PlannedAssault web based mission builder

[seaside 10]

Love the generator. Any plans to add the Invasion 44 mod ?

[Dwarden 1124]

@william from 1.54 patch ? o.O ... but but we are already on 1.60 patch {panic-emotion}

[_William 0]

Modest yet fun update, primarily bringing integration with RUBE's weather module. That weather module creates a varying weather strongly based on the date, time and climate model. I've tagged each of the PlannedAssault supported maps with a meteorological region and written a script to match that region to the most suitable climate model RUBE weather provides (currently it provides a Prague (CZ), Kandhar (Afghan valley) and Bamiyan (Afghan mountain area) model, but I'm hoping for more models to better cover tropical maps and winter maps). The differences shown for time in the year and weather type are very impressive. (The add-on currently gives an error message for a missing season model when initializing the mod, but my understanding is that this is a problem in the add-on. The season is set later. Don't let it scare you).

Also added is a ballistics table for the M1126 Stryker MCV-B mortar carrier, enabling the AI to fire artillery mission using these vehicle mounted 120mm mortars. The vehicle has been part of Arma2:OA from the beginning but lacked configuration for the Arma2 artillery module. This ballistics table is automatically included in missions using the Arma2:OA US Army units.

The new map supported with this update is CWR2's Malden, with two areas. See this post for more info.

My next steps include reworking the terrain parsing, preferably using an in-game exporter similar to the one I have for VBS2. The newly available extension i/f should help here. Being able to export terrain, vegetation, houses, obstacles from within the game is a step forward since it provides me with correct dimensions for most these objects. In my current terrain parser, I just parse the terrain (.wrp) and config file, thereby lacking information on object dimensions. The struggle will be to get good terrain height information from the game, especially when there are vehicles on top of the terrain. The aim is to cover Shapur for Arma2:OA and give TKOH a shot.

William

@Dwarden: Don't worry. Shapur hasn't seen much change. I'm at 1.60+ myself, but didn't have a non-encrypted "lite" shapur.pbo. The 1.54 patch contained one, and extracting that one saved from from reinstalling Arma2.

@Seaside: Not anytime soon, I've got a pile of work lined up, and a backlog of add-on updates that I need to reflect in the unit database (for example, the Hexagon/Operation Frenchpoint units). I do love the German tanks in I44 though.

[R0adki11 3945]

@_William great update. I still plan to send you those files so that you can include my Nogovan Addons :)

[Defunkt 431]

I'm at 1.60+ myself, but didn't have a non-encrypted "lite" shapur.pbo. The 1.54 patch contained one, and extracting that one saved from from reinstalling Arma2.

I think you can find the 'lite' pbo's in <ArmA 2>\Common\

[Alvando 10]

hey william, RUBE is a very nice addition for plannedassault! really enjoyed it :D

but btw i have a suggestion:

i dont think a sniper team should be given a defensive sector in a defense. because they wont be able to defend a sector that big. So i think the sectors for sniper teams should be placed outside the objective, so it can become more effective :D

and what exactly do we have to do so that a sniper team can follow their task to "observe and snipe" in an attack? in my mission the sniper team get the task, but they just go to the objective and attack.

thanks and i just tried to make a counter attacking force mission and it was AWESOME!

[_William 0]

hey william, RUBE is a very nice addition for plannedassault! really enjoyed it :D

but btw i have a suggestion:

i dont think a sniper team should be given a defensive sector in a defense. because they wont be able to defend a sector that big. So i think the sectors for sniper teams should be placed outside the objective, so it can become more effective :D

and what exactly do we have to do so that a sniper team can follow their task to "observe and snipe" in an attack? in my mission the sniper team get the task, but they just go to the objective and attack.

thanks and i just tried to make a counter attacking force mission and it was AWESOME!

Thanks for your feedback. Don't forget to tell Ruebe you like his add-on (and ask for additional climate files).

Right now the way defending units are positions is not optimal. I'm (automatically) identifying defensive sectors and hiding sectors, and placing ground combat units, unarmed units (HQ vehicles, trucks) and support units (AA, artillery) in the suitable sectors. What is missing though is:

- unit placement near cover, concealed or without silhouetting. In Arma1 it was possible to identify cover, but that function is broken in Arma2.

- defensive placement of spotter/sniper

For next week, I had already planned to improve defensive positioning using the same techniques I've used to select attacker form-up positions. If I'm able to come up with something that works for spotter units, I might start treating them special.

An AI sniper/spotter team isn't currently able to properly observe and attack. By default, Arma doesn't have a waypoint behavior that has a unit stop advancing when spotting hostile (ground) units (the Combat Mission series calls this a 'hunt' waypoint). I don't generate special behavior; the role is primarily intended for a player in a forward position, witnessing and supporting a large attack.

William

[Alvando 10]

thanks, hope it can be improved :)

and i have one more suggestion: i think its better if we can load reinforcement troops on choppers and send them to the objective in a defense mission.

because it would be very nice to see friendlies fast roping from choppers when we are being pushed back by the enemy. or maybe play as the reinforcement and get dropped right on to the action? :D

thanks and i thank you for all your hard work :D

[neojd[ny] 10]

Will there be a way for web.de or gmx users to register? I want to use it too. :(

[_William 0]

;2121299']Will there be a way for web.de or gmx users to register? I want to use it too. :(

Use an email address from gmail, hotmail, yahoo, freenet.de, ... Signing up requires just one email. PlannedAssault sends the confirmation email, the problem is web.de / gmx bouncing emails from plannedassault.com for some reason. If I knew how to fix this, I would.

[_William 0]

TKOH support

I've updated PlannedAssault with some early support for Take On Helicopters, providing the air landing and close-air-support missions you already know for Arma1/2. The Hinds (from the TKOH DLC) are beautiful and very detailed - I even managed to shoot the rotors from one of them. The terrain lacks some detail compared to Arma2, and I wouldn't mind better fleshed out soldiers and weapon systems...

I'm not (yet) supporting Arma2 add-ons in TKOH as the preconditions for that aren't clear to me (mod permissions and technical aspects).

As said in the post above, I'll have a look at improving defensive positioning and defensive movement (to alternative battle positions if the enemy closes in, or to reinforce a threatened sector). Will keep Alvando's request (air insert reinforcements) in the back of my mind.

William

[_William 0]

This update adds support for the combination of Trouble's (cold war era) British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) units and Vilas' excellent 1982 british infantry and paras. If you also feel the need to charge with your Chieftains to stop a Soviet armored horde (or vice versa, the need to overrun British tommies enjoying tea with your T-72s), this is for you.

Be warned though that Trouble's vehicles have rough edges, with some of the configs causing error messages or worse (heli's affecting default chopper behavior). Hopefully Trouble finds the time the extend and improve his BAOR; in a way, he's recreating history in a very tangible format.

Vilas' UK units have been released earlier this year without getting the attention they deserve, as part of a US and UK units pack. The 1982 british infantry and especially the paras look great, and come with all the right weapons (SLR, GPMG) bar the Milan.

The new maps in this update are southwest Nogova ('Petrovice') and northwest Nogova ('Modrava'), in medium size (6km x 4.5km rather than the default 4x3km), which should give you more room to plan maneuvers. See this post for more info.

I've also updated some maps to refer to Ruebe's new climate models (winter kolguljev now comes with a sub-artic climate if you select the Ruebe weather add-on for use in your mission).

William

[Shashman 0]

Hey William, outstanding work on this!

I only really have one minor 'gripe'/request and that's to do with the size of the map images. Would it be possible to either make the map images larger, or zoomable? It's just a bit difficult to place units precisely at the moment. Cheers!

[.kju 3240]

This might be of interest: Take On Helicopters: Rearmed

:)

[El-Producto 10]

Apologies if this has been mentioned.

Is there any way to use this wonderful tool to create a co-op mission? Is there a way to open it in the game editor and add a player?

[ebarstad 18]

El-Producto, you can definitely open these missions up in the editor and select which characters are playable. I often do this so that when my main character dies, I can take over another role. This would probably work for co-op, too, though I couldn't say for sure.

[El-Producto 10]

Ok, I'll try that tonight.

The regular editor frankly terrifies me.

[_William 0]

Apologies if this has been mentioned.

Is there any way to use this wonderful tool to create a co-op mission? Is there a way to open it in the game editor and add a player?

The missions as generated won't work properly as a co-op mission, with initialization and most scripts not being MP compatible.

It's not hard to make the mission look like a co-op mission (I have a setting for that, which generates a proper description.ext and sets all friendly units to playable). The problem is that the mission falls flat because unit initialization needs to be done differently and scripts (used in waypoints) need to be made MP compatible. For some scripts, this isn't even possible.

I've had some help in the past from Defunkt identifying things requiring changes and haven't found the time to follow up on everything. Getting the scripts to work in MP is going the be the biggest problem.

William

[Defunkt 431]

I'm pretty keen to pursue that again William (while waiting for ArmA 3). For my money your mission planner provides AI with far and away the greatest intent and purpose and an all-slots-playable version where players can choose to join and group-respawn into leadership or rank-and-file positions on either side would make a wonderful Co-op/P-v-P hybrid which can be enjoyed by 1 or 50 people.

[.kju 3240]

yup. maybe you should try to expose the scripts you use in here or a project tracker/repository

there is a good chance for other people to help out there :)

[_William 0]

Being born and raised in a country with plenty of rivers, streams and canals, I have something with bridges. Although we've had bridges in Bohemia's games and simulations since OFP's Nogova, it seems that AI bugs (pathfinding, inability to adapt the formation to fit the bridge) and physics/collision detection bugs have prevented proper use of bridges by the AI groups. However, recently two map makers did everything right (or got lucky) in creating maps with bridges which the AI is capable of crossing most of the time (six and eight wheel vehicles still run the risk of being launched in the air though).

Jakerod's Zernovo and =KCT=Blackmamba's Faysh Khabur maps are great maps that allows us to fight for bridges.

To bring combat to the bridges, I've extended PlannedAssault in several ways: (1) identification bridges in the terrain, (2) improved defensive sector picking to include key nearby bridges, (3) introduce explicit instructions and task updates to defend a specific bridge, and (4) pre-registered artillery targets at the far side of bridges being defended. You'll find more (technical) details in this post.

Together these measures beef up the defensive behavior in generated missions. On the offensive side, there is still some work to set-up coordinated attacks across bridges.

In addition, Spetsnaz GRU teams (colonel stagler's) and modern russian infantry (using latest RF equipment, by cmp) have been added to the unit database for inclusion in missions.

William

@Shashman: I'll look into using larger maps images; it's causing me problems as well.

Edited May 28, 2012 by _William
Fix title

[delta99 34]

I really need to get back to using Planned Assault. It really is just way too good and appreciate the continuous great updates like this.

Keep up the great work guys.

[_William 0]

This is a work-in-progress update - PlannedAssault has not yet been updated to provide smoke screens.

With PlannedAssault defense now able to identify bridges and defend there, I needed to boost the attack planning. The (tactical) text book approach to attacking hostile bridges is obscure the bridge attack with a smoke screen. And that's what I'm doing...

When generating attacks across a bridge, the attacking force will attempt to fire a smoke screen at the far end of the bridge. I wrote a smoke screen script that figures out where to fire smoke/WP shells, depending on the number of guns and wind direction. The smoke clouds will be narrow when the wind blows in line with the bridge, and will be wide when the wind is perpendicular to the bridge: using that knowledge, one can fire smoke shells wider apart with a perpendicular wind, and get a wider smoke screen. (All this from some documents on WWII British artillery corps tactics).

Screen shots from left to right: start of a smoke screen with 3 shells having landed, the smoke screen fully built, and myself (cowardly) crossing a hostile yet obscured bridge.

The next problem is to fire smoke shells at the designated positions just frequently enough to the smoke screen in-place. Firing more frequently is bad for your frame-rate and wastes ammo. I had hoped to use BI's arty module script ARTY_ExecuteMission.sqf (the script that does the work for the Arma2 artillery module). However, this script contains several hard-wired delays, making it not able to fire a shell at a different target every 15s. That way, it wouldn't be able to keep up a four point smoke screen, because smoke shells live about 50s.

As a next option, I've created a variant of ARTY_ExecuteMission.sqf that is able to fire a mission with each gun firing at a (slightly) different position. That works fine now (see the screen shots above), and keeps the artillery compatible with other mods that use the artillery module (guns aren't available for a next mission until a batteryScope variable is set, etc.).

However, since this variant of ARTY_ExecuteMission.sqf differs hardly from BI's original, I've requested permission from BI (Dwarden) to be able to distribute it as part of my generated missions. Probably due to frantic E3 activity, I haven't heard back.

William

[_William 0]

I've completed the work on smoke screens for bridge assaults (see above post), with a small change in smoke screen scripting. I'm still getting excited when the artillery starts dropping smoke at the bridge I need to cross; there aren't many (war)games I know of that have the AI use smoke properly.

The other significant improvement is immediately showing in the browser the generated plan for the player's side. This will enable you to get a feel for the generated plan and adjust if necessary (without having to download the mission and boot up Arma2). This feedback is particularly useful in positioning artillery; when out-of-range, the generated plan will indicate so along with the gun's range and distance to the objective / target.

Screen shots from left to right: OFrP's Tigre HADs hovering near Faysh Khaburs Fixsabur bridge, generated plan feedback, and an OFrP AMX-10 R-CR recon vehicle at the far end of a hostile bridge.

This update includes an upgrade of all Hexagon units to Operation Frenchpoint. I've disabled the CAESARs and mortars for now, as I'm waiting for the OFrP team to fully make the CAESARs artillery capable (I've provided them input, and have something working locally).

For Arma2 (all variants), I now by default include in generated missions a script that orders tank crews stay inside immobilized tanks; that's functionality available as of 1.60.

William

p.s. I've now solved firing a linear (smoke) artillery mission in a different way, fully relying on BI's ARTY_ExecuteMission.sqf to do the work, and adjusting targets for individual guns by appending a 'prepare' script to each gun and adjusting azimuth and elevation in the prepare script. These prepare scripts are invoked by the ARTY_ExecuteMission.sqf script. Prepare scripts are removed from the gun after firing the artillery mission. This approach enables to fire linear artillery missions (barrages) as well as smoke screens.

[kiberkiller 10]

Oh wow! How come I didn't see this before? This is the best thing since sliced bread.