Artillery Planning - Mission Editor

[G241]

Could any one answer or direct me to where the answer may be on a couple of questions with preplanned artillery. I have looked at most documentation I can find.

1. I am particulary interested in being able to establish covering fire to neutralise a position ( rather that to neccessarily destroy a target) to enable friendly manoevure.

2. Is there a way you can extend an individual fire mission more than one minute. (I currently employ a work-around that has five missions in close proximity with progressive delays in "fire if " scripting. This enables a continual fire for the required periods but takes a long time to plan and results in a cluttered map.

3. Is there anyway for a player to cease a fire mission planned in the mission editor. I couldn't find a way to cease a rouge mission that continued to fire after a condition set of; mission time < 10 Minutes when in test or an offline play of the scenario.

Lastly , can you adjust the number of batteries firing on a particular target.

i.e one battery fire on target A but 3 batteries on target B.

Appreciate any guidance that can be given.

[Gibsonm]

Mate, had a quick look.

Q1. When you initially plot the mission you can have if fire once, twice or "forever" (this choice is available if you right click on the mission once you set it up - i.e. right click on the red "box" on the map).

Note: "twice" and "forever" do not equate to continuous fire. It will fire once then wait the 3 min or so then fire again (for twice). Forever is an ongoing series of missions with the 3 minute gap.

Assuming this is pre-planned (i.e. you want the fire from say H-2 to H and H is fixed) you can set up and "AND" statement that says (assuming H = 6 mins in):

Fire if "mission time greater than (>) 3:30" AND "mission time greater than (<) 6:00"

The only time that both of these are true and the fire will happen is between 3:30 and 6:00 mins.

You need the first one to be 3:30 because there is a roughly 30 sec count down, so you need to start the mission at approx. 3:30 to have impacts happening at approx. 4:00.

Three missions superimposed with slightly different start times and set to run "twice" should give you six minutes of fire for effect.

Similarly the same set of three configured to fire "forever" should give you a Somme like barrage.

Q2. Unfortunately the Triggers only seem to effect the initial start of the mission. So if the mission is set to fire twice and all are satisfied it will fire twice, even if one has changed between the first mission and the second.

So I think the best way is to revert to the more complex multiple single missions, but adding another AND condition to the above using the first choice "Tigger ... is not set ("is set" and "is not set" toggle when clicked on).

So you can create a Trigger "Cease fire ZP1001" or similar.

As long as that is not set by the player, all the ANDs will be correct and the mission happens. If the Trigger is fired then the "is not set" will fail and the mission will not be fired or if in progress, it will fire but the subsequent ones plotted wont.

If your fire plan calls for the fire on ZP1001 to lift to ZP1002, then the activation of that trigger can be used to satisfy the requirement to start the mission(s) that you may have planned for there.

Q3. Regarding the weight of fire. The pre-planned missions are "generic" so to achieve what you want you'd need a single mission on target A and plot three missions on target B (each with the same start time).

You can't make a single pre-planned mission three times stronger than a different single mission.

You can though adjust the impact boxes so that a Regt mission is depicted rather than a Bty one.

Hope that helps a bit ...

[G241]

Mark,

thank you for your reply and the tips. It looks like I am basically on the right track. I used the repeat forever option but limited the time of firing through a mission time < function. This seemed to work. I triggered the mission by a condition : x unit is at way point Y. So it wasn't a purely timed mission but same intent.

You may need to talk me through the trigger solution. I get the gist but a discussion on Thursday if you are available would be great.

I will go hunting impact boxes for the effect of the fire.

I suspect I am tring to use SteelBeasts for something that it is not designed to do but which his very clsoe to being able to achieve.

Thanks Again

Michael