Creation of Enemy Artillery Strikes

[nuxem]

The proposed plan of attack for implementing this:

Designation of an artillery spotter unit that will spawn in regularity with medium and high aggressivity forces, spotter unit will create target callouts for firebases to attack with.

Mortars and heavy shell artillery assets available to the enemy.

Implementation is tricky as it would require the enemy to either A) have units spawned at the firebases that can fire on the location generally, or B) simply have the Spotter units "Spawn" shells in the air in a general location of the region only to have that ability disabled if a firebase is destroyed.

Plan A - will be tricky in implementing a Spotter Unit that creates a marker for a artillery piece that is present in the game to attack. The tricky piece of this is getting an artillery unit to spawn at a far away location upon generation of this marker, as the game mode spawns enemies based on town proximity rather than a trigger. Simply generating a unit on game startup or load is not preferred due to server load of managing active units that are not doing anything. Also if an enemy RETAKES a base, these units will not respawn.

Plan B - seems easier in implementing a Spotter Unit that creates a marker of which shells will begin to fall in "X" area around the marker after good 40-60 second delay. The way to counter this would be of course to capture the firebase responsible for the region disabling either the ability for shells to spawn or the spawning of spotter units entirely.

Both plans feature their own unique challenges and intertwine into the existing game script which is the cause of the difficulty of implementation. Will be posting probable solutions here, in the form of links. Either script added in mission editor, scripts added to mission file, or even third party AI add-ons will be viable solutions here, and I will be suggesting them in this post.

[nuxem]

A hybrid solution to this would be to have a permanently spawned Artillery unit with infinite ammo located far away in a location that is not viable to search in normal game situations, this unit would be effectively out of play except for occasions where markers from spotters are present in which they would attack. countering this would involve the capture of firebases, turning off the local spawning of artillery spotter units providing no markers for the artillery pieces to use.

[nuxem]

http://kriegsimulation.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/arma-3-easy-way-to-get-enemy-ai-to.html is one solution, if we can figure out how to set it such that persistent enemies such as artillery tanks spawned at firebases can RESPAWN in the event of a recapture, then this will work in our favor. With this setup we can setup firebases in the region with large areas of overwatch that they can automatically attack upon.

In terms of getting units to respawn I would approach this by attatching a respawn script to these units that allows respawning when X-Game-marker in this case the military base they are linked to is captured by an opfor team.

[nuxem]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/avlg8po6eg8svlr/FFE%201.14.pdf?dl=0

Script found on steam workshop addable to gamemode via script with no addon download required. has all the necessary variables for implementing what we need, designation of spotter enemies and whatnot will have to do further testing with this to see if it can work in game.

EDIT THIS IS THE SCRIPT TO BE USED IN THE ACTUAL GAME

[nuxem]

Initial testing done, can specify individual units as spotters, and configure the firemissions thereafter.

The act of firing shells is now possible in the game mode, we just need to implement a way to respawn the units.

[nuxem]

Artillery Strike script is implemented, there is currently no spawned artillery units that are useable currently this is what is implemented:

Occupied mortars will start spawning with enemy units in some occasions such as military bases

Sochor SPGs will spawn but will likely be TOO close to fire the main gun.

Artillery units have no spotters required for Fire for Effect, merely being spotted by any enemy faction team member will relay information to a single available artillery weapon. Spotter units will be implemented soon and will be configured to only spawn at Medium/High Threat levels. Maintaining a low threat level will ensure the cessation of artillery barrages.

Here is what should be implemented:

Persistent spawning of Firebase SPGs at an uncapturable location that will spawn after configurable periods of time (Dictateable in mission parameters before game start). Players will be able to destroy these SPGs to halt the assault of shells temporarily, conversely maintaining a lower threat level will prevent the spotter enemies from spawning further maintaining safety in the ranks.

This current setup is pushed to Master and should be the unofficial V06 of Salvation tanoa, the change will be marked as official and every labeling will change after the artillery script is done working as intended.