Artillery unit situational awareness?

[MikeGER]

Hi Gents

I am well aware that DCS is revolving around air assets and at the beginning the ground units are just there to produce a nice threat and target rich (dynamic, or i hope so) environment.

But with CA with status = released my expectations had grown a little higher. ;)

 

Here's the question: Artillery unit AI situational awareness?

 

If a Artillery group in status "red" get news about an enemy in its sensor= threat 'ring' shown on the map, will it engage that unit after some time with indirect fire?

 

Or do i really have to build a sophisticated construct?...

..with group AI set off (utilizing a trigger-zone when Artillery reached designate deploy position) and several pre-planned hit-zones (trigger zones) witch switch on the group AI (which then does a Fire-at Point task) while enemy in that hit zones?

 

Well, this worked for me so far for one preplanned (aka registered) fire-mission... but how to activate different fire-missions in different preplanned zones? ...i am struggling atm with 'binding' the fitting 'Fire at Point'-Tasks to its according trigger zone stored in the group AI to-do-list at the DP point...

 

Thoughts? :detective:

Edited May 5, 2013 by MikeGER

[Frogisis]

It seems like mortars (both the regular tube kind and that Russian self-propelled one) will attack targets on their own, but all the others need to be deliberately aimed.

 

Not sure how you'd program it ahead of time... Maybe something about each target zone setting a flag to true when targets enter and turning off all the other flags that would affect that artillery group, and it's the flag that determines which fire-at-point task is activated?

[Grimes]

AI groups don't "communicate" with one another on potential targets. So if artillery starts to attack an enemy group it means they have LOS. So while they are an indirect fire support platform, they will provide directed indirect fire.

 

To activate different fire missions use the triggered tasks. Its the next tab over from the waypoint information. Create a task for each fire mission and then use triggers to set each task as needed.

[MikeGER]

Grimes, THX for the headup :)

 

now my 'trigger-zone driven fire missions' works like a charm (after i climbed the learning curve ;))

 

I ran some additional test on situational awareness...

 

...and it looks like Artillery units inside the same group don't exchange information either? :huh:

 

I had a mixed red Artillery group made of two SPH 259 Nona and two MLRS-BM21 Grad.

I placed on SPH in a forward position with a good view over a plane and the other 3 units behind buildings (which seem to actually block LOS, which is a good thing).

 

Now when my blue enemy group enters the LOS of that single forward positioned SPH, it started engaging my group after the usual delay.

Good!

 

But, the 3 other units didn't joined in, even so they belonged to the same group?

 

 

I also run a different test with a MLRS B21 Grad and it didn't engage enemy in LOS and range at all? ...bug or feature?

(rockets are a to valuable asset for the HQ to fire on their own iniciative ...and should never come in a situation were they have LOS on the enemy in RL anyway ...because LOS works both ways!)

 

proposal:

...i think a group task: "share intel with group members"

and a triggered action: "group x share Intel with group y for n minutes"

would be handy for enhancing the virtual battlefield behavoir

Edited May 6, 2013 by MikeGER