Drongos Artillery (an advanced artillery system)

[EricJ 764]

No, would be nice though.

[legolasindar 3]

First post updated with the latest version (v0.25). Changelog:

• Made tube detection less reliant on the display name (which causes errors with non-English versions)
  
• Fixed dialog errors (listScrollBar, colorFocused, colorBackGroundFocused not defined)

@Legolasindar

Please let me know if this fixed your problem.

I don't have much time at the moment, so I was unable to test this release to much. Please post any bugs.

Yes this fix the problem, thanks.

[[styr]killswitch 10]

hey, very nice mod! i think it would be great to have the option to set another unit (maybe squadmembers) as the reference point for the adjustment - so that a squadleader for example can give the order to call in artillery and also to adjust it with the adjustment values from his his point of view.

[Drongo69 117]

A bit of an update: I stopped work on this for a while and focused on other projects, but some progress has been made. I am overwriting the BIS values, getting rid of most of the random inaccuracy of shells. So the artillery is much more accurate. Unfortunately this requires manually finding all of the range values again, tedious work. I have also adjusted round lethality to better match real-world data. I plan to add 155mm to INDEP and MLRS to INDEP and OPFOR. I'd like to add support for Reyhard's mortars too, but have not started on this yet (more tedious data gathering).

@[styr]killswitch

That would be too difficult to do, getting an AI to report fall of shot etc.

[[styr]killswitch 10]

Ah ok, but what i meant was having the feature of course limited to other real players in the squad, not AI- so to say having the option to choose another human suqadmember (if existent) as geographical reference point for the adjustment that i am transmitting, instead of my own character. But I guess this also wouldnt be much easier then^^

Nevertheless I'm glad to hear you're still working on it so thank you for your great work :)

regards

Edited April 23, 2014 by [styr]killswitch

[Drongo69 117]

Ah, I understand. In that case, wouldn't it just be easier to get the squadmember to act as the spotter and use the dialog?

Anyway, I'm glad you are enjoying it.

[[styr]killswitch 10]

yea I guess the effort of modding this would outweigh the benefits for realism a little bit ^^

anyway thanks for your answers :)

[militarypolice 10]

Has anyone got this working with TFAR yet? Or how do I get it to work with TFAR I did the script thing "dtaRadioTypes = ["ItemRadio","tf_rt1523g","tf_mr3000","tf_anprc155"] to try to get it to work am I doing something wrong or does it just not work with TFAR?

[Drongo69 117]

Last I tested (some months ago) it supported TFAR and ACRE without needing to adjust anything.

Progress report: Currently waiting on motivation to manually determine all range data again -_-

[militarypolice 10]

I really want my Unit to use this system it will greatly help with My Forward Observer guys (FO) I have for the unit. If you would can you tell me how to adjust the range manually (Or am I doing it the right way anyway) until you fix it permanently if you fix it that would be nice.

Thanks,

R. Bruce, USA

Major

42nd Air Assault Regiment

Executive Officer

[silverwave 11]

Well if it can help with your motivation, I'm also waiting for an update for this mod!

It is REALLY nice and it is so much more realistic!

It also make artillery not that scalpel precise weapon of unavoidable death. It's so nice in MP when you actually see artillery start falling closer and closer to your position as FO is adjusting fire and you know you need to start running out of that building but you also know it's suppressed by machinegun fire. True story :)

Hopefully, gave you a tiny bit of motivation by sharing my love for this mod :P

[mahuja 12]

There hasn't been an update since I last tested, so I'm assuming this still holds true.

The altitude of the target seems to be ignored. So it'll assume the target is at sea level. If you have some idea what angle the shell will come in at, you can compensate for it (so long as you don't cross a charge boundary in doing so). It will be more accurate the closer the target is to sea level.

At no point was this clearer than when I saw the arc the shells approached the steep half-island I was targeting at the time; if they had continued the arc would have hit the target point had it been at sea level. It is also one of the few values not kept.

And it's probably caused by a spelling error.

I'm curious though, did the shell flight characteristics change? Is that why you need to "determine all range data"?

What format etc do you need the data in?

[97.dylan@gmail.com 10]

awsome mod dude

[Drongo69 117]

When I first determined the range/height data, I was using BIS values with their high dispersion. At times firing 10 rounds at the target would see half of them land 50 meters or more away. So the current values are a best guess. In the version I am working on all shell dispersion is very low, so I want to get accurate data.

@Silverwave

That's a cool story, I've never had players use the arty against me.

[7Cav Wiper 10]

Drongos artillery

Fantastic mod from what I have seen so far and works excellently.

I was wondering if you would ever consider making an iteration of this mod that would allow human players to be inside of an artillery piece and use your call for fire type GUI as a FireCS.

Basicly the user would use your system while they are inside the vehicle in the gunner seat for example and the artillery piece would lay itself to that co ordinate. I am asking this as much as I calling in the rain I also love to send it and point and click doesnt do it for me even if its just a few more actions it would make all the difference.

I saw earlier that you said you had not played A2 but im not sure if you might have seen the FCS system that ace used to use below.

image link below regarding the FCS system I'm talking about

http://raceriv.com/arma2/afcs_01.jpg

[mahuja 12]

The paladin fcs is part of the m109a6 paladin mod, which was never brought into ace. (I think that may have been the intent, but it was never actually done.)

For drongo to expand the scope of his mod that widely though... don't hold your breath.

[7Cav Wiper 10]

Yes sorry, that's what I was talking about. Its similar but i think the laying of the gun etc especially with an already existing vehicle such as the scorcher may be a tad difficult. Would love to see someone bring a similair FCS system over to A3 in the future.

[mahuja 12]

I don't know the implementation details but I think the "turret" was not a turret to the game engine, but an animated part, with the scripts animating it (="turn to here"). This removes the ability to aim by mouse, naturally, which means it's harder to disrupt its aim by accident.

The m109a6 was partially ported to arma 3.

I think maybe he needed SoulAssassin to update the model or something (see front heavy video), I don't remember.

I am hestitant to ask nou about it again since I don't want to take his focus off of acre2 more than necessary.

[7Cav Wiper 10]

Yeah I would definitely love to find out if he ever solved the issue and if there is a possibility of it being brought across in the future.

[Redland123 10]

How do you access the other modules ?

[Drongo69 117]

I have no intention of supporting human-controlled artillery, it is beyond the scope of this mod and would probably be a lot of work.

@Redland123

Under modules in the editor their should be a number of modules starting with the tag DTA.

[doom_sharpe 10]

Do you know the values for the muzzle velocities for each fire type of the vanilla arty? How do I find them in the config?

[quantenfrik 10]

I'm pretty sure you can find them when you go into the config viewer, cfgweapons, mortar_155mm_AMOS. there are burst 1-5, and each has a different artillery charge, i'm quite sure it's a value multiplied with the initspeed to achieve different muzzle velocities, e.g. the lowest one is 810 (initspeed) * 0,19 (artillerycharge of burst 1) = 153,9 m/s.

[UGLY58 10]

In regards TFAR and ACRE

Tried playing with the dtaRadioTypes = ["tf_rt1523g","tf_mr3000","tf_anprc 155"] etc but no luck. Great shame as this works very well without those to me, key mods. I tried adjusting key definitions in the dtaconfig.hpp but as others report that is just a shortcut to the item radio click.

I wonder if its possible to redefine that element another way as dtaRadioTypes does not seem to work for me, or others it seems. Maybe naming a player "FOO" or "JFO" etc could work or linking the function to a specific item defined in the dtaconfig.hpp ?

[Drongo69 117]

Unless ACRE and TFAR have changed something, it should work fine with those systems without the player needing to do anything. Adding TFAR/ACRE radios to dtaRadioTypes does not work, due to the way those mods work (each radio is replaced with a unique radio item).

The DTA radio check script uses functions from the respective systems to check radio presence. Try putting down a DTA Debug module and starting your mission, it should say "Checking TFAR radios"... "TFAR radio used" if the TFAR mod is present. Please let me know if this does not happen.