Removing destroyed units

[johnv2pt0]

Has anyone had any luck with this?

[FlightControl]

Guys, really. Is nobody reading my messages?

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=153773

 

Check the date of my post. The 12th of January 2015..., that is almost 2 years ago now?

 

Note that this USED TO WORK till DCS version 1.2.14.

 

When destroying the Group, also the burning units were destroyed, belonging to that group. But from 1.2.14, this behaviour got removed ...

 

I had made a CLEANUP class in the moose framework, that could easily clean up polluted airfields with crashed planes ... I had that CLEANUP class working, until that bug appeared ... It is on the wishlist now.

And this behaviour has remained throughout till DCS version 1.5.5.

 

FC

[Grimes]

This thread is older than yours...

[FlightControl]

This thread is older than yours...

 

Ha yes, even worse then ...

[Dusty [CPC]]

Yup, I've been waiting patiently for 3 years now, hoping one day I can finish my training mission without units spawning stacking on top of wrecks.

Yes I know there are alternatives, such as offsetting units or what xcom implemented which would suffice for training purposes I guess... But I'm lazy and stubborn !!

Bring on the garbage collector!! :D

Edited December 5, 2016 by Dusty

[FlightControl]

Guys, really. Is nobody reading my messages?

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=153773

 

Check the date of my post. The 12th of January 2015..., that is almost 2 years ago now?

 

Note that this USED TO WORK till DCS version 1.2.14.

 

When destroying the Group, also the burning units were destroyed, belonging to that group. But from 1.2.14, this behaviour got removed ...

 

I had made a CLEANUP class in the moose framework, that could easily clean up polluted airfields with crashed planes ... I had that CLEANUP class working, until that bug appeared ... It is on the wishlist now.

And this behaviour has remained throughout till DCS version 1.5.5.

 

FC

 

But again, this used to work till DCS 1.2.14. If you destroyed a group right after the unit fired an EVENT_DEAD, it used to be able to remove both the group and alive and dead units ... It doesn't do that anymore ...

That was the catch of the CLEANUP class. I catched the EVENT_DEAD stuff, and cleaned up the groups who were "dead".

 

Sven

[Dusty [CPC]]

I guess that's the same logic as what xcom proposed. It's a nice substitute, but it doesn't hold the guilty pleasure of seeing the smoking dead husk of your target before disappearing when the script tells it to.

[FlightControl]

I guess that's the same logic as what xcom proposed. It's a nice substitute, but it doesn't hold the guilty pleasure of seeing the smoking dead husk of your target before disappearing when the script tells it to.

 

I think you misunderstood. It worked in Mutiplayer before 1.2.14.

Units were dead, smoking ...

When you deleted the group, the dead, smoking units dissapeared.

But only on the CLIENTs in MP. Because on the server and in single player mode, the units remained visible, dead and smoking.

 

Now, after 1.2.14, this does not happen.

The best that CLEANUP can do right now, is once a unit gets hit and is within the airbase perimeter, it starts to "monitor" the unit. Once the unit is below x meters and damaged, it dissapears. Once that unit has damage larger than x%, it dissapears. But that has consequences and disadvantages:

 

1. High CPU load on the server.

2. Units that are dead immediately can't be tracked.

3. What about units flying under x meters, damaged, but still flying?

4. There are still units that can crash and become dead, because the monitoring is done with a timer event. Sometimes the timer does not fire in the required intervals, due to high server load or long processing.

 

So, for 3 years this has had no track or follow-up.

 

FC

[Dusty [CPC]]

Ah, I wasn't aware it had been working for clients, always tested my missions/scripts as a server.

Yeah the magical disappearing is less than ideal, but it's the closest there is atm, sadly.

I juts think the priority is somewhere out there with the working ATC (if not less)...

[johnv2pt0]

Guys, really. Is nobody reading my messages?

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=153773

 

Check the date of my post. The 12th of January 2015..., that is almost 2 years ago now?

 

Note that this USED TO WORK till DCS version 1.2.14.

 

When destroying the Group, also the burning units were destroyed, belonging to that group. But from 1.2.14, this behaviour got removed ...

 

I had made a CLEANUP class in the moose framework, that could easily clean up polluted airfields with crashed planes ... I had that CLEANUP class working, until that bug appeared ... It is on the wishlist now.

And this behaviour has remained throughout till DCS version 1.5.5.

 

FC

 

Right, thanks.

[Pikey]

It's not a necro post if you posted in a four year old thread asking for the same thing. Still waiting for a method to delete debris.

Reason it is required, because AI spawning and taxiing and takeoff are all seperately affected by wreckage at airbases. They stop and mess up everything. It's essentially a blocker to ATC which was supposedly supposed to be looked at too, some years back. Since ATC can't route blocked traffic.

[FlightControl]

Unfortunately some people who are key community representatives have a different opinion about the urgency of this issue. I hope this issue will be considered at a point in time, as it damages the simulation experience of many, unfortunately.

[Grimes]

FC, is the first part of your post really necessary? I mean it is incredibly ambiguous and seems to imply that the community members and not the ED dev team have the ultimate say in whether or not specific features or bugs get development time spent on it. If it is toward the dev team then a simple rephrasing will do the trick to avoid ambiguity. If its not, perhaps rethink your thought process with my aforementioned statement regarding developers decide what to develop.

 

 

My reply sans that first sentence: I wish I had information to convey on this subject. I really do hope that once the big merge happens that some dev time can be spent on TLC updates for the mission editor and scripting engine.

[FlightControl]

FC, is the first part of your post really necessary? I mean it is incredibly ambiguous and seems to imply that the community members and not the ED dev team have the ultimate say in whether or not specific features or bugs get development time spent on it. If it is toward the dev team then a simple rephrasing will do the trick to avoid ambiguity. If its not, perhaps rethink your thought process with my aforementioned statement regarding developers decide what to develop.

 

 

My reply sans that first sentence: I wish I had information to convey on this subject. I really do hope that once the big merge happens that some dev time can be spent on TLC updates for the mission editor and scripting engine.

 

Okay, maybe I am mistaken, but the underlying correspondence confused me a bit, which is some time ago now . This was still in the back of my mind when writing that first statement...

 

My concerns were posted herein the past. The chapter 2. CLEANUP

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3013014&postcount=34

concerns the same subject as outlined in this thread.

 

The response was:

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3013132&postcount=36

 

It appears that every time I bring up this subject, I seem to upset people.

 

The post that I made however was neutral and I tried to explain the facts, and outlines some of the issues we have with clear examples that can be demonstrated. The response was quite discouraging.

 

While reading the response, I got the impression that these issues are not important enough, thus not being actively monitored and managed.

 

Sven

Edited April 26, 2017 by FlightControl

[Grimes]

It is critical for you to understand that I didn't take issue with the reminder that this feature hasn't been implemented. I took issue with you going out of your way to blame that lack of progress on "some people" who ultimately have very little influence on the solution. If you did the same thing complaining about a bugged texture file I'd probably have the same reaction.

 

Just a reminder for what happens when bugs and features get reported. Generally bugs will have the priority, with bugs that cause the game to crash being the most important. Once something is reported it is entirely dependent on whomever at ED to work on it to fix or implement a change. However they prioritize things is up to them and about all any of the testers can do is try to be verbose in advocating why it is important upon submission or follow-ups posting new tracks of the bug. It isn't a "make 10 complaints and the bug gets prioritized" kind of deal. Maybe it moves the priority up a little, maybe it doesn't, point is we don't know for sure. That is all I am trying to get across, it isn't some nefarious plot. If you want to gripe that a feature hasn't be implemented yet, by all means gripe, but don't shift the blame to those who don't control it. That is all I ask.

 

If you want to continue the back and forth you can continue it via PM.

[eekz]

While making Warbirds-like mission based on airfield capture in Normandy, I've faced the issue of impossibility to remove debris of destroyed units. Theoretically if same airfield will be recaptured several times it will be flooded with dead units. Not a good thing.

PS: just my 2 cent.

[xcom]

@eekz this is the same issue we are encountering with in Blue Flag.

This is still no possible AFAIK.

[FlightControl]

....

[Kyridious]

@eekz this is the same issue we are encountering with in Blue Flag.

This is still no possible AFAIK.

 

I hoped to test this before replying, but life's been busy and I won't get to it before the weekend. Something to try...

 

Instead of removing wrecks, it may be possible to destroy() the unit/group before the wreck is generated in the first place. Try using event listeners to detect crash & onHit events. Depending on circumstances, destroy() the unit immediately before the sim even gets a chance to blow it up. Manually trigger an explosion at the crash point for visuals.

 

 

There are many reasons why this might fail, but I'm mildly optimistic.

[FlightControl]

I hoped to test this before replying, but life's been busy and I won't get to it before the weekend. Something to try...

 

Instead of removing wrecks, it may be possible to destroy() the unit/group before the wreck is generated in the first place. Try using event listeners to detect crash & onHit events. Depending on circumstances, destroy() the unit immediately before the sim even gets a chance to blow it up. Manually trigger an explosion at the crash point for visuals.

 

 

There are many reasons why this might fail, but I'm mildly optimistic.

 

This is exactly how the CLEANUP class within the MOOSE framework is working around the problem. But from experience it is marginally successful.

 

CLEANUP monitors the hit events. When hit, and the unit has a damage level beyond a %-tage, it will be removed. It also tracks the height of the unit and the position. When the unit is above the runway, and below a certain altitude above the ground, it will be removed if the direction vector and the speed is such that it would crash. This is done with a timer.

It also checks when groups are dead. If a unit or a group is artificially destroyed, CLEANUP will generate a S_EVENT_CRASH artificially.

In this way, I try to keep the air base clean while still having some game experience.

 

But the slightest hickup or delay in the check process can still make an airbase operations stall.

 

I understood from ciribob, that for ED to fix this issue, it is not so easy. There seems to be a difficulty with accessing destroyed units. Probably they are removed from the sim when dead...

 

It used to work though till version 1.2.6, when a unit would be destroyed using Destroy(), directly after processing the S_EVENT_DEAD or S_EVENT_CRASH, it would remove the unit!!!!

Even in muti player!

 

However, indeed Kyridious, there are ways around this issue, but it is far from perfect and consumes CPU.

 

 

http://flightcontrol-master.github.io/MOOSE/Documentation/CleanUp.html

 

I didn't want to publish this because it is a crappy solution for the moment.

 

Fc

[xcom]

I hoped to test this before replying, but life's been busy and I won't get to it before the weekend. Something to try...

 

Instead of removing wrecks, it may be possible to destroy() the unit/group before the wreck is generated in the first place. Try using event listeners to detect crash & onHit events. Depending on circumstances, destroy() the unit immediately before the sim even gets a chance to blow it up. Manually trigger an explosion at the crash point for visuals.

 

 

There are many reasons why this might fail, but I'm mildly optimistic.

 

Yeah, I did this years ago, probably earlier in this post you can find it.

The thing is, it is not successful enough and creates other side effects.

 

Basically, until ED don't fix it, I will not handle it further.

[FlightControl]

Is there an update on this item?

[Pikey]

Mission restarting has long been the solution.

Mission persistence is the Nirvana.

It's why years ago when I stopped worrying about this ever changing, I started looking at things like DAWS, writing to files, save states and the like.

 

With Ground units the approach is restart, based on the level of mess that you might have, but with airfield wreckage it can be avoided by players most times.

 

OT;

I noticed the other day that Runways report a DEAD event. I'm looking at tying that to a timed restart of the mission, since knowing what it does to AI allows players to be somewhat brutal to any mission involving a free flowing attack they plan themselves.

 

Any mission I had that went for multiple sorties where there was a meaningful AI threat from an airfield, is one where I, personally, would start with a bomb on the runway in order to win (if it was that important).

 

DCS ME is based around a single mission scenario, this is why anything involving anything in depth, or for longer, is just not in it's design and movements towards that in the last 5 years in terms of DCS design are detailed in between my Left bracket here: {

 

} and my right bracket there.

I do not see it ever changing, DCS is a simulator and it's quite clear on their design.

[FlightControl]

Mission restarting has long been the solution.

Mission persistence is the Nirvana.

It's why years ago when I stopped worrying about this ever changing, I started looking at things like DAWS, writing to files, save states and the like.

 

With Ground units the approach is restart, based on the level of mess that you might have, but with airfield wreckage it can be avoided by players most times.

 

OT;

I noticed the other day that Runways report a DEAD event. I'm looking at tying that to a timed restart of the mission, since knowing what it does to AI allows players to be somewhat brutal to any mission involving a free flowing attack they plan themselves.

 

Any mission I had that went for multiple sorties where there was a meaningful AI threat from an airfield, is one where I, personally, would start with a bomb on the runway in order to win (if it was that important).

 

DCS ME is based around a single mission scenario, this is why anything involving anything in depth, or for longer, is just not in it's design and movements towards that in the last 5 years in terms of DCS design are detailed in between my Left bracket here: {

 

} and my right bracket there.

I do not see it ever changing, DCS is a simulator and it's quite clear on their design.

 

 

I am sorry Pikey, but I don't agree.

One can easily today wreck an airbase in 1 minute...

 

What you are doin here is put the ticket to the ED team that they don't need to bother about it.

 

I don't understand, I really don't why you are doin this.

 

FC

[Pikey]

I'm doing nothing but observing. I asked for this years ago! Again, there is nothing for you to agree with, I'm not suggesting ED do anything but change it. I'm just saying that I don't think they will. In fact...I'm absolutely 100% positive.

I am sorry Pikey, but I don't agree.

One can easily today wreck an airbase in 1 minute...

 

What you are doin here is put the ticket to the ED team that they don't need to bother about it.

 

I don't understand, I really don't why you are doin this.

 

FC