SBCT Infantry Rifle Platoon COOP Missions

[igor drukov 0]

Download edited 17/03/2007 to take 1.05 changes into account.

Hello

The following download contains two (hopefully) realistic missions and a mission template for an MP compatible dialogue enabling you to control an entire AI SBCT Infantry Rifle Platoon.

----> Download <----

Mirror courtesy of armaholic

Mirror courtesy of assaultmissionstudio.de

<ul>[*]The Dialogue

The dialogue enables you to control an SBCT Infantry Rifle Platoon as they are described here.

With it, you can:

<ul>[*] Control the behaviour, combat mode and formation of each squad.

[*] Make Platoon formations as described here.

[*] Order the men to mount/dismount their assigned stryker.

[*] Order them to move via map clicking.

[*] Order them to flank in an intelligent way (i.e. they won't cross your line of fire).

[*] Watch a bearing.

[*]  Advance in a certain direction

[*] Adjust the spacing between the squads

[*] use the minimap...

[*] Adjust the background colour of the dialogue.

[*] The missions

They put you in the shoes of a Platoon Leader, but you can play along with your mates, as the 42 slots left are all playable.

They come with a full briefing -which also contains the manual of the dialogue-, custom sounds and surprises.

They are basically for committed players with an interest for missions with a tactical edge. Don't expect to slaughter a company all by yourself here.

[*] Known issues

Although the net coding has been streamlined, the Strykers sometimes just won't move on dedi servers, especially in cities. I haven't been able to carry out comprehensive testing on dedi servers yet as I don't have any handy.

All feedback, on behaviours in MP environments, on the realism of certain aspects of the mission, on anything, is more than welcome, as I believe the whole thing can still be improved... but not without you!

I really hope some of you will enjoy this.

Regards,

Igor.

[Turkmenbashi 0]

Nice one. Going to re-install ArmA for this.

[ryankaplan 1]

Interesting that not many people seems to have shown interest. Maybe they were just too excited to go play :P

I on the other hand however, have had many problems with your system sir. I tried the mission in multiplayer first (non-dedicated 1.02) and the ai sometimes just refused to board, or move. Deciding that this was a non-dedicated server problem, i ran it on singleplayer.

On the mission where you need to get back to base, i told all strikers to board. 1 crew group properly got in, and only the gunners boarded their stations from the other crew. i reissued my orders countless times, and told them individually, yet they refused nontheless.

Then i thought, hmm, i'll put them in manually with teamswitch. Then i told all dismounted elements to board, and the same problem was present there. 2 soldiers in whole of the dismounted platoon, refused to get in. One of them was a squad leader, who seemed to be disobeying his own orders....

I switched to the squad leader, and tried to activate the command system wondering if it'd work when i wasn't the platoon leader. It didnt, so i switched back to the officer. Tried to activate the SBCT command system, and it just wouldnt come up anymore.

Saying that, some guy i know that goes by the name of Saparmurat Nazarbayev has said that the system worked fine for him.

So....

[hellfish6 7]

VERY interesting. I'll try this out.

[nubbin77 0]

The system looks great and is a step in the right direction until we get a full blown CoC CE3. Are you meant to switch to map mode when issueing the move orders on the minimap? I wasn't getting any response when I was clicking to make a waypoint. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Also, It would be helpful to have waypoint markers for the 4 strykers and the 4 groups. Otherwise it is all set up very well and very intuitive.

[fasdandantalis 0]

This is absolutely incredible, more for those who wish more leadership role options in the new ArmA - Looking foward to company level options real soon! Terrific application of a good concept! Dont let the level of intrest fool you, more people want this then you know sir.

[zwobot 22]

I had a short look at it but I don't have a real opinion yet.

It really seems to be specialized on stryker platoons, my low end notebook can't keep up with it and so this statement is based on the readme and a 1 Minute ingame experience

I am looking forward to seeing the new CoC Command Engine for ArmA.

[igor drukov 0]

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your interest in this somewhat ambitious project. I'm sorry I couldn't reply earlier: this week has been a busy week.

@Turkmenbashi

Thank you mate, hopefully the missions work well enough and have kept you from deinstalling the game again!

@ryankaplan

Thank you very much for your detailed feedback, it's very helpful to me

For some reason the AI just won't mount their assigned vehicle when on "SAFE" behaviour. Try putting them on "AWARE", it should do the trick.

@Hellfish6

Hopefully this will live up to your expectations...

@nubbin77

Are you meant to switch to map mode when issueing the move orders on the minimap?

I'm not sure I understand the question: when you click "MOVE TO MAP WP", the minimap pops up,and you have 15 seconds to click on the map to create the Waypoint. That's how it should work... Thank you for your feedback and your suggestion about the markers, which I will probably implement even though I still have to find a way to keep the map readable.

@fasdandantalis

Thank you for this heart-warming feedback mate, I appreciate. The next step I'm thinking about will probably be to implement a realistic east platoon and have the two dialogues work together to have players fight one another.

@Nepumuk

Well this project is humbler than whatever CoC has in store for us. The idea was to have a userfriendly dialogue to control a realistic structure easily, given the units of the game.

I will try to come up with an update as soon as possible, I just need to gather more data about the engine and MP behaviour.

Regards,

Igor.

[zwobot 22]

That reminds me on the (hopefully) upcoming Combat Mission: Shock Force currently being developed by Battlefront.com.

I think this will easily beat ArmA in various aspects.

I have had a closer look at the patrol mission to familiarize myself with the control dialog, as I have said before my system specs are low end and the dialog is a bit hard to read with 800x600 screen resolution.

The platoon formation is not looped, I mean once the "Formation on PL..." Button is pressed the selected elements come into formation with the PL and when he moves the rest of the platton does not follow him in formation, right?

Can we use this command system easily portable to other missions or did you "hardcode" it?

[igor drukov 0]

Well as a general rule I try not to make any loops. The only one there is is the one run on the server. So no, platoon formations are not looped and the squads won't follow you unless you tell them where to go.

The code is as "softcoded" as they come: there's a template mission in the download.

Regards,

Igor.

[hellfish6 7]

I haven't played the missions yet, but I mucked around with the template. In the future could you maybe have the squad or vehicle send a confirmation when you order it to do something? Maybe a sidechat "Wilco, out" or "Copy, out"? I told my squad to do something and if I wasn't watching them do it, I had no idea if I issued the order properly or not.

Otherwise it was a simple, easy to use system for controlling the platoon. Very intuitive. Good job.

[nubbin77 0]

My question was stupid and I answered it after I played with it some more. The system is very good and well thought out. Its easy enough to incorporate a marker script to keep track of your units, and I have done so already.

On a semi related topic (not necessarily for Igor), is there a way to have some sort of AI info share? As in, if group 1 knows about some enemies and engages, it would be great if the stryker knew about it too. I made a quick mission where I send in the disembarked elements and put the strykers on the top of a hill to (theoretically) provide overwatch with their M2's and Grenade launchers. Unfortunately they don't engage or provide support because they don't really know about the enemy. If the 4 teams and the HQ could share the "knowsabout" info that would be cool. I know there were scripts like that for OFP, I wonder if anyone has converted anything like that yet.

[Lustypooh 0]

Igor, very nice scripting here. I was actually thinking last night whether someone could do this in ArmA and was pointed to this thread.

I agree with previous poster that confirmation via radio from squad leaders would be good feedback. If in earshot hearing them yell out to their squad commands would be pretty immersive.

Do you know if there is a way to bind keys to scripts in ArmA? Would be nice to just tap a key to bring up/remove the platoon commands window instead of using the radio menu.

[zwobot 22]

The code is as "softcoded" as they come: there's a template mission in the download.

Oh forgot about that one, great!

Does the PL really ride in a jeep by the way? Not that I think it's bad but I thought he was mounted in some of the Strykers? I don't think it is directly mentioned at globalsecurity.org, is it?

[major woody 11]

How do I add this feture to the player in the actionmenu instead of using the radio option?

[igor drukov 0]

@ Hellfish6

I had contemplated having the squads confirm their status after an order, but didn't implement it because the only way I could think of was to have a client side loop. After more testing in combat, I have realised how useful it'd be, so I'm still thinking about it.

Thank you again for your feedback.

@nubbin77

I agree with you 300%: info-sharing is on top of my to-do list. I'm trying to do it as little intensive as I can and already have something interesting running. It will definitely be implemented in a next release (along with WP markers and most likely, confirmations).

@Lustypooh

Thank you very much for the compliment and the suggestion. I will also try to get the SLs shout "ready" when they're around.

I haven't explored touch-binding scripting yet, I have reminiscences of it possible, but I'm still pretty clueless there.

@Nepumuk

I don't think Platoon HQ have jeeps. I added one for gameplay reasons: we know how frustrating and terrible an experience it can be to be sitting inside a windowless AI-driven vehicle...

@Major Woody

Delete the radio trigger in the template. In either the init.sqf/s of your mission or the init field of the platoon leader, add this:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">leader hq addAction ["Control Platoon","PCP\Client\DlgControl.sqs"]

If the PL dies, noone will have the control panel anymore (with the radio trigger, it's the leader of Platoon HQ, whoever it was, who could have access to the dialogue).

Thank you all for your interest,

Igor.

[zwobot 22]

I had contemplated having the squads confirm their status after an order, but didn't implement it because the only way I could think of was to have a client side loop. After more testing in combat, I have realised how useful it'd be, so I'm still thinking about it.

Thank you again for your feedback.

Why would you need a loop for that? You basically had to let the squad leader sideChat something when a button in the control panel is pressed?

@Nepumuk

I don't think Platoon HQ have jeeps. I added one for gameplay reasons: we know how frustrating and terrible an experience it can be to be sitting inside a windowless AI-driven vehicle...

True.

[igor drukov 0]

Why would you need a loop for that? You basically had to let the squad leader sideChat something when a button in the control panel is pressed?

Well the idea is to have the SLs say they've arrived to their destination (for instance) regardless of whether you press any button or are even using the dialogue at all: they should report at any time once their orders are completed.

[zwobot 22]

I see.

What about this:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">@unitReady squadLeader_unitName

To be found in the Biki - unitReady

I have not used this one in ArmA yet and I don't know wether the '@' still works in ArmA or you had to use Biki - waitUntil to get the same effect which would result in something like

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">waitUntil {unitReady squadLeader_unitName}

I also do not know if '@' or waitUntil is as bad as a client side loop.

What is so bad about a client side loop anyway? I am fairly unaware of multiplayer scripting problems

(Is the problem that the loop had to be processed on every client which could cause synchronization problems between the different client loops? Well see above I am a multiplyer-scripting-noob)

[major woody 11]

Any plans to take this script/feauture to a higher level? Company -Battery or even Battalion?

[major woody 11]

Quote[/b] ]leader hq addAction ["Control Platoon","PCP\Client\DlgControl.sqs"]

Using this line gives me an error:

_control = _this select 1;

_display = |#| ctrlParent (_this select 1);

[Scrub 0]

Thank you Igor! Very useful. I'm looking forward to your future works in ArmA. (Can you beat CoC to the punch?)

[igor drukov 0]

Hello all

Thank you for your interest again and sorry for not answering earlier on, but real life is keeping me very busy these days...

@ Nepumuk

Back in the old OFP days, "@" was considered CPU-intensive. I don't know about "WaitUntil", but it doesn't look any better from where I stand.

@ Major Woody

I haven't considered notching this thing up to company level or higher yet. It sounds like a good idea, I'll most definitely give it some thought, thank you for your suggestion.

As to your error message, could you tell me where you added the "AddAction" line? And if the dialogue does show up and everything works apart from that error message?

@ Scrub

Thank you mate, thank you. The whole project was born from a will to have something realistic, user-friendly, MP compatible and tactical. It's only "accidentally" that it wound up encroaching upon CoC territory. This mere thought actually gives me the creeps, I really look up to them.

[zwobot 22]

@ Major Woody

I haven't considered notching this thing up to company level or higher yet. It sounds like a good idea, I'll most definitely give it some thought, thank you for your suggestion.

Nah, don't think so. Play Combat Mission when you want Company+ engagements.

[olemissrebel 0]

A good platoon sergeant is who really commands the platoon, not the PL