Artillery fire

[159_Archer]

Having trouble getting arty groups to fire with the newer ME. Not found anything in search here or in the manual that helps.

 

I want arty groups to fire at a specific point or area, have managed the following so far;

 

Created an arty group, including a task to fire at a location name (I made a trigger-zone and named it).

Set-up a trigger action as follows -continous action, set to start after a certain time, then selected AI action which was selected from the list below which was the very trigger zone I made.

 

I then run the mission, the arty points at an area (not the trigger-zone though...) and doesn't fire.

 

Seems I'm almost there but missing something important?

[EtherealN]

As a first question, what is the range?

 

If you attach the miz file here it might be easy to see what is being done wrong.

[STP Dragon]

Add the Arty to the map and open the advanced WP-options.

There you can find "Fire at point". Once added you can see a small zone and a line on the Arty-symbol on the map.

Place the zone where you want to fire at.

 

Open the trigger list.

 

Trigger: MISSION START

Condition: Time less 5sec

Action: A.I. OFF - Arty

(Arty will be deactivated, no moving, no fireing)

 

Trigger: ONCE

Condition: Time more - xsec (or when ever you want to activate the Arty)

Action: A.I. ON - Arty

 

 

Please keep in mind that the Arty will move the canon directly after activating A.I. ON but it needs up to 3 minutes till it starts fireing!

[159_Archer]

OK -I worked out that I was at least partly off-track...

 

I'll try the above and report back!

 

Thx for the replies.

[STP Dragon]

By the way:

 

It takes 3min to fire.

If it is out of ammo it takes up to 60min to automatically rearm and again 3min to fire again.

So if you want that the Arty is stop shooting, simply trigger the A.I. OFF again.

[159_Archer]

OK -I managed to get it to work;

 

1. create unit, enter advanced WP options

 

2. Selected Fire at point (dragged to required location)

 

3. clicked on condition and then entered a time to commence firing, then clicked probability at 100%.

 

They fired!

 

I wasn't waiting quite enough time to let them work before I think, although this is the first time I tried the exact method as above.

 

I'll do more testing to see if I can do more than this. -Not sure what the other options are for as yet. Any help here would be appreciated!

 

Thx for the replys Guys!

[STP Dragon]

Well many way's leads to Rom and every mission builder has his own way to get his mission to work. :)

[nomdeplume]

1. create unit, enter advanced WP options

 

2. Selected Fire at point (dragged to required location)

 

3. clicked on condition and then entered a time to commence firing, then clicked probability at 100%.

Careful with this. The conditions determine whether or not the task will be executed when it's encountered in the unit's task list, not the time at which it will start.

 

So for example, if your mission starts at 12:00:00, and you have a 'fire at point' task on the first waypoint of a unit with a condition of "time: 12:05:00", then that fire task will never run. This is because at the mission start, the game logic will consider whether or not to run the fire task, test all of its conditions (only one - mission time > 12:05), find it to be false, and therefore skip running the task.

 

The start (and stop) conditions can be satisfied by any of the conditions being true, as opposed to all of the conditions being true. So in your case the time condition is irrelevant since the probably 100% condition will always be true.

 

If you want a task to always be run, you don't need to enable any conditions at all. You only need to enable one of them if you want to be able to prevent the task from being started on some occassions but not on others.

 

Also, for "fire at point" tasks, it's a good idea to specify a stop condition with a duration. 10 minutes is probably long enough. Otherwise the units will reload and start firing again, often a long time after the first barrage. I just had some Grads recommence firing nearly an hour after their first barrage, which gave me quite the surprise when I was coming in for landing (they were near my FARP).

[Speed]

Well, it's usually better and more flexible to use triggered actions to make the artillery group fire.

 

1) Select the arty group, select the triggered actions button (the triggered actions button is in the same group of buttons as armament and waypoint actions buttons), and then create a new triggered action

 

2) Set the triggered action type to fire at point

 

3) Set a stop condition for the fire at point task- either an "IS USER" stop condition (this means, "is user flag"- i.e., "flag is true"), or a timed stop condition.

 

4) Name the triggered action something you will remember.

 

5) Close the triggered actions menu and open the trigger rules menu. Make a trigger of the desired type with the desired conditions. The trigger action needs to be AI TASK and select the desired fire at point task from the drop down menu.

 

Now, when the trigger conditions go true, the artillery will stop whatever it was doing and start firing at point. Furthermore, if you used an "IS USER" stop condition, you can stop the fire at point task at any time by setting a flag. If you set a timed stop condition for the fire at point task, then make sure you give them enough time to start shooting.

 

Artillery doesn't take 3 minutes to start shooting; it takes 3 minutes to start shooting at a certain AI level. The lower the AI level, the longer it takes to start shooting. At at the "Expert" AI level, it only takes 2 minutes to start shooting.

 

So for example, if you always want a 30 second artillery barrage, set the artillery's AI to "Expert", and then set a stop time on the fire at point triggered action of 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

 

Note that since this is a triggered action, you can call it WHENEVER you want, and as many times as you want, regardless of whatever the artillery was doing or where it was immediately before calling the triggered action. Furthermore, unlike some AI on or AI off approach using waypoint actions, the artillery is capable of moving and shooting in between fire at point taskings. These kinds of reasons are why triggered actions are often vastly superior to waypoint actions.

Edited November 29, 2011 by Speed