beta 2.5 patch /post bugs here

[Sa8Gecko]

the following files will solve some issues on the beta 2.5:
xoomer.virgilio.it/sa8gecko/beta2.5.working/psy_mcar_scripts.pbo
xoomer.virgilio.it/sa8gecko/beta2.5.working/psy_mcar_config.pbo

overwrite the corresponding files in your 'Addons' directory
(or wherever you placed them when you installed beta 2.5)

Also, post any bug you may find here (not MP related, an apposite
thread will be opened in future)

[Sa8Gecko]

Here are some new files for test:
xoomer.virgilio.it/sa8gecko/SA-8/sa8files.rar
or (mirror, 7 days only):
s26.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=03KK8TC5185WW2BT0HAHEUZC5W
They introduce the latest bug fixes as well as a new concept unit,
the SA-8 Gecko SAM system. Please note, before being
displeased after, that the SA-8 used in this release is the
same unit as the SA-9 Gaskin: the real SA-8 launcher is at
the moment worked on by Wildo. In the same directory
xoomer.virgilio.it/sa8gecko/SA-8/Sa-8.rar
there's a old version of the unit as it will look in game.
You need O2 to visualize it, as it's only a .p3d file, in the
early stage of development.
Anyway, the above understood, you can find the unit
under 'East>Project MCAR>Sa-8 Gecko'. You won't see,
as now, many differences from the Gaskin, a part:
- the missile is new (untexturized yet and still worked on)
- the missile is bigger, better, faster (I'm quoting Railroad
Tycoon here ... ;D ), that is it will do more damage and
has a range of about 12000 meters
- the unit has six missiles ready to launch as in the SA-8B
(the SA-8A will be probably done as well, once the SA-8B model
is ready)
- the unit will engage you very far away (till 7000-8000 meters
if you're moving away from it, 5000-6000 meters if you're
moving towards it)

Please note that the missile max speed is about 800 meters/sec
(as the real one), so you probably won't see the missile
coming at you, if not in the darkness. Of course the missile
accelerates till that speed (about, it depends on other factors
too, as the turns the missile had to take to attack the target), then it decelerates (engine burnout): quickly, but
not too much: at the end of its life (now set at 21 seconds,
while in real life the missile is auto-destructed after 25-28
secs) it has a speed well beyond 400 m/s.
The occasional 'hint' that will show up in game using the
SA-8 is the distance from the SA-8 itself at which the target
has been engaged, and obviously it's here only for test
purposes.

If you happened to download the files and tested the new
unit,
you're encouraged to give suggestions, as well as to report
bugs,related or not to the SA-8.

[Gnat]

Nice, very deadly .....
Is it too deadly ? F18 jamming doesnt seem to hold it off and obviously other planes dont fire flares.
It's short range is deadly too ..... if thats realistic then its ok.

keep up the good work.

[Sa8Gecko]

Is it too deadly ? F18 jamming doesnt seem to hold it off and obviously other planes dont fire flares.

The problem is that the missile, being camcreated, doesn't
activate the countermeasures of the plane, because they're
based on the incomingMissile eventhandler.
So there's no way for an AI pilot to protect himself from this
missile, as well as the Gaskin's one. For human pilots there
are some ways: the easiest being to put an obstacle between
his plane and the missile (a hill, if any), or if he's flying a plane
like the F/A 18 to put the plane exhausts toward the missile
and fire chaffs. In the F/A 18 they're real blocking objects,
that will destroy the missile. Unfortunately in the very majority
of the other cases the planes limit themselves to fire some
eye candy flares (which would not work anyway on a radar
controlled missile like the Gecko's one, in RL) and try to deviate
the missile setting its direction off the attacked plane.
Since it's already difficult to hit a maneuvering plane flying at more that
500 km/h with a standard OFP missile (that is, without
proximity fuse) even if the plane itself is not using countermeasures,
I think that the SA-8 redresses the balance a little, and
makes life a little bit more difficult for pilots. Now they have
to think before acting, and it would be better if they plan
their approach path before flying, just like in real life.
Before, they were free to raid almost unmolested, because
the only appreciable threat come from AAA. Even sophisticated
systems like the DKM Tunguska are not very effective with
their missiles, and their most effective weapon is the cannon
(which is very deadly, btw). You could try this simple
mission: put 2 or 3 SA-8 on Everon, placing them on the top
of some hill, spacing them far apart, and put yourself in
an AH-64 (or AH-1) chopper, starting out at sea, with a
DESTROY waypoint on every Gecko. Then try to kill them
all, if you can. Hint: place your chopper behind an island
off the main one at start, and immediately drop your altitude
to 10 meters or less and wait for the first missile launch,
and then place yourself behind the little island. Then
proceed at top speed towards Everon, and, flying NOE,
use the terrain as cover. Good luck, you'll need it.
Script's future version will aid the pilot a little (mostly the chopper
ones) by making the missile loose lock on target if this flies
less than 10 meters above ground (simulating ground
clutter) and if the plane or chopper is no more in direct visual
contact with the launching SA-8. Of course the missile will regain
lock if the two conditions above become false subsequently.

It's short range is deadly too

You mean 'long' range, don't you ? If so, yes, it's realistic,
since the real SA-8 missile max range is about 12000 meters
(12 km), while min range should be 300 meters (even if I
think this last data is a little optimistic).

[Gnat]

Sa8Gecko said:

You mean 'long' range, don't you ?

No, I mean short range. At less than 400 meters to a high speed plane, the missile launchs and hits the plane @ like 100-200 meters ..................... seems too close for me ...... realisticly I'd think lock & manover would be impossible in the real world that close. Just my thoughts anyway.

And yes, I noticed they are "point and shoot", not target locking required. Pretty at night too

[Sa8Gecko]

Uhmmm... the minRange coded in config.cpp is 200 meters,
so the unit should not open fire at distances lower than this.
Infact you said it opened fire at 400 meters.
As for the rest, the missile uses a proportional navigation
system, which is similar to lead-collision: in reality this should
be the case as the 9M33 is radar controlled.
For wanting of proper data, I set the max turning rate to
60 degrees/sec (_maxTr = 1), but this only means that it will
reach this turn rate (and little exceding it) only near max speed,
because the turn rate raises with velocity. This is all coded
into the scripts. Also for wanting of proper data, I 'imagined'
the working of the rocket engine, that is said to be dual thrust.
This means that initially the missile will accelerate very fast
(and will burn a lot of fuel) and then it will burn more slowly,
accelerating slowly than before as result. The missile is a
mass-variable object, and this is reflected into the scripts.
That means that the more light it will become (fuel burnt),
the faster it will accelerate. Anyway I set both the boosted
phase and the 'cruise' one so that the missile will attain a
max speed of about 800 m/s. As posted above, the missile
will loose speed to air attrition the tighter it turns, so in
return it will turn slower too (in the acceleration phase this
means that it will gain less speed).
Also, but this is not modelled satisfyingly, I tried to keep
into account that the slower the missile moves the less the
lift, so the missile 'sinks' a little before gaining sufficient
speed.
One thing that I can easily simulate could be the warhead
arming after a certain time, so that if the missile hits before
it will do less damage. This will require another set of missiles,
but it's easy to do. For example the 'real' tow2Xs use this
system: you can easily check this out placing an enemy
tank in the editor less than 70 meters from the tow humvee
and then firing at it (only 'real' ones).
Or I can, more easily, disable the proximity fuse before that
certain time. Infact most kills are done by proximity fuse.
What do you suggest ?
Also, if you're interested, I can show you how you can in
a simple way change the missile behaviour modifying some
parameters.

BTW: the link in the 2nd post has changed, cause I modified
the scripts so that if the target's altitude drops below 10
meters, the missile looses lock.

[Gnat]

Sa8Gecko said:

Or I can, more easily, disable the proximity fuse before that
certain time. Infact most kills are done by proximity fuse.
What do you suggest ?

I suspect the disabled prox would be better idea. But does the missile have "weight" ? ie what will a disabled missile look like when it hits the ground or objects ? Bounces ? Wouldnt be so realist, so you'd have to kill the missle object so it'd look/perform better, or just go with you first idea, smaller explosion.

On the explosions, its a shame it throws the aircraft about the sky on a hit, be better it just did the damage and didnt extremely adjust the aircraft's flightpath ! Is that adjustable ?

[Sa8Gecko]

But does the missile have "weight" ? ie what will a disabled missile look like when it hits the ground or objects ? Bounces ?

Alas, not, because it's still a missile hard coded into OFP engine
and will explode on contact. One thing we tried with the
gaskin missile at the start was to make it a plane, rather than
a missile. This way we could animate it in pitch, without resorting
to have a whole set of differently tilted missile as now.
But we had to give up, cause till this 'missile' didn't achieve
a sufficient velocity, it just evitated obstacles rather than
slamming into them. That is, if you fired intentionally on
a hill, or an house, or even a plane or chopper, this kind
of 'missile' just went up above them, following the ground
contour, even if it should have hit the obstacle directly.
This happened in the first few seconds of flight, till the missile
didn't achieve sufficient velocity. After a certain speed the
'missile' behaves correctly, and hits on the right spot (or
target). We tried even with different class of objects, rather
than only planes, but the results were the same. It's a
pity cause it would have simplified a lot of things:
for example as now engine burnout is not simulated visually,
you can see it clearly at night cause the missile shines
always. Would have that system worked, it would have
been easy to do so, just using one model and config entry.

On the explosions, its a shame it throws the aircraft about the sky on a hit, be better it just did the damage and didnt extremely adjust the aircraft's flightpath ! Is that adjustable ?

I think I can adjust this reducing the hit/indirectHit values.
I based mine on existing OFP AA and SAM missiles. For
example Footmunch's AMRAAM has hit=270, indirectHit=200
and indirectHitRange=15. The 9M33 I simulated has
300,180 and 15 respectively. The 9M31, gaskin's missile,
has 200,120 and 7 resp. . I want the missile to be deadly,
that is it has to be able to down a plane with a direct hit.
Of course I'm not basing these values on the standard OFP A10, which is strongly underarmoured, but rather on
addons planes. Footmunch's ones, for example, have an
armor value set around 100, RAD F/A 18 has 120.
I'll try to play around with some values and see what will
achieve a balanced result.

EDIT>
These are the new files:
s34.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0MB21AEOMP7AZ2VEXVSYK5GETA
(7 days only)
I modified hit and indirectHit setting them both to 150,
indirectHitRange stays at 15. The proximity fuse is activated
2.6 seconds after launch, that conrespond to a distance
from the shooting vehicle of about 400 (+-10) meters.
That means that if a target is intercepted when the missile
has still to travel this distance it can only be destroyed by
a direct hit. I did some tests, and being the missile rather
precise in a non lagging scenario (FPS>20), if the target
doesn't make any evasive maneuver it will be hit directly
anyway (and anyway the missile turns back to re-engage,
so beware...). At this distance the speed of the missile
should be around 300 m/s and the turn rate a little less
than 40 deg/s.
As I said the maximum turning rate is set to 60 deg/s,
but this is the turn rate at the average speed of 550 m/s.
Maximum turning rate, achieved at 800 m/s (max speed),
is about 75 (+- 1) deg/s. Max speed is achieved 9.25 secs
after launch, at a distance from the shooting vehicle of
about 4350 meters. For these stats, de-pbo scripts.pbo
and in \aa\PSY_MCAR_guidMis_16.sqs uncomment the
following line:
;player globalchat format ["dist %1,time %2, tr %3, sp %4",_missile distance _shooter,_time - _misTime,_speed select 1,_speed select 0]

this prints on screen the distance from the shooter, the time
this distance is taken, the turning rate at that moment and
the actual speed.
The turning rate (TR) is not given in deg/s. To transform it in
deg/s, you have to use this formula:
TR in deg/s = acos (-(TR^2 - 2)/2)
acos = arc cosine.
To make the missile less manouvrable reduce, always in
guidMis_16.sqs, the value _maxTR (now set to 1).
I remember you that this value is the turning rate at the
average speed, so it will be higher at top speed. To switch
from angles to the value to input in _maxTR use this formula:
TR = sqrt( 2 - 2*cos(TR in deg/s))
For example, for 45 deg/s, TR = .7654, for 30 deg/s TR = 0.5176 .

[Sa8Gecko]

New files (again):
s20.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0JUMZADJAW1PH2DM4Y8JM8YK49
(7 days only, here)
The prediction of the impact point has been introduced for
the 'SA-9 Gaskin Prop. Nav. Ballistic', which should be more
reliable than before in an heavy scenario. The impact point
is predicted when the missile is about to hit the target (no
more than 0.5-1 sec from the point were the two trajectories,
the missile's and the target's one, should cross) and the
detonator for the proximity fuse is placed. This should cure
(or at least alleviate) the case when the missile crosses
the target direction, but does this not hitting the target
and out of the main proximity fuse detection range (10 meters),
usually because the script line dealing with this is not executed
in the right frame rate. That is, the time before the missile
was more than 10 meters away from the target, and the
time after it has passed the target by more than 10 meters.
Since the added lethality, I'm considering to lower the
hitting power of the 9M31 (Gaskin's missile) to something
less than 200/120 (SA-8's for example is set to 150/150).
Your comments will be appreciated (even coming from this
site's full members).

[Sa8Gecko]

Update: check these files:
s25.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1077TGE65WLDR0PKHOH4WQ49B2
the modifications regard mainly the SA-8. I believe you'll like
them: at least as regard to the previous version !
The files will be up only for 7 days, anyway the link is backed
up on this one:
xoomer.virgilio.it/sa8gecko/SA-8/Sa-8.rar

[Sa8Gecko]

Gnat said:

Nice, very deadly .....
Is it too deadly ? F18 jamming doesnt seem to hold it off and obviously other planes dont fire flares.

Now try the 'SA-9 Gaskin Prop. Nav. Ballistic', either placing you
in the target plane or as an observer, and tell me what you
think.
The files:
s35.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=15MD5JU3RK1K12C22IZXNBH808

[Gnat]

Few errors, first of which is;
NoEntry config.bin/cfgVehicle/psy_flare.coefInside

Looks like interesting effects, I assume your making the targets release flares, even if they not normally equiped ? nice idea I think, but black flares dont looks so good.
The missile smoke trail is good too, having a missile visible, coming at you is MUCH nicer than just a warning followed by a bang. Adds to the suspence.

I'll try again once the error is fixed.
Cheers

[Sa8Gecko]

Few errors, first of which is;
NoEntry config.bin/cfgVehicle/psy_flare.coefInside

Yes, 'PSY_flare' is configged like a 'car', while should be
'NonStrategic'. It's strange anyhow, because on my PC it
doesn't show up, while in Hater_Kint's it appears too.
Will release an update next week.

Looks like interesting effects, I assume your making the targets release flares, even if they not normally equiped ? nice idea I think, but black flares dont looks so good.

Yes, I have to do so, otherwise there's no way the targeted
plane realizes it's under attack. Also, if you noticed, the
missile attacks the flare rather than being diverted to a
random direction.
The flares obviously are not black (they're magenta, almost),
they smoke black: what color should be the appropriate one ?
(please, not white !)
Inputs welcome.
BTW: the flares will be relegated to the Gaskin only, cause
the Gecko missile is radar controlled, wheras the Gaskin's
missile has an IR sensor.

The missile smoke trail is good too, having a missile visible, coming at you is MUCH nicer than just a warning followed by a bang. Adds to the suspence.

this only last till engine burnout: 4.85 secs for the Gaskin,
and 9.25 secs for the Gecko.

If I only had moderator's powers, I'll give you 'affiliate'
status, so that you could access the reserved forum area,
Gnat.
Unfortunately at present the moderators are unavailable.

[Gnat]

(please, not white !)

ummm cream ?
I havent seen too many that burn much other than a white or yellowish colour.

BTW, the impacts seem to be a little better, a single direct or near direct hit will kill a unit but at least the plane doesnt do a complete summersult or stop in mid air. Larger aircraft survive 1 hit with a small deflection in direct which is good.
Not sure what the cycle time is between flares, but you may want to make it a min time ie 2 secs, if you havent already. That just reduces the chance an aircraft will escape a multiple gaskin attack

I wait for the next one, but I'll be away next week.

[Sa8Gecko]

I havent seen too many that burn much other than a white or yellowish colour.

You are referring to the color of the light, aren't you ?
The smokes are now medium-gray.

Not sure what the cycle time is between flares, but you may want to make it a min time ie 2 secs, if you havent already. That just reduces the chance an aircraft will escape a multiple gaskin attack

As now this time is 0.7 seconds. Maybe I'll raise it as per
your suggestions. Mostly I based my work on FootMunch's and
Diesel's flare system, that's were I took the time to be so
short (I must say without immodesty that the Gaskin's flares
look a lot better, though. Maybe it's only my impression...)
The short time is also motivated by the fact the flares are
fired when the missile is less than 400 meters from the
target plane. So there's not so much time: typically about
one second. To raise the time in between flares are launched
means that I have to raise the distance too. That is, it's
realistic the fact the plane starts launching flares 1 km
away from the missile ? I know that usually flares are
launched in advance, so that if a missile is launched in
the meantime it (maybe) will lock on flares rather than the
plane.