Mass Eject From Helo Doesn't Work Properly Anymore

Heya!

I've just noticed some troubles in my missions probably related to the Heli DLC update. To force quick drops - helo flys in, touches the ground for a sec and ejects all units from cargo simultaniously, heli takes off again - I use a combination of unit capture and this simple line of code:

{_x action ["EJECT", IP_Heli]} forEach (units group player);

As said, it used to push the units out at the same moment, perfect for a helo like the hummingbird where one can just jump off the seats. Since the update this line drops the units one by one with a small delay - so, first the player gets ejected (fine), then the helo starts to take off (crap) and half of the squad dies from falling a few metres (catastrophe).

Anyone else experiencing this? Or any ideas how to fix this? Thanks for any input!

Hey,

Added: Delay between commanded ejects of AI

for whatever weird, out of mind reason a delay got added between each eject command.

Broke quite a few of my scripts, it's one of those changes that goes by almost unnoticed and driving you insane trying to figure out why your scripts are failing.

I wonder what the actual explanation for this addition has been.

Prost

Thanks for your reply. Oh dear, that breaks a lot. I have a handful of these unit-captured drops throughout my campaign, some were quite difficult to record. Only ugly workaround I can think of for my problem would be to disable the helo's simulation until every unit is outside so it doesn't take off too soon. Hell, why are they doing these things from time to time? What ever happened to "never touch a running system"? :/

Darn, disabling the simulation doesn't work as units can't eject from a disabled helo. :j: Giving the helo a land command directly after finishing unit play doesn't work as well - it just takes off and tries to land somewhere else. Temporary and ugly solution: Making the passengers invincible and then watch them drop while the helo takes off.

Any other idea is appreciated! Still can't figure out why they'd change a perfectly working functionality...

Darn, disabling the simulation doesn't work as units can't eject from a disabled helo. :j: Giving the helo a land command directly after finishing unit play doesn't work as well - it just takes off and tries to land somewhere else. Temporary and ugly solution: Making the passengers invincible and then watch them drop while the helo takes off.

Any other idea is appreciated! Still can't figure out why they'd change a perfectly working functionality...

Why not wait for something like

waituntil {{_x in _chopper} count _units isEqualto 0};

until the chopper is allowed to take off again?

That's what I'm doing. Problem is, that the chopper takes off automatically once the unit play is done and doesn't care about disembarking units. Before this change it worked perfectly because the action to eject was triggered once the unit play ended -> units were ejected all at once, helo took off and flew away, quick combat drop. To clarify, we're talking about a generic insertion function used in ~11 missions, not just one special scene I could re-do. Recording the data took me a few hours, on some occasions 20-30 tries to manually land on a rooftop and such. Nothing I'd want to do again.^^

Ouch.

Did you already try to doStop the chopper or set the fuel to 0? (probably won't look nice with turning the engine off, especially for a combat drop).

You could also try to manipulate the recorded data and just copy and paste the recordings from the point where the chopper is touching the roof, so it stays a bit longer.

Other than that, no idea.

Setting fuel to 0 is as clunky as making the passengers invincible I'd say. Copying the data might be worth a shot, lots of fiddeling around though, thanks.

Try

player action ["[color="#008000"]getOut[/color]",vehicle player];

BIS changed the "eject" functionality mid last year, but "getOut" works to remove the unit immediately from the vehicle. Eject is more conditional than "getOut", suffice to say. You cannot "eject" anymore under all circumstances, but you can "getOut".

Hm, can't be that long ago, that stuff worked until November at least. First reports of faulty behaviour haven't reached me until December.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion, I'll try that ASAP and report back!

Seems to work, thank you again!

Great you got it working.

Kinda weird how "Eject" is basically a faster "Get Out", instead of an actual emergency "GET THE F*** OUT" like it's intended to be.

If a dev could chime in and explain why this has been changed I'm probably not the only one curious about the reasons.

Cheers

I second that, would also like to know more about the background of this decision.^^

I wonder if there is some parachute bool in eject command.

Would be worth testing if the same issue occurs with land vehicles, and then try parachute-equipped soldiers and use the "eject" command again. Not hopeful but I could see that as a possible explanation. "If no parachute, then DONT eject!"

That is one thing that spooked me away from SaMatra's KOTH. Joined the game and just a constant stream of pilots ejecting from helicopters to parachute into the AO. Very immersion breaking I found. Haven't checked that in awhile, may have been changed or sorted.

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Actions#Eject

Well, the eject does work, they just added that weird delay when ejecting multiple units in a loop. Such delay can be easiliy added manually for parachuting scripts etc. But it doesn't work the other way round, we can't remove the delay by script.

Hm, can't be that long ago, that stuff worked until November at least. First reports of faulty behaviour haven't reached me until December.

I find players to be very good at playing around bugs, but very bad at reporting them. Sometimes I get alerted to an issue, then ask the regulars and they say "Oh yea, thats an issue but we just do this/that to get around it instead..." I facepalm, though sometimes the workarounds/exploits they find are ingenious. :)

Never got around to it yet, but have intentions to make a small 'Bug Report' UI for players to pop open and fire a message to the server + diag_log when they find a bug. I think that level of immediacy and ease-of-reporting is the only way it can work, to receive good amount of bug reports.

Only other way is to observe the playing, but that is time consuming.

Yes, true, lots of stuff just doesn't get reported. Or worse, players don't even notice if something's wrong and how could they if it's new to them? Plus I don't have the time to replay all 35 missions of my campaign on every one of BI's or my own updates. But I see this behaviour in myself too. I try to provide detailed criticism to fellow creators but sometimes I'm just too lazy or simply forget about it. When specifically asked to playtest I take notes though, of everything that seems odd or obviously doesn't work.