[sp / CO-OP MP] EXPANSION - a Dynamic Mission and Sandbox (all aircraft)

[cfrag]

Version 1.50 -- MAJOR UPDATE -- Back to operations!

Well, finally. The Aug-09 release seems to have corrected some issues, left  others, and added some new strangeness. This Expansion update attempts to mitigate the worst damage wrought by unannounced and likely unintended changes made by ED with past three updates. 
Since those updates also brought some (welcome) new DCS abilities, version 1.5 brings preliminary support for the CH-47 Chinook, dynamic player spawning (only available in multiplayer), all to be tested and confirmed over the next few weeks.
Version 1.50 currently is HOT only, I'll add a cold version as soon as this release settles.

Details:
•    massive DCS code hardening (Jul-11, Jul-22, Aug-09 releases)
•    support for dynamic player spawns (MP only) on some airfields/FARPS
•    QoL: csarMissions provide local info 
•    delayed check for FARP ownership, 10 seconds after mission start so that airfields captured with exotic methods (e.g. Olympus) still correctly work after mission reload 
•    massively upgraded convoy code and reporting ability 
•    added CH-47F Chinook to all airfields 
•    made Hook a troop carrier 
•    added cold Hooks 
•    added Hooks to the CSAR-enabled roster 
•    did not create a cold version (yet), will wait for feedback first
 

Edited August 15, 2024 by cfrag

[Grindmetal]

@cfragI noticed that some of the zones, i.e. their DRAW, disappeared as the mission progressed 

[cfrag]

Version 1.51 - 20240822 -- Maintenance Update

 
•    More code hardening 
•    Cleaned up group names
•    COLD version added
•    (still stress-testing dynamic player spawns, no major bugs so far)

 

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

31 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Version 1.51 - 20240822 -- Maintenance Update

 
•    More code hardening 
•    Cleaned up group names
•    COLD version added
•    (still stress-testing dynamic player spawns, no major bugs so far)

 

Tried 1.50. For solo, when red zone turns blue and FARP is set up (after I send blue units into the zone via Olympus), the FARP blue aircraft are not appearing and I am unable to slot in. Is this still as intended for the time being? Or do I need to transport some troops into the zone for a proper take over that will activate the right triggers?

[cfrag]

20 minutes ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

Tried 1.50. For solo, when red zone turns blue and FARP is set up (after I send blue units into the zone via Olympus), the FARP blue aircraft are not appearing and I am unable to slot in. Is this still as intended for the time being? Or do I need to transport some troops into the zone for a proper take over that will activate the right triggers?

No, that is not as intended, looks as if I'll be back to testing.

That being said, a mission must run for 10 seconds for some FARP aircraft to become available (some DCS-internal shenanigans), and during initial slot selection the mission is paused. Does this issue resolve itself after ten seconds sitting in a different cockpit (e.g. F15)?

To help me zero in on a possible bug, can you give me some additional information (and if possible using 1.51):

When you initially capture a FARP, does it turn blue?

When it spins up (some seconds later), do the blue resource vehicles appear?

Do the slot static aircraft (should be neutral/grey) appear (if stopgap is on)?

Can you slot in?

Now, Expansion saves after every 5 minutes. Please wait 5 minutes to allow a save, then restart the mission. Then wait 10 seconds with the mission running (so slots can become available)

- are all farps colored correctly and spun up?

- how about the static stand ins

- can you slot in?

 

Thank you for any additional information that helps me to iron out this bug.

 

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

Hi Cfrag, please see replies below for 1.50... I will try 1.51 later on. Hope it helps. 

7 minutes ago, cfrag said:

That being said, a mission must run for 10 seconds for some FARP aircraft to become available (some DCS-internal shenanigans), and during initial slot selection the mission is paused. Does this issue resolve itself after ten seconds sitting in a different cockpit (e.g. F15)?
>>I waited long enough to ensure all the messages on the right said zone is taken, FARP is ready. F10 map shows zone/FARP is blue. FARP vehicles appear but no aircraft. 

To help me zero in on a possible bug, can you give me some additional information (and if possible using 1.51):

When you initially capture a FARP, does it turn blue?
>>After I send blue units in via Olympus, yes it becomes blue. F10 maps shows it to be blue.

When it spins up (some seconds later), do the blue resource vehicles appear?
>> Yes blue vehicles are there but no blue aircraft.

Do the slot static aircraft (should be neutral/grey) appear (if stopgap is on)?
>> Sorry, not sure what stopgap is. There are no aircraft in the FARP after it has turned blue.

Can you slot in?

>> I can select the slot but I cannot enter the aircraft. Message says "currently blocked and can't be entered"

Now, Expansion saves after every 5 minutes. Please wait 5 minutes to allow a save, then restart the mission. Then wait 10 seconds with the mission running (so slots can become available)

>> Yes, slots are there for selection but not permitted to enter aircraft if not from Nalchik.

- are all farps colored correctly and spun up?

>> Sorry, not sure what you mean.  

- how about the static stand ins
>> Sorry, not sure what you mean.  

- can you slot in?
>> I can select all Nalchik slots and fly Nalchik aircraft. But FARPS turned blue like October FARP, I can select a slot from it but when I enter the mission, message says "currently blocked and can't be entered"

 

 

[cfrag]

36 minutes ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

Hope it helps. 

I did detect a sneaky little edge case that, with slotty and ssbClient together created a race condition between them: if you 

a) start Expansion and

b) load from save 

c) (as single-player -- probably also multi-player)

d) that savegame contains at least one farp that was captured by blue 

e) and the first aircraft that you choose is a helicopter from a captured farp (e.g. April Huey)

then that Helicopter (here the Huey) becomes inaccessible for the remainder of the game. I've now added code to prevent this.

Now, when you load a mission, the mission must run (i.e. time must run in the game, go to spectators perhaps) for at least 10 seconds (wait for Dragon Ledge to announce priorities) before you can enter helicopters on FARPS. The sneaky little bug will be fixed with the next update.

 

[cfrag]

46 minutes ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

After I send blue units in via Olympus, yes it becomes blue.

Please understand that DML does not support units spawned by Olympus, and I do not know how (and would be surprised if) DML handles Olympus-spawned units. They won't be persisted, but hopefully the FARP's ownership should be. Perhaps it would be best if you delete the last savegame and start new in 1.51 without using Olympus spawns. That being said, I don't think that Olympus would screw up DML that badly, as The Debugger (that also can spawn units) should also not trash Expansion. I'll test this later. 

48 minutes ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

When it spins up (some seconds later), do the blue resource vehicles appear?
>> Yes blue vehicles are there but no blue aircraft.

In Single-player that is intentional. In multi-player, the aircraft appear as statics (that is what stopGap does) as pure eye candy. 

 

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

14 hours ago, cfrag said:

Now, when you load a mission, the mission must run (i.e. time must run in the game, go to spectators perhaps) for at least 10 seconds (wait for Dragon Ledge to announce priorities) before you can enter helicopters on FARPS. The sneaky little bug will be fixed with the next update.

Thanks!  It worked. Tested as follows...

1. Started fresh Expansion 1.51.
2. Used Olympus to quickly take over Oct and May FARPS with blue units. Waited for FARPS to be operational. I could then enter FARP aircraft and refuel/rearm. 
3. Waited 5mins to ensure new blue FARPS are saved. Exited Expansion. 
4. Re-Entered Expansion. Clicked on slots in Oct and May FARPS (now blue). But aircraft are blocked from entering.
5. Waited in spectator mode for messages to complete.
6. Selected slots again in Oct and May FARPS. Able to enter aircraft and refuel/rearm. 
   (Previous blue units from Olympus are gone - as intended. Previous Roland and vehicles triggered by Expansion remained.)

I am thinking it might have worked in v1.50 if I had followed step 5. 

Edited August 23, 2024 by GrEaSeLiTeNiN

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

It worked.

Thank you so much for taking the time and test.

[GrEaSeLiTeNiN]

Halfway through this, playing solo, and it feels like a nice campaign  
(Needed some help though with Olympus to take over zones and protect them.) 

Are there other 'Expansion' missions using other maps?
I saw Catch'n'Keep (IW Series). I might try that.  

[cfrag]

4 hours ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

Are there other 'Expansion' missions using other maps?

I have plans to bring expansion to other maps as well (most probably Syria). I'll wait a little bit longer to allow all your kind feedback to settle, and balance the mission. Once I feel comfortable that Expansion has matured to be fun, I'll start the process of bringing it to other maps as well.

4 hours ago, GrEaSeLiTeNiN said:

I saw Catch'n'Keep (IW Series). I might try that.  

Expansion currently represents the high watermark of my mission creation abilities. I did not get there in a single step, ED's user files are littered with less ambitious and (probably) much easier, smaller-scope attempts of mine at this concept. "CnK" is one of them, and before that came 'Pushback' (of which only "Pushback Caucasus" and CnK are current, the other -- Syria and SOH -- require updates to work around the past three unsavory DCS patches).

[Mistermann]

On 8/31/2024 at 7:48 AM, cfrag said:

I have plans to bring expansion to other maps as well (most probably Syria). I'll wait a little bit longer to allow all your kind feedback to settle, and balance the mission. Once I feel comfortable that Expansion has matured to be fun, I'll start the process of bringing it to other maps as well.

This is fantastic news!  Thank you.

[Desolcm]

My buddy and I recently found this mission and it seems awesome.  We played for a few hours but had forgotten to adjust the persistence.  Since fixing that, we are now seeing it crash after the very first objective capture and the attempt to bank the money shortly there after.  We have tried a few things to figure out the cause (solo, multi-player, different host, etc.) but it is consistent.  If there is anything else we can do to help you identify and fix the issue, let me know.  This was with 1.50 and 1.51.

[cfrag]

8 hours ago, Desolcm said:

If there is anything else we can do to help you identify and fix the issue, let me know.  This was with 1.50 and 1.51.

Thank you so much for the headsup. There's a lot I'd like to know, and any clues that you might be able to provide can help. So here goes:

• What do you mean by "crash"? I know that this sounds silly, but it makes a difference. Does the mission throw up a dialog with a stop sign and some text? If so, I'd love to have a screenshot. That would be the single best clue I can have to locate the culprit. So, if the error can be forced in single-player, make it surface, and take a screenshot. If the mission simply becomes unresponsive, the issue becomes less clear-cut to identify
• An obvious question: did you in any way modify/adapt the mission to your needs: add units, objects etc.? If so, can I trouble you to try again with a vanilla copy of Expansion?
• Also: are you running any mods with DCS? For example Blackhawk, A4 etc.? Olympus or some other helpers perhaps? Do you have server extensions running (obviously, I expect you answer with "yes, dummy, I'm running stopGapGUI on the server."). Please remove all but the recommended
• Before you run a test, please remove the saved data file and folder, so we can start fresh, with a defined, common starting point

Thanks for any help you can give me in this

[Desolcm]

I just did a repro as a single player on my local box.  I got a Chinook out of Nalchik.  Here are answers to your questions and some additional info (helpful or not, I'll let you decide)

Crash - DCS completely shuts down.  No errors or messages.  Just back to the windows desktop.  This occurs right after the "new funds" dialog in the game comes up.  In this run it was aprox 190 seconds after dropping off troops at that power plant thing to the south of Nal (first objective) and capturing it with troops.  I was in the new Chinook and on a return flight at the time of crash.

Modifications - No mods to the mission itself, just a Stright download.  Other missions appear to run fine, including pretense.  I do have blackhawk and hercules mods loaded.  Now running SRS, although I don't think I was when this first started.  I don't think I have the stopGapGUI loaded unless it came with something else.

Folders - I removed the "saves" folder and the "Expansion (data)" folders prior to the test.

I know, hard for you to figure out the cause/problem.  My bet is that it is something to do with the funding system and code that executes, as that seems to occur the first time and trigger the crash.  Is there any easy flag to disable the funding or force it differently to rule it in or out as a cause?

[lei]

Why the F4 spawn half way in the ground? like the rear gear is below the goround? also hind and ka50 spawn and explode...i am runing DCS 2,9,5 though. would that be the reason

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, lei said:

also hind and ka50 spawn and explode...

Either disable stopGap in the miz, or run 'stopGapGUI' on the server (need only be run on the server). The exploding and dropping aircraft are a result from a DCS synchronization bug.

[Desolcm]

On 9/7/2024 at 4:20 PM, Desolcm said:

I just did a repro as a single player on my local box.  I got a Chinook out of Nalchik.  Here are answers to your questions and some additional info (helpful or not, I'll let you decide)

Crash - DCS completely shuts down.  No errors or messages.  Just back to the windows desktop.  This occurs right after the "new funds" dialog in the game comes up.  In this run it was aprox 190 seconds after dropping off troops at that power plant thing to the south of Nal (first objective) and capturing it with troops.  I was in the new Chinook and on a return flight at the time of crash.

 

I did some more test scenarios. 

I verified if I set persistence back to defaults, no crash.  Once I commented out the two lines, crash occurred.

I went into triggers and blanked out the script "income".  No dialog, but the crash occurred.

I went back to vanilla and deleted the bank scrip.  I get an error on startup but the mission can play.  It gets no dialog about money, but it also does not crash.  I'm thinking something called by those functions is hitting a bug with persistence being disabled.

That is all I was able to spend time doing.  If I can narrow down further I will let you know.

[cfrag]

52 minutes ago, Desolcm said:

I verified if I set persistence back to defaults, no crash.  Once I commented out the two lines, crash occurred.

Thank you for sticking with this issue. A few more questions and comments: What do you mean by 'commented out the two lines'? Did you remove the DOACTION for persistence and unitPersistence? That will indeed remove persistence from the mission entirely. I followed your kind advice and re-created this. I was unable to observe any crashes.

 

53 minutes ago, Desolcm said:

I went back to vanilla and deleted the bank scrip.  I get an error on startup but the mission can play. 

That is about what is to be expected, DML (the foundation the Expansion is built upon) works that way. It will automatically also shut down the 'income' and 'camp' modules. Net result should be that your side starts without funds, and no longer can work with any funds. Just like you state, it leads to an error dialog from the xpStrat module at start. The main mission script shuts down, and no AI is scheduled (you'll receive no objectives, no enemies are launched, no allies launch). Expansion has become a shell, no units are spawned by the mission.

54 minutes ago, Desolcm said:

I'm thinking something called by those functions is hitting a bug with persistence being disabled.

While I can't 100% rule out a bug in bank nor income, I'm currently leaning against that hypothesis after extensive testing. The persistence modules have no open issues, and neither do 'bank' nor 'income'. A stress test over the week-end I conducted cannot reproduce the issue that you kindly reported. To try and make this issue go away, can I ask you to ensure that 

• you have removed all mods
• run a full repair on DCS

The pattern and symptoms of the issue that you are describing (isolated nature of occurrence, crash to desktop instead of an error dialog) IMHO points to a cause outside of the mission's scripting. It can't be ruled out, but I have been unable to re-produce your issues. After a full repair of your DCS installation, and removing all mods, what do you observe?

 

[Desolcm]

10 hours ago, cfrag said:

Thank you for sticking with this issue. A few more questions and comments: What do you mean by 'commented out the two lines'? Did you remove the DOACTION for persistence and unitPersistence? That will indeed remove persistence from the mission entirely. I followed your kind advice and re-created this. I was unable to observe any crashes.

Sorry for not being more clear.  I was referring to the two lines in the missionscripting.lua file.  When commented out, I get crashes.  If I put them back to  default then it works, but no state is saved between sessions.

--sanitizeModule('io')
--sanitizeModule('lfs')

 

I thought this would be an easy repro but it seems not.  I'll try some of your suggestions and see if I can narrow things down any better.

[Priest]

I've really been enjoying this mission flying A-10C as main. If there is a suggestion box, I think the initial phase of the mission would benefit from some more substantial surface to air missile coverage out of Nalchik the rolands get overwhelmed pretty easily and until I could generate enough income to keep CAP flights up this phase of the mission was more difficult than it probably should be. I realize I could just change this in the editor, but that's cheating

Question though! Is there a way to have the drone flights call out target coordinates as MGRS grid references rather than latitude and longitude? Thanks in advance.

[cfrag]

Version 1.52 - 20240912 -- Maintenance Update

 
•    Fix for FARP slot accessibility edge case (single/multiplayer)
•    Added a single Su-25T (DCS free plane) Frogfoot to Nal, so everyone can start the mission.
•    Set all AAA infantry orders to “wait-guard” while all Assault set to “wait-captureAndHold”
•    Slightly upgraded the AI Cobra’s bite

Enjoy,

-ch

 

[Kamicosmos]

Just wanted to drop a quick note: Love This!  Today I had the most fun and satisfying experience in DCS this whole year.  Flew a blackshark down to the Gigawatts plant, was able to find and kill everything, and as I was pondering 'do I go grab a hind and bring some troops down to cap?' what do I see coming but a Chinook with a two ship Cobra escort!  Amazing!!! Then the base flipped blue, I got money, stuff started happening....wow!

It has inspired me to learn how to setup a dedicated server so that I can enable persistence and see how far I can get in this! 

 

I also want to say your documentation is great!  It's especially 'fun' to compare your detailed how it works explanations and examples with ED's total lack of how it works explanations and examples!

And finally, I saw you mention Sinai.  Yes, please!  That is actually how I discovered DML and your work just a couple days ago.  I've got an idea to split the Peninsula Vertically between say Israel with NATO support and Egypt with Soviet support.  This would keep factions simple, and the penninsula has like 6 or 8 bases that should split up well e/w or even n/s.  Would be a perfect spot for me to learn how to program up Base capturing, convoys, AI patrols, etc etc.  All that lead me to DML, and then Expansion.  Which is much more than I'll be able to do any time soon!  So yes, Sinai Expansion gets an enthusiastic thumbs up vote from me! 

 

EDIT: Oops, Syria, not Sinai.  Well, Syria would be cool to, it's an awesome map!

Edited October 2, 2024 by Kamicosmos

[Priest]

After the latest DCS patch is anyone else having issues with F10 map view crashing DCS while running Expansion with stopGap enabled?