ME set a safe moving zone invisible (not engaged) by SAM

[Jenson]

Hey guys,

I'm trying to set up a mission with a simple EW simulation:

Send a prowler (using S3B) in the air, link a moving zone to it with a radius of 2nm. Any unit inside this moving zone will be undetected to an hostile SAM radar. Or in another method, a SAM won't shoot at an unit unless the unit moves outside the safe moving zone. 

Is there a way to achieve this? I'm so struggling to get this work. 

Thanks a lot! 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Jenson

[cfrag]

5 hours ago, Jenson said:

Is there a way to achieve this?

Not without Lua. Since you can't selectively tell units (here the SAMs) to ignore targets, you'd have to go the other way around: destroy any missiles that are launched at targets inside the moving safe zone. That is entirely possible, and requires some mild Lua scripting. Here's the general idea. You'd simply apply this to the units inside the prowler's zone (or even simpler: who are less than 2nm away from the prowler.

Edited August 11, 2022 by cfrag

[toutenglisse]

12 hours ago, Jenson said:

...Send a prowler (using S3B) in the air, link a moving zone to it with a radius of 2nm. Any unit inside this moving zone will be undetected to an hostile SAM radar. Or in another method, a SAM won't shoot at an unit unless the unit moves outside the safe moving zone...

Hi, you can set triggers, for every plane of prowler's coalition, to make plane "invisible" when inside moving zone, and "visible" when outside of it. For that you need "switched conditions" triggers (1 for inside, 1 for outside, for every "blue" plane) plus "once" triggers (for the cases when planes are already inside zone at start, because "switched conditions" triggers won't detect that). Works but it requires many triggers.

Example attached (1 "invisible" S3B prowler + 2 F18 AI, one is inside zone at start, one is outside and is targeted by SAM at start, + 1 "client" F18. The 2 AIs follow S3B until time > 6 minutes. the S3B path is over a serie of SAM sites).

The "limit" with moving zone is that it is infinite vertically - you could ad conditions for AI altitudes relative to the S3B flying at 4000m (example : inside moving zone + Alt < 5500m + Alt > 2500m for "invisible" triggers, and outside moving zone OR inside AND Alt > 5500m OR inside AND Alt < 2500m for the "visible trigger") if you want the 3 km moving zone to be a 3km high "cylinder".

test-S3B-EW-blue-invis-inMovZone.miz

Edited August 11, 2022 by toutenglisse

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, toutenglisse said:

to make plane "invisible"

Ha! Sheer brilliance! Thanks @toutenglisse, never thought of that. So much easier than what I would have done. Hat's off to you, sir!  

 

[Jenson]

On 8/11/2022 at 9:16 PM, toutenglisse said:

Hi, you can set triggers, for every plane of prowler's coalition, to make plane "invisible" when inside moving zone, and "visible" when outside of it. For that you need "switched conditions" triggers (1 for inside, 1 for outside, for every "blue" plane) plus "once" triggers (for the cases when planes are already inside zone at start, because "switched conditions" triggers won't detect that). Works but it requires many triggers.

Example attached (1 "invisible" S3B prowler + 2 F18 AI, one is inside zone at start, one is outside and is targeted by SAM at start, + 1 "client" F18. The 2 AIs follow S3B until time > 6 minutes. the S3B path is over a serie of SAM sites).

The "limit" with moving zone is that it is infinite vertically - you could ad conditions for AI altitudes relative to the S3B flying at 4000m (example : inside moving zone + Alt < 5500m + Alt > 2500m for "invisible" triggers, and outside moving zone OR inside AND Alt > 5500m OR inside AND Alt < 2500m for the "visible trigger") if you want the 3 km moving zone to be a 3km high "cylinder".

test-S3B-EW-blue-invis-inMovZone.miz 12.85 kB · 2 downloads

 

 

Hats off to the ME master. It works very well. 

Although I've also tried the add AND altitude condition for "invisible on" action, and add OR altitude condition for "invisible off" action. It seems that by adding these altitude the invisible on/off can't be triggered. So I only kept the "Inside/outside moving zone" for the trigger and it works well for the mission. I'll share the mission with you guys once it's done. (a max 8-clients multiplayer COOP hornet strike missions mainly focusing on training and excution)  

Thank you so much again! 

[toutenglisse]

10 hours ago, Jenson said:

...Although I've also tried the add AND altitude condition for "invisible on" action, and add OR altitude condition for "invisible off" action. It seems that by adding these altitude the invisible on/off can't be triggered...

Here is the same .miz example, with the altitudes included (+ or - 1500 meters from S3B altitude). I've checked that while inside the moving zone, if player or AIs go above 5500m or below 2500m they get visible/targeted by SAMs.

EDIT : note that this "works well" for single unit groups, but if you have groups with more than 1 unit it will make conditions more complex or problematic (ex : 1 unit of group inside zone will trigger 'group invisible' while the other units of group can be outside...)

test-S3B-EW-blue-invis-inMovZone-2.miz

Edited August 15, 2022 by toutenglisse
in post

[Jenson]

22 hours ago, toutenglisse said:

EDIT : note that this "works well" for single unit groups, but if you have groups with more than 1 unit it will make conditions more complex or problematic (ex : 1 unit of group inside zone will trigger 'group invisible' while the other units of group can be outside...)

Yup, I noticed that the triggered action can only be applied to a "Group" level. So I've made an independent group for each client plane, but for AI, I think it's too much time consuming to separate all of them into single unit group, it also create troubles for other command when a flight is not in a same group, so for those AI plane, I just made them the normal way. 

I'll check the altitude settings and try to incorporate. 

Thanks a lot! 

Edited August 16, 2022 by Jenson

[Jenson]

Thanks again for your kind help! @toutenglisse 

Here is the first mission with a "fake EW" aircraft, suppressing enemy radar and taking the package (6*AI hornets plus 1-8 client hornet multiplayer COOP) for a runway attack mission, please let me know if you like it, thanks. 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3325580/