Mission 4 - missing scripting for breaking ROE

[Rosly]

Hi @Reflected

I really enjoy your campaign. I already pass it once.

Though I have some improvement proposal.

In mission 4 if you break the rules of engagement and shoot down Mig 23 before being shoot upon, the mission stuck.
I mean no progres in scripting, no communication, etc. I can hang at waypoint 3 till fuel is gone with no progress in the mission.

I know it is hard to script every possibility but, this is breaking moment in the campaign.

If you do not follow the "script" there should be some result.
Like "Hey they didn't attack us!" or "This is not going to end well..."I mean anything on the radio + mission failure screen will be enough. Even the mission failure if you do not have resources to get the voice acting.

Your campaign are very immersive and I hope you find this report as positive outcome of your hard work. I really enjoy it and hope You can make it even better with this fix  

[Rosly]

Some video to explain what might be the cause for lack of fire from Mig23 and the existing scripting.

Video: 

Probable explanation: I sneaked bellow Mig23 pair in hope they do not have "look down shoot down radars". They locked me ~15nm but do not opened fire. After the merge me and my wingman stayed at their 6 all the time. I started to wory about the lead which I lost from sight and ordered wingman to "protect me". He instead opened fire to Migs but not shoot them down fully. There was no sense to follow ROE as both Migs was damaged at this point to I finished both. In summary no single missile was fired by the Migs, which fail to trigger the mission script and mission stucked in place to the end of the recording.

Timeline:

4:50 I decided to go low as I thought Mig23 not have "look down shoot down radar". Hoping they will not be able to lock me and fire.

7:25 They lock me up but do not fire.

8:05 Merge with Migs, still no missile in the air. I get behind the wingman of the Mig pair while monitoring If  my wingman will sit on tail of the lead.

9:45 I order the wingman to "protect me" for hope he will sit on the lead.

10:16 My wingman opened fire to lead Mig23 but do not fully shoot it down. Than he fires to my target. Decided to finish it up.

11:40 Splash the lead which started to fly away.

[Reflected]

In short, don't break the ROE

Your orders were to intercept and monitor, so get on their wings and snap photos, or flip the bird...

The thing is, a player can not follow the briefing or rules in a 100 different ways, and there is just no way to set up a mission to accommodate for each. It's not a dynamic campaign. Even like this it has over a hundred triggers per mission, setting up for each possible scenario would make it over a 1000 per mission - special voice overs for each scenario, etc... just not possible. If you want a more dynamic outcome, that's what you need dynamic campaigns for, but I assure you, they won't be offering so many voice overs and other immersive details for this very reason. It's either this or that.

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by Reflected

[scommander2]

Quote

Your orders were to intercept and monitor, so get on their wings and snap photos, or flip the bird...

Do what TOPGUN do when meeting Mig 29s first time.... haha...

Edited October 25, 2022 by scommander2

[Rosly]

15 hours ago, Reflected said:

In short, don't break the ROE

Your orders were to intercept and monitor, so get on their wings and snap photos, or flip the bird...

The thing is, a player can not follow the briefing or rules in a 100 different ways, and there is just no way to set up a mission to accommodate for each. It's not a dynamic campaign. Even like this it has over a hundred triggers per mission, setting up for each possible scenario would make it over a 1000 per mission - special voice overs for each scenario, etc... just not possible. If you want a more dynamic outcome, that's what you need dynamic campaigns for, but I assure you, they won't be offering so many voice overs and other immersive details for this very reason. It's either this or that.

 

 

 I followed ROE. I didn't opened fire and didn't realized my wingman will shoot them on sight after command to check my 6.

As described (and is on the video if you looked at it), the sole reason for mission to fail was we sat on 6 of Mig23 from the beginning. I could fly along all day long like that and the outcome will be the same...
Just wanted to show you that it was not fault of the break of ROE but how game reacted to the "by the book intercept" (go low for planes without LDSH capabilities). I'm not sure you got the point though. Your script assumes that they will shot before merge which as you see might not be the case. So it is hard for me to agree with your explanation that not following the ROE is the sole reason here and that you cannot add conditions for such cases. WE could fly along in circles all day till they will hit the ground due out of gas.

About the custom voice over it is not that it was first thing I thought about.
just added as "nice to have". But fail condition which would prevent the progress to stuck is needed here IMHO.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Rosly

[Jayhawk1971]

In order for certain triggers to fire, you need to be inside the trigger zone set by the mission designer. This is the nature of story-driven single player missions.

This is nothing new, and not limited to DCS either, as these things can happen in basically any scripted game. If you "trick" the game and thereby miss a trigger in any Call of Duty game, for example, the AI will not spawn and the game will not progress. Same happens in pretty much any SP scenario in any ARMA version if you go outside the parameters set by the mission maker.

Evidently, your aggressive (and not briefed) decent to ~6000 ft put you outside of the necessary trigger zone. So either play the mission as it was designed to be played (which will proceed without problems), or you will have to skip it. Or you can try to edit the mission yourself and maybe extend the trigger zone to sea level, if the campaign's copy protection allows you to do that? 

Spoiler

Apparently, the Floggers are not attacking "organically", but are literally "triggered" into launching at the player. You will have to defend and subsequently kill the Floggers, and the mission will proceed normally.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Jayhawk1971

[Rosly]

4 hours ago, Jayhawk1971 said:

Evidently, your aggressive (and not briefed) decent to ~6000 ft put you outside of the necessary trigger zone

You are referring to "some" attack trigger, which I doubt it exist in this mission. Those Mig23 are set hot on you, weapons free. There is trigger though which simply check or presence o missiles those Migs are caring in vicinity of you position (trigger zone), and push the flag + voice that "you been fired upon". Those Migs actually locked on me but are out of parameters to shoot. If you flew Mig-21 this should be clear why. Both Mig-21 and Mig-23 have RP-23 radars if we want to base on technical limitations for sake of this discussion. They are probably modeled the same. And what you mean by aggressive? This is by the book head on intercept. Examples of such approach you can get from 1989 where 2xF-14 shoot down 2xMig-23 in exactly same scenario, and the altitudes where 5k and 9k ASL so almost exact as in my scenario and because of the same reason (radar clutter). It is valid and well known intercept, but this is digression from main point. Just wanted to point out this is exactly what you should do when intercepting Migs-21 or 23 every time without advantage of been able to eliminate threat from distance.

The point here is different. I'm referring too lack of trigger that would fail the mission, if you shoot without being fired upon you got clear message "narration will NOT be continued - game over". Instead if in case as shown, if your wingman shoot them down (you can set "cover me" even on the deck) or they will crash to the see, the mission stuck (safe assumption is those Migs cannot shoot to you from cannon which would be hard to detect by trigger I think). We have known reproduction and I do not agree this something odd. It is one of not covered cases. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reflected responded that there are to many of such cases to cover all of them. I understand, he is busy man. Better to focus on other things than constantly fixing old missions. Though fix for this is probably easy but there can be thousands of similar ones. I get it.
But please do not comment that this is "limitation" or "it is not only DCS" or "this is normal". As Reflected referred to: it is amount of work you put into mission design and effort to maintenance those.

Edited October 25, 2022 by Rosly

[Reflected]

I get it now. On one hand, the Migs are told to open fire and the trigger is activated when they launch. There is no trigger zone.  If the AI fails to do this,  I’m not sure how I can circumvent this but I played the mission a 100 times and they never failed to fire. This is the whole point of the mission and it’s called ‘First blood’ for a reason. ‘What if they don’t fire’ is not an option. 
 

on the other hand the built-in ‘cover me’ command tells your wingman to attack the biggest threat to you. So sam or bandits. It’s like an engage command. 
 

 

Edited October 25, 2022 by Reflected

[Jayhawk1971]

vor 35 Minuten schrieb Reflected:

 I’m not sure how I can circumvent this but I played the mission a 100 times and they never failed to fire.

I can confirm. I've played the mission at least dozen times, and it always went the same way, same time/distance, too. Hence my assumption that you used a trigger zone. It worked like a swiss chronometer.  

Edited October 25, 2022 by Jayhawk1971

[PawlaczGMD]

Yes, don't use any wingman commands in any missions with ROE. E.g. "Cover me" will cause them to be aggressive. I've had this same issue with another campaign. Just don't touch your wingman.