LUA API and CA improvements

[WirtsLegs]

First-off this touches on a variety of combined arms and core game elements, so i opted to stick it here if it would be better in the CA section or elsewhere please move it or let me know and ill re-post there.

 

Ok now that's out of the way, I have been working on some scripting to try and improve the Combined Arms experience, in doing so I have been looking at gameplay and general immersion, I have written two core scripts that improve these aspects (in my opinion) and I would like to ask for one of them to serve as a 'proof of concept' for what I would love to see added to Combined Arms specifically

However in the shorter term there are some much simpler asks that are a mix of new functionality and bug fixes that will allow for my demo scripts to be greatly enhanced, and by extensions similar scripting options that can add a lot to a mission.

So the two features are:

CREW COMMANDS:

This is a mix of immersion and better situational awareness, lets the player benefit from magic AI vision and just generally get help finding their targets. Inspired by GHPC (and my own armoured experience) this generates calls to targets instructing the player of the target type and guiding them to the target with traverse calls.

The version in the attached demo miz is still what I would call indev, has some edgecase issues and target prioritization is very basic at the moment and could use a few more features (radio items to adjust priority of targets and shut it up etc), but its stable and I think quite a bit better than the current vanilla experience.

Note a few vehicles (mostly modern ones) will call "Target Cease Fire" when you kill a target but i don't remember hearing any other commands/callouts

 

VEHICLE ACCURACY:
This topic has been done to death in discord etc but the other big script feature in the demo miz is my stormtrooper function, basically it aims enemies manually using fire at point, in the demo miz this unfortunately manifests as them mostly ignoring the player entirely until the player is the only one they can see, once you get too close it (currently) makes the player visible so they will engage naturally.

The primary issues here stem from a few bugs that severely limit how much it can be used, when it does fully work its a good way to have decent volume of fire without the players being instantly killed.

 

ALL THE WISHES:

So what would I love to see added beyond a full crew command system ... Each title is hyperlinked to a related thread

Unit Description Enhancements: This will allow both crew commands and things like stormtrooper to function better, having quick programmatic access to the rough max range a unit can shoot will generally simplify a lot of potential scripts well beyond what I have mentioned here

Fire at Point Options: This would enable much finer control over the AI in DCS, being able to specify to any increased degree the weapons units should use when given fire at point (or attack unit/group), and being able to shortcut the aim delay would enable simulating a lot more tactical scenarios easily

Fire at point aim delay bypass: This would allow much more nuanced control over the AI and how they engage, enable things like rolling barrages and fire adjustment etc

AI LOS Respect Trees: I'm linking a bug report on this issue, but basically would love to see AI detection factor in foliage and forests for obvious reasons

Ground Unit Follow Command:  Pretty simple, for some scripting due to the nature of things like ROEs, Alert State, and invis/immortal etc being group-wide its often necessary to use individual units (1 unit groups) for certain effects to be feasible, but them moving them around together is a nightmare, a simple follow command would help immensely. This would also be great in normal mission making, allowing 2 groups to move together easily before splitting up at some point

Dead Vehicle Fire/Smoke Randomization: Would love to see just some randomness here so they dont all always spawn the exact-same size fire and smoke effect

Ok so these next ones I have heard rumours are tracked internally already but im not sure....

LUA LOS Access: Allow us to check LOS between 2 points using whatever the back end method of doing so is (expose it through lua), somethign that factors in buildings etc instead of the current land.isVisible() which only considers the ground.

Get Detected Targets/Is Target Detected:  Change to Return detected units that are of the same or neutral coalition instead of just "enemies", same for is detected, allow us to query if a specific unit has detected another regardless of coalition.

 

BUGS:

Ok Final thing before I talk demo mission, there are a variety of bugs that are really directly hindering the ability to accomplish some really interesting effects (can tell you without these both my above-mentioned scripts would be a lot better) or generally hurting CA gameplay a lot, Some of these are fully reported, some not yet acknowledged  but id like to highlight them:

Restrict Target breaks Fire at Point: Cant stop units from shooting at the air or the ground whichever if I plan to use any fire at points

Fire at Point vs ROEs: This one is a major pain and why I need to have the players be invis or neutral or have the enemies neutral to use stormtrooper scripts, as it stands if you give a fire at point, regardless of their ROEs they will immediately ignore the fire at point to engage any valid target they have detected and is in range

Aiming in CA has some issues: Makes aiming at close range a nightmare at times

Tank Engagement Range: Pretty obvious why this would impact CA stuff I think

Infantry Chickens: Running like their heads cut off, makes them hard to include if the players will be looking at them for any amount of time

Sherman FF HE shells: They dont explode, less important than the issues above but worth mentioning (the standard sherman's shells do explode)

 

DEMO TIME:

Ok Thanks for reading, ive been enjoying using LUA to force DCS to do interesting things, and used it a lot to enable experiences that cant exist without it, sometimes its to make something that should someday hopefully end up in the base-game, other times not so much but either way it can suck when a weird bug renders something impossible or overly complicated.

Please check out the demo miz ive attached: DesertFox_demo_nomods.miz(its on Sinai and will require the WW2 asset pack) This has just a single blue JTAC/Operator slot, grab that, let the miz run atleast 2 seconds and then there are a handful of shermans called driveme that are in singleton groups with the rest of the shermans and drive (or feel free to advance time until the shermans are making contact with the enemy)

Regardless play until you've faced off against the enemy tanks and please remember this meant to be a proof of concept, this is not meant to be a completed mission, feel free to reach out if you want more info on the scripts I am always happy to share.

Edited May 7 by WirtsLegs
adding info on map for demo miz

[Walshtimothy]

Great in depth post Wirtslegs , DCS will be a go to battle simulator once many of the above have been addressed .