Also, is there any way to set how many shells the artillery guns fire per mission?

PSA for Spearhead 1944 users: If you're having trouble getting this to work with the artillery guns in the DLC, I think I might have found one possible troubleshooting method: traditional, vehicle-towed howitzers in Arma kinda suck, in that they tend to flop all over the place quite easily. Half the time they were aiming their barrels in the air when receiving fire missions, but not firing. I believe for the best results, you need to place them on as flat a surface as possible. This means for mountainous maps, you're going to want to place your guns on top of prop platforms to get them to actually fire. It's not foolproof by any means. I am still noticing some of the guns not firing or still doing some janky stuff, but it's better than them not working at all. Hopefully it works decently enough to have a good experience, though. After all, what would a World War Two battlefield be without some good ol' brass rain falling about?

oooooooh cant wait to play it!!

i need a bit of help the mod doesnt work the artillery, planes, tanks and choppers doesnt react to the spotters contact. Even in the Demo mission it didnt work.

I am using a map that doesn't have an airstrip can the airbase spawn aircraft in the air without having me to use an airstrip?

Very cool mod! One of the saddest things about ARMA is that a lot of the campaigns (except CWA and AA's), singleplayer and multiplayer missions always revolve around the player. Giving the AI the ability to spot & call fires, on its own, (relatively) intelligently, goes a long way in helping the game convey a lot more scale of the player being "another brick in the wall".

@GRIM LAFS in no way affects the behaviour of your artillery like that and especially of player artillery. What you're describing sounds like ACE Artillery server settings.

For players, the only thing LAFS does is place an eventhandler on you so that when you get into a vehicle, it checks if it is an artillery piece and if so, places an event handler when you fire. That firing event handler checks for any nearby enemies and if the enemy actually has counterbattery capabilities. If so, it will record your artillery firing location into the counterbattery memory, potentially resulting in a counterbattery strike.

So no, LAFS is not the problem there.

hey rimmy just letting you know, my unit uses LAFS and we love it, one issue is that i run our artillery detachment and when LAFS is enabled the range on player used Artillery/mortars is reduced greatly, IE. the 60mm mortar no longer fires its max effective range and rounds land 100-150m short, whereas AI artillery is able to still use full range, is that a server setting that got fucked or a possible bug with the mod

@Dillion For the Mortar, check your ACE settings. You likely have ammunition handling turned on, which removes any ammunition in an AI mortar making them unable to fire the Mk6 Mortar.

As for the uniform, that sounds like a USP problem. Either that they apply a heavy camouflage to your unit like a ghillie which reduces the knowsAbout or that acts like a Side setter. Either way, not something that my mod even checks for, so it would be a USP issue - except I believe that's less likely than it being a classname problem with the units that you are placing. Some units in modded ArmA are weird when placed, and will have scripts run on them by the mod that added them into the game. It is more likely to be something like that.

Update: After updating ACE to 3.19.3 the MK6 Mortar is also no longer working with LAFS for me

@Rimmy I found an issue where if any units are using uniform's from the USP (UnderSiege Productions) mod the opposing side will not use fire support on them. I've tested this where I've used regular nato uniforms, rhs uniforms and the opposing side will in fact use arty on me. As soon as I use any USP uniforms they will not.

@Pat In the latest version there will a manual weight modifier to allow mission makers to completely disable certain missions, but for now if you want to remove smoke as an option just remove the smoke rounds from the artillery piece.

Awesome mod! Just one thing that popped up last night: Is there any way to turn off smoke for artillery?

Could do, the demo mission has that already, you could just form your own comps out of them, but I might do a comp list at some point

Could also do a composition that has the setup already done kind of like the NR6 stuff on the workshop.

Additional info for the variable dump below, I forgot to include how the classnames are stored. It is;
[(typeOf _x), _unitVariables]

_unitVariables can be nil for most classes, but they must still be stored in this form. The only classes that care about variables are Drones and Tank QRF.

[B_Man_UAV_Operator, [Grenade Dropper, Mortar Dropper, AP FPV, AT FPV]]

[B_Tank, [Anti-Infantry, Anti-Vehicle]]

So for example, a tank that only targets other vehicles would be:

[B_Tank_Destroyer, [false, true]]

@Timoruz The quick start is the demo mission. It has comments absolutely everywhere that explains how the modules work, and the demo mission's set up already functions so it can be easily copy and pasted into a mission to use it.

I have no plans for further DCO support as I'd have to figure out how it defines and uses squads, and I just personally do not play with the mod. The exception rule was easy to include and improved compatibility massively, so that was easy to add in. I've also had contact from DCO's dev who helped me with that.

Any chance you could add a "quick start" section to the wiki?

DCO has a squad type named "recon". If you wanted to add more DCO support, allowing recon squads to spot for artillery would be a nice feature.

The question below was answered on Discord, but for Steam users here's the answer:

Replace SIDE with the side of the LAFS module.

LAFS_var_spotterClasses_SIDE < Spotter (Man)
LAFS_var_droneClasses_SIDE < Drone Operator (Man)
LAFS_var_planeClasses_SIDE < Fixed Wing (Loadout Determines Role)
LAFS_var_attackHeliClasses_SIDE < Helicopters
LAFS_var_tankHunterClasses_SIDE < Tank Hunters (Man)
LAFS_var_sniperClasses_SIDE < Sniper (Man)
LAFS_var_tankQRFClasses_SIDE < Tank (Land Vehicle)
LAFS_var_mobileAAClasses_SIDE < Mobile AA (Land Vehicle)
LAFS_var_supplyTruckClasses_SIDE < Supply Vehicles (Land Vehicle)
LAFS_var_supplyMenClasses__SIDE < Supply Crewmen (Man)

LAFS_var_MobileArtillery < Group Variable
LAFS_var_droneGroupVariables < Group Variable for Drone Types - Grenade Dropper, Mortar Dropper, AP FPV, AT FPV. Example: [true, true, false, true]

Artillery is automatically detected. For something to be considered 'Artillery' it must have an Artillery Computer.

Is there any way that the definitions for Spotters / Support can be done through code, rather than modules?

I have a mission where the OPFOR faction is set in the parameters and units are spawned dynamically. At the moment, the factions work perfectly but obviously with the use of modules the Spotters themselves are hardcoded.

I'd like to know if there is a way to register a classname as a Spotter externally so that I can swap them out depending on the faction?

Absolutely lovely mod thanks mr rimmy! <3

@Sgt.Johnson maybe you can try to provide some more information about your set up instead of swearing.

Download the demo mission. You can see there will be drone operator groups and spotter groups already set up. Delete the other support groups if you don't want them. Those will function. If you want FPVs to work instead of just Droppers, you need Crocus FPV enabled.

why the fuck does the ai not send out drones. what else does it possibly need more than a spotter

Hey! Is there Any chance to integrate this mod into antistasi?

After a few months using it now, I can confirm, both works with VCOM, LAMBS, both dev and regular, as you already knew. I also saw it work just fine with 40 players, and even tried once with 70 players, and it still functioned without lag, though we did have a headless client for the 70 player one. I have been using it to help simulate the call in system from Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and it has worked wonders. I can simply place a few units at mission start, or tied to a trigger to spawn, then let them get automatically called in when the group is noticed by OPFOR or BLUFOR as they are INDEP. I am simulating the Angolan Civil War, so they find themselves in the middle of a battle between UNITA (BLUFOR) and the MPLA (OPFOR), with a mix of Western and Easten Bloc equipment. This made it easier for me to actually focus on interacting with the players as Zeus, or putting more emphasis onto known locations for intel, triggers, sounds, etc.

I wish Arma had ai this smart in vanilla haha

@Coltrigun Thank you mate, that means a lot! I'm glad the mod works for you!

You made my biggest dreams come true ! Amazing mod !

@Oxide Read the compatibility section, yes.

will this work without the FPV mod?

thank you very much and also for documenting your mod so well.

@Willins as for the locations, they are only needed for Mobile Artillery. If you are not using the Mobile Artillery system, then you can just ignore them

@Willins You can learn more in the discord thread where people have discussed this, but in general my advice for NR6 HAL is: leave the Support Groups out of HAL. Let HAL control the Spotter Groups. This way, HAL will move Spotters, who then automatically call in fire missions from the waiting Support Groups.

the reason i ask is because im basicly replacing nr6 HALs ability to call fire missions and such For a sorta persistent CTI like game and giving it over to LAFS while HAL controls the troops mainly; witch is how I would like it to work, but i just need to know if i should give control of these units to hal and let the commander spawn them and LAFS have them do fire missions or if i should just give laugh a few arty systems and place a buch of positions?

also are they even really needed? do they do this on their own and that option is just for predefined locations?

@Willins If compromised by enemy ground units they're deleted, but otherwise can be used again and again.

Are artillery firing positions reusable? or do they completly delete if compromised?

Makes total sense thanks, will give it a try with Alive but I can see the AI commander interfering with it so I'm expecting DMP to be a better option, will let you know my findings

@Rex501 Yes, as long as you have the 'Scan for New Groups' option ticked on. Doesn't matter how they are spawned, as long as a new group appears if that option is on it'll be sorted and either ignored if it isn't a spotter or support or if it is one of them, it'll be assigned to its role.

Of course there will be a problem if the spawning system is also an AI system, as it may give orders that conflict with the orders that LAFS gives. Spotters are mostly immune to this, though you may want to turn off their overwatch move and behaviour changes with the module. I will likely be adding a global way to do this next update.

Been meaning to try this out for ages, finally going to set it up tomorrow but in the mean time one question crossed my mind, will this work for dynamically spawned AI provided I have the classes defined of course? for example if I define the spotter, sniper etc and AI with those class names are then spawned by something like Alive or drongo's map population will LAFS still work its magic on those AI?

@RusComBear
1. Yes, if a group no longer features the special classname, it will stop being that kind of group. Applies to Snipers, Drone Operators etc. too
2. Yes, with both those settings Spotters will behave just like any other group, save for the LAMBS info sharing being disabled on them. That is the best way to combine with HAL from what people have tested so far.
3. No, you will need separate assets for the players to call in versus the AI.
4. Currently not possible, something I'll mark down for later.

3. Is it possible to share support assets with players? If player will call fire support by some other mod/script (for example, via Drongos arty and air support mods) will LAFS recognize that this support is busy/unavailable?

4. Is it possible to run custom init code on planes that spawned by air base? If not, consider this a feature suggestion.

I love dynamic AI mods and this one surely has a lot of potential. I have a few questions:

1. Will spotter group stop being a spotter as soon as all units set to that role in the group are dead?
For example, if i have some radioman unit set to be a spotter and i have a group of a radioman and a rifleman, does this group loses ability to call support if only radioman dies, or does this group will keep being a spotter as long as any unit in it are alive?

2. With "dont modify spotter group" and "remain stationary" modules spotter group shouldn't get any commands on its own, right?
I want to try to combine LAFS with HAL commander for arty and CAS (as these aspects implemented in HAL rather poorly). Supports obviously need to be excluded from HAL command, but spotters probably should be included, so i need to make sure they don't get any clashing waypoints.

Man it's an incredible mod dude, the wiki video and demo helped alot!

@Gentlemen No. Download the demo mission, read the wiki or watch the video.

So, if i place an FPV with an Enemy AI, will the Enemy AI attack me with it?

Im using RHS assets. Ill play around with Vanilla and see if its a mod issue

@Shizzak What plane are you using then? Which mod?

Anyway, they don't have to go exactly over the waypoint. There's actually a larger area that they need to pass through, this is true regardless of my own settings, hardcoded into ArmA based on vehicle type. And in turn I have increased that area. With vanilla aircraft it doesn't happen 95% of the time.

If you're talking about circling infinitely, that's the aircraft's problem, not my mod, plenty of aircraft are fairly uncontrollable by the AI, with immense turning circles.

I think you misunderstood. Lets say I have a rocket attack mission and it doesn't go over the two markers it needs to it will circle indefinitely unless it gets lucky and flies close enough to the marker