Need help with mission editor

Ok, I thought it all was supposed to be simple... put in some aircraft, give them waypoints and you have a mission. It seems a little more complicated now, not because of all the little details of info you can add to the aircraft... It looks like some AI scripts are conflicting.

What I want to do is setup a co-op mission, in which you scramble to protect your AWACS against an incoming enemy strike force. After that you move on to destroy the enemy AWACS and after that to destroy some facilities at the enemy air base.

Here's a list of the problems I have encountered so far:

1. The first enemy fighters that will atack the US AWACS are two MiG-29s. I gave them an airstart and I'd like them to stay together until they are close to the target. Then they can break up and attack the AWACS, so I inserted a turning point right before the attack waypoint. This doesn't seam to help. Right after starting the mission, #2 breaks off and goes full burners to intercept the E3 AWACS. By doing so he burns off all his fuel and can't make it back to base. Also, #1 continues on to attack my F15 on the ground (not taken off, because I was watching the AI). He used to shoot me with his canon on the first pass, but the last time I tried to play the mission he only shot me at his 4th pass and didn't do anything on his 1st to 3rd pass. This problem isn't really important, but it just doesn't feel right.

2. The mission starts at 20.40. I've setup 2 MiG-23MLDs to take off from the runway at that time. The don't even appear in the mission.

3. I've also assigned two Su-27s to take off from parking area at 20.40. They used to do just that, but the last time I checked they behaved really weird and didn't take off.

4. Two Su-33s should take off from parking area at 20.45. Again, nothing... :helpsmilie:

I would really appreciate it if someone could take a look at this. You can download the mission via this link: www.virtualredarrows.com/Phoenix/Missions/Scramble_Phoenix.mis

Thank you and kind regards,

Sytse "Phoenix"

Oh yeah, for ground vehicles I know you can set different options for their movement. I get 'on-road' and 'off-road', but what do 'rank' and 'cone' do?

pps. does anyone know of a good tutorial on mission building?

Hey Sytse,

Welcome to the world of mission building for Lockon.

Unfortunately what you're seeing are many of the limitations of the Mission Editor that you have to learn, and then circumvent.

Here are my opinions of what is causing the issues that you are having:

The Mig-29s in this case are set to intercept. This means that that is their behaviour for their entire flight time. If they detect something, they will do their very best to kill it. In your mission there is an AWACS present which means they are aware of any threat instantly. I'd suggest changing it to a tanker instead. The Mig-29s however will use their radar (they always do, 24x7x365 :( ), but think about how that radar works, they can only detect what is infront of them, so you could alter their flight path so that they only 'see' what you want them to. That said though, they do have passive sensors and at 66km the Migs will engage an AWACS as they'll know it's there for sure!

In real life, AWACS would not operate anywhere close to the front line. In Lock On, you need to think very clearly about why you want / need them in a mission, and carefully consider the implications of using them, they can see clearly for several hundread kilometers.

AI aircraft also will treat any airfield that doesn't have hostile aircraft built into the mission to take off there (at any time) as nuetral and they will land at it when they get low on fuel. The way that most mission designers get around this is for the airfields in the area of your missions operation, set an AI aircraft of the side that you would like the airfield to belong to, to take off in 12 hours time.

In your case the mission starts at 20:40 036 so set the take off time of these AI aircraft to be 08:40 037. This will define which airfields are friendly for the AI, and they 'should' adjust their strategy to suit.

Your Mig-23's didn't take off for me either, but I suspect that this is due to you assigning the 2 SU-27's to take off at the same time. Lock On's airfields suffer because they are 'locked' when a runway is in use. This means that if you have any aircraft on finals (within 2 miles) or taxiing towards the runway, the airfiled is 'in use' and no AI will enter the mission or attempt to land. Try spacing out your flights to accomodate for this.

Finally for us Westerner's think of the ground unit formations as:

Rank = Line Abreast

Cone = Diamond, some also know this as Wedge, most however use Wedge similar to an Echalon left & Right joined at the front

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-91/c03.htm

Check out Ironhands tutorials at www.flankertraining.com and just download mission that others have made and see how they did things. I made a whole bunch of missions for the SIM-MOD A-10 if you have it installed. Check the A-10\Crimean Campaign folder.

thanks highwayman-ed, this has answered a few of my questions too.

Thanks a lot Ed! I'll make some changes and see how it goes... :)

Ok, I've set the task of the Mig-29s to "nothing". They now stay together, but they don't attack the E3, not even when I set an attack waypoint with the E3 assigned as their target. :S

Also, I now know how to let the different flights take off from the same airfield. It all has to do with the order in which you create the flight groups. Let's say you want to have group 1 take off from the runway and group 2 to take off from the parking area and group 3 to take off from the parking area after group 2. You need to set the whole thing up in this exact order. First, create group 1 and assign waypoints, then group 2 and group 3. Group 2 will appear at the parking area when group one is airborne. Group 3 will appear when group 2 has taken off. etc...

To have the MiG-29s attack the E3 AWACS I think I'll have to set their task to something other than "nothing". What other options do I have than "intercept"? And what do "GAI" and "CAS" mean (in the task dropdown menu)?

"Fighter sweep"

GAI

Ground Assisted Intercept. Put an aircraft on an airbase without any waypoints, set TASK to GAI. It will sit on the tarmac and only scramble when the radar on the airbase detects a threat. You can experiment to determine the scramble range, I can't remember what it is, maybe 50 miles? I seem to recall that if you add other friendly radars into the mission, then they will scramble at greater range? But don't quote me on that, experiment with that too.

CAS

Close Air Support, ie attacking ground targets.

Ok thanks a lot guys! I'll "experiment" some more... :)

CAS = Close Air Support (Used to assist friendly ground forces)

Unfortunately Nothing means just that, although they will defend themselves...

For GAI - I think it's 60km ... Unless there's an AWACS in the air on their side, in which case they'll try to intercept something taking off from Auckland.

Thanks! :)

I tested the mission tonight with the Virtual RNLAF F-16 Solo Display Team. We all had a great time (I even shot down a SU-33 with an A-10! :D), but the mission still needs some improvements. One of the things I noticed is that the aircraft which were assigned to "take off from runway" actually started at the parking area. I'm guessing this is a bug in multiplayer and there's no way to solve this. Correct?

I think it is a feature rather than a Bug for MP. As you might have many folks taking off from an airbase in a big MP mission, then "forcing" them to start from parking area means that they can all be assigned a starting spot to spawn. Otherwise they would likely spawn on top of each other on the runway and explode.

Of course starting on the parking area means that you need to choose your airbase carefully as the taxi time to the runway fom the parking area can vary a great deal between the airbases. Check this thread,

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=10922

It shows the taxi time for AI to get to the runway but is somewhat relevant to players too, most serious squadrons don't taxi at insane speeds.

Rank and Cone.

One thing about this is that occasionally I have had a ground unit group simply stop when I had it changing formation between off-road, rank and cone. I seem to recall it was dependent on the number of units in the group.

During your mission creation, you might want to do a mission run through (at accelerated speed) watching your ground units to double check they do change formations correctly and actually travel all the way to where you want.

While I'm talking about the ME and ground units - don't forget they can't cross rivers unless you have them on-road and using bridges. Also, if a vehicle is off-road and in hilly terrain, it can only handle a gentle slope, it won't go up or down any kind of vaguely steep hill.

Here's hoping that vehicles can be amphibious in BS ;)

Thanks guys, but I was talking about the AI. I want them to take off from the runway in multiplayer. Possible?

Polite bump... :)

I'm pretty sure that multiplayer shouldn't make any difference, but the airfield must be empty with no flights locking the runway.

It worked in singleplayer, but in multiplayer, the AI flights took off from the parking area in stead of the runway.... :/

Thanks for your help again, mate. I don't think there's a sollution for this problem, so I'll just have to make two versions of the mission. One for single player, and one for multiplayer. :)

hmmm...

In regards to flight take offs... i've resorted to having most flights start on the runway rather than parking area. Its just easier not to mess things up.

The AI can get itself in a real pickel when taxing.... sometimes they just block the area stopping all flgihts.

I 'simulate' aircraft taking off from the runway at the beginning of some of my missions by starting them at the lowest possible altitude over the runway at mission start so that they climb away toward their first waypoint which runs along the axis of the runway.

Only works propperly with fighters though, large aircraft yo-yo with their altitude :(