Bug - Embark Task prone to breaking

[Exorcet]

Coming out of another topic on DCS COIN missions I decided to play with the editor a bit to get a better idea of how to set up the missions as I mostly focus on air to air. I randomly decided to test embarking and found some issues.

First, disembarking troops have a tendency to run forever after leaving the vehicle. It looks like they might be running for the bullseye but I didn't investigate deeply. This can be fixed by giving them a waypoint after the embark waypoint but I feel like this shouldn't be necessary.

Secondly disembarking does not work if the disembark task is not the last waypoint of the transport, unless a hold task is also given. Without the hold the transport sits at the waypoint forever and doesn't deploy troops.

 

Tracks attached.

 

test_embark_forever_run shows the running problem

test_embark_no_embark shows the transport refusing to deploy troops

test_embark_success shows a successful embark and deploy using workarounds (add 1 second hold for transport, add waypoint for embarking troops)

test_embark_forever_run.trk test_embark_no_embark.trk test_embark_success.trk

[NineLine]

Thanks I will take a look soon.

[NineLine]

On 4/12/2024 at 9:34 AM, Exorcet said:

test_embark_forever_run shows the running problem

Can you check this track, for me they do not embark at all, the run up to the vehicle and just stand there. Can you confirm? Might be broken worse now. 

[Exorcet]

5 hours ago, NineLine said:

Can you check this track, for me they do not embark at all, the run up to the vehicle and just stand there. Can you confirm? Might be broken worse now. 

On replaying the track they board, disembark, and then don't run for some reason, acting as I would expect. I'll have to try to make a new track later.

[Exorcet]

9 hours ago, NineLine said:

Can you check this track, for me they do not embark at all, the run up to the vehicle and just stand there. Can you confirm? Might be broken worse now. 

This is odd. Replaying the track it works. Loading the track as a miz and playing the mission it breaks. Try loading through the ME:

 

Notice Troops running at 8 knots, second image the group leader remains fixed in the correct position, all other troops running into the distance. This is the same track, just loaded and resaved as a miz file.

[NineLine]

2 hours ago, Exorcet said:

This is odd. Replaying the track it works. Loading the track as a miz and playing the mission it breaks. Try loading through the ME:

 

Notice Troops running at 8 knots, second image the group leader remains fixed in the correct position, all other troops running into the distance. This is the same track, just loaded and resaved as a miz file.

Thats what I was afraid of, seems embark might be more broken right now. 

[NineLine]

Ok, I was able to spend more time with this. 

For the run forever I wasn't able to reproduce on Caucasus and when I made a slight edit to your track in the ME, it seemed to stop doing it. I am assuming that there is just something there that causes pathfinding to get 'confused' I was able to make it worse as well. So I will let the team look but let me know if you can work around it.

Here is my mission, edit of yours. 

test_embark_forever_run UserMissionEdit3.miz

Will check other issue tonight as well.

[NineLine]

The no embark track I could not reproduce, when I opened the track and resaved as a mission and played it, they disembarked and didn't run, so saw neither issue in that one. 

[Exorcet]

26 minutes ago, NineLine said:

The no embark track I could not reproduce, when I opened the track and resaved as a mission and played it, they disembarked and didn't run, so saw neither issue in that one. 

I will try to recreate it, though just for my information is the intended way for disembark to work is that having a disembark task makes the transporting unit stop and unload, automatically, and then once all transported units are unloaded, it will resume the route? There is no stop condition or switched waypoint needed?

I ask mostly because I've found ReFuAr waypoint for planes need a switch waypoint which seems unintuitive, unless that's also a bug.

[Exorcet]

46 minutes ago, NineLine said:

The no embark track I could not reproduce, when I opened the track and resaved as a mission and played it, they disembarked and didn't run, so saw neither issue in that one. 

The bug might be ever weirder.

I made a mission to try to replicate no embark, I could not reproduce it. But it did reproduce forever run:

I did not save that track, but I took the above screenshot. I also backed out and saved the mission first because of the previous issues with saves.

Then I played the mission intending to save the track and everything worked as expected.

Saving the mission might change how/if the bug appears?

 

More testing, moving the mission editor camera so as to get the save because of changes prompt and then running the mission causes the bug to appear. The bug might appear when the save prompt does in the ME.

 

test_embark_2.miz test_embark_2_success_after_saving.trk

[NineLine]

Interesting, I will try that as well, need to see if I can get it to happen on the Caucasus.

[Exorcet]

I was able to reproduce on the Caucasus

Two versions of the mission. I tried to see if moving the disembark point away from the waypoint would help. With the disembark at the default location (on top of transport waypoint) the troops ran. Moving the disembark off to the side of the waypoint helped, at first. But trying a second time, the troops starting running again.

 

I think part of the issue is the troops being too close to the transport on disembark. They sometimes slide away from the vehicle as if they are being pushed by its hitbox. Or maybe they are colliding with each other.

 

test_embark_forever_run_black_sea_offset.miz test_embark_forever_run_BlackSea_offset.trk test_embark_forever_run_black_sea.miz test_embark_forever_run_BlackSea.trk

Edited April 18, 2024 by Exorcet

[NineLine]

Weird, I did the same things but have no issue with troops running BUT I did manage to break the vehicle path so that's a different bug. lol. Thanks for the tracks I will check them out.

[NineLine]

Weird, both missions the troops embark but the transport never moves.

 

And both tracks, the troops never enter the transport lol...