MCC Sandbox 3 - Dynamic mission creating tool for ArmA 3

[t.a.6 7]

 

Thanks you.

 

Oh, and just got a question: does gaia controlling planes?

[JamesTheClarke 40]

- General enhancements of logistic use would be very neat. Sometimes I see GAIA utilise a truck from one zone to pick up infantry and bring them somewhere else, but it's quite rare. I've never seen them do that with a transport helicopter. I'd love to see GAIA make full use of small and medium sized transport helicopters, actively picking up rifle squads and flying them at the rear or flanks of a player controlled platoon or even trying an extraction if losses were quite severe -> Zone 1 had seven elements garrison / patrol defensively. Players take out six elements, the seventh is requesting emergency EVAC via helo.

Something that just popped into my head which kinda goes in the same direction as the above:

I'd love to see GAIA retreat more - abandon positions, retreat and regroup with additional elements and re-engage the players in a new battle when the odds are once again more in favour of the AI (mainly calculated by number of soldiers left). For example: Zone 2 is overlapping a town plus a sizeable area of the surroundings of the town. Two GAIA fire teams are "fortified", four rifle squads are patrolling "defensively" within the zone. The players take out large 60% of the entire GAIA force in Zone 2 without taking any losses themselves. All remaining GAIA elements should receive WP's to high tail it out of Zone 2 and retreat to Zone 3 (a GAIA controlled zone which hasn't seen any combat yet). Of course this game logic would only trigger if GAIA units still have an unharmed zone to retreat to, if not they'd fight to the death as usual.

Ground vehicle / helo patrol WP generation:

One thing that often irks me a bit, when using GAIA in conjunction with ground vehicles and helos "defensively" is that if I let GAIA control let's say a technical or medium armour, it will always generate patrol way points for that vehicle. This is totally fine when I want to create a vehicle patrol, however most of the times I'd like to have a vehicle be stationary (harder to spot for players, no sound or movement cues) while still directly connected to the "GAIA network". Ideally it should remain where I placed it, respond to emergencies when called for by other GAIA units, but return back to its point of origin (more or less of course) when done with its tasks. Right now to achieve this effect I have to micro manage via Zeus / Ares which isn't always an ideal solution, especially if multiple vehicles are involved. I'd be grand if we could get a new behaviour button for that purpose: "aggressive", "defensive", "fortify", "vehicle behaviour x". I'm running into this issue especially when trying to attach attack-helos to GAIA. Often placing a helo and a corresponding landing pad carefully in a specific location where I want it to be, then applying either "aggressive" or "defensive" to it, only to see it lift off immediately, receiving a number of new WPs and then landing at an entirely new location where it is very vulnerable to attack, easy to spot and breaking the immersion - people going like "why by Odin's beard is that Hind just chilling in the middle of this wheat field instead of an airport?".

[john111 76]

Could we set the Ai pilot to invunreable ,please?  If he get shot down,we could rescue him as a unexpected side mission.

[JamesTheClarke 40]

Could we set the Ai pilot to invunreable ,please?  If he get shot down,we could rescue him as a unexpected side mission.

This is not really related to GAIA.

 

You can do that by adding this to any unit's init line: this allowDamage false or if you are not comfortable with init lines etc. use Ares mod, it has a Zeus module extension to make any unit invincible on the fly.

[t.a.6 7]

 

i afraid do not working, mcc do not recognising zones and units getting " (G) " but nothing more.

[spirit6 51]

Thanks for the valid points all!

 

Great input James. I am already increasing the input for the AI. The idea about retreating is what i described few pages back as Batttle Plans. I think I will put up a template here on the forum so people can start filling in that template that I can then put into effect as battle plan.

 

Something like this:

 

BatlePlan 1 : Tactical Retreat

 

Triggers:

GAIA points < Offensive Force in triggered Zone

&

Any GAIA Zone <> Combat

 

Action

Relocate triggered zone to Non-combat Zone.

 

 

 

Something like that.The thing is. It may all seem rather simpel but you might have multiple triggers going off. You can solve things by (like Hetman) creating "character statistics" to the GAIA system. I prefer however mission maker control. So I would vote for being able to set priority to zones. So if a priority One zone is in trouble it will draw lower priority zones empty. Stuff like that.

 

Anyway, I plan to release in short sprints and not in bulk. So we should slowly get to "the goal" instead of think it  all over and fail :)

[1212PDMCDMPPM 200]

Something like that.The thing is. It may all seem rather simpel but you might have multiple triggers going off. You can solve things by (like Hetman) creating "character statistics" to the GAIA system. I prefer however mission maker control. So I would vote for being able to set priority to zones. So if a priority One zone is in trouble it will draw lower priority zones empty. Stuff like that.

 

That's perfect ! We don't need Gaia to be an exact copy of Hetman. As mission maker, I prefer to have different types of high level AI. Knowing their strenght and weakness, I can then choose the more appropriate one for the mission I'm designing.

In some missions, I need the Gaia zones, the fight to death behaviour...etc. In other, I like the total unpredictability of Hetman, of its leader protection behaviour.

[JamesTheClarke 40]

I fully agree Spirit. Mission maker control should always trump GAIA strategies if the mission maker desires it. I'm definitely for a "tag" solution rather than an "always on" solution. Adding more behaviour buttons such as "aggressive", "defensive", "fortify", "vehicle behaviour x" and "likely to retreat" etc. could offer the most amount of freedom for the mission maker while still balancing the want / need for a bit of randomness. It let's the mission maker tag exactly how he expects the unit to behave (more or less of course). Another benefit of the tag approach over a unilateral solution is that if a certain behaviour string ever is borked (due to a bug or unforeseen effects) the end user can avoid said issue by not applying the tag behaviour to units anymore -> compartmentalisation of possible issues.

It's definitely a very good approach to introduce GAIA changes in smaller packages. a.) coding a decent macro AI which can adapt logically to a large variety of player inputs is hard, really hard. b.) small changes in macro AI can have larger effects one did not contemplate right away and with smaller gradual updates one has more time to inquire feedback from hundreds of different community testing sessions - potentially catching bugs early on.

I for one am very much looking forward to the next GAIA update and my community will gladly provide feedback on the various GAIA deployments (got a few die-hard MCC enthusiasts).

[S.Crowe 142]

@t.a.6

 

You must be doing something wrong.

 

Going with shay's example, if you put this in the init of a unit

group this setVariable ['GAIA_ZONE_INTEND',["zoneMarkerName","MOVE"], true];

Then you need to create a marker (square or circle) and name the marker zoneMarkerName

 

What I am guessing is that you are putting in the init code, but you don't have a marker with the appropriate name. Therefore GAIA takes control (get's a G but the unit), but can't do anything because there is no marker.

[t.a.6 7]

Problem, was because of other problems in mission, its working (zones anyway do not adding to MCC (would be nice)), sorry and thanks.

[shocknawe 11]

After updating to 1.56, I've been having the issue where respawning with the MCC Save Gear option turned on, causes your weapon to disappear. I get the following script error (from the RPT):

 

20:26:32 Error in expression <player addPrimaryWeaponItem _x} foreach MCC_save_primaryWeaponItems;

 

{

if (_x !>

20:26:32   Error position: <MCC_save_primaryWeaponItems;

 

{

if (_x !>

20:26:32   Error Undefined variable in expression: mcc_save_primaryweaponitems

20:26:32 File mcc_sandbox_mod\mcc\general_scripts\save_gear.sqf, line 145

20:26:32 Error in expression <ayer addSecondaryWeaponItem _x} foreach MCC_save_secondaryWeaponItems;

 

{

if (_x>

20:26:32   Error position: <MCC_save_secondaryWeaponItems;

 

{

if (_x>

20:26:32   Error Undefined variable in expression: mcc_save_secondaryweaponitems

20:26:32 File mcc_sandbox_mod\mcc\general_scripts\save_gear.sqf, line 155

20:26:32 Error in expression <pon;

{player addHandgunItem _x} foreach MCC_save_handgunitems;

 

{

if (_x != "") >

20:26:32   Error position: <MCC_save_handgunitems;

 

{

if (_x != "") >

20:26:32   Error Undefined variable in expression: mcc_save_handgunitems

20:26:32 File mcc_sandbox_mod\mcc\general_scripts\save_gear.sqf, line 165

 

 

 

Any hope for a fix?

[realthing 14]

Hi to all!

 

Really after 1.56 updating and a great Eden editor we have now a lot of problems with my favorite mod MCC ver.18. Many modules of MCC now are working incorrectly and parameters of its don't save after changing in editor. Also convoy can't be placed now. And not only these problems... I hope new MCC ver.19 will work with Eden perfectly as in the past with old versions of Arma 3.

[starcos 15]

Hi to all!

 

Really after 1.56 updating and a great Eden editor we have now a lot of problems with my favorite mod MCC ver.18. Many modules of MCC now are working incorrectly and parameters of its don't save after changing in editor. Also convoy can't be placed now. And not only these problems... I hope new MCC ver.19 will work with Eden perfectly as in the past with old versions of Arma 3.

 

Same problem here with the modules.

I change the settings, but when I open the module again, they are back to default.

[t.a.6 7]

Waiting )
I thought it's game's problem, but all exact MCC's working.

[sjones17 35]

Since I updated my ARMA yesterday, MCC is broken on our dedicated server and no one cant login again.

[El Tyranos 1264]

Did you guys updated CBA A3 ?

[realthing 14]

Did you guys updated CBA A3 ?

Of course i did! The same day with Arma 3 1.56. Is your MCC working as usual and settings of modules don't back to default every time? Or maybe did you mean the newest version of CBA is working incorrectly?

[sjones17 35]

Did you guys updated CBA A3 ?

Yes we did, we will try downgrading it.

[rekkless 240]

Odd you guys are having so many troubles. Everything works perfectly fine me. The modules all work in the editor, I can log in fine both in single player and on our dedicated server. The only problem is convoys don't work which is a known issue and havent worked for some time. I'm running version 18 with the latest CBA. Either way I'm pretty sure shay is just about to release an update.

[Moon_chilD 200]

While I get like a ton of script errors, MCC is working better than before. No problem with 1.56 so far and we had a very nice ALiVE/MCC Op. right now!

[realthing 14]

Can i ask you? If your MCC is now working better than before - did you update CBA A3 ver. cba_2.3.0.160217 ? Or maybe you simply don't use modules in editor (for example MCC mechanics etc.)?

[Moon_chilD 200]

Can i ask you? If your MCC is now working better than before - did you update CBA A3 ver. cba_2.3.0.160217 ? Or maybe you simply don't use modules in editor (for example MCC mechanics etc.)?

No this is the funny thing. The mission has not changed between 1.54 and 1.56 but it just runs better e.g. the mission creation goes way faster and smoother (of course it still lags when AI is spawning in but thats normal and okay)

I use the latest CBA!

[t.a.6 7]

No this is the funny thing. The mission has not changed between 1.54 and 1.56 but it just runs better e.g. the mission creation goes way faster and smoother (of course it still lags when AI is spawning in but thats normal and okay)

I use the latest CBA!

You playing with 2D editor map 

[redarmy 422]

Hi Shay,

 

two issues with MCC since last update...

 

1. when using MCC console to move groups of infantry,they ignore all formation and behaviour settings and when they complete a waypoint they end up bunched up at destination.

 

GAIA still works by the way,the group stays in formation and acts normal.

 

2.when i hijack an AI i loose control of my group(mcc console still says im group leader when i check squad icon but i cant issue orders,ai still follow the player,really odd)

[t.a.6 7]

 

Just inf., may will be useful.