Static starting position for Combat Patrol missions

[Lukeocyte 7]

I've made a custom combat patrol mission with additional ambient side missions/patrols going on. Ideally what I'd like to do next is create a static base for the players where they can choose load outs and request an airlift to the combat patrol AO manually.

 

However, as far as I can tell, you can't make the players starting position static and so they get transported near the combat patrol AO which sometimes spawns them in the middle of a patrol and makes the starting base pointless. Has anyone been able to figure out how to make the players start position static in Combat Patrol missions through scripting etc.?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Simon Eff 21]

That would also interest me. A starting base would be awesome. So you could also choose a better starting position by driving/flying into the AO. 

Besides that, it is way cooler to get somehow to the AO instead of only spawning near to it. 

Right now I have no idea on how to do this either... sry

 

[das attorney 858]

Have a read of that page - it should get you pointed in the right direction:

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Respawn#Respawn_Types

 

I think it's 3 "base" you're after

[Simon Eff 21]

I Think that is not what we are looking for. We are not searching for the right respawn position, but for the right starting position. perhaps I´m missing something, but nevertheless thx for the help attorney.

[Simon Eff 21]

The problem is, that the combat patrol module seems to teleport you and your group near to the AO. What we want would be a command or anything like that, which could disable the automated teleport and instead spawn you where you placed your units in the editor/ where you want them to spawn by script...

[Raven08 0]

Is there somewhere a full description of what we can change with this module?

 

A great thing can be adding something like patrol ops, with choosing spawn at start, factions, what kind of support we want, weather etc...

[Lukeocyte 7]

Hey guys,

 

Glad I'm not the only one interested in this. My hopes were to create a template map that has prepopulated patrols, vehicles, camps etc. that the player would have to navigate to get to their objective. They would have a choice of being airlifted in, by boat, etc. and getting to the Combat Patrol AO would be a major part of the mission.

 

38 minutes ago, das attorney said:

Have a read of that page - it should get you pointed in the right direction:

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Respawn#Respawn_Types

 

I think it's 3 "base" you're after

 

I'll give this a try later when I'm home and combine it with the option to select respawn loadout/location at the beginning of the mission. However, if anyone if up to try before me please let me know if it works.

 

16 minutes ago, Raven08 said:

Is there somewhere a full description of what we can change with this module?

 

A great thing can be adding something like patrol ops, with choosing spawn at start, factions, what kind of support we want, weather etc...

 

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/MP_Combat_Patrol

 

Check this out. Was helpful for setting up the description.ext which has a lot of the options you want. It does not, however, have an option for static starting position.

[Simon Eff 21]

13 minutes ago, Lukeocyte said:

Hey guys,

 

Glad I'm not the only one interested in this. My hopes were to create a template map that has prepopulated patrols, vehicles, camps etc. that the player would have to navigate to get to their objective. They would have a choice of being airlifted in, by boat, etc. and getting to the Combat Patrol AO would be a major part of the mission.

 

Hey Lukeocyte,

 

I think for you "ALiVE" could be an interesting mod. I have a sample mission together with ace and tfar. Honestly ALiVE needs a little tweaking and it is by far not the simplest to set and use, but I think you can get a lot out of it. 

But what interests me the most about combat patrol: 1. it is official, I love officially supported thing. 2. it is simple and straight forward and you got a fast and quíck mission which is easy to set up and fulfill.

 

[Lukeocyte 7]

59 minutes ago, Simon Eff said:

 

Hey Lukeocyte,

 

I think for you "ALiVE" could be an interesting mod. I have a sample mission together with ace and tfar. Honestly ALiVE needs a little tweaking and it is by far not the simplest to set and use, but I think you can get a lot out of it. 

But what interests me the most about combat patrol: 1. it is official, I love officially supported thing. 2. it is simple and straight forward and you got a fast and quíck mission which is easy to set up and fulfill.

 

 

Hey Simon,

 

Yeah totally agree and tried it out. Great mod, however, the problem I had was that ALiVE put all of its units as Zeus editable, which for most players is probably a great thing. Unfortunately for me I spent a lot of time tweaking Zeus parameters to limit it only some NATO units/objects, set camera movement only to the player's base, and give them only a certain amount of Zeus resources to spend with the idea is that the player can place their own units for the mission. Obviously I wouldn't want players to see the OPFOR units that ALiVE places.

 

Basically what I'm ultimately trying to create a semi-dynamic scenario in which players will get a briefing and then have to do their own intel to figure out the force size and how they are going to get to and accomplish their objective. During that process they can hop into Zeus and spawn whatever units/vehicles they deem appropriate for the mission based on their Zeus resources either by assigning them to their squad or controlling them via Zeus to accomplish the objective.

 

This is the main reason I want combat patrol to force spawn players at a designated base.

[XXLKlugey 6]

Hey guys,

 

I made a small workaround for the problem.

The units are still teleported near a city, but are moved back to the start position when the blackscreen ends (not the best solution but it's a start)

 

It worked for me and I hope it will work for you too. 

 

initPlayerLocal.sqf:

private _pos = getpos player;
waitUntil {!isNil "BIS_CP_initDone"};
player setpos _pos;

 

[Lukeocyte 7]

59 minutes ago, XXLKlugey said:

Hey guys,

 

I made a small workaround for the problem.

The units are still teleported near a city, but are moved back to the start position when the blackscreen ends (not the best solution but it's a start)

 

It worked for me and I hope it will work for you too. 

 

initPlayerLocal.sqf:

private _pos = getpos player;
waitUntil {!isNil "BIS_CP_initDone"};
player setpos _pos;

 

 

Thanks for the post! Definitely works. Unfortunately on a later test run I was teleported inside one of the mine fields I placed and exploded before your script kicked in... doh. I've posted a request in the official combat patrol thread in hopes a dev will see. I can't imagine it would be difficult to add a parameter to allow us to select whether the mission teleports us or not.

[XXLKlugey 6]

Mhh ok. Like I said not the best solution :S . Maybe it's the best to ask bohemia directly to add an option to change the spawn location. Anyways I will still work on and post my results here ;)

[Lukeocyte 7]

18 hours ago, XXLKlugey said:

Mhh ok. Like I said not the best solution :S . Maybe it's the best to ask bohemia directly to add an option to change the spawn location. Anyways I will still work on and post my results here ;)

 

If you find any other solutions please post here as at the moment I'm currently using your solution, but have removed mines for obvious reasons :-)

 

I also posted in the main Combat Patrol thread in hopes of getting a dev's attention as it seems like it should be a fairly straightforward thing to implement and would open up a lot more design options for making more customized Combat Patrol scenarios. PierreMGI responded, but I have yet to figure out how to implement his solution. Might be worth checking out.

 

Happy scripting.

 

[XXLKlugey 6]

Hey Lukeocyte,

 

I found another solution which is much better then the first one. I just opened the original init function in the function viewer for combat patrol and copied it to the init.sqf of my mission (later on it could be integrated into a seperate function, used the init for testing). After that I found the part where the units are teleported and commented it out (starts at line 785). so the starting position will be the one you want to. With this function you also can disable the CP module as it does the same.

 

EDIT: Still gives an error regarding an undefined variable (_this), but its working

 

init.sqf:

http://www31.zippyshare.com/v/4ZPWfhsK/file.html

 

Also thank you for sharing the progress at the official combat patrol post. It's nice to read that someone responded and got a solution too (maybe a better one as mine :) ). I will try it later with a friend of mine (SP&MP).

 

[Lukeocyte 7]

11 minutes ago, XXLKlugey said:

Hey Lukeocyte,

 

I found another solution which is much better then the first one. I just opened the original init function in the function viewer for combat patrol and copied it to the init.sqf of my mission (later on it could be integrated into a seperate function, used the init for testing). After that I found the part where the units are teleported and commented it out (starts at line 785). so the starting position will be the one you want to. With this function you also can disable the CP module as it does the same.

 

EDIT: Still gives an error regarding an undefined variable (_this), but its working

 

init.sqf:

http://www31.zippyshare.com/v/4ZPWfhsK/file.html

 

Also thank you for sharing the progress at the official combat patrol post. It's nice to read that someone responded and got a solution too (maybe a better one as mine :) ). I will try it later with a friend of mine (SP&MP).

 

 

Very cool! I think this is what PierreMGI suggested on the other post. I'm still getting my feet wet with Bohemia scripting so I just want to make sure I understand. Basically you opened the Combat Patrol Init module, found where it teleported the players, commented that out, and then placed the new script into the init.sqf? So in theory to get this to work I would put your init.sqf into my mission folder and then remove my Combat Patrol Init module. The other blacklist etc. Combat Patrol modules should still work with it right? Awesome work.

 

I think this is exactly what PierreMGI did on his Takistan mission (scroll up in the other post). Might be worth looking at that as well in case _this is important in the script (I can't imagine it wouldn't be).

[XXLKlugey 6]

Yes basically it's like you said :). To find any official functions you can use the Functions viewer. You find it at the Editor -> Tools -> Function Viewer.

But I can't tell you if it works with blacklist. Like you said it should work because the script actually replaces the main module.

 

Like I understood it PierreMGI added the possibility to change the position via mission parameters, so that you can enable and disable it at the mission selection screen (I'm also still at the beginning of Arma scripting and don't understand them til now :S). Like I said im going to test it later on, because it sound much better.

[Tyl3r99 41]

any update to this? very interested

[viperBAT44 17]

On 8/17/2017 at 2:36 PM, XXLKlugey said:

Hey guys,

 

I made a small workaround for the problem.

The units are still teleported near a city, but are moved back to the start position when the blackscreen ends (not the best solution but it's a start)

 

It worked for me and I hope it will work for you too. 

 

initPlayerLocal.sqf:

private _pos = getpos player;
waitUntil {!isNil "BIS_CP_initDone"};
player setpos _pos;

 

This definitely works for me... but not the rest of my squad. They are still teleported to just outside the AO.