ITC Land Systems V1.3 - Naval Fire Support

[Rapaxlegio 1]

hi, Great work! 
One question
sometimes i hit and sometimes i dont know where the shell lands :-)  The shooting computer  gives you 6 solutions but is there any method To find out what's the best?

Thanks

[sammael 366]

Amazing update!

Please make Pook Arty Compatibility mod

[toadball 35]

Obligatory "We're not dead yet" post, we've got a couple of things brewing at the moment.
I've been working on implementing some MLRS improvements which will hopefully be coming in our next update.
Some video of a couple tests below:

 

 

Regarding compatibility expansions:
I'm reluctant to say outright that we wont do specific compatibility expansions for other mods as we have with RHS; but I can say it's very unlikely that we will do any others in the immediate future with our present focus on feature development including incorporating new systems onto the Encore naval assets.
We are happy to assist anyone who would like to attempt to make a compatibility addon themselves. We will be producing documentation explaining the steps involved with integrating features from ITC Land Systems into 3rd party addons later on down the line as it is a relatively simple process with a fundamental knowledge of configs.

Regarding solution selection from BCS:

Think about the terrain between the gun and target, and what type of ammunition you are firing.
With hilly terrain, and when using guided munitions a higher angle fire mission can be preferable.
However, if you don't need a high angle you need to remember your shells still have to clear the highest obstacle on the gun target line so being aware of the maximum ordinate vs highest obstacle is important if you want your rounds to arrive on the target.
Additionally, ICM bomblet dispersal can behave differently depending on how you fire it: Higher angle fire missions concentrate the bomblets a lot better, while lower angle solutions can allow for a larger area to be covered.
Yax is the better of the two of us for BCS questions and he may provide a better answer than I can.

 

As always, feel free to join the ITC Addons Discord! Myself and Yax are around and post updates and other bits we are working on from time to time, and you can always chat with other users of ITC Addons.

[yax 597]

Update V1.2: MRLS

Today's update features new and improved MLRS systems, along with many tweaks, fixes and improvements to existing systems!

 

1.2 Changes:
Added: MLRS App to tablets on MLRS, includes remote guidance and fuze setter
Added: New MLRS munitions with ITC features:

• M230 HEX - Unguided high explosive munition
• M230 ICM - Dual purpose anti tank / anti personnel cluster munition
• M230 PGM - GPS guided high explosive munition
• M230 MAT - Anti tank mine dispersal munition
• M230 MAP - Anti personnel mine dispersal munition    

Added: Improved illumination properties for ACE 82mm Illum shells
Added: End of mission & record target functionality to BCS

Fixed: Muzzle velocities for 155mm & 152mm howitzer munitions reduced to provide realistic range capabilities
Fixed: Time fuze function was not spawning submunition/helper entities with correct alignment resulting in unpredictable behaviour of various shell types
Fixed: Mk6 82mm BTABs and battery definitions updated to v1.1 standard.
Fixed: Various tweaks to config components of CIWS feature.

Tweaked: Various config values used by BCS to provide TOF for various munitions that require optimal burst heights.

 

Media:

Improved 82mm Illumination shells.

 

MLRS Firing Command Interface.

[Coding42 18]

Is it possible to use your Artillery UI (Gunnerview) without installing a mod, just by calling a scriptcommand and adding stuff to the description?

[toadball 35]

52 minutes ago, Coding42 said:

Is it possible to use your Artillery UI (Gunnerview) without installing a mod, just by calling a scriptcommand and adding stuff to the description?

In general, yes.

As it does occur to me we have been rather silent since the last update ( work and personal circumstances have kept us both rather distracted ) I bring a bit of a dev update on v1.3 of the mod. 

 

Some things we are working on:

VLS Land Attack Missile System:

We have the core functionality for GPS guided terrain following missiles working, some footage of this can be found over on my twitch channel. The UI for this has been drafted but still needs to be finalised and brought in game. This will still be controlled by using the UAV console remotely, a design decision we quite like about the naval weapon systems added by BI in the Encore update of last year.

Once we have that done we will look at expanding functionality to incorporate selecting vertical angles of impact. As this may involve tweaking our guidance function for this missile v1.3 may be released without that particular feature for this system.

 

Naval Gun System:

With v1.3 we intend to implement a number of features present on the self propelled howitzers on the naval gun system added in the Encore update. This will include an improved gunners sight for indirect fires, ballistic calculation system, as well as ammo handler and fuze setter.

This is unfortunately the crux of things right now. Thanks to the helpful reporting of bugs by users in our discord chat a number of issues were identified with the ammohandler and autoloader system we currently use which necessitates a rebuild of the back end to these particular systems. This needs to be done before we can implement it on a remote controlled turret such as the NGS.

This rebuild is a taxing task in terms of time,  energy, and sanity. And for all of those we can hardly say we have a surplus of any right now.
Not to say we aren't working on it, just letting you know where the delays are.

 

Compatibility Updates:

We recently updated our RHS compatibility mods to allow the use of our BCS with all RHS howitzers, and mortars. With UX in mind, we'll be updating assets which currently lack alignment displays with these with v1.3 to make the use of these a littler easier.

Implementing our recent MLRS improvements on RHS' MLRS such as the Grad and HIMARS is taking longer than anticipated and will likely take a back seat to the main v1.3 projects.

[toadball 35]

Hello!

A bit of an update for those of you who are not in the ITC Addons discord.
I've been busy this month catching up on the to do list for v1.3, a recent bank holiday gave me some much needed time off to work on ITC Land and I'm excited to say it's paid off!

I have finished the back end rework of the ammohandler/autoloader component used on the self propelled systems which has fixed a number of bugs and allowed me to complete the integration of ITC Land Systems features on the naval gun system.
At present this will function the same way as the SPH gunner position does except the gun remains accessed with a UAV terminal and the controller will have access to the FCI system to calculate basic fire missions and the BCS for more sophisticated tasks.
The downside of this, is that until after v1.3 is finished the ROF of the naval gun system will still not be comparable to real world analogs. However, we will be releasing a hotfix with another back end rework to enable config definable rates of fire acros all systems which use the ammohandler feature.

The VLS will be my next task and should, fingers crossed, not take too much time to finish and is currently my main priority.

Hopefully once I have some more visually interesting updates I'll post a video or two of some of these updates in use.

[toadball 35]

Got some testing of the new VLS features, and back end changes to allow the use of ITC Land features on autonomous / remote controlled vehicles done this weekend.
With a bit of house keeping and some final checks still to do, we are fairly close to another update.

 

 

[F.Herbiie 33]

 

I did  a tutorial for this 😄

[Tiberius_161 41]

Really great how you guys potrait artillery more truthfully! Great mod!

 

Suggestion:

1) adding the possibility to enter meteo data (both admospheric as local meteo for smoke). I think ace supports this for mortars at least. 

 

2) Making the gun magazine changable during the mission so you can change yoir loadout to suit the situation. 

 

3) Allow troughloading for during static shooting.

 

4) Add circular and Rectangle as shape to shoot. 

 

One question though, is there a direct download solution?

 

Thnx again! This mod is absolutely fantastic.  

[Tiberius_161 41]

When setting up a gun in the bty setup, you can choose the gun type from the drop down. I noticed it often puts it automatically back to the first option. Due to this you cannot select the right munition when assigning a fire mission. 

Resolved

 

[toadball 35]

Update V1.3: Naval Fire Support

Our update today finally integrates ITC Land Systems features on the naval fire support assets introduced with the Encore DLC.

This introduces the features we have on our SPH variants on to the Mk. 45 Hammer in through the addition of the Mk. 45 mod. 0 Hammer 2.

Additionally, we have introduced the MN230 VLS (Cruise Missile) system which allows for the use of GPS missiles in a land attack role including a choice of impact angles. This uses a variant of some guidance integrated from ITC Aircraft and has a couple of known behavioural tweaks in areas of particularly rapid changes in topography. We do have a number of planned improvements to this and you can expect to see them in later hotfixes/updates.

 

1.3 Changes:

Added: Mk 45 mod 0 Hammer 2 (Naval Gun System) - includes ammo handler, IGS, tablet access
Added: MN230 VLS (Cruise Missile) - includes launch interface for GPS targets
Added: Guided M320 ICM (itc_land_m230gicm_12rnd, itc_land_m230gicm_6rnd)
Added: Improved Gunner Sight (IGS), implemented on all SPH systems and NGS
Added: Basic QD/AZ display - for use on assets without existing display and without autoloader
Added: Variant of improved mortar illumination round for spawning by script (itc_82mm_flare_scripted)

Added itc_land_common_fnc_getCurVehicle: Returns either the player vehicle or the UAV they are currently controlling

Fixed: Count of rounds fired on sights showing incorrectly
Fixed: Error in delay fuse code
Fixed: Most/All functional bugs in the SPH Ammohandler
Fixed: Typos in 155 and 152mm battery type names in BCS (apparently the mmm or metric millimetre is not recognised, fine)
Fixed: Description of Mk 6 fire modes in BCS, should now better reflect those displayed when using the mortar.
Fixed: some battery definitions had errors in the available munitions listed in their configs

 

[Tiberius_161 41]

Is the Discord still operational? All links to the discord are not valid anymore... can you provide a current invite link? 

[ski2060 167]

Here you go.  https://discord.gg/ucgVfY

[toadball 35]

Going through our usual quiet period (unless you're on the discord) as we work on bug fixes and new projects.
We've had a few hotfixes pushed out for the main mod, and I should expect to see a couple more in the coming weeks.
Among these we've slipped in a small feature change: Vehicles can have 2 different types of autoloaders: semi, or fully automatic. This has already been implemented through the addition of the mod. 1 variant of the Hammer NGS. This addition now has a much higher rate of fire.

 

The RHS comptability mods have been brought in line with the main mod also.
Most notably the compatibility for RHS AFRF has now included compatibility for the recently added 2S1.
As always these can be found as separate variants alongside the originals in the editor.

  

 

 

There are one or two other things we are working on which are not yet in a state to be shown off, but we look forward to doing so when they are.
If you want potential sneak peaks our Discord server is often the best place to see them, as well as the best place to reach out to us for anything be it bug reports or help using the mod.

[F.Herbiie 33]

A tutorial for v1.3's Naval Fire Support Systems

[Mail_Manof_Doom 2]

Getting an issue with the CRAM side of the mod. They don't appear to be tracking and shooting down incoming fire. The information about the landed projectiles is displayed in the tablet if that helps.

 

CRAM is enabled in the CBA Addon Options, which doesn't show unless you are in mission I've found.

 

I tested with only the mod and its requirements loaded and with the Vanilla artillery assets.

[toadball 35]

I'm unable to reproduce the issue you're describing. Can you provide a copy of the mission you have this issue on?

[Mail_Manof_Doom 2]

Disregard, it has decided to start working. May have been making a mistake on my side of things.

[toadball 35]

As 2019 comes to a close I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the year for ITC Land Systems, and our plans for the mod in the coming new year. 

 

Development

2019 has been a slower year than we would have liked for the development of ITC Land Systems, personal and work commitments, as well as other projects have provided unavoidable distractions. While I referred to them rather unkindly as distractions, these have admittedly yielded some fantastic work from Yax in the latter case, and I look forward to seeing how these other projects mature.

 

V1.3: Naval Weapon Systems

Although not until well into July, our first release of the year was version 1.3, a fairly big step bringing with it naval fire support systems that we’d been meaning to have done since the release of the Encore DLC.

While relatively unremarkable on the surface, the introduction of GPS guided cruise missiles, and the implementation of existing features on our other gun systems to the naval gun system opened up these assets to smaller communities where the use of a gunline and other similar fire support assets would not be feasible due to the player counts ordinarily required for them. 

The background development work for v1.3 and the (numerous) hot fixes which followed have laid the groundwork for planned feature improvements and additions for 2020.

These included a much-needed overhaul of the ammo handling and autoloader system in place for self-propelled and naval gun systems, part of this allowed us to add variations with increased rates of fire.

 

FALAT

 Yax’s experimenting has produced another special artillery munition he has dubbed FALAT. This was a relatively recent undocumented addition as it is still being worked on.

 

https://giant.gfycat.com/SomeSmugAntbear.webm

 

 FALAT is a munition that deploys in the same way as SADARM and our existing EXTRA munitions. However instead of scanning for armored targets the submunitions will each scan for predefined laser codes. This provides a semi-loitering munition that can be used to engage specific targets in an observed area.

 

Improved Gunner’s Sight

 We also introduced a new gunner’s sight for the self-propelled howitzers we add.

The improved gunner sight was added as a UX improvement: we found the extra information we wanted to display, and the new features we plan to give gun crews in 2020 required a new sight display that is easier to read in all environmental conditions. Expect to see some changes and new features built into this in the new year.

 

Documentation, Tutorials, and Reference Material

Since ITC Land Systems first released, we have been guilty of becoming particularly lax around the documentation for the mod. In particular use guides and technical information for mission makers and other mods have been sorely missing, this is something I will be looking to correct in 2020.

 Now, while we in the mod team have been lax on this front, some of the mod’s users have been quite the opposite.

Herbiie has made a number of videos which offer a basic intro to using some of the mod’s features as well as some of Land Systems sister mod, ITC Air Systems 

Likewise, Tiberius has produced an interesting video on different ways to use our BCS for different effects with only one gun.

 

Plans for 2020

Terminal System

 As part of a long overdue overhaul of our various UI components, we will be introducing the Terminal system which is set to replace our existing Tablet interfaces.

We will be working to migrate existing features (BCS, COBRA, etc.) to the Terminal system, but we will also be using this as an opportunity to improve these features with on map graphical representations of planned fire missions as well as other UX improvements.

This will not simply be a replacement project, we will be introducing new features as well:

Gunline link – This will allow for information to be passed between guns and an FDC including new firing solutions and loading instructions, as well as enabling an easier way to setup a battery and update battery information.

Resupply System – Lacking a means to easily setup custom loadouts for guns and having encountered issues with other resupply systems, we will be introducing new features to address these issues. 

IGS configuration – This will allow gunners to customize the information displayed on their sights to better suit their needs, as well as offer new capabilities currently lacking including a direct fire capability.

 

User readable range tables

A feature long requested by some of our users is range tables to allow for truly manual fires planning.
This has been a somewhat low priority until we could develop a way to produce the necessary data easily from the BTABs our BCS works from.

We’ve managed to clear some of the initial barriers to this and look forward to showing you more around this as development continues. With these hopefully being included in an update in 2020. 

 

Active Protection Systems

Continuing his trend of innovation, Yax has begun work on implementing various active protection systems within the mod, providing a lightweight system and accurate representation of the modeled systems.

 

 

 The GIFY above shows an early test of the system demonstrating coverage of specific arcs. What’s not shown are the more nuanced features.
Vehicles can have multiple APS modules, each with a position, a turret they're on(optional), a direction, coverage angles, max range, ammo count, probability of kill, and reload time.
Expect more news on this soon. 

 

Expansion of packable equipment
One of our less flashy features was the ability to pack the AR-2 Darter into an item that could be carried within a backpack rather than as a backpack. We’ve been working to expand this and incorporate other assets including the AL-6, Remote designators, and camp site respawn tents.

 

Improved capabilities to additional vehicles:

Following on going user requests for it, we’ve begun adding our improved UAV sight to other UCAVs present in ArmA 3. 

 

Additionally we have put together a modified version of the Strider/Fennek’s commander optic to improve its functionality in recon, as well as fires and CAS direction.

 

Munition guidance improvements

Another less flashy area of development that will be getting some more attention this year is our various guidance methods. We hope to see improvements to our MLRS GPS and VLS GPS Terrain Following guidance methods to address some behavioural issues we’ve noticed in some test situations.

 

Widening range of compatibility mods

We still do not plan to do compatibility mods for all mods out there, but we have taken our first steps towards expanding the ones we produce ourselves. Our first set were for RHS USAF, and RHS AFRF. We are hoping to expand this to include CUP Units, and CUP Vehicles in the new year.
As always, we are open to assist any mod team’s who would like to add compatibility with ITC Land Systems’ features either natively or as part of a compatibility mods.

 

 

In closing, we’ve had a busy 2019, with a lot of behind the scenes work building towards what we hope will be a fruitful new year.

We hope you all have a good time over the festive holidays and we look forward to sharing our new developments and progress with you as we go into 2020!

[toadball 35]

ITC Land - January 2020 Update

Our latest update has been pushed to the steam workshop. This addresses some bugs reported over the last few months and adds some new content and features to other platforms.

 

Fixes:

Fixed: Smoke shells had invalid fuzes defined

Fixed: Sights were no longer functional after ACE Version 3.13.0

Fixed: Removed developmental content causing RPT errors

 

Additions:

Added: Improved UAV gunner sight display added to additional drones with variants added: MQ-4I Greyhawk, K40i Ababil-3 (CSAT and AAF), and UCAVi Sentinel 2

Added: Packable Darter migrated to ITC Land Packable feature.

Added: Packable feature functionality for AL-6 Pelican / Utility drones Added: Empty variants of AL-6 UAV bag

Added: Improvements to the Fennek / Strider commander optic for better suitability for ISR, Fires and CAS direction, Strider RV variants added with this new sight

Added: Functionality for new / customizable IDF sirens to be set up through 3rd party addon or by mission maker

 

Edit 12/01/20: Another bug that had gone under the radar on smoke shells was spotted last night. Yax will be pushing the hotfix later today.

[TechThings 22]

I've found an issue when using the improved system UAVs.

When trying to utilize the turret view the following error is thrown up.

 

 

This was done with just ITC Land, Latest ACE and CBA.

 

 

Edited January 13, 2020 by TechThings
image issues

[toadball 35]

I've just done a complete rebuild of the last update and included the previously mentioned smoke shell fix, and the issue you've spotted @TechThings.

Yax has pushed this to the workshop in the last hour or so.

 

Apologies for the issues with this latest update, we've rejigged how we do these updates slightly and that lead to some things being not checked as thoroughly as they should have been on my end.

Should be fixed for any future updates!

In other news I plan to do a brief stream on Saturday 18 January as a tutorial on one or more ITC Land topics.
If there's any requests let me know, otherwise it will be likely around the COBRA system, and sirens as it's a nice and simple system to begin with.

[TechThings 22]

Cheers for the quick fix.

[john111 76]

Could the cruise missiles ai in arma be used to make the helicopters fly much better,perhaps? Something you could try to do?