Some questions regarding artillery

[markturner1960]

Hi, I am trying to work out the best way to generate some cool artillery barrages and explosions. I started off having actual units and giving them waypoint actions to attack a group or fire at a point. However, have since discovered that this can generate quite a CPU overhead...

I found this guide: 

 where the guy says that using "fake" artillery is a much more CPU friendly way. He uses triggers and the "shelling zone" action, which seems great. 

I have some queries relating to this, first one is regarding the damage scale - how does that work? Obviously 0 is no damage, but what would 50 for example do? Does it work on a radius or what? And can you edit the frequency of the shells, as they all seem to come fairly quickly...which leads to......

Second one is more complicated.......this relates to time. Can you make this function repeat and better still repeat at random times using the random condition? And how would you make it work with several zones and randomise the shelling into these zones? Just have many triggers? Which seems a bit cumbersome....

Many thanks

[Branli]

Point 1: Best way to check how damage values behave is just testing it out by trail and error. 50 to much? Try 25. 25 to much? Try 12.5. 12.5 almost no effect? Try 20 etc. etc. Its a simple fifty / fifty approach and off course some guess work is involved. Eventually you get a feel how numbers correlates to your desired effect.

Point 2: Their are many options you can do this. The most realistic way in my opinion is:

- Calculate the distance between the target and the artillery.
- A shell has a velocity moving from Point A - B
- A shell has a parabolic behavior from point A - B ( for example y = 100 - (1/100) *x^2 ) https://www.desmos.com/calculator/t9utbi5yhf?lang=nl
- To calculate the time of impact from firing until impact you start a virtual timer
- Based on the velocity of the shell you simulate when the shell should impact.
- Add some random deviation between 1 and 0.8 to make it less predictable.

Another, easier option is and (less CPU intensive):

- Calculate the distance between the target and the artillery.
- Multiply the distance with a factor (for example a shell should travel 0.8nm per second) if a distance is 20nm, shell should hit a target after 16 seconds.
- Add a random deviation lets say give a random number between 1 and 0.8. And multiply the time with a number between 1 to 0.8. (16 - 12.8 seconds)

Hope it helps

[markturner1960]

Hi Branli, thank you for the suggestions....In regards point 2, how do your suggestions relate to to the mission editor and the settings and options within it, to make that happen? Perhaps I should clarify a little :

Say I set up 10 zones. I want to generate a barrage ( "shelling zone" event) in a random selection of those zones at a random time and interval. I can see from the linked video how to make one zone trigger once. I can then set a whole range of individual triggers, using "Time more" for example and soem otehr triggers such as units in zone etc for other barrages to occur....but woould have to do all of these individually. The lazy person in me wondered if there was a quicker, easier way to generate the seemingly random and ongoing barrages using combinations of trigger events etc in the mission editor that I am not aware of.

 

Thank you

Edited April 8, 2024 by markturner1960

[Branli]

As harsh it may sound, i rather program my way out of this. The Mission Editor is nice in some regard, but it gives massive headaches when it comes to scalability and maintainability. So i would rather create 10 zones in the ME and refer to those zones in my Lua script where i can easily setup functions for each zone and setup the required conditions.  MIST is really nice for checking if there are units in those zones and execute a function if it does. Scripting is actually the quickest in the end. especially if you want to tweak your missions later on.

[markturner1960]

Unfortunately, I can’t write scripts or code! So limited to using the editor, unless someone fancied writing the script for me………. 

[Branli]

@markturner1960 Actually i might do this. I almost have the logic in place. I wrote a script for Artillery Overwatch which requires artillery, but the calculation and picking targets is already automated and works. But i have other issues at the moment i want to solve at the moment for my missions.

[Exorcet]

20 hours ago, markturner1960 said:

first one is regarding the damage scale - how does that work? Obviously 0 is no damage, but what would 50 for example do? Does it work on a radius or what? And can you edit the frequency of the shells, as they all seem to come fairly quickly...which leads to......
 

One of the other explosion triggers uses mass TNT as the explosion volume. This might be similar. Did you try checking the DCS manual for an explanation?

20 hours ago, markturner1960 said:

Second one is more complicated.......this relates to time. Can you make this function repeat and better still repeat at random times using the random condition? And how would you make it work with several zones and randomise the shelling into these zones? Just have many triggers? Which seems a bit cumbersome....

Switched Condition trigger with a flag counter. Have the flag count up to a certain value and reset, or have the flag continually assign random values. When the Switched Condition trigger is met the artillery should trigger. Example:

Trigger 1 > Continuous Action > No Condition > Flag Increase by 1 [Increase does not have to be 1, can be any value that makes sense for your mission]

Trigger 2 > Switched Condition > Flag value is maximum > Flag set random value (0, 0) [This is using flag random to set flag to 0 by setting the min and max random values to 0]

Trigger 3 > Switched Condition > Flag value is maximum > Shelling Zone

It is a bit cumbersome, but for this like setting artillery timing or flashing SAM sites this is what needs to be done.

[markturner1960]

On 4/9/2024 at 3:37 PM, Branli said:

@markturner1960 Actually i might do this. I almost have the logic in place. I wrote a script for Artillery Overwatch which requires artillery, but the calculation and picking targets is already automated and works. But i have other issues at the moment i want to solve at the moment for my missions.

Ex ellent! Please ping me a message if/ when you do this!

[markturner1960]

Thanks both….. however there is still no way anyone knows of making the burst of shelling that occurs when the “shelling zone” is activated occur over a longer time period and with some better spacing between shots? Currently, around 40 shells all land within approx 10 seconds…….which looks great, but blink and you miss it …… 

this must be coded somewhere? Can anyone point me to where?