Firing Ranges

[Bradley_Gunner]

I've always been interested in creating live fire ranges for Infantry as well as Armor. What I do now is use triggers to start the engagements (i.e. once firing vehicle occupies Battle Position targets start to move towards). But this isn't realistic. I would be willing to work with anyone on this. I've gunned on Bradley Tables at Ft Stewart and Ft Jackson and could offer a real world perspective. Any help would be great though.

Thanks
Bradley Gunner
4/118 INF SCANG

[Kuro]

Hello,

this idea sounds good. Lets create it.
My name is Kuro, I am good at Mission creating and scripting. I will make a sample mission. Could you then please tell me what is wrong.

Greetings
Kuro

[Bradley_Gunner]

Sounds great. Just send me what you have or whatever. I have AOL IM and Messenger, so send me a private message and I'll give you the screen names.

Thanks for your help!!

[Bradley_Gunner]

Sounds great.

I'm not sure which island you have in mind, I really haven't found any good ranges on any other island other than the desert, but I'll keep looking.

On real ranges (or tables as the Army calls them) Bradley/Tank crews go though a series of engagements. Usually about 7. Between each engagement there is an aprox 30 second break.

We fire about 3 engagements in the first battle position, then have an offensive engagement  where we are moving from battle position (BP) 1 to BP 2, then have the final 3 engagements from there. I don't know how hard that will be to create in the mission editor, but thats the real deal.

Also, Bradley tables involve trucks, infantry, and BMP. No tanks. Infantry engagements are 600-800 meters, truck engagements are about 1000 meters, and BMP engagements are 1200-1400 meters.

There are some engagements are duel engagements with any combination of the above, with stationary and moving targets.

I hope this isn't too much info. I'm just giving you a rough idea.

I'll make a mission as well, as I see it. Mine will mainly be placement of objects to make the mission "feel" like your on a range.

I'm pumped, can't wait for your mission!!

[Kuro]

Hallo,

i did a very very simple Example Mission (5min Creation) The attachment contains the sourcefiles and the playable pbo (just copy the pbo into your OFP\Missions Folder).

The Overview and the Briefing are just stripped from another mission i have created therefore the Info is totally incorrect.

Also the mission has nothing except a Bradley, an armour target and an infantry target. It is just to get a feeling for these things.

Greetings Kuro

[ntstlkr]

Cheers All,
Would be very interested in how you go about doing this as I'm working up a "extended" campaign Red Storm Rising style that will include a series of "Welcome to the Army" training sessions.

Kinda like the Basic Training setup in America's Army.

One set of sessions would revolve around the 19K, heh heh and was trying to get in a work up on a Table VIII and CALFAX.

Was with the 1st Bde 3rd Ar in FRG '86-88 and ran quals on the ranges in Graf. Thats what gave me the idea.

Doing a Bradley Q course would be excellent! You gonna have a rating scheme for getting Master Gunner? ;D

Well, anyways keep us posted as to what you work out!

Huahh!  ;D

NSDQ!!

[Bradley_Gunner]

I wish we had some Oxgen experts that could give us a hard target add on.
The "Target E" is perfect for the Infantry engagements, but I would like to have a frontal truck target (basically a large square), a side BMP, and a frontal BMP. One the ranges these targets are made of wood and painted dark green. They are on lifters that when activated, raise up for X amount of time and then go down.

Any help would be great!!

[Arctic]

There is also an Armored Target thing in the objects menu. Its basically a tank that is colored sort of green... no details to it. Its basically like seeing a T72 without any textures.  

[Bradley_Gunner]

These are stationary targets only though. If that's all we got, then we can work with it. I think the biggest thing it to have targets "appear", get killed, then disappear. Then another set of targets "appear" and so on.

I'm never wrote a script, but this is lamens terms of what it would be

is the bradley in BP1, true or false

if false, then back to start of script

if true then count down 30 seconds, then display target1 and target2

if target1 and target2 are dead, or if 45 sseconds has elapsed then remove target1 and target2

count down 30 seconds and display target3

and so on...

I'd also like to have alot of placement radius built into it, so the mission wouldn't get to boring.

[Bradley_Gunner]

I was doing some reconing last night and found a pretty good site for a range. It's on the island of Malden, on the edge of Chapori (don't think that is spelled right, i dont have a map in front of me right now). The town is on the southern end of the island

The firing position is on a nice raised, level platform on the southest edge of the town. It over looks a nice field, with natural left and right limits, slow rolling hills, and good natural terrain features. The firing vehicle would be facing to the south. The hardest part about that is getting the AI driver smoothly into the firing position (or BP).

I was thinking this morning (at work..hehe) that we could possibly use the command "unitname1 setpos (getpos from unitname2)" to simulate the appearance of the targets. Unitname1 would be the target, set off somewhere downrange out of site of the firing vehicle, and unitname2 would be like an invisible H or something like that. By using triggers or scripting, tune in the timeline of the targets appearance.

Just food for thought. Let me know what you think.

[wi77ard]

hiya,
just a thought, but have you seen the pop up targets in the editors depot ?
i think they could be useful in what your trying to create

wi77ard

[Kuro]

Hallo,

do not worry about the scripting, i will do it (latest Saturday). I would really like to do it this evening but my boss send me to boring meetings until late in the evening. And i can not start up OFP on my Laptop to make a script during the Meeting :-(

About the wooden target. Basically no problem and no O2, because if we make an addon nooone will play it. I will just use some already existing object (wood wall, table, etc) to make the basic shape of the target and then put a user grafic on it (this is easy in OFP).
What would be nice is a Grafic file or a scetch of the Target Painting. I will do one but i am a lousy painter.

The excat Positioning of the Bradley is not so difficult.  Can be done with scripting.

But i have some work for Bradley Gunner: First make a sample mission (like the one i did, without the overview and the briefing). Place a Invisible H on the Firing Position, also place the Targets (Target E)  for Infantry, an empty truck for Truck and an empty BMP for BMP on the proper places of the map. Write in the description field (pop up after 15 sec; moving to the left, right, back, front, etc.)

Save the mission, attach the mission.sqm to your posting.

The rest will be prepared by me. After we have finished the first Table we will start with the next one.

Greetings Kuro