"All Follow 2" problem, when as leader I order "Return To Formation"

[johnnyboy]

In a mission I'm working on, sometimes I order group to "Return to Formation", and they all form up on soldier 2 (I am soldier 1).  I am still leader of the group though (I can see the icons for all the soldiers), and I can still order them to move here and there.  But I cannot get them to form on me.

Is this a bug?  Has anyone else had this problem?

I do have various scripts running, but I am 99% sure that none of them are re-assigning leadership...

Any ideas?

[Baddo]

It has happened to me too a couple of times and it can really ruin a mission, it is very annoying when it happens.

Reading from the ComRef, it appears that a group can have both a leader and a formation leader or formation leaders, and those are not necessarily the same unit. I just wonder what makes these separate automatically. I call it a bug until someone tells me a good reason why it happens automatically without my approval.

I'm not able to do any testing now myself, but it could be worthwhile to experiment with the scripting commands formLeader, formationLeader, formationMembers, formationPosition and formationTask. Observe what those commands return and try if you can change the leader of the formation by yourself somehow. Maybe the command commandFollow is useful in fixing this problem. By reading from the ComRef I would say without testing, that this command can be used to form new formations inside a group. My bet is that for some reason this can happen automatically in ArmA and that causes the problem we have experienced. If you can change the formation leader of different units by yourself with the help of scripting commands, then you could create a script that automatically fixes the problem by detecting when the group leader is not anymore the formation leader of some units in the group, and changes it back to how it should be. This could also create problems, for example if the player tries to assign teams inside the group and our script prevents it from working by messing with the formation leader.

Also scripting commands that might be related (probably not) are selectLeader, effectiveCommander, assignTeam and unassignTeam.

Notice that I have not tried any of these commands, I am just reading from the ComRef and giving you suggestions where to look if you want to try and make this problem disappear.

[Planck]

This used to happen in OFP as well.

I think it has something to do with you and your group entering a vehicle where you do not drive and maybe your #2 is the driver.

On leaving the vehicle #2 is the one to follow, something like that anyway, can't remember off-hand how to fix it.


Planck

[johnnyboy]

Thanks guys.  I think I solved my peculiar case of this occurence.

I had waypoints defined for the players group, and in one of the waypoints I had this line of code:

Code: [Select]

this domove getpos buildingX;
For some reason, issuing a "domove" command on the player's group, caused units to form up on Soldier 2.  After removing this line of code, it stopped happening.

(I don't even know why I had that code there...I've been working on this mission off and on for awhile).

Anyway, thanks for the replies and good suggestions for testing group leadership, and scripting reformation of the group.

[Blanco]

It happened to me aswel, with the exactly the same symptoms but no scripts running in the background.
I gave several "return formation" commands and my group always replied with "all, follow 2" instead of "all, return in formation".

I solved it by accident via the reply - done in the commandmenu, dunno why but it worked.

On leaving the vehicle #2 is the one to follow, something like that anyway, can't remember off-hand how to fix it.

Makes sense to me because it happened after my group dismounted a truck.

# removed unnecessary quote - bedges

[HulkingUnicorn]

If you get the "all follow all" or "all follow 2" etc - press 0-1 (done) and then 1-1 (return to formation).
Usually you have a stop/hide whatever status above your icon and the ai will form their own formation when this happens.