DCS-Dismounts: A script for ground vehicles to transport squads and other cool things!

[WinterH]

I was working on this script on and off since about april this year, and now it's at a stage where I can consider it "v1.0" and open up a thread for it: https://github.com/erdenizsanlav/Dcs-Dismounts/releases/tag/v1.0

The script is easy to add into the missions, and it gives every APC/IFV and most trucks some infantry squads that fits with its troop transport capacity, as well as to some degree the country it belongs to. Some squads may have just riflemen, others maybe a an RPG or two, yet other may have some nasty surprises in the shape of Igla or Stinger MANPADS! There are even occasional mortar squads as a possibility! This gives an element of randomness where each time you run a mission, a convoy may or may not have dangerous defenses in it, and each time nasties may be coming out of a different vehicle in the group. When a vehicle that has a squad assigned stops, it will drop its squad. When the vehicles gets back on the move past a certain speed, the squad will be picked back up. Any members of the squad killed in the meantime will remain dead of course, and won't spawn again when the vehicle stops and deploys its squad the next time.

You can issue basic "move here" or "shoot here" commands to dismounted squads through use of F10 map markers.

Another feature is, you can have weapon site transports if you have a group with suitable vehicles and assign them so. Currently these can be Rapier SAM site for UK trucks, Soviet AAA site with a Fire Can radar for Russian/Soviet truck types, 105mm LeFH 18 howitzer site from WWII German trucks and halftracks, and an American WWII AAA site with 37mm and quad .50 cals from US WWII trucks&halftracks. The way these work is, when the assigned group makes it to their final waypoint and stops, each vehicle that has a component of the weapon site assigned to it by the script will drop a few "worker/crew" infantry from those vehicles, and a timer of 5 minutes starts. If at the end of that timer, transporting vehicle and worker crew are still alive, whatever was in that vehicle (could be a radar, an AA gun, a Rapier SAM launcher etc) will be dropped. These convoys can make a nice "destroy/protect before it gets to its destination and deploy its cargo" kind of mission objective/side objective.

You can either have the script automatically add squads to all the supported vehicles in the mission's start, only have squads added to certain vehicles you want, or have them added to all the supported vehicles except the ones you want it to ignore etc. Currently almost all the APCs and IFVs as well as most of the trucks in core DCS is supported, with a few random squad options fitting their troop capacities each. If, optionally enabled, WWII Assets Pack and popular community mod FrenchPack vehicles are also supported.

For any unsupported vehicle type (could be a mod, or really any vehicle you want to add dismounts for), there are two different ways to get them to have some troops too.

I plan to add a lot more features as time goes, and you can see them listed in the "issues" section of the github page in the link above. You can use that same "issues" section to request features and report bugs too.

The script uses MIST, and aside from that, is pretty much plug&play into any mission with minimal work to get it working in it.

My thx to devs of MIST, and also MBot, whose earlier script when I found out about after deciding to build this one helped with mine both as an inspiration, and even a few flat-out nicked lines of code  

Hope this helps adding some dynamism and extra challenge/targets into missions of other ground-pounding lovers in the community!

[Rudel_chw]

Thanks a lot for sharing this, I read the documentation at GitHub and seems a bit complex for me, but I will test the demo mission tonight and that will probably make everything clear.

[WinterH]

40 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

Thanks a lot for sharing this, I read the documentation at GitHub and seems a bit complex for me, but I will test the demo mission tonight and that will probably make everything clear.

Demo mission in github has a very old version of the script enabled in it which I've just realized now that you mention it :)) But to enable it in a mission is done exactly the same way, so looking at triggers in it should be enough to see how to use it :).

Just creating a trigger to load first MIST, then DCS-Dismounts with a "DO SCRIPT FILE" action for each, and then just typing "mechanizeAll()" in a following "DO SCRIPT" action should be enough to enable it.

[Hairdo1-1]

Thank you for this! Is there somewhere in the script I can customize the squadtypes? For example I would like to add RPGs to the MANPAD squads

[WinterH]

14 minutes ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

Thank you for this! Is there somewhere in the script I can customize the squadtypes? For example I would like to add RPGs to the MANPAD squads

Not yet, well not easily without editing the script anyway. But I am planning to move pretty much all the currently hardcoded parts of squads etc to a more customizable way and also create a windows app with a UI so you can set options, customize&configure the way things are, add your own vehicle types to script, add your custom squads etc.

For now though, if you want to edit the script and change squads yourself, current default squads are all between lines 57 to 690, between "--START squads" and "--END squads" comment lines. Replace one of, for example "Infantry AK" lines with "Paratrooper RPG-16" for a VDV dude with RPG-7, or "Soldier RPG" for Mr. Beardy-Insurgent-Dude with RPG.

[bennyboy9800]

Fantastic! What a great asset for mission makers, thank you for your work!

[Hairdo1-1]

On 12/7/2022 at 10:23 AM, WinterH said:

Not yet, well not easily without editing the script anyway. But I am planning to move pretty much all the currently hardcoded parts of squads etc to a more customizable way and also create a windows app with a UI so you can set options, customize&configure the way things are, add your own vehicle types to script, add your custom squads etc.

For now though, if you want to edit the script and change squads yourself, current default squads are all between lines 57 to 690, between "--START squads" and "--END squads" comment lines. Replace one of, for example "Infantry AK" lines with "Paratrooper RPG-16" for a VDV dude with RPG-7, or "Soldier RPG" for Mr. Beardy-Insurgent-Dude with RPG.

I can't find where you defined the more basic squads names in the script?

- rifleWest
- rifleRu
- rifleIns
- manpadsRu
- manpadsWest
- manpadsIns

 

 

[WinterH]

6 hours ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

I can't find where you defined the more basic squads names in the script?

- rifleWest
- rifleRu
- rifleIns
- manpadsRu
- manpadsWest
- manpadsIns

Ah, those are only used by assignSetSquadTypeToVehicle() function, but they aren't the definitions themselves, if you search for these in the script though, it will get you to lines where you can find names of actual definitions, for example:

--vehicles with 11 passenger capacity
        if vehichleType == 'M-113' or vehichleType == 'MTLB' then
            if squadType == 'rifleWest' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,usaSquadM113)
            elseif squadType == 'rifleRu' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,russianSquadMTLB)
            elseif squadType == 'rifleIns' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,insRifleSquadMTLB)
            elseif squadType == 'manpadsWest' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,usaSquadManpadsM113)
            elseif squadType == 'manpadsRu' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,russianSquadManpadsMTLB)
            elseif squadType == 'manpadsIns' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,insSquadManpadsMTLB)
            end
        else --else use 7 man squads for now
            if squadType == 'rifleWest' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,usaSquadBradleyMarderWarrior)
            elseif squadType == 'rifleRu' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,russianRifleSquadBTR_BMP2_BMP3)
            elseif squadType == 'rifleIns' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,insRifleSquadBTR_BMP2)
            elseif squadType == 'manpadsWest' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,usaSquadManpadsBradleyMarder)
            elseif squadType == 'manpadsRu' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,russianModernSquadBTR_BMP2_BMP3)
            elseif squadType == 'manpadsIns' then
                initializeTransport(hostVehicle,insSquadManpadsBTR_BMP2)
            end
        end

for "rifleWest", you need to find usaSquadM113 and usaSquadBradleyMarderWarrior, and change some of the riflemen in those into a RPG soldier. I'll add an option soon then to turn at least one member per squad into a RPG soldier to provide an easy quick fix for this.

Squad definition normally look like this:

usaSquadBradleyMarderWarrior =
{
    "Soldier M4",
    "Soldier M4",
    "Soldier M249",
    "Soldier M4",
    "Soldier M4",
    "Soldier M249",
    "Soldier M4"
}

If you change content between quotes for of any of the lines with "Soldier RPG" it will replace that squad member with a RPG-toting one.

[Hairdo1-1]

@WinterHjust a thought. As you added TRANSPORT## to the script so any vehicle can be added, maybe add a SQUAD## so that any squad with that prefix will be used as a dismount? Not sure if it’s doable

[WinterH]

18 hours ago, Hairdo1-1 said:

@WinterHjust a thought. As you added TRANSPORT## to the script so any vehicle can be added, maybe add a SQUAD## so that any squad with that prefix will be used as a dismount? Not sure if it’s doable

I'll see if I can get that working later on for 2.0, should be possible. For a bit I'll be working on a few other scripts and a few missions now that I've brought this one up to a v1.0 state, but I'll get back on this later.

[Hairdo1-1]

@WinterHhope all is well. Any updates with this?

[WinterH]

Hi, all is ok, but IRL stuffz will keep me away from working on scripts for a bit it looks like, as I keep wanting to work on it but end up not finding time or energy

Hopefully soon.