MeanJim Posted June 13 Posted June 13 I've been trying to put together a mission for my group to play this weekend, but I'm running into so many odd issues that it's driving me crazy. Basically the mission is for us to hunt down a moving convoy of artillery. The artillery will move and shoot several times before moving to safety, and if that happens we lose. The mission takes place at night, so to find them, we need to spot them while they are firing or use GMT radar, but there is a lot of civilian traffic for them to blend into. I planned add some randomness to the mission by having three convoys, which it would pick one at the start, then use triggers to make the convoy take random turns, so it won't always take the same route. So far I haven't even managed to get the first convoy to make it to the end of one of their possible routes. I counted the number of rounds they could fire before empty and divided that up between the number of times they will stop to open fire. I have AAA and short range IR SAMs in the convoy, and so at first I also had a supply truck in the convoy. But after they conducted a fire mission, even though the artillery did not fire all of their rounds, because supplies were available, the convoy would not move until they reloaded. I removed the supply truck, and now they'll move to the next waypoint and fire. The next issue I ran into is that they reached one of their fire waypoint and sat there. To make a long story short, it turned out that a telephone pole was confusing them so they would just sit there. Even though they can turn aim their guns, the artillery drives off the road a little and turns toward the direction they are going to fire. There happened to be telephone poles on the side of the road they were trying to turn toward, and I guess they couldn't figure out how to get around them, so they stopped and gave up. I had to go through each waypoint where they fire and make sure nothing was in their way. Now I've finally managed to get the first of the convoys to make it to the last fire waypoint, but now I find that if they've expended their ammo, they won't move. Why would they not move when out of ammo? I tried putting a warehouse and supply trucks at their last waypoint to tempt them to go there, but that didn't work. I can't take anymore, so I'm done with editing for the day. My next thought is to simply add another vehicle and/or have them fire fewer rounds at each fire waypoint so that they don't run out, but there has to be a better way.
TEMPEST.114 Posted June 14 Posted June 14 (edited) Welcome to the ai logic of ground units in DCS. It has to be the worst of any ‘sim’ or game ever released. When they get to the point of no ammo and just sit there, set their roe to don’t engage, set their alarm state to green and set their visibility to invisible, those might help. Edited June 14 by TEMPEST.114
MeanJim Posted June 14 Author Posted June 14 If the convoy even makes it that far, I still want them to engage us if we find and attack them before they retreat to safety.
TEMPEST.114 Posted June 14 Posted June 14 6 minutes ago, MeanJim said: If the convoy even makes it that far, I still want them to engage us if we find and attack them before they retreat to safety. Then I suggest you set some variables (flags) at waypoints to toggle their ROE and Alarm State so they don't waste everything before they get there. But your question said that they get there and won't move because they're out of ammo. So that was what I was addressing.
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