Support by fire/Attack by fire, target acquisition and engagement ranges

Gday all

I am currently trying to make a Platoon attack mission on an enemy location with 3 objectives (approximately 150m apart). That part is easy but I am trying to tie in artillery/mortar support as well as direct fire support from a Support by fire (SBF) location

I am not very experienced at editing missions and have only a base understanding of scripting, however i have managed to do the attack fairly easily and used triggered fire missions for arty and mortars (Using when BLUEFOR present triggers to layer fire for effect missions - initially on objective one, then as the assault gets close it switches to the second objective etc.)

Goal

Pre assault - Snipers acquire targets but do not fire - Just as the first artillery rounds land on OBJ 1, the snipers and 50 cal (both in SBF) are clear to engage (Currently trigger for them to engage is when artillery fires - not ideal but i can live with it)

Assault then steps off and artillery shifts to depth positions and mortars start firing on the first objective. As the assault progresses the indirect fire support (Arty and MOR) shifts fire to depth objectives then cutoff positions (All done using bluefor present triggers)

Problems I am having

Arty/MOR - Is there any way to keep them firing at a sustained rate until triggered to stop instead of just firing a fire mission for a certain number of rounds? Also is there any way to check fire (in case a fire mission is still going but friendly troops get too close to the target?)

Currently using when bluefor present trigger to fire the following;

[m1, 150] call BIS_ARTY_F_SetDispersion; [group m1, getPosASL a1, ["IMMEDIATE", "HE", 10, 9]] call BIS_ARTY_F_ExecuteTemplateMission;

where m1 is the lead mortar in a group of 3 (synched to arty module) and a1 is a game logic location to fire on.

DFSW/Snipers in SBF

I am currently trying to simulate a 50 cal det and snipers in support from a flank. I have them set up so they are in position and wont fire until the assault begins using waypoints on top of each other synched to triggers (ie. hold fire initially, then open fire synched to the same trigger the arty fire mission is on) - is there a better way? Two big problems I am currently having.

1. The SBF location is 900-1000m away and enemy are in the open however the snipers dont target the enemy. Occasionally once mortars start firing they will pick up on enemy however normally they wont unless i switch to one of the snipers and look through the scope - once i see the first enemy the team commander starts assigning targets etc.

(AND when they DO start firing they receive effective fire from the enemy PKM gunner who is 1km away!)

2. The 50 cal det (M2 minitripod) cant detect the enemy but i want them to fire on the area (ie. suppression fire) Is this at all possible? And is it (ideally) possible to set up two guns on a rate of fire (ie. fire a burst of x rounds every y seconds?)

I am guessing that the SBF problems wont be able to be solved without some detailed scripting (especially the second one?)

If anyone has any advice, or knows of any mods that could help I would very much appreciate it! If anyone wants to have a look at the mission to give me some advice I have no worries emailing it.

Last point - I only have ArmA2:OA on my computer (Because I lost my damn manual for ArmA2 so cant reinstall it!) so I cant use any solutions that involve Arma2 normal.

Cheers!

Interesting ideas! I'd say you have great promise in mission design, keep learning how to script.

I've been tinkering with AI artillery support myself. You're welcome to join the ECHO addon thread in the "ArmA 2 & OA - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE" section if you find that interesting.

Meanwhile...

You can try calling your fire missions using timed vs immediate fire to avoid shell-count issues.

You can check fire - the BIKI article implies the ARTY_CANCEL variable is involved - there is some interaction between SOM and ARTY, it's just not well documented yet. Now you have me curious, lol.

Cheers - Sounds like you know a decent amount about scripting from that ECHO addon!!!

I have been toying with ideas, concentrating on the direct fire support weapons idea...

I dont know the language or whatever it is called for scripting but i think i have possibly come up with a workable template. Would this kind of idea work (when it was put in the proper langauge)

DFSW Script

input:

fire mission (g1, g2, burst length, gap between bursts, fire mission duration, target)

where...

g1 and g2 - weapons

burst length - number of rounds to fire each burst

gap between bursts - gap between burst of each gun

fire mission duration - length of time to fire the mission

target - location on the map (normally use game logic location)

With the script being something along the lines of...

Variables

g1, g2 - string (name of weapons)

rnds, gap, msntime - integer

loc1 - string (of location)

timecount - integer

Start

timecount == 0

fire mission (g1, g2, rnds, gap, msntime, loc1)

g1 target loc1 // both weapons target location

g2 target loc1

hint "Commencing fire mission"

while timecount =< msntime //repeat the individual firing serial until time exceeds firemission time (not perfect but workable initially)

{g1 fireburst rnds // fire a burst (unsure if there is a command for this?) of x rounds

sleep gap/2 // wait for half the time between gun bursts - offsetting g1 and g2 bursts

g2 fireburst rnds

timecount = timecount + gap

}

hint "Fire mission complete"

end

I am thinking that should mean you can tell the guns what to fire at, then guns will alternate bursts (as real sustained fire heavy weapons do in dedicated fire support) until the time is up...

Ideally in future I would like to increase the beaten zone, possibly give multiple targets (close together simulating traverse targets to cover multiple areas in the one fire mission) also possibly use in the semi indirect role (Unsure if you will be able to tell them to target a location out of LOS though? ie. other side of a hill?) however I would like to get the basics functional first.

(basic description of a beaten zone here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_fire )

---------- Post added at 07:55 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:54 AM ----------

Also, on the side of the mission

Currently I have the 50 cal engaging (grouped them with sniper team leader and i jump in to one of the snipers to acquire the targets) from 900-1000m. Problems - They are unerringly accurate on single targets (ie. no beaten zone), the enemy barely respond to sustained fire from 50 cal.... which SHOULD be very effective at suppressing/neutralizing.

Is there something i am overlooking with enemy reaction or is there some way I can increase the suppression value?

As promised - I finally did look at the insides of the ARTY module to see how to cancel a fire mission. Turns out it's just as simple as doing a

_battery setVariable ["ARTY_CANCEL", true, true];

Your work on direct fire support is interesting, btw. Agree that creating a beaten zone is very important.

I played around with this the other day and it sounds like it could facilitate what you want wrt the beaten zone.

As for the sniper problem, have you tried the 'reveal' command?

Ok, I am back onto this problem... (After a lengthy work related absence)

Firstly - Thanks heaps for all your assistance. The script works well for creating a beaten zone and the reveal command is working well for individuals.

Two things I am working on now:

1. I am at a spot now that I am trying to reveal all individuals as they enter the engagement area (rather than specifying each individual soldier) in order to facilitate long range engagement by HMG.

I am sure this can be done however just not sure of the script syntax...

What I am thinking is: A repeatable trigger - OPFOR present, on activation it reveals all OPFOR located in the trigger... I believe there is a command to get all units inside the trigger that returns an array?

My thoughts:

If anyone can assist with this it would be much appreciated!

2nd issue : Has anyone found anything that will assist with increase a units reaction to receiving long range fire? (ie. Suppression values?)

Thanks again all!

so trigger activation - opfor present

on act

{gnr reveal _x} foreach thislist

If you have the latest patch beta's reveal has been improved

group reveal [target, accuracy]

{gnr reveal [_x,4]} foreach thislist

The main difference is that all units in the group get the info and the amount of knowledge can be increase from th4e default 1 to 4 which is the maximum.