Coc unified artillery 1.0 released

[dinger 1]

bugs:

_tickmon is either an error with a BIS internal script (which I suspect) or is some non-UA script causing trouble.

Adding an action (such as useradio) shouldn't cause a CTD. Now, if you're getting it when you select the action, that shouldn't happen either, but we're more likely at fault.

CoC_Radio is an object like a table, not a weapon; adding it to the player shouldn't work.

Missing addon: bas_opfor. The missing addon bug has been with us for some time. Frankly, I don't know why this is happening, and without further details, I don't know what we can do. Yes, I've seen it too on MP games, and the same bug has appeared with many other addons.

UA is a 12-megabyte addon. That uses up a considerable amount of memory and will put some systems with addons "over the top". It also uses what for an addon is a considerable amount of memory overhead at mission start and when firing a mission. The rest of the time it's low-profile.

The problem could lie with us. We could have another obscure config.cpp entry messing things up, or an improperly binarized model. It also could be an underlying "bug" in OFP that UA uncovered (we are pushing the limits of what OFP can do, so this is to be expected). However, at this point, I'm going to need more information.

-- To check if it is a memory problem:

A) rename your addons folder "addonstemp"

B) make a new Addons folder, and copy in there _ONLY_ CoC_Arty.pbo and any other pbos you need for the mission.

C) test the mission in question.

If you get the same error, it is probably not a memory issue. Drop me an email or PM or something with your system configuration (CPU/Vid card, RAM, page file size), the addons installed and the type of error. If it is one that occurs on a mission regardless of who plays it, offer to send me a copy of the mission.

If it is one that affects UA functionality and occurs intermittently (This feature breaks), save the game (use left-ctrl-keypad minus autosave -- it works even in multiplayer), and offer to send me the .fps. If it's not corrupt, we can use that to analyze what UA was doing.

If you're getting CTDs, and they're not like the one described in the readme, send it off to support@bistudio.com

Dinger

[dinger 1]

For an artillery model to work with UA, you need:

A) some modifications to the CPP.

1) The "LGB hack" to the shell ammunition. Use the shotmissile simulation with thrust and thrusttime of 0. This will make your shells last for 2 minutes. The downside is that you lose any engine-generated firing effects (such as gunclouds).

2) An init EH that starts a registration script, and a fired EH that runs a fired script.

3) A gamelogic with private scope and class name equal to the addon .pbo name. (We call this the "Library Logic")_

B) Some scripts.

1) A registration script that registers the library, units and assets (these are our start scripts), waits for CoC_Arty init, then starts the command/release script "\CoC_Arty\IFCommand.sqs", and

2) A status and control script that manages the status of the asset, processes orders, makes the call to the fire missions, and any firing scripts and so on. (our orders script).

3) a fired EH that adds the weapons effects, and applies the velocity vector to the shell.

C) Some functions.

A whole bunch of array values stored in .sqf files in the addon root directory. Check documentation for what these are.

[denoir 0]

i just wondering could the respones of the artillerys be faster? it is not nice to wait for 5 mins b4 the artillerys speaks up................

It's by design. Real artillery takes time to call in - generally longer than UA simulates. The fire mission request processing times were chosen as a compromise between playability and realism.

[walker 0]

Hi  all

Here are some tips for if your having a problem with any addon not just CoC_UA

Quote[/b] ]Indemnity

By following the advice in this post you are doing so at your own risk you agree to indemnify, defend, acknowledge and hold that The Chain of Command, its owners, its members, partners and agents cannot and will not be held responsible for any damage to your self, your chattels or any loss of data that you may incur or may yourself cause to third parties arising directly or indirectly from your actions or inactions in your choosing to follow the advice in this email; you have been warned.

 

Now fixing your problem

 

Notes

i)Machine specs help in finding errors.

ii)Describe the error in as much detail as you can. So we can hone it down to as few causes as possible

 

 

Possible Causes of a CTD

1) OFP Version

You must be using OFP version 1.91 or later to use CoC_UA

 

 

2) Too many addons at once

If your getting this report at CTD "cannot memory-map file" such errors are indicative of your beginning to have too many addons running at start-up.

 

In that case I suspect CoC_UA is the straw that broke the camels back (too many addons)

 

You should optimise the load by using MOD folders as described in Avon's FAQs on this page

http://www.theavonlady.org/theofpf....ers.htm

 

It is rare indeed that you will need to have WWII addons in the same mission as your BAS addons and if you do; it just needs a special short cut addition. I have shortcuts labelled WWII, BAS, COC, DKM, Vietnam, Objects, Miscellaneous, Winter etc. Each short cut points to a list of MOD folders.

 

 

3 )A conflict between CoC UA and another addon

Note MOD folders are great for beta testing and finding conflicts.

For finding conflicting addons you can use this process:  

  i) Set up MOD folders as described in Avon's FAQs on this page

http://www.theavonlady.org/theofpf....ers.htm

  ii) Only have the official OFP addons in your OFP and OFP/RES folders. For those unofficial addons that just will not work any where else remember they are excluded from this test process so consider temporarily removing them to another folder until the test process is finished. If you can find no other causes.

  iii) So far All CoC addons will work from a CoC Mod folder I have tested them.

iv) To narrow the options to particular folders you have a test folder test0. You then try the addon on its own in the test0 folder.

  v) Create an OFP shortcut that just adds the Mod Folder test0

  vi) Now you add each MOD folder in turn to the shortcut only test one folder with the addon at a time until you find one that conflicts.

  vii) Now make two other MOD folders test1 and test2

  viii) Now divide the conflicting folder in to these two folders by copying them to it. make sure your shortcut only points to test0 and either test1 or test2 now you can narrow the field to just one folder;

  ix)Then just reiterate the process until you narrow it down to just one addon. Please beware it is possible for there to be more than one addon conflicting with another  ;- )

  x) Let CoC and the other Addon maker know about the conflict.

 

4 )Missing third Party addons

If your getting the error when you play particular missions you may be missing those addons required by the mission look at the readme for additional addons that may be required for some of the missions (CoC Mines for instance)

 

If you Still having problems after you try the above solution to you problems do not hesitate to email us but it perhaps best if you make error reports and bug reports on the Official OFP forum as lots of other people can help and others with same problem will be able to see the solution ;- ) Also try using our own CoC forum where all the team can look at the problem it will increase the number of experts looking at your problem.

 

Hope that the above is of help.

 

Kind Regards Ian Walker

Project Leader For The Chain of Commandâ„¢

[Pappy Boyington 0]

btw i fixed my problem. apperently cussing at the game DOES work and now i dont get that error

[dinger 1]

sweet. By the way, the Mission Response Time shouldn't be longer than a minute for anything but the M109s. The M109s when they're on the move can take up to 2.5 minutes to get in position and fire. Once they're in position, if you don't move them again, their response time should be about 35 seconds. and, as denoir points out, the values we give (For response from CFF to FFE) are all much quicker than in real life. You should be grateful

[Camelhammer 0]

I work in a heavy Cavalry Squadron stationed in Germany, and we have our own mortars mounted in M113 carriers.

If the FO is talking directly to the FSE (Fire support element, a M577 with a couple forward observers and the FSO, fire support officer) or firing unit, it should only take 5-15 seconds for rounds out once the last digit of the target grid is sent. I'm not sure what the time is for M-109s, the FSE sends those through a special fire support radio channel to the artillery unit, and I never get to moniter that.

And the mortars should be louder. It's not a M203 (Which has a nice pop to it, Dynamic Range has it the best), but a 60-120mm cannon that fires a pretty good sized shell. I came across an old 4.2 inch mortar round at a training area in Germany, was the size of a football in length, at least.

[Nexus6 0]

I want to remove the Chain of Comand Logo and Wesite URL at the begining of a mision. I have the code I just ned to know where it should go?

Al help much appreciated

The code is: CoCIFNoSplash.

I have put it in the CoC obelisk unit and it does not work, I stil get the logo.

Thanks very much.

Nexus6

[killswitch 19]

IThe code is: CoCIFNoSplash.

It should be<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">CoCIFNoSplash=true

[Apollo 0]

Somebody should revive the good old scud and give it balistic properties and dammage.

[mads bahrt 0]

An idea:

Coc made their mine pack.

Coc made UA

How about artilleri delivered scattered mines?

Could it be done?

As a side remark: In this case automated mineclearing vehicles would be needed. - Could this be done?

[GoOB 0]

Taking out mine fields with the aid of mortars is more fun. And if you want to clean AP mines. Use the M1A1 or the T80

[dinger 1]

Quote[/b] ]

If the FO is talking directly to the FSE (Fire support element, a M577 with a couple forward observers and the FSO, fire support officer) or firing unit, it should only take 5-15 seconds for rounds out once the last digit of the target grid is sent. I'm not sure what the time is for M-109s, the FSE sends those through a special fire support radio channel to the artillery unit, and I never get to moniter that.

Here's how the thing works with us, and the decisions being made.

First, this is FP1985, and we wanted to simulate something that worked for Vietnam missions on to contemporary missions.

Second, the MRTs I've seen for the units in question are much longer than 5-15 seconds. For the MLRS, for example, the "By the book" response time is 3.5 minutes from when the fire order is issued.

On the mortars and the M101s, the azimuth and elevation is set by hand.

On the M109, the turret takes care of that.

For all fire missions, we give 20 seconds for transmission, authorization and adjudication and the issuing of the fire order. The rest of the time is taken by moving into position.

At this point, we hit machine limitations:

A. On the M109s, if they're not in a firing configuration, we set the formation to do so. I understand that current M109s can just drop and fire and the firing computer takes care of the rest, but these line up. This takes the bulk of the time.

B. On all units, we need to move the tube to the proper azimuth and elevation. Believe it or not this takes time. A minimum is 15 seconds. (This is why, once a M109 is in position, subsequent CFFs take 35 seconds).

So in short: if you have a M113 mortar carrier model and want it to fire with UA pretty fast, we can do it, but probably not in five seconds.

If you'd like to convince us to reduce the time on the others, well, MRT is a figure that's published in field manuals. Show me some documentation that pertains to the units in question, and I'll do it. So far, the FACs, FOs, ANGLICOs, gun bunnies and rocket bradley guys I've spoken to have commented on how _quick_ the response time is.

The mortar sounds are currently "stock". Hopefully we'll get something good soon.

As for FASCAM: the problem we have is that CoC_Mines, as much as I like them, don't have a good way of going off without requiring a lot of CPU time. So it'd be messy. Yes, we'd like to do it, and one night jostapo did get a proper mine collision system working. But he lost the data.

[Viriato 0]

Just to confirm it:

If someone makes a naval unit with arty, and you want to make it CoC UA compatible.

The firing unit has to be the gun of the unit or, as some mods does, can be an independant unit linked to the main ship via scripting?

I had the feeling that CoC UA can´t be used on a unit attached to a moving unit.

Regards.

[cbfasi 4]

With the limtis placed on maximum dimensions my method of ship construction would mean that a full compliment of guns could be used as artillery.

Most my naval weapon systems are sperate addons from the ship thay are placed on, as the ships dont actually move this causes no problem, and in fact you codl easily end up with a group of say 4 turrets from Warspite all grouped together and firing as one battery.

As mentioned above its already been done with guns placed on the deck of HMS Hermes, the same principal applies.

I would be quite happy to model several naval weapon systems of WW2, mainly as I have a book dedicated to just that. My only constraint is time as I am rather busy with the Falklands stuff I am working on.

[dinger 1]

A moving ship would cause additional complications for fire control, but not insurmountable ones. If Denoir had his way, we'd run a call to the neural net, set azimuth and elevation, then five (or however many) seconds before each round, run another call and do it again. I'd probably be lazy and switch to linear adjustments after the first call.

[havocsquad 0]

For the first 20 minutes, I thought the spotting markers were not working, I must have created red objective map markers before I figured out the correct way to click on the map.  

Anyways, bloody wonderful job on this artillery project CoC.  I loved the intro of the artillery tutorial mission.  

Is there any possibility of an addition of adding a Regular HE Rocket MRLS asset?  I'm asking because the ClusterBomb MRLS rockets are best used against soft armor and vehicles (mainly used for harrassment and attacking logistics targets), soft objects (tents, pillars, etc.), and against infantry.

However, when you have a large enemy armor formation moving in convoy or moving in waves during a battle, I'd like to have a good regular MRLS HE rocket spread targeted well to even the odds.

Anyways, you deserve a good round of drinks for making this.  Hopefully OFP 2 will incorporate a system similar to this, simple but effective and versitile.

Later,

Havoc.

[Noose_ITO 0]

I wonder if UA can support AMOS (Advanced Mortar System)?

This twin-barrelled 120mm mortar has very high rate of fire ( up to 26 rounds/min ) and has a MRSI (multiple rounds simultaneous impact) capability of 14 rounds. So it can generally send ammo to different trajectories to hit same point simultaneously.

http://members.surfeu.fi/stefan.allen/AMOS.html

[dinger 1]

AMOS: Well, I don't think we could do "Simulataneous Impact" without a really fancy neural network system (currently they're weighted by MV). One could, however, set up a fire control system to fire HA rounds at different m/vs and trajectories, and get something fairly close. It's another level of complexity, but not outside of our reach. Hmmm.... I wonder what I could do real quick...

[Wick_105 0]

havocsquad...the "cluster bomb" as you put it, is supposed to be DPICM... and I can tell you that stuff in real life will blow through the top of any modern main battle tank. now people...most of them american will fight this to the bitter end...theyll say nothing can destroy a M1A2. but it will. dpicm can go through 100mm of rolled homarginized(spelling) steal...and thats the stuff that they make the front plate of tanks....and on the m1A2 the top of the turret only has 15mm or regular armour. and it still does the regular stuff to stenches and infantry.

[dinger 1]

I was wrong about the AMOS. It is possible, only targeting isn't as precise (yet). (though it does look and sound good when 64 120mm rounds all splash at the same time on top of an infantry company).

[Noose_ITO 0]

Dinger:

Sounds very promising  

Now only if someone nice person could make the actual units (models etc.)  

BTW. Thank you too all involved for a magnificent addon !

[EiZei 0]

Well, lot of the suitable carriers have already been done in OFP, XA-series APCs, BMP-3 and CV90.

[Consigliere 0]

In one of the demo missions included, there is an enemy "battlefield radar" that can localize your own artillery units and call in artillery at them.

In real life, it is also possible to localize radio signals, such as the ones used by artillery spotters, wich basically means that if you stand still too long after chatting with the dudes back at base, you wont see next sunrise :P

Don't counter artillery radars work by actually detecting the fired round? That's how I thought they worked...

[walker 0]

In one of the demo missions included, there is an enemy "battlefield radar" that can localize your own artillery units and call in artillery at them.

In real life, it is also possible to localize radio signals, such as the ones used by artillery spotters, wich basically means that if you stand still too long after chatting with the dudes back at base, you wont see next sunrise :P

Don't counter artillery radars work by actually detecting the fired round? That's how I thought they worked...

Hi Consigliere

Yes.

Counter battery fire is directed by radar that picks up the round in flight and performs reverse balistics calculations tracking the round back to source.

Picking up radio traffic by RDF is what KTM_Calle is talking about. That is the old fasioned thing you see in WWII films with the van with the directional antena moves around and some one plots lines on a map usualy capturing a spy.

The latter is fraught with problems in the modern era.

1) Modern systems can be and are typed then a burst transmission is made no voice involved (so our requests for fire stuff is half obsolete) typed transmits are more accurate and silent (Modern FOs can be a few feet from enemy forward positions looking into their rear areas at major assets such as HQs, Logistics, supply routes and strategic area assets such as artilery batterys.

2) As well as being burst transmits of less than a second modern systems are high speed frequency switching (meaning you have to monitor a broad band of frequencies to catch a message)

3) Finaly they are digital and encrypted (meaning that even if you monitor a broad band of frequencies to catch a message; would you know to put all the random bits tegether? Would they even add up to a transmit and not just random noise?)

Other options to further confuse the RDF picture are:

i)Short range radio to multiple long range relay

ii)Land line to multiple long range relay

ii)LOS laser to multiple long range relay

All result in the transmitions apearing spread over a vast area that is nothing to do with the FO making it all you can get in CB is the ten a penny transmitter relays about the size of a few stacked CD cases

Then again just plant fake FO radio transmits by air drop with relayed and recorded messages.

All in all modern RDF on the battlefield is a tail chasing waste of time.

It is reasonable up to vietnam era though.

Straight radio transmits still do happen and people even use diggital phones but you only catch the FOs doing it a couple of times then the rest will learn.

Kind Regards Walker