Is this possible?

[Freebie 10]

Hi all I'm new here and I'm probably as inexperienced as it gets judging by some of the posts I've been reading. I've only had Arma2 for a fairly short time and have just started trying to make my 1st SP mission.

All is well except for one part, the end bit. After I complete the main part of my mission I've made it so a RHIB picks me up at the waters edge and once I'm in it, out to sea we go. I've placed a couple of OPFOR MG'rs along a beach head parallel to the waypoint line of our escape that fire at us as we make our getaway (just for effects :D).

The problem is that while the OPFOR MG'rs fire quite enthusiastically at us in the RHIB, my two AI guys manning the mounted guns at the bow and stern do pretty much nothing, even though there are bullets and tracer fire wizzing past us and hitting the boat.

In the waypoint marker that takes us past the beachead I've tried setting the 'combat mode' and 'behaviour' to different settings and placed the waypoint marker different distances from the beachhead but it's all a bit of a fail. Setting combat mode to "open fire, engage at will" gets the best result from the boat gunners but it also slows the boat down and makes it head toward the beach head which isn't what I want.

What I want is for the RHIB to continue along the waypoint line while my two boat gunners actively return fire at the MG'rs as we continue to speed by.

Is there a way to change the behaviour of my AI boat gunners to make them give back as good as they're getting?

Please remember I'm brand spankin new to mission editing so if any scripting or other indepth stuff is required can you please explain it in Arma2 'newb' speak so I can understand what to do.

Thanks guys :)

[Gekkibi 11]

Hello, and welcome!

Put gunners to another group than the driver. Here is how you do it:

Create an empty boat. Name it, for example "boat".

Create the driver and gunners. Ungroup them by using F2 and draw a group-line somewhere where there are no units.

Put this to the drivers init-field: this moveInDriver boat;

Put this to the other gunner: this moveInGunner boat;

Put this to the other gunner: this moveInTurret [boat, [0,1]];

Not sure if I remembered correctly the numbers in moveInTurret. If the man is not in the rear turret, try changing the numbers. You can learn more of moveInTurret -command here.

Anyway... Put behavior of the gunners to combat & engage at will and put the driver to careless mode. You could also increase the skill of the gunners, so they shoots more accurately and with increased RPM (Rounds Per Minute).

Add move waypoints only to the driver.

Can't test if this actually works, I am at work atm. Hopefully this was helpful. If you have more problems, don't hesitate to ask them.

[Toasted Duckie 0]

note: if you use the RHIB with 1 gunner, use moveInCommander instead of moveInGunner to get a unit in the gunner

[Freebie 10]

Anyway... Put behavior of the gunners to combat & engage at will and put the driver to careless mode.

Add move waypoints only to the driver.

Thanks Gekkibi, I've done most of that but there is a problem with it.

Firstly giving the waypoint to the driver does nothing, we just sit there in the water. I overcame this by adding a Commander and gave him the waypoint which he made the driver do. So I guess this bit is OK now.

But what definately won't work is setting the behaviours of the driver and gunners as those options are only available through the setting a waypoint, which only the Commander has.

I tried also giving the driver and gunners their own individual waypoints too, all leading to the same place as the Commander waypoint (is this how I'm mean't to do it?). Then I set their behaviours through that. But I didn't notice any behavioural changes. We got shot at from the beach head and the gunners looked in that direction but never fired.

I also tried Duckie's idea and made the front gunner the Commander and set his behaviour to engage, fire at will but then the boat changes direction and heads towards the MG'rs, which I don't want. Plus even he doesn't fire that enthusiastically.

Maybe it's just not possible to make the boat gunners into Rambo's. You can't do everything I suppose.

[Gekkibi 11]

My bad, I forgot that the front gunner is also the commander.

Select the driver / gunner, press f4 and double click the unit, thus creating a waypoint directly to the unit. This way you can change the behaviour.

Fire at will allows the unit to fire. Engage at will causes the unit to move toward the unit (Breaking the formation).