Coc unified artillery 1.0 released

[SGTKOPP 0]

(but wont help much cause even you adjust the aimpoint correctly there would be errors.............20% from God, 70% from luck, and the tiny 10% from skills.......... )

Of course you can, the bias error is environement specific and therefor constant in a fire mission. By adjusting the fire you compensate for it. You just need a bit of training

Put it in spot mode, fire one round and see where it gets, adjust, fire new spot round and adjust again etc You'll get the feel for it.

Quote[/b] ]one thing i need to no.. wats with the oblisk?

The Obelisk is the heart of UA. It starts the system on all clients. Without the obelisk on the map, the UA does not start.

Quote[/b] ]i would like to add that modern artillery(at least us arty) is very acurate  the rounds they now use are gps guided, and laser guided also even the stupid rounds are accurate because of the current fire controll systems expesialy the pallidin

The precision of the unguided rounds is limited - not due to the fire control system but due to precision and bias error. With GPS or laser guidance, you can compensate to a certain degree but they are still ballistic objects and the corrections you can do are minor.

how much live arty have you spotted for or seen?

if all your info is from a book you need to see the real thing then

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Firing M109 in "High Angle" mode is fantastic!

Having control of 4 batteries(16x M109).

Firing 20rounds every battery.

Given them all the same target(Scud-Launcher Base).

Then let them fire.

Jeeeeeehhaaaaaaa!!!

I am feeling like beeing back in the Bundeswehr!

MfG Lee

[miles teg 1]

how much live arty have you spotted for or seen?

if all your info is from a book you need to see the real thing then

Sgt, CoC has a arty guy on their team if I remember correctly.  I've also seen the real thing out at Ft. Hood and while yes it can be fairly precise, often a larger spread is more useful when targeting large numbers of troops spread out over a wide area or who are moving around trying to avoid the incoming fire.  

Also keep in mind Sgt, that this is OFP we're talking about.  There is NO ground cover that you can hide behind.  Even if you're in a building, if a shell lands near youl, you die.  So if the artillery was very precise, it would be way too easy to kill every enemy unit you came across using nothing but artillery.  This was a big problem when I was beta testing this addon in my opinion.

Perhaps in the next update, they can provide the option of adjusting precision, or changing the shells to GPS guidance.

But personally I think it provides better balance the way it is.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Pappy Boyington 0]

might i suggest rather then "up/down" and "left/right" you change it to "East/West" and "North/South" to adjust fire?

[walker 0]

Hi all

Just for the record Denoirs millitary creds are Very Good check his history through this forum. He may not be able to speak about all his work in the military but it is up to spec He is a second lieutenant in the Swedish military reserves and has been in the amphibious corps (costal ranger and later attack diver) and with the military intelligence (including Kosovo, 6 months in 2001). Equivalent to US navy SEALS or british SBS

The UA has been tested by former and serving Forward observers and artilery men in western armies it is as realistic as we can make it whithin OFP and to their recommendations.

As to increasing or decreasing the accuracy how you do that is described in the manual your at liberty use the degree of accuracy you want.

Kind Regard Walker

[ralphwiggum 6]

kinda makes me sad cause my now-outdated-PC had CTD right after intro mission.

and MLRS had great effect on my framerate.

good job CoC

edit:

Quote[/b] ]Just for the record Denoirs millitary creds are Very Good check his history through this forum. He may not be able to speak about all his work in the military but it is up to spec He is a second lieutenant in the Swedish military reserves and has been in the amphibious corps (costal ranger and later attack diver) and with the military intelligence (including Kosovo, 6 months in 2001). Equivalent to US navy SEALS or british SBS

and currently employed in IKEA <s>World Domination</s> Research Dept.

[GoOB 0]

Cool, Denoir's an ex. A-dyk. The forum Hamilton

I just want to further my expression of joy last night (or rather early this morning) When Dinger announced the release of CoC UA. Around 2:41 AM I think it was. Very nice work boys, it enhances many aspects of OFP. But I hope that you might be able to squeeze in a few east artillery pieces aswell. DKM has one Russian fieldgun do they not?

Very nice work, this in conjunction with your mine pack is unbeatable. I had a wonderous time guiding M109 fire to thwart a minefield so that the main infantry wave could advance towards Malden airport

[walker 0]

Hi all

To those who want to vary accuracy of units Read the Manual

I quote

Quote[/b] ]

Patch Objects:

Patch Objects are gamelogics that enable or modify UA features.  They work through the CoC_Obelisk and basically execute instructions or scripts on all clients.  Patches do not require 1.92 to work.

Patch Label:

Zero Bias Error.  Zeroes out the values for M101, M109, M252 and M270 Bias Error.  Artillery will target the specified aimpoint without any skewing (so no need to adjust fire).  Use this to center the shell patterns exactly ont he specified point.

Zero Precision Error.  Zeros out the values for M101, M109, M252 and M270 Precision Error.  All shells fired by a given unit in a mission will land on exactly the same point.

There are other patch objects like I said read the manual they can do lots of nice things before you even begin scripting CoC_UA

Kind Regards Walker

[bn880 5]

Yeah BN880 - could be very annoying, when ppl have to listen

to it from launch until impact

What i meant is:

at launch - depends on the type of arty - already there, no need for makin summit new

before impact - huuuuuuuuuuuuuuh - this one might become

tricky, but as you are already calculating the shell's flight route, you could have the sound waiting for a certain distance

from the target area and then let it have a go.

If you need some decent incomming sssssssh's, leave me

a messy on icq - i got alot of them in wav format from some

round based strategy games.

We'll think about it for the next release. It really is not as simple as that, especially if you are concerned with maximum realism. One shot sounds are better used for explosions than in flight sounds... it is a kind of engine limitation dilema. The bestresults really are when the sound level and loop of the inflight sounds are changed, except like I said, hearing it from asset launch point.

EDIT: Thanks for the offer on the sound clips. The ones "worth gold" are loopable ones ;)

[bn880 5]

how much live arty have you spotted for or seen?

if all your info is from a book you need to see the real thing then

I know Walker has already replied to this but: please refrain from any kind of presonal attacks, in the end any decision made will depend on facts and not necessairly on someones impression from the field. Although we do listen to everyones experience carefully.

[Harkonin 0]

Well from what i've seen, the early betas proved too accurate. The way they've released the pack now is much more balanced and still allows for a good game without completely decimating the opposition.

And as stated befor if you want more accuracy use the gamelogic patches included.

[Stag 0]

Nice work!

One minor gripe: The commander of a unit which contains a radio cannot call in artillery; the caller actually has to be carrying the radio. Can this be fixed?

[SGTKOPP 0]

as most know when ever discussions like this are started i go into all the way ====i love this addon no doudt

it is just most people are always talking about realism and that is what i am about ===i know this is a game

i apologize for my comment but i am a firm believer in facts

COC brings a element of play that cannot be discribed i love what they bring to the ofp table and hope to see many more addons such as this

[dinger 1]

the Co-producer of CoC UA, Jostapo, has served as a FAC in the Canadian Light Infantry, where he has called in airstrikes and artillery of all sorts (including if I recall correctly MLRS), and has trained with a M101 outfit.

The radio messages are an amalgam of modern NATO usage, Vietnam-era conventions, and a few others.  But there's also been a heck of a lot of "streamlining". For example, we left out the readbacks on both sides. And, since we couldn't "assemble" radio messages, we left out most of the information, and the callsigns. Finally, because a radio message carries with it text, the text messages had to be just as generic.

The result is that instead of three-line radio messages full of data on the fire mission, we get a single message.

We do plan to "update" the radio messages and give each firing unit its own set.

Accuracy:

First, the game is Flashpoint: 1985.

Second, we allow enormous precision in plotting targets.

Third, Artillery is an area effect weapon.  Sure, you can call in some sort of guided munition, but the fun is in getting a pattern on target.

Finally, as has been noted, the accuracy is completely adjustable by the user. In addition to the "patch objects" available, the user can manually set each of the error values.  The variables take the form:

CoC+UnitType+ErrorType.

UnitType is one of M101, M109, M252 or MLRS

ErrorType is one of: PED, PER, PET (Precision Error Deflection, Range and Time), BED, BER, BET and MaxWind.

Each error value represents the maximum error (at least I think so), so "probable error" (the value within which are half the shells) is 1/4 of the value.

Deflection and Range error are expressed here in degrees out of the barrel.

Time is expressed in seconds. (Currently, only the M26 rockets are time fuzed; they are not prox fuzed.)

We wanted UA to be able to provide artillery for everything from Vietnam missions to contemporary special ops jobs. So it's all a little "generic".

We're certainly amenable to suggestions for improvement in our error values.

Future plans do include prox and time fuzes for howitzers.

Oh and Wardog -- that's a good idea, and easily done with a script. All you need is a script that adds an action that execs "\CoC_Arty\scripts\openmenu.sqs"

[denoir 0]

how much live arty have you spotted for or seen?

if all your info is from a book you need to see the real thing then

Lol. Ok. I am by no means an expert on artillery. I've had some basic spotting training and I've seen some live excersises, but nothing that would make me an authority in these matters.

We did however for the project have testers (and one of our team members) that are or have been arty guys. And we've followed their recommendation to the extent it was possible in OFP.

As for precision - no matter how good your control system is, you will always have a bias error (for dumb rounds). This is due to the fact that there is no way you can predict the wind and pressure variations in the air while the shell is airborne.

And as for the GPS guided - the next generation guided artillery munitions, such as the Raytheon Excalibur promise a CEP of 20 m (menaing at least 50% of the projectiles land within a radius of 20 m of the target).

UA has a lot higher base precision (CEP of about 2 m) than that, so GPS guided munitions are no problem.

[Harkonin 0]

Shoot just thought of something Dinger, the Ballistic boys figured out a way to use 2 names within a callsign. They use a [Primary,Secondary] name format, maybe you could get the goods on that from them and implement it somehow in v1.1.

[Wick_105 0]

I have been waiting for this since befor the summer. and all I have to say is....well....I love you all at CoC.

and I have some good footage of a C-3 howitzer firing from this summer ... I'm in the artillery here in canada.

great work guys

[stevevcb 3]

Ooh, lovely stuff. Managed to wipe out an entire regiment of enemy infantry that were marching towards my guys with just a radio... well, a radio and access to two batteries of mortars, a battery of 105s, four M109s and an MLRS

[Guest DKM-jaguar]

But I hope that you might be able to squeeze in a few east artillery pieces aswell. DKM has one Russian fieldgun do they not?

Very observant of you, we do indeed have an M46 Field gun.

[KeyCat 131]

Been waiting for this and just wanted to say THANKS for your hard work CoC!

/Christer (a.k.a KeyCat)

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Ok, time for this:

I hope to see an updated bas_cargo.pbo to transport the field artillery.

MfG Lee

[raedor 8]

i just cant express my feelings in words... this is... unbelievable good... i never thought that something like this is possible in ofp.

that's... impressive. it's a kind of addon we never had before in ofp... everyone can model, script and texture, there are lots of addons with good textures, scripts and models: but you cant even compare any of them with this addon!

i can only say THANK YOU to coc and all who helped you guys.

how long did u work on this?

[walker 0]

Hi raedor

I think the first step was taken when I did an internal CoC technology demonstration of a very rough and ready method of achieving indirect fire over a year ago.

I got an AI riflle mortar man to fire at an IIFT (Invisable Indirect Fire Target) It was very crude but it showed it would be posable

As I said it was very crude; it was inacurate, the IIFT would sometimes be hit and it had to be close to the AI riflle mortar man so it often blew him up and me too sometimes. That was my small part in it.

From that Jostapo, who has served as a FAC in the Canadian Light Infantry took the idea and convinced Dinger it would be worth while to make it work properly and give us real artillery.

Dinger worked on it real hard using lots of scripting and programming tricks he and the rest of the CoC team discovered over about 6 months of research.

Jostapo beavered away at all the effects to get things to look right as well as giving all the systems requirements and started to convince other MODs we could make it with their help.

There were hurdles you would not believe:

Units that decided to go on a tour of the island each time they fired.

Fire tables were just too big an overhead to use. So Denoir created a Neural Net to replace them, the most amazing thing is they teach them selves and they are more accurate than fire tables but that does not mean there was not a massive hard slog training those nets to different kinds of ammo and islands there was hundreds of hours of work.

Shells that hit moutains and made us think the NN was duff till somone reminded everyone the difference between High and Low angle fire and what indirect fire is about in the first place.

Then it all had to be linked up to MP which is where bn880 came in.

And all that just gave us a half working system the team then spent another 6 months perfecting it Alpha and Beta testing it, getting other MODs to come in, building missions, having screaming shouting arguments about it.

The other MODs BAS, DKM, SEB and UK Forces had to build the models and plug them into the system all at high speed and research requrements agree hooks and plug in methods and all of us MODs had to work together something none of us had ever done on this scale before.

It is amaizingly complex and I dont think one of the team knows how all of it works except perhaps dinger but it was a team effort and it took a lot of people to build it.

It was 4 months in beta testing then we had to write manuals and intro teaching missions, do logos (and if you think that is easy you try and get 10 people to agree on one) and publisize it, make sure there were enough mirrors and a thousand other things.

It was a lot of work and many hours without sleep for all the team especialy as we came up to release.

I guess it never would have happened if Jostapo had not pushed Dinger so hard for it and conviced so many other MODs we could make it work. So most of my thanks go to him but as I said it was a true team effort and could not have been done without all the people involved.

Kind Regards Walker

[Snake Man 401]

I guess it never would have happened if Jostapo had not pushed Dinger so hard for it and conviced so many other MODs we could make it work.

Not really related, but I remember watching this duo working on the CoC Mines in #opfec channel back in the good old days. Never would have imagined what these guys can come up with later date.

I salute the whole CoC team and everyone involved in the Unified Artillery!

[dinger 1]

In all fairness, I have very little idea how the neural nets work. When I was studying in Pisa, a Nobel laureate came and spoke at my school (but, probably because he was sponsored by an outside institution or something, he was stuck in the sala Russo and not the pompous as hell Sala degli Stemmi). He got his prize in some other field, but used his prestige to talk about darwinism on the cellular level, and how it related to their neural network tests. I sorta understood that. I have no idea how the neural network here works. It just does, and the beauty of it is that instead of my system of linear interpolation on two entries in a huge firing table (10 entries x (200 + 100 + 50 + 320), which generated decent but not great results, Denoir's system gets even better results with a fraction of the entries (in this case, weights). That's why he gets pissed off when I call the system "Firing-Table based).

Oh yeah, and for those still suffering from trying to figure out what the OFP formula was for ballistics: well, with all deference to BIS, it's not a simple formula. So we used experimental data and built up from there.