On Station

Hi Grimes,

Just played it, here is some feedback.

 

Awacs is called by 2 names in brief, Wizard and Darkstar.

 

Arco 61 has a radio freq listed in brief as 126.00 VHF AM but I can only contact him on 150.00 VHF AM which is what is listed in the Mission Editor for Arco.

 

The first mission I received near WP 2 was "A Suspicious Man"

 

When coord are given on screen, it reads

Friendlys at coord 42 04 20 042 04 47

This location has no enemy or friendly's.

I could not complete it.

 

Tanker works.

 

New voice acting sounds great.

I flew this mission yesterday a couple of times and I could not find the '" suspicious" man either. Maybe there is an easier way to find the coordinates other than the map? I thought I was in the right area but apparently not. I finally gave up looking for this assignment and flew to the east and followed the waypoints hoping for a new assingment. Every so often I kept getting the same order. I did find other targets of tanks, air defense systems that myself and my wingman took out. That was a lot of fun. So, if we are flying right over the "suspicious" man, at what altitude to see him? Or will he fire off a shoulder missle at us?;)

Same, we tried it with 4 guys. Got suspicious persons - Show of force mission. Flew to coords nothing there. In the end checked the map, only friendly position that was close was a FARP. Made low passes, dropped flares etc. but no joy.

PS dane, you can set the waypoint in your aircraft systems. Doing it with the map is very inaccurate. There is a thread now I believe in avionics forum, its called "How to make a waypoint?" It has links to some youtubes and explanations :)

The "Suspicious persons" task is basically an experimental idea. The purpose of it is to create a task that gets completed via non-violent means. I opted not to place any physical enemy forces at the locations so there wouldn't be anything to actually kill. Think of them as hiding in a building or something... For a while in development I thought it would be cool to have potentially hostile infantry forces that would attack the friendlies if you didn't scare em off with a flyby. However I opted not to pursue this idea for a couple of reasons, but the biggest one was my fear that all the triggers may be effecting game performance negatively.

To complete a show of force task, you simply have to fly over the coordinates at a low altitude. Low being <1500 feet. There shouldn't be any nearby threats, however it is entirely possible a random patrol convoy will be within 15km of the coordinate, however its possible, but not likely. Maybe I should raise the altitude for the pass abit...

Love your work Grimes

Amazing job sqeezing last bits from ME...

SP.On_Station_v3 run on BETA 4 full remarks:

1 While exiting mission I got runtime error (dsc requested terminate in unusual way...).

2 Tanker Arco61/callsign Arco has invalid COMM set to 150 (AM), no matter 'set freq' to 126 it won't response untill changing COMM from 150 to 126, also activate TACAN command should have set callsign to ARCO (default TKR).

3 Wizard/Deathstar AWAC has activate TACAN command (WP1) which has to be deleted (no such support in ME/Beta 4).

4 I find it quite difficult to spot for targets via TGP based on received coordinates, they tend to miles away and it makes me nervous when wingie spots them far much earlier advising about SAM presence...

5 Which flag disables barrel roll 'get mission update' trigger?

6 Is there among all missions any with built-in JTAC co-work?

Great job though. Will follow project.

Got suspicious person first mission. Flew under 1500 feet in all directions around the grid for 10 minutes. Nothing changed. Quit mission, not sure what to do on that.

I'm with the last poster.... flew low ( really really low.... < 200 feet agl ) and couldn't get past this mission. I think what we need is a "this is done" option and have the awacs give a new mission. think of it has "the person or vehicle is no longer a threat or has left the area..."

I want to thank you for a really fantastic idea and I think if the execution or concept was really lame, you wouldn't have all these guys giving feedback. It just sucks to have to quit the mission because a trigger didn't pan out. Big Big kudos to you man!

When I tried this last i avoided waypoint 2 and 3 and set a course for 4. Don't know why but I also did not contact the JTAC until I had been flying for about 15-20 minutes. I got a mission to take out the structures/bldgs but Ii was having trouble with putting in my coordinates. I did finally find the correct target (using labels and maps) and completed the mission. I couldn't go on as I had to quit at that time. You might want to give it a try just for kicks

I'm trying to diagnose the suspicious persons task. I see nothing in the triggers to indicate it is broken, but there is a chance the task completed trigger just isn't working for whatever reason when you are playing it through. To help with the fly over, I think I'll expand the area you need to fly in and raise the altitude limit.

As for coordinates, whenever I input my own coordinates it always seems to be off from the coordinates I used in the mission editor no matter what. Some of the coordinates act as a "the target is here" others are "check between these points", and with the SAM sites its usually "check this area." Also note that whenever you enter latitude you NEED 3 digits to mark degree's correctly. Some of the messages use the correct format, others do not.

got another question, I have a wingman that is up there with me.. but I can't seem to contact him and there's no freq listed in the brief for him... is he avail to be commanded?

Flew the mission today... really love it..but have a question/problem. I got the sa-8 mission. I put in the coords in. not a problem...but approaching the target I was about 20 miles out, looking for the sa-8 in the tgp. Nothing on the screen, but I had labels on, and I happed to look over my right side and boom.. there was the sa-8 target. 15 miles away from where it was supposed to be. I managed to destroy it, but I wouldn't have seen it if I didn't have labels on. Thoughts?

Challenging yet very fun!!

Im on it, thanx bud.

Great mission Grimes +1 :thumbup:

This is a great mission. I flew it a few times. I love the large battlefield and the random messages. When I finish with the mission I'm working on currently, I think I'm going to make one like this one!

Two issues:

1) Coordinates given are in Degrees Minutes Seconds (DMS). CDU entry is in degrees and minutes. If you (Grimes) convert the coordinates over to degrees and minutes, it would solve alot of these "I can't find the target" issues because, it seems, virtually no one I have met in game knows the difference between DMS and just degrees and minutes. At best, incorrectly entering coordinates will cause a 0 foot error (at zero seconds longitude and lattitude, i.e., NXX XX' 00" EXXX XX' 00". At worst, it will cause something like a 2300 foot error in lattitude and 2200 foot error in longitude for a total error of ~3200 feet at 59 seconds of a minutde lattitude and longitude (i.e., NXX XX' 59", EXXX XX' 59").

Remember, NXX XX' 59" = NXX XX.983', so NXX XX' 59" IS NOT EQUAL TO NXX XX.XX'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Math behind this: circumference of the earth = 24000 miles = 1.267x10^6 feet. Divided by 360, each degree of lattitude and longitude (longitude at the equator) = 352,000 feet; divide by 60, each minute of lattitude equals 5867 feet. A rough approximation I often use is 1 minute = 1nm. Each second of lattitude and equatorial longitude then equals 5867/60 = 98 feet. 0.59 minutes = 0.59*5867 = 3460 feet. But 59 seconds equals fifty-nine sixtyiths of a minute, or 0.983 minutes. 59*98 feet (fifty nine seconds) or 0.983*5867 = 5767 feet. Thus, if you don't know the difference between seconds and minutes, you get an error of 5767-3460 = 2300 (yes, I'm doing some rounding, but the figures are close). So if it was at 59 minutes lattitude and longitude, the error is the square root of two times 2300 squared, or about 3200ish feet.

2) Target coordinates are out of whack with moving targets. Even after inputting correct coordinates, by the time you get to a moving convoy, they will be miles away. There is no real solution to this other than scripting, or triggers that update target coordinates. Unfortuantely, I have yet to figure out how to put a "Message to All" in a script. I had thought that World.schedule_do_string would work, but after playing with it a bunch I still can't make it display "Hello World". :( The second I do, it will be possible to make a script that displays current coordinates of any target you want as a message in game. As it stands right now, I DO know how to send a series of voice message using scripts and triggers that would give you updated coordinates, but it would involve something like 130ish voice messages I would have to record, with a total weight of about 3MB after compression to .ogg.

Would you like me to let you know when/if I figure out current coordinates text messages, Grimes? (BTW, I still remember that task you asked me about, saving flags in a text file and setting them in the next mission... I can still get around to that if you want me to).

I'm trying to diagnose the suspicious persons task. I see nothing in the triggers to indicate it is broken, but there is a chance the task completed trigger just isn't working for whatever reason when you are playing it through. To help with the fly over, I think I'll expand the area you need to fly in and raise the altitude limit.

Just curious, to detect multiplayer clients, you ARE using a UNIT in zone, not a coaltion, part of coalition, part of group, all of group.... I don't believe any of that works in this current beta, only Unit In Zone. This is almost certainly due to the fact that multiplayer clients are treated differently, and are actually kinda dissassociated with the unit that you give them in the ME. It's weird, hopefully it will be fixed cause it causes tremendous scripting and triggering headaches.

Remember, NXX XX' 59" = NXX XX.983', so NXX XX' 59" IS NOT EQUAL TO NXX XX.XX'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Doh' I guess I misread some of the stuff on coordinates for the CDU. Its easy enough the run the known coordinates through the correct conversion to accurately provide results. IMO, in the editor we should be given a coordinate system check that displays a given coordinate in the coordinate type that can be imputed into either A10 or Ka50. Basically automatically calculates everything so its a matter of Ctrl C and Ctrl V. Not that I'm lazy, but its one of those things computers were kinda invented for.

2) Target coordinates are out of whack with moving targets.

The moving groups are given 3 coordinates to search between. The first is near where they start, the 2nd is near the middle, and the last one is near the end. All of these coordinates are supposed to line up with roads and you can "connect the dots" to figure out which road they should be on. Obviously its not real time, and if you destroy a bridge forcing them to turn around it becomes rather broken. Its not perfect but it works.

If unit in zone is broken for multiplayer it is an easy fix to prevent the mission from choosing suspicious tasks.

find the "Select Mission 5" trigger and change the condition value

"Flag is False (15)" to "Flag is True (15)"

This prevents the suspicious persons task from being executed. All of its related code will be ignored when you play through the mission.

The moving groups are given 3 coordinates to search between. The first is near where they start, the 2nd is near the middle, and the last one is near the end. All of these coordinates are supposed to line up with roads and you can "connect the dots" to figure out which road they should be on. Obviously its not real time, and if you destroy a bridge forcing them to turn around it becomes rather broken. Its not perfect but it works.

OH! I understand now. I thought that was three separate targets! I will try this tonight with the squad :)

Been trying for several hours now and still no luck getting DCS to display a message. Jesus, you think it would be easier than this to output text via a script. I can output it to a file. I can output it to WinMain. I just can't make the goddamn thing output to the player's screen :cry:

Flew this one tonight, we had seven folks in it. I disabled the suspicious person task as you directed, by finding the select mission 5 option and setting flag is false(15) to flag is true(15). We flew around for 45 minutes and didn't get a single task. What went wrong?

Honestly have not had a proper chance to test the mission in beta 4, so I have no idea what actually is the problem. Coulda swore I read around that the "unit in zone" or a similar condition is not functioning correctly in multiplayer. If this is true then the entire mission will break. Unit in zone is use to start the tasks and to assign the proper number of them. If you happen to have the debrief log complete with the changed flag values, I might be able to diagnose the issue fairly quickly. Otherwise I suggest wait till beta 5 or use beta 3.

Copy that. Unit in zone works fine in multiplayer, as far as I have ever found. It's part of group in zone, all of group in zone, part of coalition in zone, those kind of zone triggers, that are unable to detect multiplayer clients, as in beta 4, multiplayer clients are treated different than multiplayer hosts and single players. Multiplayer clients are kinda disassociated with the unit they are flying. Unit.getByName() does not work on them, for example.

Regardless, you've inspired me to work on a mission similar to this one, but I'm gonna wait till beta 5 with its multiplayer JTAC to really get started.

Curious to find out if there will be an update to this mission to fix the coordinate system? I don't seem to have any luck with trying to convert what is shown into what really needs to be input into the CDU as I am not a math wiz and don't keep a calculator nearby...

For structures, I can usually spot which ones to hit because they are a different color and stand out amongst the rest. For the convoys, I got lucky enough to spot one once...

Thanks for your work...

When the next beta comes out I'll test everything to make sure nothing gets broken and change all of the coordinates to their corrected values.

When the next beta comes out I'll test everything to make sure nothing gets broken and change all of the coordinates to their corrected values.

Awesome, I am looking forward to it.

I've been flying this a bunch. There is, in fact, as far as I can tell, nothing wrong with the triggers of the "Suspicious Persons" tasks. However, the coordinates given for one of them are a degree off. The "Suspicious Persons" at 42 04' 20"N 042 04' 47"E are in fact at 42 04' 20"N 043 04' 47"E. I had to pause multiplayer, minimize the game, and search through the triggers for a few minutes before I realized that they were right and the coordinates were wrong. I suspect that other people are having trouble with these tasks because of that, and because, sadly, very few people understand what degrees minutes and seconds are, and how to convert.