Dynamic Vehicle Loadouts feedback

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Well, the PLA CSAT are more advanced than the regulars. So it could be a mini radar or something, or some kind of sensor you can't see. Don't forget these guys field full screen thermal helmets, thermal suits, underbarrel .50 cals. 

[dragon01 902]

They can't change the laws of physics, though. A radar of that size would be pathetic, certainly not enough for ATG operation. Anything else needs a transparent lens, which tend to be obvious. SACLOS is the most reasonable explanation here. Again, more diversity among the weapon selection could only help.

 

Also, I want BIS to implement reliable SACLOS so that Russian missiles from RHS can properly guide when launched by AI. :) 

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Well I think it would be cool. I'm all for good sized vanilla missile box, so having the dynamic loadout added to then Fenhuang and its missiles compatible with all CSAT vehicles would be warmly welcome.

[petek 62]

36 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

No, it shouldn't. First, it doesn't have a seeker (those tend to be pretty obvious), as I said before. Second, it's unrealistic, nobody puts two guidance systems on one missile unless it's really long-ranged. Third, it's just plain boring that way. If you want locking, you take the Scalpel. If you want SACLOS, you take the Jian. Right now, the choice doesn't matter. Ideally, if you wanted locking you'd have to take the big AT missiles or maybe the Titan (it'd be really nice to have an aircraft version of it), Scalpel would be LG only and Jian would be SACLOS, to further differentiate them.

Agree that air versions of both AA and AT Titans would be great (I mentioned in a different thread that I think in 2 or 4 pod configs would be great for the smaller Helos)

...... Dear BIS Devs....... please put back all the options for the munitions for the aircraft! I'd much rather it be determined by the mission makers what they'd like to arm with rather than the WIP restrictions introduced in this update. I realise some clipping issues etc.. but in the absence of any bespoke solution I'd rather have them and decide not to use them. Still early days with trying these out but I already miss large AT missiles and AA on the Pawnee, Orca and drones. The new Jet Drone especially seems under equipped - Air to Air would be great.

[silentghoust 132]

Here is a question, is there going to be a module or script system for us to change stuff out in the mission? 

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

In the Wiki, it's planned. I kept having my team mate bugging me about not being able to do it while he was in the mission. So I'm hoping an re-do of the ammo truck system.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

7 hours ago, silentghoust said:

Here is a question, is there going to be a module or script system for us to change stuff out in the mission? 

 

A vanilla menu to customize the loadout would be sweet

 

where is @moricky when we need him

[Strike_NOR 898]

On ‎14‎.‎04‎.‎2017 at 1:59 PM, petek said:

Dear BIS Devs....... please put back all the options for the munitions for the aircraft! I'd much rather it be determined by the mission makers what they'd like to arm with rather than the WIP restrictions introduced in this update.

 

It could be convenient for certain scenarios (maybe an EAST jet that normally would not have a Maverick (Macer), but you want it to have one for your mission), but it will either be very buggy, unbalanced and unstable (no rules forced to munitions).

 

Picture this :

 

You are playing multiplayer, your default Buzzard only has 4 AA missiles equipped, so you decide you rather take an A-164 Wipeout and load it with only AA missiles. Now you are a flying SAM site.

 

Also, when developing a jet mod, if there are no restrictions to munitions, you would get all sorts of clipping, and glitchy stuff going on.

 

And you could get situations like the AH-9 having 24x Macers installed.

 

All in all, restrictions are good. They help balance the jets out, and make sure that some weapons are only available to each side. At least that is my opinion.

 

In regards to realism, there should be even more restrictions (weight etc).

[petek 62]

2 minutes ago, Strike_NOR said:

 

It could be convenient for certain scenarios (maybe an EAST jet that normally would not have a Maverick (Macer), but you want it to have one for your mission), but it will either be very buggy, unbalanced and unstable (no rules forced to munitions).

 

Picture this :

 

You are playing multiplayer, your default Buzzard only has 4 AA missiles equipped, so you decide you rather take an A-164 Wipeout and load it with only AA missiles. Now you are a flying SAM site.

 

Also, when developing a jet mod, if there are no restrictions to munitions, you would get all sorts of clipping, and glitchy stuff going on.

 

And you could get situations like the AH-9 having 24x Macers installed.

 

All in all, restrictions are good. They help balance the jets out, and make sure that some weapons are only available to each side. At least that is my opinion.

 

In regards to realism, there should be even more restrictions (weight etc).

Have to disagree (but I only play SP;-)) Arma is a Sand-box game and balance should always be handled in the scenario/mission if required by user-imposed restrictions in my opinion. I agree that for the sake of some realism weight and realistic restrictions would be great if it can be done - wouldn't want a Pawnee with a loadout comparable to a Kajman but being able to tweak the munitions should be allowed.  I see the clipping that we had and if it's an issue for folk don't overload the vehicle. (let's face it we get clipping in most games including Arma 3 that isn't related to this). I personally regard the blackfoot clipping issues as acceptable in the absence of any stub-winged version being available. Obviously would prefer bespoke solutions (earlier discussions on Titan AT and AA as a helo platform etc...I'm sure we'd all love a whole new missile/weapon box that can be used but at this stage I think we're only going to get the weapons that are availble (like a 3 missle rack etc...) but I'd rather we have the option to customise than not. I love what mods have already done (MELB, RHS CUP etc... and would hope for similar options available in the base game. Cheers

[da12thMonkey 1943]

On 14/04/2017 at 0:59 PM, petek said:

please put back all the options for the munitions for the aircraft! I'd much rather it be determined by the mission makers what they'd like to arm with

 

But it can already be determined by mission makers regardless of the native side and weight restrictions in the attributes menu.

 

They can force any munitions on any pylon with setPylonLoadOut command using true in the fourth value of the array.

 

 

Or have mission makers forgotten how to write basic init commands now we have modules and Eden attributes, and rely solely on drop-down menus? :D

[petek 62]

18 minutes ago, da12thMonkey said:

 

But it can already be determined by mission makers regardless of the native side and weight restrictions in the attributes menu.

 

They can force any munitions on any pylon with setPylonLoadOut command with true in the fourth value in the array.

 

 

Or have mission makers forgotten how to write basic init commands now we have modules and Eden attributes, and rely solely on drop-down menus? :D

I'm all about the drop down menus me ;-) Seriously though I'd rather it be a feature people can use without having to code it......I will however have a mess around with the init command you mentioned (here come some hours of frustration....;-) Cheers

[da12thMonkey 1943]

1 hour ago, petek said:

here come some hours of frustration..

 

Try something like this in the debug console when pausing the game

for "_x" from n1 to n2 do {vehicle player setPylonLoadOut [_x, "PylonRack_Classname",true,-1]}

where n1 and n2 determine the range of pylons you want to fit that weapon to.

e.g. "from 2 to 2" would apply only to the left-outer pylon, "from 1 to 2" would do the two outermost pylons on each wing, "from 1 to 6" would do all the 6 wing pylons on something like the Shikra

 

It's simpler than writing a new line for every pylon when you want to add several of the same munition on symmetrical pylons.

 

PylonRack_Classnames (e.g. PylonRack_Missile_BIM9X_x2) can all be found in the config browser under cfgMagazine. Just highlight and Ctrl+C to copy classname from the "Path" field when you click on the name of the munition you want in the browser.

[Strike_NOR 898]

36 minutes ago, da12thMonkey said:

They can force any munitions on any pylon with setPylonLoadOut command using true in the fourth value of the array.

 

 

Case closed :)

[petek 62]

10 minutes ago, da12thMonkey said:

 

Try something like this in the debug console when pausing the game

for "_x" from n1 to n2 do {vehicle player setPylonLoadOut [_x, "PylonRack_Classname",true,-1]}

where n1 and n2 determine the range of pylons you want to fit that weapon to.

e.g. "from 2 to 2" would apply only to the left-outer pylon, "from 1 to 2" would do the two outermost pylons on each wing, "from 1 to 6" would do all the 6 wing pylons on something like the Shikra

 

It's simpler than writing a new line for every pylon when you want to add several of the same munition on symmetrical pylons.

 

PylonRack_Classnames (e.g. PylonRack_Missile_BIM9X_x2) can all be found in the config browser under cfgWeapons. Just highlight and Ctrl+C to copy classname from the "Path" field when you click on the name of the munition you want in the browser.

Thanks da12thMonkey.

 

...and Strike_NOR.... err ...No ;-) 

 

We all love how moddable Arma is (and I'm still amazed and grateful for this Community) but if it can be in the base game I feel it should be . After all sling-loading, FFV, weapon resting and deployment etc... were brought in because talented modders were able to satisfy the requests from the players and BIS eventually implemented them.

 

Cheers

 

 

 

[Sniperwolf572 758]

1 hour ago, da12thMonkey said:

 

But it can already be determined by mission makers regardless of the native side and weight restrictions in the attributes menu.

 

They can force any munitions on any pylon with setPylonLoadOut command using true in the fourth value of the array.

 

Or have mission makers forgotten how to write basic init commands now we have modules and Eden attributes, and rely solely on drop-down menus? :D

 

Speaking as a person who is capable to script anything I can think of, I'd also rather have it unrestricted in editor when there's already a system for it. If it's a problem of cluttering the UI by default, a simple "enable all weapons" checkbox allows for advanced usage on demand.

 

If we go by the argument presented, then why have anything related to pylons in the 3DEN at all? You can move and rotate objects by script commands, you can place units in vehicles by script commands, etc.

It's not like the person modifying the mission in 3DEN is unable to make an any loadout he wants anyway. It's like saying, you can damage a unit to 80% in the editor, but if you want to kill it, use setDamage. 

 

In the end, 3DEN is a tool that was made and exists for convenience of the mission maker. And all the "omg realism" claims also go out the window, it's not like the planes would go on combat missions without ammo and collect powerups to replenish their stores by flying through rings in mid air, but 3DEN allows for it, why not complain about that? Should 3DEN allow for only balanced or realistic scenarios now? A warning that goes "You placed 2 BLUFOR units, you must place 2 OPFOR now"?

[Zygzak191 52]

Tbh adding an option to mount every weapon possible for every "slot" is a bad idea, right now those slots are realistic, for example you can only attach light AA rockets to the edge of the wing. Also HUD has to be configured properly for certain weapons (HUD on Shikra shows that R-77 is being locked for example).

[da12thMonkey 1943]

53 minutes ago, Sniperwolf572 said:

a simple "enable all weapons" checkbox allows for advanced usage on demand

I could agree with that.

 

I think for BIS it's kind of important in the first instance of the editor though to enforce the idea that there are realistic limitations to what types on munitions can be loaded on certain pylons. Similarly, one can't stick a rocket launcher or Machine-gun in the pocket of a unit's uniform.

It's a feature that they consciously made when developing the whole pylonPod system, and the native attributes UI reflects BIS' intent for their game assets and what they feel are realistic configurations for each aircraft.

 

Having access to all munitions should be the exception, not the rule IMO. Leaving it to scripts definitely makes for it as an exception, but I agree there could be more user-friendly ways of bending the rules.

 

At any rate. BIS made it entirely possible to mod the Attributes menu, and allow addon-makers to implement different iterations of the loadout system on their own aircraft, with custom features rather than using the exact same template.

[noilliz 38]

1 hour ago, da12thMonkey said:

 

Try something like this in the debug console when pausing the game

for "_x" from n1 to n2 do {vehicle player setPylonLoadOut [_x, "PylonRack_Classname",true,-1]}

where n1 and n2 determine the range of pylons you want to fit that weapon to.

e.g. "from 2 to 2" would apply only to the left-outer pylon, "from 1 to 2" would do the two outermost pylons on each wing, "from 1 to 6" would do all the 6 wing pylons on something like the Shikra

 

It's simpler than writing a new line for every pylon when you want to add several of the same munition on symmetrical pylons.

 

PylonRack_Classnames (e.g. PylonRack_Missile_BIM9X_x2) can all be found in the config browser under cfgWeapons. Just highlight and Ctrl+C to copy classname from the "Path" field when you click on the name of the munition you want in the browser.

3

 

I guess I'm really blind, but in the config viewer I can't find anything that starts with PylonRack. What is the path towards the "PylonRack_Missile_BIM9X_x2"?

[Sniperwolf572 758]

25 minutes ago, da12thMonkey said:

I think for BIS it's kind of important in the first instance of the editor though to enforce the idea that there are realistic limitations to what types on munitions can be loaded on certain pylons. Similarly, one can't stick a rocket launcher or Machine-gun in the pocket of a unit's uniform.

It's a feature that they consciously made when developing the whole pylonPod system, and the native attributes UI reflects BIS' intent for their game assets and what they feel are realistic configurations for each aircraft.

 

If we were talking about some menu was for in-game use by players, I'd agree. Also, one can't stick a rocket launcher in a units uniform with script commands either, so I hope you see the inconsistency. Either way, I see where you're coming from, I'd just rather advocate for the mission maker than either realism or balance in this case.

 

However, in my opinion, that's a weird precedent to set in the 3DEN editor as stated above. They might as well argue that you should not be able to give BLUFOR soldiers OPFOR weapons in the 3DEN without scripting commands and so on. It's like making this awesome tool for people who can't script and then purposefully limiting it, why should I be able to put 10 nukes on a plane that can't carry it IRL, but a person who might not know how to script can't. 

This kind of thinking removed buildings, ruins and such from editor since OFP, and that was put in with 3DEN because someone at BI came to their senses.

 

I don't think they want to encourage utter madness

 

They encourage battle buses, sci fi mods, insane game modes, and all kinds of creativity. What's a DIY plane loadout compared to that? 

Edited April 15, 2017 by Sniperwolf572
Encouraging utter madness. :)

[da12thMonkey 1943]

29 minutes ago, noilliz said:

 

I guess I'm really blind, but in the config viewer I can't find anything that starts with PylonRack. What is the path towards the "PylonRack_Missile_BIM9X_x2"?

Apologies, they're under cfgMagazines - I wrote cfgWeapons by mistake.

e.g.  Path: configfile >> "CfgMagazines" >> "PylonRack_Missile_BIM9X_x1"

 

19 minutes ago, Sniperwolf572 said:

why should I be able to put 10 nukes on a plane that can't carry it IRL, but a person who might not know how to script can't.

Why would they start adding unrealistic loadouts to the game in this instance with the pylons menu though?

 

You can just as well addweapon+addmagazine a tank to fire A2A missiles from its cannon. But if you could just select that from the editor instead of having a normal selection of AT and HEAT shells, people would think the game was stupid unrealistic crap.

 

In terms of presentation of the assets, it benefits them to keep things realistic. If I could just drop one of these down in the editor, I'd feel like BIS was losing the plot.

[darkChozo 133]

19 minutes ago, Sniperwolf572 said:

However, in my opinion, that's a weird precedent to set in the 3DEN editor as stated above. They might as well argue that you should not be able to give BLUFOR soldiers OPFOR weapons in the 3DEN without scripting commands and so on. It's like making this awesome tool for people who can't script and then purposefully limiting it, why should I be able to put 10 nukes on a plane that can't carry it IRL, but a person who might not know how to script can't. 

 

There's a distinction between "silly" and "impossible" here. The unit loadout editor lets you do silly things, but they at least look okay and are technically possible. Unlimited pylon settings can result in a lot of big missile racks clipping into each other and random minigun belts hanging in midair.

 

Also, I'm not sure the current UI could handle a full selection of weapons, at least without some fixes. It already kinda struggles with the ~10 or so weapons we've seen with it, how would it handle 30 or 40?

 

I mean, I'm not totally opposed to it, but there are additional factors to consider here.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

18 minutes ago, da12thMonkey said:

You can just as well addweapon+addmagazine a tank to fire A2A missiles from its cannon. But if you could just select that from the editor instead of having a normal selection of AT and HEAT shells, people would think the game was stupid unrealistic crap.

 

You can make things invincible with a click of a button in 3DEN, does that make people think the game is stupid unrealistic crap? Or do they go "hey mission maker, this unit can't be killed, can you fix/change that?".

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I think the pylons feature should replicate the exact capability of real life counter parts. Realism aside, and balance, what ever these aircraft are capable of IRL should be reflected in game.

[petek 62]

Hi all

I feel the more accessible the better. End of the day Arma is a great game and we all want to have as much fun with it as possible. As a non-scripter the ability to add custom loadouts is great fun and as it's mainly the helicopters I mess about with I've enjoyed the fact that the previous restriction-free drop downs allowed all helo to have AA and larger ATGMs added.

 

Luckily I kept an old version of and Pawnees, Orca and Wildcats with 3x scalpel racks and a sindle ASRAAM look and work well and are a lot of fun! AAF anti-tank missions are now achievable;-)

 

I personally wouldn't use ridiculously overloaded aircraft but I think it should be left to the individual user. I know I'm going to be pretty disappointed if the current restrictions stand...... and I really don't have the ability or time to script changing them - as said it's a convenience thing. Anyway it's good there's feedback for BIS to chew over.

 

cheers

[Sniperwolf572 758]

29 minutes ago, da12thMonkey said:

In terms of presentation of the assets, it benefits them to keep things realistic. If I could just drop one of these down in the editor, I'd feel like BIS was losing the plot.

 

Yet this is a-ok?