'in'.

 

 

That needs to be fixed 

[Beirut]

On 4/12/2022 at 4:40 PM, Hotdognz said:

needs to go up a lot of notches now the Apache has dropped as its by far the most popular helicopter  . . . 

 

 

It's funny, you wrote "Apache", but I really think you meant to say "Ka-50".

 

I understand it can get muddled sometimes, the letters are so close on the keyboard. 

[Callsign112]

6 hours ago, Exorcet said:

I think troops in buildings is actually more of a low hanging fruit than anything else. I know a lot of people want the AI to be able to take cover behind buildings/terrain when attacked, but this is probably harder than it sounds. It requires revamping the entire AI detection system (to know where to hide you need to know where the enemy is, but this also has to be a fallible ability so that proper tactics on the attacker's side remain effective), it may require new animations (troops pressing against walls, crouching to fit behind objects, etc), and then there is the CPU overhead for controlling all these AI that need to decide where to go.

On the other hand, hiding in a building could be done just by having the troops get close to a particular building, then disappear, then have the building in question gain weapons (whatever the troops were holding). Depending on how DCS is coded the troop embarkment from helicopters and such could just be copy-pasted.

If low hanging fruit means we don't see improved Ai, then I'm not interested in low hanging fruit. Personally, I am more interested in seeing improvement in Ai, not a copy and past of what is already known to not work well to other parts of the SIM.

And having troops in buildings is not as straight forward as it might sound if the intent is to do it right.

Damage models for buildings would need to be updated, and the soldiers themselves would need the improved logic your suggestion claims it could avoid anyway if the intent is to have anything other than a soldier showing his face in a window until its knocked out. This would describe perfectly what we have now, and which resulted in the common complaint that Ai are stupid and don't react.

And then there are the potential problems if Ai units in buildings receive damage, but are not dead. You can read over in the CA: Front Lines Georgia campaign about Ai that bug out after taking damage causing campaign progression to hang.

I am not against the idea of having infantry in buildings, I am just pointing out that I think we need a functional Ai first. At the moment, what we have is pretty simplistic. I would hope the point to all of this would be to improve.  

[Exorcet]

35 minutes ago, Callsign112 said:

If low hanging fruit means we don't see improved Ai, then I'm not interested in low hanging fruit.

That would be counter productive. It's low hanging fruit in that it's easy to do, so logically you might expect it to happen before an AI revamp.

35 minutes ago, Callsign112 said:

And having troops in buildings is not as straight forward as it might sound if the intent is to do it right.

Technically it's already in the sim. We have armed buildings as placeable units. Their representation in the sim is admittedly simplistic, but it works well enough for some missions. Essentially what I suggested was AI infantry + proximity to build turns the building from static object to armed building.

35 minutes ago, Callsign112 said:

Damage models for buildings would need to be updated, and the soldiers themselves would need the improved logic your suggestion claims it could avoid anyway if the intent is to have anything other than a soldier showing his face in a window until its knocked out. This would describe perfectly what we have now, and which resulted in the common complaint that Ai are stupid and don't react.

And then there are the potential problems if Ai units in buildings receive damage, but are not dead. You can read over in the CA: Front Lines Georgia campaign about Ai that bug out after taking damage causing campaign progression to hang.

I am not against the idea of having infantry in buildings, I am just pointing out that I think we need a functional Ai first. At the moment, what we have is pretty simplistic. I would hope the point to all of this would be to improve.  

You're making things a bit too complicated. All of the things you mentioned would be nice but they're not simple add ons to the current sim. I mentioned troops in buildings as low hanging fruit because it's something potentially easy to do. A lot of the parts are there, tying them together may or may not involve a lot of work.

[upyr1]

8 hours ago, Exorcet said:

I think troops in buildings is actually more of a low hanging fruit than anything else. I know a lot of people want the AI to be able to take cover behind buildings/terrain when attacked, but this is probably harder than it sounds. It requires revamping the entire AI detection system (to know where to hide you need to know where the enemy is, but this also has to be a fallible ability so that proper tactics on the attacker's side remain effective), it may require new animations (troops pressing against walls, crouching to fit behind objects, etc), and then there is the CPU overhead for controlling all these AI that need to decide where to go.

On the other hand, hiding in a building could be done just by having the troops get close to a particular building, then disappear, then have the building in question gain weapons (whatever the troops were holding). Depending on how DCS is coded the troop embarkment from helicopters and such could just be copy-pasted.

1 hour ago, Callsign112 said:

If low hanging fruit means we don't see improved Ai, then I'm not interested in low hanging fruit. Personally, I am more interested in seeing improvement in Ai, not a copy and past of what is already known to not work well to other parts of the SIM.

And having troops in buildings is not as straight forward as it might sound if the intent is to do it right.

Damage models for buildings would need to be updated, and the soldiers themselves would need the improved logic your suggestion claims it could avoid anyway if the intent is to have anything other than a soldier showing his face in a window until its knocked out. This would describe perfectly what we have now, and which resulted in the common complaint that Ai are stupid and don't react.

And then there are the potential problems if Ai units in buildings receive damage, but are not dead. You can read over in the CA: Front Lines Georgia campaign about Ai that bug out after taking damage causing campaign progression to hang.

I am not against the idea of having infantry in buildings, I am just pointing out that I think we need a functional Ai first. At the moment, what we have is pretty simplistic. I would hope the point to all of this would be to improve.  

I would be fine if we see troops enter buildings and disappear like @Exorcet is suggesting provided that we also get improved damage models for the buildings and we get improved AI over all. I think it will take more than 2 weeks to get the updates 

[Callsign112]

On 4/8/2022 at 12:02 AM, Mohamengina said:

Wargame does this mechanic really well.

 

Would be awesome to allow troops to occupy buildings which they could fire out of and would give them a defensive bonus. Would also allow them to ambush vehicles and other infantry.

 

They could be identified by seeing them in the windows/on the roof and would die if the building got destroyed or set on fire.

 

26 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

That would be counter productive. It's low hanging fruit in that it's easy to do, so logically you might expect it to happen before an AI revamp.

Technically it's already in the sim. We have armed buildings as placeable units. Their representation in the sim is admittedly simplistic, but it works well enough for some missions. Essentially what I suggested was AI infantry + proximity to build turns the building from static object to armed building.

You're making things a bit too complicated. All of the things you mentioned would be nice but they're not simple add ons to the current sim. I mentioned troops in buildings as low hanging fruit because it's something potentially easy to do. A lot of the parts are there, tying them together may or may not involve a lot of work.

No I am not making anything complicated. Modeling the Apache helicopter with all its systems was complicated. My hope is that other parts of the SIM follow in that direction, not copy and paste 12 year old pieces of code just because its easy to do.

My original comment, and the one you first quoted was directed at the OP's suggestion. His suggestion would be a massive improvement in Ai functionality and would likely require a substantial amount of work well beyond any low hanging fruit.

After seeing something like the Apache, and being truly amazed, I think other parts of the SIM should follow suite, not go backwards or stay in the past.

But after you copy and paste a static object to represent an armed building, then what?

Can you attack it with another Infantry unit, or do you need a tank/plane?

What happens currently when you attack a building in DCS with a tank/plane?

Should you be able to tell that the soldier inside the building is dead, or does that matter?

Having soldiers in buildings would be great if it was done right, but I am certainly not interested in more of what was 12 years ago. We don't even have capable infantry in the SIM yet, let alone capable infantry fighting from buildings.    

[Exorcet]

7 hours ago, Callsign112 said:

 

No I am not making anything complicated. Modeling the Apache helicopter with all its systems was complicated. My hope is that other parts of the SIM follow in that direction, not copy and paste 12 year old pieces of code just because its easy to do.

They're not mutually exclusive. You originally said that we need more advanced AI before we could have troops in buildings, but that depends on how it's implemented. It's absolutely true that a detailed building occupation model would be preferred over a simple one, but for obvious reasons sometimes you get a simple model as a starting point before moving on to a complex one.

The idea of copying and pasting code isn't to keep the sim simple, it's to allow a new feature in the short term while still leaving us with the possibility of a more detailed system in the future.

7 hours ago, Callsign112 said:

My original comment, and the one you first quoted was directed at the OP's suggestion. His suggestion would be a massive improvement in Ai functionality and would likely require a substantial amount of work well beyond any low hanging fruit.

Not really. I guess it's up for interpretation since the original post isn't very detailed but my idea is essentially the same minus the "defensive bonus".

7 hours ago, Callsign112 said:

After seeing something like the Apache, and being truly amazed, I think other parts of the SIM should follow suite, not go backwards or stay in the past.

How is adding a new capability to AI staying in the past? It's literally advancing the sim by definition.

7 hours ago, Callsign112 said:

But after you copy and paste a static object to represent an armed building, then what?

Can you attack it with another Infantry unit, or do you need a tank/plane?

What happens currently when you attack a building in DCS with a tank/plane?

Should you be able to tell that the soldier inside the building is dead, or does that matter?

Having soldiers in buildings would be great if it was done right, but I am certainly not interested in more of what was 12 years ago. We don't even have capable infantry in the SIM yet, let alone capable infantry fighting from buildings.    

 

Once the troops enter the building, the building becomes an armed building unit as we already have in DCS. So the answer to your question is basically whatever applies to those units.

I guess the last point isn't covered currently, but the simplest thing to do is to tie infantry health to the health of the building they occupy. If the building is alive so are they. If the building is dead so are they.

12 years ago we didn't have infantry in buildings. We still don't today. I don't see what adding the feature has to do with the past. I'm not even sure why we're discussing this because I think we're on the same side. Some projects are completed in steps, from simple to complex. Especially in DCS where we get more features added over time.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Exorcet

[Silver_Dragon]

On 4/12/2022 at 10:58 PM, upyr1 said:

Combined arms is the skeleton in the pool meme. I would love to see them pay attention to it. I am willing to pay for CA ii or expansion packs if it gets eagle as long as it gets done. The ideal situation would be to fix CA then use expansion packs to add vehicles. Though no matter what they need to work on the ground war.

This is the need to work on the ground war 

Remember CA was a professional JTAC UK Army trainer, licensed to release by ED, no a planned product build to improve land warfare on DCS, ED has none make improvements on CA surelly by a "locked" contrat.

Here someone like a FPS infantry warfare implementation as "Arma / Combat Mission" series, and actually, you require build all infantry new product from scratch with a dedicate team (with actually no exist) with a defined plan to reach them and working on cooperation with a AI team to build someone coherent and the core team to build detail interior buildings and the propper assets to working with infantry. The same situation if ED build a "land" module, has a product outside CA.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Silver_Dragon

[fargo007]

While I'm roundly in favor of the idea of occupied structures, how would we decide as a mission designer whether the troops are portrayed "inside" a building instead of up on  top of it?  

I think this is a deeper rabbit hole than might be first imagined.

[Silver_Dragon]

Actually, has none into the ED code to get troops into buildings, and no, we dont have troops with control nothing into them. The same situation with the helo cargo with only has a Phantom script with load and unload troops.

A armed building (on fact by code a "vehicle" building with weapons), working with none crew. You can put a script to simulate crew with leave o enter on a building (a placed building, no a scenery building), to appears o disappear by a trigger when a condition appears, but has none into the DCS code to make a soldier open a door, enter into a room or climb a leader and take a defensive positions on a roft, hiding into them and start fire with a enemy move on your area, similar situation, has nothing on a helo or a vehicle with a troop can open a door and enter into them, seating into as take damage from a weapon.

That in not only a AI problem, has a feature outside of the DCS product.

Edited April 17, 2022 by Silver_Dragon

[Callsign112]

21 minutes ago, Exorcet said:

They're not mutually exclusive. You originally said that we need more advanced AI before we could have troops in buildings, but that depends on how it's implemented. It's absolutely true that a detailed building occupation model would be preferred over a simple one, but for obvious reasons sometimes you get a simple model as a starting point before moving on to a complex one.

The idea of copying and pasting code isn't to keep the sim simple, it's to allow a new feature in the short term while still leaving us with the possibility of a more detailed system in the future.

Not really. I guess it's up for interpretation since the original post isn't very detailed but my idea is essentially the same minus the "defensive bonus".

How is adding a new capability to AI staying in the past? It's literally advancing the sim by definition.

 

Once the troops enter the building, the building becomes an armed building unit as we already have in DCS. So the answer to your question is basically whatever applies to those units.

I guess the last point isn't covered currently, but the simplest thing to do is to tie infantry health to the health of the building they occupy. If the building is alive so are they. If the building is dead so are they.

12 years ago we didn't have infantry in buildings. We still don't today. I don't see what adding the feature has to do with the past. I'm not even sure why we're discussing this because I think we're on the same side. Some projects are completed in steps, from simple to complex. Especially in DCS where we get more features added over time.

 

My apologies if I left the wrong impression, because I agree and think we are on the same page/team. Your points are well taken, and yes ED could rush out and represent troops in buildings like they could rush out and make a simplistic Dynamic Campaign using the currently available game mechanics.

But the impression I get after reading the OP's request, and the one I was working from is that he was requesting a more advanced infantry.

For example, using the currently available infantry to occupy rooftops would look like cardboard cutouts silhouetted against the sky for the player to take potshots at without having them react, take cover, return appropriate fire.

My main point being for troops in buildings to add anything over what is currently available would mean they would have to advance the current infantry model, which they are apparently working on to some extent. Regardless of whether the infantry unit is in a building or not, the ability to prone, crouch, peak from a window or from behind a piece of cover, and return appropriate fire would be needed.

I completely agree with your point about doing it in steps, and think this is what is likely going to happen.

The impression I took form the mini road map announcement they made several months ago was that they were working on improving obstacle avoidance. This would initially be used to improve the quality of deck crew on the SC as they direct aircraft on-deck before it is rolled out to infantry in general. Obstacle avoidance is sort of akin to improving the Ai units situational awareness. A next step could be to add animations for going prone, crouching, retreating when appropriate.

But given the level of complexity/detail that ED and third parties put into flyable modules, and given that this level seems to also be increasing as the fight gets closer and closer to the ground magnifies the need to improve the ground war side of this. 

[upyr1]

36 minutes ago, Silver_Dragon said:

Remember CA was a professional JTAC UK Army trainer, licensed to release by ED, no a planned product build to improve land warfare on DCS, ED has none make improvements on CA surelly by a "locked" contrat.

Here someone like a FPS infantry warfare implementation as "Arma / Combat Mission" series, and actually, you require build all infantry new product from scratch with a dedicate team (with actually no exist) with a defined plan to reach them and working on cooperation with a AI team to build someone coherent and the core team to build detail interior buildings and the propper assets to working with infantry. The same situation if ED build a "land" module, has a product outside CA.

 

Since I have not read the contract for Combined Arms, I don't know the limits and I keep suggesting ED should work on Combined Arms II since I am not sure if the issue is as you suggest a contract one or a resource one. Eagle's business model depends on releasing modules so I hope that they doing Combined Arms II or other land modules would lead to and fund a team dedicated to improving the ground war. The same holds true for Naval modules with the Fleet Ops wish.