Defend the Town Trouble

[Monkey6014]

Pretty basic question here:
I'm making a simple defend the town mission. Basically, you move to the front line, set's off a trigger that makes tanks come in, then after a short delay, infantry, paratroopers and some shelling occurs. None is based on whether units are dead or not, figured that wouldnt happen in real life anyway.

So at the end, you repel a big attack from your flank and it seems to be all over. But, I can't end it. I don't want to do NOT PRESENT because you see russians retreating into the woods, and I don't want to give up the intensity of the mission by making you hunt them down.

You do get reinforced, but those guys can die also, depending, so their not very relaible on making a WP.

My only idea is for the town to be overrun, and force a retreat. What do you all think, what is a good way to end a defend the town mission not in the heat of a battle?

[macguba]

Lets simplify for a moment and say that the only attacks are waves of infantry.  

Trigger1
Activation:   the earliest possible moment for the end, however you wish to define it
On activation:   endPossible=true

Trigger2
Area:   the town and surrounding area
Activation:   East (enemy) present
Condition:  endPossible and count thislist < 12    
On Activation:     "_x allowFleeing 1" forEach thislist; end1=true

In other words, when the enemy get down to the last dozen they all run away.

Trigger3
Area:   the town and a little bit beyond
Activation:   East not present
Type:   End#1
Condition:  this and end1

Syntax not guaranteed and I may have missed a detail, but I hope you can see what I'm getting at.   You may have to amend it slightly to take account of armour, choppers, paras, airstrikes, arty etc.

I like the idea of a retreat.   One of the problems with the corpus of OFP user created missions is that they all have happy endings.   I'd love to see some where the ending is the player getting a bollocking from Colonel Blake for losing the town.   Which of course you couldn't avoid.

As you say, you can't end a mission in the heat of battle so the enemy has to be not where the player is.    The question is then where do you want the player to be at mission end - in the town or somewhere else?     If you want the player to retreat you'll have to give him an order to do so and also a rally point to aim for.    Plus the final enemy attack on the town obviously must be overwhelming.  

As an alternative to the fleeing command you could use waypoints and switch triggers to get all the enemy to combine to launch one final suicidal assault from one direction.     An allowfleeing 0 command would probably be required to keep 'em coming.

If you do want to end the mission in the heat of battle, and offer an unusual ending, how about this.     A chopper is tasked to bring a small reinforcement squad in and take the player out.   (You'll have to make up some excuse as to why this is a smart idea.)     The final objective of course is to get the chopper in and out safely.    Once clear, the mission ends:   for the sake of completeness you'll need a cutscene showing how the battle in the town ends.    Of course you could use an APC or a boat instead of a chopper.  

[Roni]

Hi Monkey man

I'm no expert but how about setting up a script that checks for a certain casualty level on the bad guys then forces an end to the mission once the casualty level is reached.

I'm not sure what your mission looks like or how many groups you have but you could write a script like this and have it called from the init.sqs script or just executed by one of the units in the mission -


;   checkvictory.sqs

#loop

_enemyLeft = player countEnemy list trigger1    ;that's straight from the comref, not sure how it works   :-\
? _enemyLeft < _enemyAtStart : goto "victory"

~5

goto "loop"

#victory

hint "The enemy is on the run !"

~30

forceEnd


You will need to add up the number of enemy at the start (_enemyAtStart) and set a suitable victory casualty level, maybe 50% losses or so.

I'm not sure of the correct use of the countEnemy command since I've never used it - it looks like you need to set up a trigger which covers the whole map so that you can cover all enemy in the mission.

Wiser heads than mine should take over now . . .


Rags

PS - Hope that helps !

[Monkey6014]

Yea, see all this stuff is confusing, I must say. Here's some more detail:

It starts off with a group coming out of the woods, then some tanks rolling down a road, the alarms sounds, flares are launched and there is some light shelling.

At this point, the tanks rollover a trigger that sets a condition (lets say go) to be true. They are out of harms way, so there's no worries. This triggers the helicopters and 2-3 groups to come out of the woods, plus 1-2 on your flank. This triggers heavy shelling and the paratroopers launch from the helicopters with an ejection script. This script activates your reinforcements. The timing then allows for russian troops to surprise you from the flanks and overwhelm the town. You seem to be the only one left alive.

It's panicky, but you can live through it. Maybe I should make this point the point where you've got to retreat, and all the other WEST units for the matter. Add some more paratroopers jumping right on the town and more tanks, just in case, and you have to fight your way to the nearst rally point, while friendly helicopters come and light up the city.

I could probably time this pretty well, using conditions and if EAST soldiers get close enough to the flank. So, new question is how do i get all the remaining WEST people to move to a rally point and how do i get the helicopters to recklessly fire their weapons on the city (or at least create the illusion?)

Thanks for your input thusfar!

[Johan_D]

To reckless fire you can use some invisible targets?

Johan

[macguba]

Johan is right, there is an invisible target addon which you canuse to get the west choppers to target the town.

Trigger:-

Area:  the town
Activation:   West present
Type:  switch^
Condition:     go* and (count thislist < 5)
On Activation:   "[_x] join player" forEach thislist; papabear sidechat "You've had it!  All remaining forces are now under your command.   Get out of town and into the woods to your west.   Our choppers will launch a strike on your current position in three minutes.  Get moving!"


^ so you can synchro with triggers
* or whatever the appropriate variables are

Alternatively, use switch triggers and waypoints to get the other west units to the rally point.  Don't leave it until the player is the only unit left alive - that will make it too hard.     You could fire the trigger with an east present condition set over a small area near the middle of town.

[Monkey6014]

Thanks you guys for all your help so far, I know all have 100's more questions, because this is the first mission i've ever tried to make.

I like this idea of having a East Present trigger within the city limits, this way I can do this suicide attack plus throw in some more paratroopers, to overwhelm, forcing the choppers to attack (I'll have to learn about this inivisible targets at some point).

Problem here, enemy helicopters may come into this East Present Trigger when doing their initail paratrooper run. Some times tanks get inside the city too, but that doesnt mean the player is being overwhelmed.

So I need to know how to set a trigger to be activated when I want the player to be overwhelmed that detects the whole lot of the enemy moving into the town. (A present trigger that dectects lets say at least 7 enemy ground troops inside of the town)

If you could explain it as if I don't know a single thing about editing too, that would be so excellent. This way I can learn and help others too. Thanks a million!

[Monkey6014]

Gotta bump this up!

How can I do a Present trigger to fire if like more than 5 enemy units are present?

Also I cant find these invisible targets.

[macguba]

lol you're at that stage where the answer to one question only leads to 8 more questions ... the only cure is to read read read ... read as many tutorials as you can, you don't have to study them all but just skip through them so you learn the art of the possible.   Also read the command references.

Study my last answer again.  The answer to your latest specific question is already there.     If you've checked both the official and unofficial command references and the Ed Depot FAQ and don't understand something in my (or anybody else's) answer then say so.     Since I don't know what you know, it can be very hard to pitch an answer at the right level.    If I've got it wrong, then tell me.   An answer that is not understood is just a waste.  

[Monkey6014]

some how I knew that would be the answer.

I've been reading scripting tutorials and I'm begining to understand. I've studied the command references too, there is a lot of good stuff in there.

Ok well thanks for getting me started!