PlannedAssault web based mission builder

[_William 0]

More cold war units supported since the Arma2 community keeps on creating cold war add-ons. I love them, and love helping out those in need for interesting battle missions with their favourite units. Newly supported are the latest CWR2 updates including the British Royal Marines and Para in CWR2 BAF, a BAOR CRV(W) FV721 Fox recce vehicle, the RAF Phantom FGR2 and Argentine FAAs Skyhawks.

The third image from the left represents a 29Cdo RAR L118 light gun battery at the Falklands (except the short sleeves), using CWR2's BAF soldiers with correct textures beret, badge and trousers, stock M109 105mm howitzer and HcPook's camo nets, with all guns fully crewed. Stuff that's a lot of work to figure out if you have to do it every time you create a mission, but quite doable when you have an automated mission generator.

William

[_William 0]

I just updated the PlannedAssault site with support for my spin-off, the foliage camouflage system for Arma2*. Also fixed problems with the P82 Chinooks lacking a gunship script.

Next up is support for BI's first aid system (alternative injury simulation, first aid, battlefield clearance) and its alternative, DAP's AI First Aid Support add-on. Both add something special (a wounded/injured state) to the game, and enable the AI to heal team members. In both cases, ambulance teams, even with additional medics, don't do what I expect them to do (care for any nearby wounded, and drive the ambulance back), but I'm going to add ambulances anyhow: wouldn't it be cool to play a mission as medic / CLS?

Tips / suggestions wrt the first aid system and AI scripts for proper battlefield clearance (towards a collection spot) are more than welcome.

William

[redeyex 11]

Hoi William,

I think I have found an error in the database. I made an airborne assault mission using standerd CO units. I used a section of two MH-60S Blackhawks. In the planner it states that there are 22 passenger seats available. However I got a maximum of 19 passengers on board.

Thanks for a great and fun generator.

[_William 0]

New for PlannedAssault's mission generator: inclusion of (AI) first-aid, medics & ambulances in generated missions, support for the winter variant of Schwemlitz, and dozens of additional (OFrP) French units in the unit database.

These changes already resulted in spectacular test missions, as the screen shots below demonstrate:

Supporting first aid module (left and right screenshots) is something I should have done much earlier, even though the BI first-aid (and also DAP's first aid support module) have some rough edges. The modules add another touch of realism to the game: wounded team members soon restrict the ability of a team to fight, and being down waiting for somebody (or nobody) to provide care is a special experience.

The rough edges have to do with ambulance medics not providing care to any team except their own, and the ambulance vehicle driving around pretty carelessly.

You can select the support for first-aid on the "Add-ons" tab of your mission, just scroll down to the 'Logic/systems add-ons' and tick either the Arma2:CO First Aid module, or DAP's AI First Aid Support module. Continue to build your mission as usual, perhaps throwing in an additional 'ambulance' unit...

First-aid is supported for any Arma2, and for Iron Front 44. As soon as Arma3 is offering such a module, I'll try to support that as well.

For more info on winter Schwemlitz and OFrP (fantastic range of quality vehicles and soldiers), see the PlannedAssault news.

For the coming months, I'm working to generate maritime assaults (boats, amphibious vehicles). It would suit many of Arma2's maps as well as Arma3. In some ways, making boats do what I want them to do is harder than heli-borne air assault, so bear with me.

William

@RedeyeX: I double checked, and a section of two MH-60S Blackhawks has sufficient seats to host 22 passengers. The one error I could find is the Blackhawk being able to carry 13 instead of 11 passengers. This I've fixed.

[redeyex 11]

Odd. Because I have made a mission on Utes and I definetly had a couple swimmers at spawnpoint. Result was that disembarked troops were waiting for the swimmers. Thanks for looking into it.

Redeyex

[_William 0]

Odd. Because I have made a mission on Utes and I definetly had a couple swimmers at spawnpoint. Result was that disembarked troops were waiting for the swimmers. Thanks for looking into it.

Redeyex

If you still have the mission on your hard drive, please send me that mission, and I'll look into it.

William

[redeyex 11]

Will do.

[cadmium77 16]

I've got a request for Planned Assault; I see that in the past you've added excellent functionality to Arma by having soldiers riding in an authentic manner on top of tanks for example. Well here is a good one for you that would be important for gameplay; Manpad soldiers mounted on armor.

http://i.imgur.com/yAHS24K.jpg (120 kB)

http://i.imgur.com/Bjqv0Mo.jpg (141 kB)

This is how armored columns are supposed to move. It gives a lot of extra anti air defense without having to dismount men.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8ZiVi_HhhI

[_William 0]

I've got a request for Planned Assault; I see that in the past you've added excellent functionality to Arma by having soldiers riding in an authentic manner on top of tanks for example. Well here is a good one for you that would be important for gameplay; Manpad soldiers mounted on armor.

This is how armored columns are supposed to move. It gives a lot of extra anti air defense without having to dismount men.

Hi Cadmium,

thanks for your kind words and suggestion. Please note that the actual 'tank riding' mechanism wasn't created by me, but instead by the vehicle makers (RHS for the BTRs, using an invisible vehicle with cargo positions attached to the BTR, Iron Front 44 / Invasion 44 by defining new cargo positions). My sole contribution has been to write a few scripts that make the AI use the mechanism when ordered so as part of generated missions.

I just like mechanisms like 'tank riding' (and crew served weapons, weather systems like RUBE's, ...).

As I understand it, vehicle passengers/crew cannot fire their personal weapons from a vehicle in Arma2 (unlike VBS2 1.x). As a result, carrying MANPADS wouldn't benefit gameplay. AAW's Bushmaster might have worked around this by defining additional turrets for the air guard positions at the back of the vehicle, IIRC.

I'm not sure whether the restriction is also present in Arma3. If so, it's probably by design.

William

p.s. Raunhofer's recently released Caribou Island has been added for mission generation. Recommended!

[_William 0]

In the past weeks, I've been busy keeping PlannedAssault's unit database up to date with a bunch of great new mods, so you can create missions around them. In the pictures below, from left to right:

- CWR2 additions, such as the 1982 UK Paras, Chinook and Scorpion/Scimitar, shown on new ADO Vostok and Winter Vostok terrain by Old Bear

- Franze & NodUnit's superb AH-64D, which is also easier to fly for the AI than the stock one, and thus recommended for missions

- Delta Hawk's US Military Mod (80s, 90s), which fully outfitted and badged units for 1983 (Grenada) Rangers, 82nd Abn and Navy SEALs, 1985's 2nd Armored Cav and 101 Abn, 1989 (Panama) 82nd Abn and Marines, 1991 (Desert Storm) 82nd Abn and Marines, 1993 (Mogadishu) Rangers, 2003 (Iraq) 1st Cavalry, and 2004 (Iraq) 101Abn.

- F/A-18E&F (not shown), F-14

I'm keeping track of Arma3 and improving support step-by-step. The biggest annoyance (and obstacle) is Arma3's poor AI driving, causing vehicles to get and remain stuck and missions to stall (and not be fun for the player). Even in trivial missions on simple terrain, vehicles get stuck.

Until Arma3 improves the AI driving to at least Arma2 level, Arma3 isn't a good game for combined arms maneuvers. And not for PlannedAssault missions.

The exciting thing I'm currently finalizing is a mounted/mechanized way of performing assaults: in these assaults, infantry is carried in IFV / APCs from the form-up to the objective, and (dynamically) dismounted when the vehicles detect close threats. Once dismounted the infantry moves forward of the armored vehicles. Dismounting is done under a smoke screen created by the IFV / APCS (preferably) or, alternatively, created by smoke grenades thrown by the first soldiers to dismount the vehicle. Attacks become faster, combat becomes more confusing...

I've got this working in Arma2, Arma3 and Iron Front: Liberation 1944. It just needs a bit more testing, and the briefing / task info needs to reflect the new actions.

William

[_William 0]

Mechanized Attacks: In terms of how missions play, this is one of the bigger changes this year at PlannedAssault! Attacking teams now prefer to keep their infantry mounted during the advance, if they have sufficient armor (APCs, IFVs) to carry all infantry. The infantry is dismounted (ideally) at the objective, or (more spectacularly) earlier when close threats are observed. If the infantry is dismounted early, this is done behind a smoke screen, either from the APCs or from smoke grenades. When dismounted, infantry attempts to move ahead of the armor, to screen it from infantry ATGMs.

The nett effect is a faster attack (with APCs moving quicker towards the objective), and a more confusing fight due to the smoke. The increased speed makes it harder to defend against; however, a first kill on the APCs/IFVs still loaded with infantry will dent the attack significantly.

It probably better resembles real world tactics. See the pictures below, or generate a mission yourself (right-most screen shot is from Arma3):

I've got mechanized attacks working in Arma2*, Iron Front and Arma3, with Arma3 still being hampered by vehicles getting stuck.

Next on the list is a new "how-to" Youtube video, showcasing many of the tactical things (paradrops, fast ropes, air assaults, mechanized assaults, defense deployments, crew served weapons, camouflaging, bridge attacks behind a smoke screen) PlannedAssault can put in a mission for you. Practically, this has as a side-effect lots of tweaks, since I'll record and review lots of game footage, and want to fix / tune anything I don't like.

William

[rowdied 44]

mechanized attacks

Awesome!

I have made a few missions in Arma 2 and IF and have to say they were fantastic! It took all of 5 mins to set them up.

Keep up the great work!!

[_William 0]

One cool advantage of automatic mission generation is that it allows you easily try "large" missions and approach the limits of what Arma can do. Here is what I found out and improved when trying to generate some interesting para-drops for movie recording.

The PlannedAssault UI had space for 7 air cargo units, so I upped the amount of cargo groups per aircraft groups to 7. That allowed me to load 108 (7 x 12) men into a group of two Il-76 Candids, for a single para-drop with close air support from two groups of 2 Su-25 Frogfoots (so there's something to watch while descending by parachute). In large paradrops, it is annoying to be spread out as a group, so I change the jump order to be per group. Finally, I've figured out a key parameter in making the aircraft flying (almost) straight across a hostile drop-zone: the pilot's skill needs to be as high as possible (1.0) otherwise, he is more likely to avoid threats.

With a few newly released tactical shooter games being proud about 64-player multi-player games, it is nice to see our Arma2 happily giving us 100+ men para-drops in a single-player mission that involves 190 NPC and myself in total...

William

[miraoister 1]

How comes I can only have 10 unit slots per side? Is it possible to increase it?

[_William 0]

How comes I can only have 10 unit slots per side? Is it possible to increase it?

The number of units involved has the biggest impact on the time necessary to create a plan (generate a mission). For example, if I have a defensive position consisting of 6 sectors, and I have to assign 8 defender units to occupy these sectors, I need to pick a good combination out of 0.19 million combinations. For 10 units, the number of combinations goes up to 16.4 million. For more than 10 units, the situation gets even more challenging.

In addition, the UI doesn't have much space to add more units.

In short, the limit won't change soon. If you want to have large numbers of men and vehicles in your mission, I recommend choosing large units. That's what I did for the "100+ men paradrop" mission here, picking "double squads" and really large aircraft.

William

[miraoister 1]

Ok, I noticed when I open the mission editor up each team is represented by a single single unit, so I couldn't pad out a 9 man team with extra men, unless you could suggest another way...

I use Asr AI, DAPMAN first aid and CWR2...

Yesterday I was taking part in a mission to retake that german village from DDR troops.

It was 10am, clear weather. We had air support from two RAF Phantom F4s, which I never saw, I'm sure they were busy elsewhere, the village had in it a few units of a recce troops, backed up by APC/IFVs of a moderate strength, our force was two units of Royal Marines, one unit of paras and a unit of special forces, we were taxied into the village by Warrior IFVs, backed up by Challenger tanks, scouting our west flank we had two Fox on a recce.

Our intention was a two prong assault. soon the tanks disappeared as they had spotted T72s, several of them in a column further to the west,the far side of the village was held by FRG friendly unit of fieldjäger as we enclosed we realised the DDR recon had been backed up by a large force of East German field jäger, deploying a smoke screen whilst they deployed into the village, we pushed into the village, but the main force of East Germans obviously had plans to hold the village, I managed to use a Law against a BTR60 but our force strength had taken a few scratches by then, I decided to find a better position closer to the East Germans as our CO had been killed, I led four men further into the village, my light machine gunner got shot by East German fire while we were crossing open ground clearing houses, he lay there crying for help, first I got cover, fired some supression fire, then I turned around to drag my my team mate, at that point I noticed something just beyond some shrub about 50 meters I saw some sort of strange shape, like a periscope, I couldn't quite think be becasue of the situation becoming critical, but I realised it was the remaining force of T72s, I quickly ran to the injured team mate and dragged him into a nearby shed, I was preparing to read him his last rites as he looked a goner but I bandaged him up and he seemed ok.

Realising I had previously picked up an rpg17 from a dead DDR soldier I decided to leave the shed take on a tank...

Then the mission suddenly ended, the timer was set to 30 minutes instead of two hours like I thought.

This was amazing, and really fun experience, here are my questions.

How does Planned Assult work with Hetman ai commander?

I haven't run Hetmen yet, but it looks complicated to set up, have you thought about adding it to your mission set up?

If I wanted the AI to throw more smoke what mods do any other user recommend to use with Planned Assult?

Final question...

I tried setting artillery and mortar units but the mission generator kept rejecting it.

What layout works best for artillery?

Does the mission generator pre plan a 'firing schedule' for fixed artillery or do they receive orders in-game depending on active triggers and what enemy are sighted?

Do units act as spotters and relay target information?

[_William 0]

Great questions. And it sounds you had some good fun as well.

Ok, I noticed when I open the mission editor up each team is represented by a single single unit, so I couldn't pad out a 9 man team with extra men, unless you could suggest another way...

Yes you can. Each team's units are placed on top of each other in the editor (try selecting and move away the top one). A 9 man team consists of 9 units. You can add extra men. Just be aware than the plan has been made with 9 man units, so if you add units and the assigned transport doesn't have extra capacity, some of your extras may have to walk (and slow down the mission).

I use Asr AI, DAPMAN first aid and CWR2...

DAPMAN first-aid and CWR2 are fully supported. AI mods in general are not, but if it works for you, great. (AI mods may interfere with the scripts triggered to make the groups execute part of the plan).

Then the mission suddenly ended, the timer was set to 30 minutes instead of two hours like I thought.

You can adjust this on the Briefing tab while creating the mission.

How does Planned Assult work with Hetman ai commander?

It doesn't. Hetman's AI commander generates somewhat random orders on the fly, depending on the situation, whereas PlannedAssault uses a static, tightly coordinated plan. The two don't go together.

For some types of missions, Hetman will be a better fit. However, for tightly coordinated activities such as paradrops, mechanized assault, heli insertions, CAS, occupying defensive sectors I expect PlannedAssault to do a better job.

If I wanted the AI to throw more smoke what mods do any other user recommend to use with Planned Assult?

Don't know.

I tried setting artillery and mortar units but the mission generator kept rejecting it.

Artillery needs to be between minimum range and maximum range from the objective where it offers support. The unit icon and error messages tell you the range, but typically mortars have a 100m-3.7km range, 105mm howitzers a 2.4-5.8km range and large guns need to be even more distant from the objective. In general, put your mortars close to the objective to defend / attack, and put your howitzers far away.

Does the mission generator pre plan a 'firing schedule' for fixed artillery or do they receive orders in-game depending on active triggers and what enemy are sighted?

Do units act as spotters and relay target information?

Pre-planned firing schedule for attacks (coordinated with close-air support, so shells aren't flying when helicopters / fixed wing move forward). Triggered firing for defense, based on spotting hostiles. Spotting is implicit, with a delay.

William

[miraoister 1]

ok, another question, I have had to put Blufor artillery m119 units in an akward position west of the hold position, will they fire automatically under ai? or do they need an order from the player?

also what range will they attack targets at?

[_William 0]

ok, another question, I have had to put Blufor artillery m119 units in an akward position west of the hold position, will they fire automatically under ai? or do they need an order from the player?

also what range will they attack targets at?

When you're defending (Hold objective), the AI will fire into pre-designated zones just in front of the defensive sectors. These zones are implemented as triggers; you might be able to recognize them in the map editor.

IIRC, as a player you can call in artillery fire as well, using the radio.

[miraoister 1]

Hi will

Me again,

I have been using Blake's Ai forward observer it works well with your maps, I would recommend it.

Also I was wondering if you will add the mig21 model?

[Michael Vick 0]

has this mod died? the website is still up but there hasn't been posts in a long time