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Dividing and rejoining platoon with editor scripting?


peXmo

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Hello. 

Does anyone have a solution for the following: 

 

I want to have a platoon start all attached, moving from point A to point B in formation via a route. 

Then at B I want to be able to split up the platoon, guiding each separate vehicle to their assigned battle position via their personal routes

Then later I want the platoon to form up again at C and move out, as one attached unit again, in formation to D. 

 

The issue is that I can do this with the dismounts by just using "embark if this unit is X" but as the vehicles start as one unit, they can not be assigned this functionality. 

If I have the unit fully divided at start and move them with waypoint synchronization etc, It is really really complex to setup a behavior similar to what the units use if they are as one unit in formation when needed. 

 

How would you deal with a similar situation?

 

If this is not possible I guess that I can wish for a detach at way point switch that would treat the formation as if the detached vehicle is no longer a part of it, thus it can be assigned its own routes until it is attached again at a waypoint. 

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A very messy solution (you have been warned) would be:

 

Move the Platoon as a unit from A to B.

 

Have a penalty region at "B" that destroyed this platoon.

 

Spawn the 4 or so individual tanks based on a "spawn if ... Platoon X is in Region 1"

 

Move those tanks along their individual routes, ending up at C.

 

Have a penalty region at "C" that destroyed these vehicles

 

Spawn the new platoon based on a "spawn if ... there are 4 vehicles in Region 2"

 

The new platoon would then follow the Platoon route.

 

Call signs, ammo states, fuel states, damage, etc. would not be maintained between the three generations (Platoon, vehicles, Platoon) though.

 

This may or may not provide the solution you are after - If you want an OPFOR to appear and disappear, fine. If you want this to be BLUEFOR and you don't want extra vehicle wrecks / casualties then it wouldn't.

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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Thanks for the replies.

As I solve this at the moment is using single vehicles from the start. One does loose a bit of that formation AI though, but it works. 

Where it gets messy though is syncing everything up. Just to sync. the movement with 3 vehicles one has to setup a few conditions, as if a vehicle gets unable to move or is destroyed it should be ignored. 

Then one has to account for the behaviour of the formation if one of the three vehicles goes missing.

And after all that work, at least to my knowledge there is no way I can really say to the AI that "disregard vehicle 2 if it is unable to move". All I found is that I can create sets of conditions that checks if a vehicle is destroyed/not present and if it has damage to any mobilty part of the vehicle.

 

 So what would help in creating scenarios where the AI move more like ehat you see from player guided platoons is 2 things (imho):

 

The ability to set: if unit x is unable to move, as an option in the embark if setup.

 

The ability as i stated above, to split off a vehicle from its formation via a route the rejoining when the routes merge again. In the same manner as one does with setting up dismounts to move after they have dismounted (i know its prob not as ease as dismounts are individual units from the start)

Why do I think that it would help in scenario design, apart from the ease of use?

Well, it would be great to be able to utilize both the nice AI that SB pro pe already has when it comes to formation behaviour etc and the quite unique ability that a scenario designer is given in the editor, to micro manage AI behaviour. Edit: one example would be when setting up bounding overwatch and such within the platoon.

At the moment it seems that I have to one. To my layman eyes this woild serve the professional market as well as they would have an easier time to setup more precise training scenarios, or? Edit: well i guess that everything is manned in this case anyway.

Anyhow, there I have asked for it. I hope it gets in one day.

Edited by peXmo
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Surely the whole reason for having AI is to avoid the need "to micro manage AI behaviour"?

 

Either you let the AI move things or you do it all yourself at the individual vehicle level.

 

As someone who regularly scripts Brigade level activities (say 120+ vehicles) the ability to script that based on the AI controlling Platoons (so the bill for a typical OPFOR becomes 40 routes) far outweighs the ability to "tune" 120 routes.

 

Scripting a Platoon to "assault" a location on a wide spacing and letting the AI do it, pretty much generates the behaviours I need compared to micro managing 3 vehicles and testing multiple times to ensure they maintain spacing, move as a group, etc.

 

But up to you ...

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I am not stating that one should make the other disappear. 
Most of the time, especially when travelling or fighting in more open terrain I would neither ever feel the need to micromanage AI positions. But at certain Battle Positions the AI will pose a greater threat if they can by guided, there is where this feature would come in handy.

 

Also in smaller missions with fewer vehicles involved I see a greater need for the micromanagement, and there it is also not an insane task.... well at least if the mentioned features were in. 

As you mentioned you regularly script Brigade level activities. At that scale I would use this very little as well, BUT I would still use it some cases if the position just would not work well  with any of the preset formations.

 

This is more a request for fixing those moments where the AI does not give the behaviors needed without having to code more complex AI routines and cases.

The AI would still be doing its job when fighting from a specified position, as always but sometimes the need to specify that position in detail is needed.

 

Lastly I do recognize that I am asking from my perspective, that is one of a civilian, but I am asking for a feature in a civilian product. I design scenarios in SB as I would design scenarios in any other game, mod or professional. I do feel the need to playtest and break the scenario until it breaks no more. I am looking to have a mission editor that lets me create both large scale and really small scale scenarios, as apart from the VUs out there aren't that many (well the player base is not that big anyhow) groups of friends, sim-gamers, that play in groups of 6+ people all the time. As I mentioned, the smaller scenarios can suffer more from micro level shortcomings, that is were I feel the need to be able to go in and clear it up. For example, if one is to play SB Pro PE as a single player in command of a single vehicle at least the rest of the players platoon needs to act well on a micro level at occasions (this is something that I do create to get people into SB PRO PE and it works). 

Wall of text complete hehe. 

 

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