Not possible to shoot paratroopers?

[bizonspec 0]

Playing ARMA: Cold War Assault - from Steam, it says version 1.99 in game main menu.
 

It seems that paratroopers can not be shoot while they are in air.
Not by me, nor by other units e.g. other soldiers.
Yes, I am shooting at the person, not at the canopy.
The shots from other units are visibly crossing the flying person, but just pass through him dealing no damage at all.

I test this in the included mission editor now, by creating unit - West - air - paratrooper, options: Flying - and shooting at him.
If he is instead spawned without Flying - just on the ground, then he can be instantly wounded and killed.

Same seems to apply to units I eject from flying helicopter (via script - action eject) - immortal and invulnerable to all damage until they touch ground.

Is this a bug? Can it be fixed? Is there any work around?
I tried adding triggers with setAllowDammage True but this didnt changed anything.

[zulu1 145]

It's not a bug, it's in the game design. It uses the set captive mode which prevents a unit from being killed.

[bizonspec 0]

56 minutes ago, zulu1 said:

It's not a bug, it's in the game design. It uses the set captive mode which prevents a unit from being killed.

Hm, then why is everyone still shooting at them while in mid-air, strange.

Anyway, even when doing "this setCaptive False" as init script of the paradrop - nothing changes.
I added a trigger that detects him, on activation "boy1 setCaptive False;"  (his name is boy1) and still nothing (yet the trigger is activated - sound effect), still he just ignores any shots until he lands.

Edit: flying paratroopers even ignore "setDammage 1" done to them.

[zwobot 17]

I've never personally tried to workaround this situation but as zulu already mentioned the game does not want you to damage in-flight paratroopers so it will be very hard if not impossible to do it.

[bizonspec 0]

2 hours ago, zwobot said:

I've never personally tried to workaround this situation but as zulu already mentioned the game does not want you to damage in-flight paratroopers so it will be very hard if not impossible to do it.

Thanks, sad to hear that.
Maybe some mod that would add new type of unit and mod the part that checks for flight status, any hints how or if can this be done?

[zwobot 17]

I'm not aware of any mod or addon that features your desired behaviour. But maybe it is not completely impossible as I said before but you might have to accept some caveats.

 

You can try this: place an empty parachute (set it to be Flying - the dropdown below the unit type you select in the editor) and run a script that constantly moves the paratrooper below the descending chute with setPos and switchMove it into the parachutist stance until it reaches ground level. Then terminate the script and revert to the default stance. It might not look exactly pretty, because parachutes sway a bit while decending, but it might get the job done.

 

I quickly ran this on Desert Island, there are two issues as of now: 1. the parachutist flips over in flight and descends head first (setVectorUp is not available in Ofp/CWA); 2. he dies close to the ground (presumably because of 1.). Maybe you can go from there and make it work the way you want:

_unit = _this select 0
_chute = _this select 1
_unit switchMove "FXangel" ; that is not the parachutist stance but I could not find it on short notice

#while
? (getPos _chute select 2) <= 20 : goto "end_while"
_unit setPos [getPos _chute select 0, getPos _chute select 1, (getPos _chute select 2) - 1]
~0.001
goto "while"
#end_while
_unit setPos [getPos _chute select 0, getPos _chute select 1, 0]
_unit switchMove ""

exit

 

[hitman1987 68]

There's the paratroopers that might be actually killed, in Reforger mod in particular