Wanted Artillery, Mortar and Anti Aircraft addons

[Unnamed]

Hi,

I've developed a script to allow true Indirect fire with a forward observer or Radar tracking e.t.c. However I need to calculate something similar to a Drag coefficient for each type of round used.

I would like to test my script with as many different types of Indirect fire weapons as I can, and hopefully create a comprehensive reference table to support them all. Once I have established if my scripts work, I will start on Rocket propelled Artillery.

So if you have, or know of one, please provide a link.

So far I have the following:

Invasion 1944 81mm Mortar
Invasion 1944 60mm Mortar
WWEC 88mm Flak
M198
DKM M46 Fieldgun
SwissMod M109 Kawest v.beta 3
Quakergame's 445-M109V2
Cpt Moores 65-M101A1 Light Howitzer

If you are working on one at the moment and can spare some time to help me with integrating the scripts into an Addon, please get in touch.

Thanks

[Vyper]

Sepnam pack mortars...but wasn't the german 88mm flak a direct fire anti tank weapon?

Vyper

[Unnamed]

Hi,

Thanks I will download the Sepnam pack mortars.

The 88mm Flak was an anti aircraft weapon.

Fliegerabwehrkanone (German: Flyer Defense Cannon)    

If I remember correctly (and I am by no means certain), it was only used against tanks, when an unnerved commander was told (at gun point) to bore sight his guns on approaching Allied tanks in France?

There success led to the same gun being mounted on tanks e.t.c

I included the Flak because of the numerous scripts I've seen, "simulating" AA fire rather than just plain point and shoot. Perhaps Flak guns fall under area fire rather than direct fire, which OFP avoids? But dont quote me on that

[DeLiltMon]

The 88 was indeed designed as a flak gun but came to be used for anti tank duties, not sure when though, I know they were used in North Africa for certain.
And yes and 88 flak would be an area fire weapons as generally they would operate in batteries with each gun firing at a specific point in the sky in the hope a plane would fly through the flak, at least prior to the introduction of radar.
Creating true firing flak could be diffiult as the shells can be set by the crew to explode at specific altitudes, unless you created a few different types of flak pre-set to explode at different altitudes  :-\

[Unnamed]

I dont know squat about what you can script within an addon as yet.

My script will run through a range of elevations, plotting the trajectories, until it finds one that gets close (within a pre-defined tolerance) to the target. It will also return the time taken to reach that point, so you could set a fuze by it.

It takes about a second (depending on range) to find the best elevation, so it should be able to track aircraft using radar.

[Dinger]

Hi Unnamed,
We're finishing up something similar, but not entirely identical (all scripting is within the addon -- what I understand you're trying to do is take existing addons and make them work in a manner like indirect fire), but here's the set of limitations you're going to come against (I'm not discouraging, just letting you know, so if you didn't already know about them, you don't learn them "the hard way"):

1) The ShotShell simulation times out at 20 seconds, limiting the range of these weapons.
2) OFP's "Drag" isn't really drag, but the following nasty things mixed together:
   A) the relation of shell speed to the maximum speed of the shell.  If it hits this, it behaves "Weirdly"
   B) the AoA of the shell.  If you fire a shell at 80 degrees elevation (with a velocity vector like [0, 10, 100], at impact, the shell will be flying _backwards_ (e.g., [0, -5, -100] )
   C) some drag coefficient, and maybe something in the P3D
   D) some bizarre OFP notions of gravity and acceleration.
3) You'll be using DoWatch to elevate the muzzles, but DoWatch is not as precise as artillery needs to be.


What we did for UA was do a bunch of test firings, collect that data and store it to an array.  Then we exported the array, and put it in a script as a firing table.  It worked pretty well, but Denoir had this neural network thingy lying around, so he taught it the firing tables, and now we get <.1 m accuracy at 10km with one neural net call that lasts all of .02 seconds.

I don't think you'll be wanting to mess with neural networks, but table generation and table lookup is pretty easy to do.

Of course, if you _do_ come up with a formula that works, let me know

[Unnamed]

Hi,

so if you didn't already know about them, you don't learn them "the hard way"):

Thanks, that's why I trawl the Forums, why re-invent the wheel

some bizarre OFP notions of gravity and acceleration.

Yeah, it's a shame it's such a black box. My curiosity lies partly in the real world physics, and as I don't have a real 81mm mortar to experiment with....

You'll be using DoWatch to elevate the muzzles, but DoWatch is not as precise as artillery needs to be.

I'm not sure if these problems are inherent to OFP or the addonds?

I don't think you'll be wanting to mess with neural networks, but table generation and table lookup is pretty easy to do.

I did try this at first, but shied away from storing about 30 (for a max range of 2250M) samples for all of the basic combinations, of relative height of Target and Source.

For the time being I'm using the Invasion 1944 mortars so long ranges are not an issue.

When I get my hands on a neural network, I will be doing a whole heap of messing

But for the Mortars I thought you should be able to predict the range using a real world ballistics model, and I can within a range of about 10m. But this solution falls under the science of bodging, at the moment

But it falls close enough to be called a spotting round, and takes seconds rather than "real life" minutes.

Of course, if you do come up with a formula that works, let me know

At this rate the new OFP will be finished before I will be, would be easier if they just gave us there formula

Thanks

[decadium]

I so want to use motar's with my infantry, i hope you work it out:)

[m21man]

I so want to use motar's with my infantry,

Then check out the CoC Unified pack. It includes mortars, howitzers, MLRS, and a Tomahawk expansion pack ;D . The mortars and howitzers actually work as artillery, the MLRS fires real rockets at its targets, and the Tomahawk takes off from its launch point and flies to its target. Their DL page is here.