Mando Bombs and Mando Air Support Console

[mandoble 1]

About radio, it works fine (why db-1?), and about flir, run armed reco present in 1.58 and launch a cruise missile or reco plane and click the FLIR button (it works only for reco or cruise missile guidance).

you can see the button and flir option in action.

[mrcash2009 0]

Note to self: Never edit missions on 2 different operating system with different Arma installs, becuase then you will be editing an older set of mando scripts while 1.58 is sat installed as I assumed were on both but was only ... "in the OTHER profile folder" .....  

Everything is now working (Im ashamed of myself   ).

[mandoble 1]

Are these COC scripts running server side only?

[mrcash2009 0]

No COC running SP local/client. I only play SP at the moment.

[mandoble 1]

Ok, then just for your purpose, open mando_airsupportdlg.sqf, look for CALL_REINF, few lines below you will find:

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

if (_i == 0) then

{

_unit = _group_i createUnit [_x,[0,0,30], [], 0, "NONE"];

_unit setCombatMode "RED";

_unit setBehaviour "AWARE";

_unit setRank "CORPORAL";

_group_i selectLeader _unit;

}

That _unit is the leader of the reinforcements group, just below you may put something like:

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

....

....

_group_i selectLeader _unit;

mrcash_reinf_leader = _unit;

and inside mrcash_reinf_leader global var you have the leader of that group to be used with COC.

[supergruntsb78 67]

mando in the 1.59 vesion you are going to implent a helo landing and dropping of troops right ?

if so i sure hope you make it so you can set the paradrop and the LZ drop to have different planes / helo's

(i use the V22 osprey addon but also airplanes (be-32k as example) a lot to drop the paratroopers

[mrcash2009 0]

mando in the 1.59 vesion you are going to implent a helo landing and dropping of troops right ?

if so i sure hope you make it so you can set the paradrop and the LZ drop to have different planes / helo's

(i use the V22 osprey addon but also airplanes (be-32k as example) a lot to drop the paratroopers

Paradrops, helo landings .... loverly idea.

Also Mando after playing around (this addon is the guts of arma for SP for me now) could you include another tweak:

Quote[/b] ]then it will wait 25 seconds more and then it will fly to the marked evac destination

Could this be adjusted so you maybe get a menu option that displays "procede to evac" so you have more control on how long heli stays on ground and exactly when you want it to take off.

So far its great but there are a few times team AI have a "moment" trying to pathfind to heli or your waiting on the ground being shot at and heli AI doesnt take of "pronto". Would be nice to click exactly when.

I think im basicly asking for heli to land indefinately untill you click "procede to evac". That way no chance of some AI baording and other getting stuck and it taking off half loaded, and also you have complete control when you want to "get out of dodge".

My example scenarios for this being dead handy is evac in a heavy firefight using SF units evac with Littlebirds .. they are great for getting in to tight spots and landing but then we were getting waisted while waiting for AI to take off (we boarded real fast to get try to get out of harms way and had another 15 seconds to sit waiting for AI).

Another is inital landing is in a akward spot where heli cant fully sit so some AI board/embark and other get caught under the heli, you can tell the caught ones to move position and re-embark which works, but by that time the Heli AI is pulling off to evac.

Also unless im missing something could there be menu options or option in mando console whereas you have an option to "cancel request" so if you call heli and dont need it you can "abort". Maybe the same type of thing on the other features.

[mandoble 1]

There will be two options and two different transport types per option and side: paradrop and LZ for reinforcements and assault.

About 25 secs not being enough because some AI might get messed with the paths, it should not be a problem, if you select that AI even after the chopper took off and select the chopper as transport clicking on it, ArmA will make the chopper land and wait till the lazy AI boards it (at least I think ArmA works that way by default) before proceeding with next waypoints.

[mrcash2009 0]

Quote[/b] ]About 25 secs not being enough because some AI might get messed with the paths

To be honest it wasnt thats it isnt enough time or anything like that. I was just throwing in examples to see if you would implement an overide of waiting for all that time so you can at least control exact time of takeoff than sitting and waiting if you boarded quickly (especialy on evac out of a tight situation).

The heli sitting indefinatley until you request it to procede in my mind covers all angles and odd AI scenarios. Also realisticaly in real life if someone had trouble boarding the pilot wouldnt ignore and take off at a set time no matter what, and also if you boarded quickly the pilot would evac as soon as that was done, or you would give the pilot the go ahead anyway.

Its not so much about my view on AI problems, more about control and realism in certain evac situations.

Like I say sitting indefinately would cover all aspects of issues getting to chopper, plus having the option to say exactly when to procede means you dont waste time getting up and out. Having the control to say when to procede just gives the power back to user and console realy. Consistent with the complete control element that this pack offers.

Great news on Halo up coming helo options, this just gets better all the time.

[supergruntsb78 67]

There will be two options and two different transport types per option and side: paradrop and LZ for reinforcements and assault.

ohh mando you are the best that has ever lived even better then nelson mandela and other hero's

now after my kissing your behind long enough i got an other question for you is it possible to make a option to ask for a carpet bombing run ?

[mandoble 1]

Do you mean to have both options at the same time? precission bomb runs and carpet bombing. Or one or the other selected with a boolean var before opening the console?

If the second, it might be done (which plane type is able to carpet bombing?)

[supergruntsb78 67]

the plane type is the biggest problem because it whould need a addon of a bigger plane  (VTE b-52 / BE-52k) but it could be build to fit any aircraft set by the player (when using VTE you can set the B52 as the carpet bomber or use the BE32K addon

(make it an option like CAS / CAP / FREE FALL / SADARM

[Snake Man 407]

hehe supergruntsb78, I was just opening a dialog with Mandoble about bombing script features, I asked him about specific carpet bombing (yep you guessed it, VTE B52) stuff as well as the MC-130 dropping daisy cutter.

Other than carpet bombing, I'm very interested to setup the airstrike script to be with random plane and bombs, like you could setup and array:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">_VTE_planes = ["vte_a4r","vte_f4_tan_ag","vte_b52","vte_f105"]; and then also the bombs on array like:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">_VTE_bombs = ["vte_mk74","vte_mk82","vte_mk82r","vte_mk84"]; from where the bombs would be randomly selected (one bomb type for one strike flight).

That way when you call CAS, you dont know if there is going to be A1 Skyraider or F105 Thunderchief coming overhead and will they drop dumb bombs or cluster bombs.

I wouldnt like the scripts to be hardcoded to VTE, there is many mods under development and I'm sure they would also want to have their planes and bombs to be used, so generic array for planes and bombs woud be superb.

This would be of course an extra feature as many normal Mandoble Bombs users are just default AV8B/gbu12 BIS guys.

Mandoble, does any of this stuff sound interesting, or doable?

[mandoble 1]

Yes and no, interesting yes, but not enough to be doable in a clean way and compatible with any addon.

Im thinking about the following new option for these kind of strikes (new button for carpet bombing).

You set a code global variable that gets the plane and the target position as arguments. The console will send the plane in the direction of the target and will spawn that code variable passing these two arguments. Inside the code variable you set the conditions and actions to start dropping bombs, as well as rate of drop. For example:

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

mando_airsupport_carpet =

{

private ["_plane", "_targetpos"];

_plane = _this select 0;

_targetpos = _this select 1;

while {(alive _plane) && (([getPos _plane select 0,getPos _plane select 1, 0] distance _targetpos) > 1000)} do

{

Sleep 1;

};

if (alive _plane) then

{

// Code here to drop bombs in a loop

};

};

In this case, as soon as the plane gets closer than 1km from the target, it will start dropping as many bombs as the plane might have.

This way the mission designer has all the freedom to set his particular carpet bombing criteria.

[mandoble 1]

So far this is what is included and working in 1.59:

- You can cycle through the cameras of the mission vehicles inflight(except if a cruise missile is inflight, in this case the manual guidance of the missile has all the priority if you turn the camera on).

- A new button to select LAND or JUMP mode for airborne assaults and reinforcements, different vehicle types for LAND and JUMP. If LAND is selected, the chopper will land and the troops will disembark, then the chopper will leave the area.

- CLOSE button is now Carpet Bombing button. Carpet bombing is implemented and working. To close the console now just hit ESC key.

[CrazyAce 0]

Sounds good man, can't wait to give it a test try.

[supergruntsb78 67]

cant wait for 1.59

[kremator 1065]

Superb .... sounds brilliant !! Please PLEASE make sure that all these wonderful scripts are also compatible with ARMA2 so that we can really 'go to war!'

[TAO] Kremator

[mandoble 1]

Just for testing look here for the 1.59 BETA attachment.

[kremator 1065]

Woot ... downloading now !

Good job Mandoble!

[TAO] Kremator

[mrcash2009 0]

Great just tested that mission all works fine here.

Land option is great for more scenarios. Tested Carpet bombing on the near Fuel Depot/Fuel station of Cayo. Placing marker middle of map location EG74 and ingess from slightly south east (to fly south east to north over fuel depot) which strafed nicely over the area, causes some nice carnage with night vision on using mat effects etc.  

One thing I noticed (and correct me if im wrong as its seems to be alot with your scripts) is it possible before release of beta to have recon plane change height using the height slider and Left Shift - Click?

IE: if I change the height value slider and then Shift-Click to new destination of the recon plane camera view it will read that new value and start to rise or fall to that height setting unless I change again on next shift-left click? Naturaly it will ignore anything if I clicked but didnt move the height slider again (value=the same on next click so ignore). Is that possible?

[Snake Man 407]

Thank you for the carpet bombing feature, will test it with B-52 tonight on MP and report results back to you.

[mrcash2009 0]

Yet another request/idea ...

I notice now that the GUI has blacked out the border on 16:9 screens (great as it looked odd without it).

I was wondering in the script if I can modify local where I could "maybe" remove this border so it shows full 16:9 screen width when i enter recon camera?

So the borders are removed on recon camera only, the main console would stay the same. Not realy asking for it to be implemented but was curious if I could do this myself and where it would be in the script to change.

[Snake Man 407]

Carpet bombing works nicely on VTE B52 when doing small edit to the function, like this:<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">// Carpet bombing custom code

mando_airsupport_carpetcode =

{

private["_plane", "_targetpos"];

_plane = _this select 0;

_targetpos = _this select 1;

while {(([getPos _plane select 0, getPos _plane select 1, 0] distance _targetpos) > 2000) && (alive _plane)} do

{

sleep 1;

};

if (alive _plane) then

{

_plane action ["useWeapon",_plane,driver _plane,2];

};

};(sorry about the lame indent, you know how forum code tags are).

Make sure you fly the B52 from about 5km away and higher than 400m and it should drop nice line of 48 MK82's

Thank you Mandoble for this new feature, much appreciated.

[supergruntsb78 67]

snake man could you send me the modified files ? (with the VTE B52 carpet bombing ) i cant seem to get it to function properly

edit  nevermind got it to work  

but the bombs miss the target area by half a mile    (i tried to bomb rahmadi of the map target area was in the centre of town the plane comes in at 400m from 6km away and he started to drop his bombs 500 m from the target area (i have to place the support circle 500m / 1km down the ingress direction to at least have half the bombs fall in rahmadi :P )

i love the carpet bombing effect and the helo's with reinforcement coming in and landing (airborne need to jump so they stay and jump :P ) at the LZ to reinforce your squad