Air Support Scripts

[Draper 10]

Air Support v1.0

From Armaholic.

I made this for friends but since there is a lack for good air support scripts in ARMA 2 I thought I would release this for the mean time. (C'mon Mando!)

I also have done this in a way that isn't the elementary spawn a bomb over the target. A plane will fly over target and a bomb will have a calculated trajectory to fall to target. (Side note: the in-game world has a gravitational constant of 2 m/s^2, about that of the Moon :j:, so bombs fall slowly)

Included is a JDAM option, (bomb falls to marked target), LGB (laser guided), CBU AP (an anti-personnel cluster bomb), and CBU AT (an anti-tank cluster bomb). As well as helicopters. These options can come in any combination can be removed or added to fit the mission editors preference (see readme). The radio messages are in a stringtable.csv so it can be easily changed out of english if someone wants.

Also, its only for west, that could be something I'll change in a future release. I haven't tested in MP, although I don't think there would be a problem, don't hold me to it though. Comments are always welcome and anybody can do what they want with these scripts, you won't hurt my feelings.

Hope this helps some of you.

Edited November 16, 2009 by Draper

[Keshman 10]

Testing your scripts Draper work good! Many different bombs and support call for Cobras :) Thx. Next test in MP mission)

[Guest]

Release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Air Support v1.0

[DTM2801 10]

Indeed nicely scripted, like the explosive variation.

[Keshman 10]

Okey) i testing more and MP mission!) have litel problem :( Marker asloc in demo mission! ready where target! Not probably to move it in other place in map! We wish to specify a place for drop of bombs AP/AT! Target all time mov in Mp mission! I think is necessary add sistem MapClick where drop AP/AT bombs! Who it will do! Give the link for downloading PLZ! I have only ideas((( There is no knowledge to correct it(((

(sorry for bad english)

[Draper 10]

Thanks, especially for the file hosting.

And sorry Keshman, I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly but there is a click on map to change the target feature, its the third item in the first menu.

[Keshman 10]

Ah)) Sorry Draper no see (no understanding correct) Change airstrike coordiantes !!! ( i russian) Its work super!) THX men.

I wait the Russian version :) If will be :bounce3:

Edited November 16, 2009 by Keshman

[imutep 0]

Very nice! :)

Put it on our scripts section at Assault Mission Studio

Air Support Scripts [1.0] by Draper

[Stagler 39]

JDAM always lands about 20 meters from its target location, the blast is usually enough but sometimes it doesnt hit much. Is there any way to correct the fall so it is dead on accurate?

[Draper 10]

Thanks for the hosting.

Yeah stagler, I know its a little off and I'll work to correct, (its even worse targeting a hill top). I think the problem is my calculations are based on the height of the aircraft which is not the same at the target location, I'm working on a work around to have the height based off the sea level. Hopefully that will make it as close to dead on as I can make it without spawning the bomb directly over head.

As for languages, it can be done easily with the stringtable.csv in the airSup folder, I don't know any very well but I can give it a shot, if someone more lingual can do some translations and send them to me for a future release that would be helpful.

[AnimalMother92 10]

really nice script, i'll certainly be using this. one little thing: i tried changing the plane type for the fixed wing strikes, and things seemed to work fine with an AV8B in place of the F35B. but when I tried with an A10, it never showed up. Any way to make it work with the A10? Thanks!

[manzilla 1]

Thanks, especially for the file hosting.

And sorry Keshman, I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly but there is a click on map to change the target feature, its the third item in the first menu.

I see the option to change target location but is there a way to start this with out a predefined position on the map? So it asks you were you want to target by clicking on the map. As it stands now, someone using this in a mission may call the airstrike thinking they will get to target the location but instead the planes will bomb the location already placed on the map. I hope you understand what I'm getting at. Like how the CAS works via the SOM. Call the strike, mark the area and wait for the birds to fly in.

[Rommel 2]

The ingame gravity is 9.8m/s (Tested over and over). However there is ENORMOUS air resistance on a lot of things; whilst there is no terminal velocities.

[Draper 10]

Animal: The aircraft in createvehicle "fly" seem to always go north, so I put in a set velocity 0,0,0, so for now only VTOL aircraft work, you could try to do a create vehicle "none"; setpos up in the air and setvelocity with sin and cos using the ASpad as a reference dir at say 250m/s, and put the engine on for the AI. I'll make fixing this a priority.

Manzilla: yeah I could do that, have it ask for a location and delete after its done. I'll try that out.

Rommel: I believe you, after pounding my head for an hour or two, started to realize something crazier was going on trying to make the JDAM more accurate. Sounds like they just subtract velocity in xy continually to simulate drag then? Although, I'm tempted to just make an imaginary laser target for a bomb to track.

[manzilla 1]

Thanks Draper, that would be excellent.

[rom3ro 10]

hi,

There is small bug in your delivery.

nul = [player,"lgb"] execVM "airSup\airSupInit.sqf"; does not work.

in the file airSupInit:

replace if("cbuap" in _this)then{cbuap = true}else{cbuat = false};

by if("cbuap" in _this)then{cbuap = true}else{cbuap = false};

Thanks for you script

[mugaben 10]

Testet on dedicated. Doesnt work unfortunatly :/ Nice script, could really use this in MP.

[Draper 10]

got it, thx rom3ro.

anything specific DampetDK? no action menu or aircraft don't spawn?

[AnimalMother92 10]

support for non-VTOL aircraft and MP compatibility would be great Draper. as it is this is a really handy addition for my SP missions!

edit: oh and it would be cool if there was an easy way to edit some line in the files so that mission makers could determine how many times this support could be called. ie 2 helo strikes available, 1 lgb run, 4 ap strikes etc. infinite airstrikes can make things a tad a too easy. on the other hand limiting it to one strike can be annoying.

thanks

Edited November 18, 2009 by AnimalMother92

[tj72 0]

It stinks that we dont have a "laserlock" command to force the AI pilot to target and fire bomb reliably. I can get a plane to drop Laser bomb semi reliably by spawning a LaserTargetWStatic object 700 meters ahead and 50 meters down. This script runs at a set altitude and I run another script to keep the plane from diving. Once the plane fires on the laser target. I can setpos it to the desired ground position and the bomb stays locked on the laser and goes for the new position. Its alot of manual stuff because the simple dotarget dofire commands dont seem to work. The plane cant drop bombs to laser from high altitude with default behaviour.

Sounds like you are trying to angle the dumb bomb to target and that may be really hard to make work since distance to ground will be a changing factor so your math needs to be dynamic. It would be easier to angle rockets like off the A10 since once they are pointed to the target the propulsion will keep the aiming accurate and less dynamic code would be needed.

[Draper 10]

About MP compatibility, I realized in the airSupInit, there is a useless (isServer) if statement, someone should try removing that and see if it helps, I honestly don't know what I was thinking there. It would prevent the local client from having the scripts variables be defined.

Non-VTOL aircraft support is done, and you can change the unit types in the airSupInit file and it will auto detect the units side for which aircraft to use.

As for limiting the number of airstrikes, I agree that would be useful, ill try to work something out

I tried making the JDAM be laser guided but ran into a problem of getting the plane to stop targeting even after the laser static was deleted. To overcome the height changes its easy enough with getPosASL so there is a common 0 for target and aircraft. And I cracked open Mando bombs and saw he was forcing the bombs to fall at 9.8 m/s^2 and at the same time removing air friction, I think. Between the two of these facts I think I can make the bomb fall more accurate. If it still is problematic I would have to do a work around like you suggest, TJ72.

[MortenL 10]

anything specific DampetDK? no action menu or aircraft don't spawn?

I played with him, what happened was that the plane spawned in the middle of the map, then flew down to the left corner and back to the middle, dissapearing with some message i cant remember anymore.

We were at the top middle position of the map - laser designating + we chose our position on the map when calling in the airstrike. (tried with all ammo types)

[rejenorst 18]

downloading your script now. Thanks for this :)

[arthur666 10]

Tried it, loved it. Thanks.

[Draper 10]

I played with him, what happened was that the plane spawned in the middle of the map, then flew down to the left corner and back to the middle, dissapearing with some message i cant remember anymore.

We were at the top middle position of the map - laser designating + we chose our position on the map when calling in the airstrike. (tried with all ammo types)

Hmmm, interesting. Thats not something I would expect at all, I'll have to work on that. I'm hoping to release v1.1 with all the fixes everyone suggested this weekend (Including a JDAM that can hit a leaf off a tree ), so I might not have that figured out by then but i'll try to.