Trigger that works as soon as a group embarks a helo? Possible bug the way it is now

How do you set a trigger when a group embarks a helo? First, I had CTLD in my mission and it all worked great, but when you pick up some soldiers, the “group is dead” trigger goes off. CTLD kills the soldiers, then brings them back from the dead when you disembark them. That didn’t work for me, so I got rid of CTLD and now found that when you embark them and fly away, the “group out of zone” (out of their pickup zone) never gets triggered until you drop them off somewhere else. This means they remain in the pickup zone but hidden until you disembark them. I’m just trying to get a trigger to function right when they hop in the helo, but not a “group is dead” trigger. Grrrr, mission design!

and now found that when you embark them and fly away, the “group out of zone” (out of their pickup zone) never gets triggered until you drop them off somewhere else.

This means they remain in the pickup zone but hidden until you disembark them.

Or... it means that the group no longer exists / is no longer reachable while it's "embarked", so the DCS scripting engine can't perform any sort of check on it.

I’m just trying to get a trigger to function right when they hop in the helo, but not a “group is dead” trigger. Grrrr, mission design!

Let me think...

Ok, if the embarking group generates DEAD events when it "embarks" the chopper(s), that could be used to set up whatever mechanic you want, so the CTLD way should be valid.

Why can't the units die? Do you have “group is dead” triggers somewhere else? If so, you could modify them so they don't go off when embarking (adding a distance from chopper + flag check to it?).

When you make sure the helo only flies off if they are on board you can set a trigger when unit's altitude is > 4 AGL or when the heli has left the area.

When you make sure the helo only flies off if they are on board you can set a trigger when unit's altitude is > 4 AGL or when the heli has left the area.

Sure, but if the units aren't reachable anymore, there's no straightforward way to check whether they are on board... that's the problem, isn't it?

I know that MOOSE and CTLD have ways of "emulating" the presence of troops / cargo in the chopper (even though the objects aren't actually there).

Like I said, if the DEAD event trigger is the problem, GTFreeFlyer can make modifications, so it doesn't trigger stuff that's not meant to be triggered in the embarking process.

 

Why can't the units die? Do you have “group is dead” triggers somewhere else? If so, you could modify them so they don't go off when embarking (adding a distance from chopper + flag check to it?).

Thanks so much for your responses. This is exactly what I set up last night, but then ran out of time and didn’t get to test it. I’ll be doing that later tonight :)

I fixed the group embarking issues I've been having. I switched back to CTLD and really dug deep into the code, and found that when you embark, the LUA runs the group:destroy() command, which totally eliminates your group from the game, along with all the triggers associated with them. Before it does this, it saves their group name in a variable. When you unload the troops, CTLD uses MIST's "dynAdd" to create a new group WITH THE SAME NAME as before. This was killing me because I thought it was the same group that had been loaded in the first place and was scratching my head as to why the triggers were not working when the group was in a zone after dropoff. Again, this is because the triggers were killed off along with the group when they were destroyed.

Once I realized this, I injected a few lines of code in the CLTD lua script that checked exactly which group was “dynAdd”ed and then set a flag. In the mission editor, I now check for a flag instead of Group in Zone, that way the trigger never gets killed off along with the group.

Just some feedback for those that were interested.

Is there still no simple trigger condition to check, if an unit has emarked/disembarked?