AI Using Unified Artillery?

[Falcon988]

I'm wondering if it's possible to have the enemy use CoC's unified artillery to bomb the player's side. Like say you want to make the mission start with a few mortars hitting the town you're defending, prior to a mechanized attack. Possible, or is CoC only for the player's side?

[B-2-0]

The UA vehicles are really designed for AI use.  They can be used under human control but not very effectively as it is near on impossible to calculate the trajectories needed for an accurate hit.

To use the UA u need to place one of the UA obelixes in the editor anywhere on the map (make sure it coresponds with the side u are using).

Place your chosen arty pieces.  Then u need a guy (preferably human controlled but it can be done with ai i believe) with a radio of some sort (the BAS one will work fine) and away u go!

As for getting the arty controlled under AI...hmmm...not sure....but it can be done as CoC did it in their intro.

Try de-pbo-ing the intro (coc_uaintro.noe.pbo) or one of the missions where u get rained on by AI and u should figure it out from there.

Good luck!

[Falcon988]

How do I de-pbo the mission? Do you mean I change the file name to noe.pbo? Will that let me run it in my mission editor and look through the scripts they have?

AI controlled Forward Observers is what I'm really talking about. I.E. no human control whatsoever, completely AI. So that I can make a mission playing the West side and the East bombards the base with mortars using Unified Artillery.

[Dinger]

well,
the short answer is:
the CoC_UA package has a ton of documentation for a whole mess of features.

To learn these, check out from the coc_arty zip file:
A) the "QuickHelp".  This teaches you how to enable UA for human control.
B) The "missionediting" text file.  This has a bunch of pointers, including how to have the AI fire stuff. If that doesn't answer your question,
C) The master CoC_Arty.doc file contains all the answers, just not in the most accessible format.


For your issue, I'd recommend CoCfIFCallFire.  Of course, it will take some time for UA to init, and then some more time for the fire mission to be processed.  But in principle, all you need is:

@CoCIFinit
[ArtilleryUnitName, [player]] Call CoCfIFCallFire

where artilleryunitname is the name of an artillery unit, goup, or AI manning it.

Dinger
dinger@thechainofcommand.com

[macguba]

To de-pbo a mission you need Amalfi's unpbo 1.5 from the Editors Depot.     This will unpack any pbo file (including official BIS missions) which will allow you do examine the mission in the mission editor.    

And for the avoidance of dout, yes, UA will do exactly what you want.

[cornhelium]

Hi,

Excuse my ignorance, I'm new to this and am rubbish at syntax ...

Going on from Dinger's example, is there a way to get the Artillery to target a particular unit's target rather than the unit itself?

Eg. instead of targeting my BlackOp ("FO1"):

@CoCIFinit
[ArtilleryUnitName, [FO1] Call CoCfIFCallFire]

Can they target whatever FO1 happens to be currently targeting:

@CoCIFinit
[ArtilleryUnitName, [ syntax for FO1's current target ] Call CoCfIFCallFire]

Is this possible, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Many thanks for your help,
Cornhelium