Military Placement (Military Objectives)

Part of:
ALiVE Military
Requirements:	Synced
Military AI Commander

How It Works

The Military Placement module creates a prioritised list of military objectives across the map. Units occupy buildings or military installations and will remain in place until an associated Military AI Commander issues missions and tasks depending on the chosen scenario. Force compositions are based approximately on real world battle group doctrines although mission editors can choose to override this with settings in the module.

Usage: place the Military Placement module in the editor, select the desired Size, Weighting and Faction from the drop down.

• Objective Filters provide options to restrict objective clusters by size or relative priority, so for example it is possible to identify only large military bases and airfields as objectives, excluding smaller bunkers and watchtowers.

• Place Units defines whether MP will spawn units or only create empty objectives for the Military AI Commander to attack. The AI Comd will need at least one module to spawn some units!

• Force Size and Composition Weighting choices will influence the overall force composition. ALiVE will attempt to emulate realistic combined arms battle groups using equipment and vehicles available to that faction. Mission editors can overwrite this by forcing unbalanced groups in the Overrides if they choose (e.g. infantry only).

• Random Camps will spawn random compositions in wilderness areas of the map that do not already have objectives or towns nearby.

• Readiness determines how many groups of an occupying forces are patrolling around an objective or sitting idly inside. Note that a Military AI Commander may override the readiness level and send troops on missions and tasks.

• Overrides can be used to manually limit or completely prevent certain group types from spawning.

• Force Faction BIS standard or custom factions can be entered in the text box. Custom units need to have groups properly configured for them to work with ALiVE. See Supported Factions for a list of factions that are known to work with ALiVE. You can also manually map the faction groups if the configs are incorrectly defined. See Declaring Faction Mappings for further info.

• Create HQ will force ALiVE to recognise the objective nearest to the Placement Module as a high priority objective. This will also be used as the primary logistics hub for Military Logistics. Alternatively the HQ location can be set manually using Military Placement (Custom Objectives). If a custom location is set, it is recommended to set the Create HQ option in Mil Placement (Military Objectives) to No.

• Create Field HQ A field HQ is randomly chosen from the list of available ALiVE compositions. Mission makers can overwrite this by using [ALiVE_compositions,"FieldHQ",["yourCompositionClass"]] call ALiVE_fnc_HashSet.

• Place Ambient Units will populate objectives with a random selection of Air units, Vehicles and Supply Boxes.

Objective TAOR & Blacklists

Tactical Areas Of Responsibility are a fundamental feature of Mil Placement. They represent a zone or boundary area for which the military commander is responsible. This does not mean the commander will never leave that zone to attack nearby opposition but his primary objectives will be inside the defined TAOR.

To restrict objectives to a user-defined TAOR, place a named area marker covering the chosen area and add it to the appropriate TAOR box in the module params. A good convention is to use the format TAOR_Faction_xx (e.g. TAOR_BLUE_1). Multiple areas can be listed separated by commas e.g. TAOR1, TAOR 2, TAORxx. Ensure the marker area covers at least one military establishment, otherwise Mil Placement will throw up an error.

Blacklisted areas will be ignored and can be defined using area markers with the name specified in the module params, for example BL_Faction_xx (e.g. BL_R_1). If TAOR and BL area markers overlap, Blacklist always takes precedence.

See the TAOR turtorial for a more detailed guide on how these work.

Editor Notes

Military Placement always requires some kind of military building within the TAOR to spawn units. It is not possible to define custom spawn points. Use Military Placement (Custom Objectives) to spawn AI in user defined locations.

Any compositions that you build in the editor and save with your mission will be spawned by Mil Placement modules. Note that if they are named the same as an existing ALiVE composition, they will take precedence so you can effectively replace any standard ALiVE composition with your own.

Custom Unit Blacklists

Advanced uses can customise the force compositions by blacklisting certain units, groups or vehicles. For example, you can prevent MP from spawning Tanks or AA units. To do so, add one or more of the variables to the sys_Profile module init field, where type is the vehicleClass C_man_1

ALiVE_PLACEMENT_CUSTOM_UNITBLACKLIST = ["unitType_1","unitType_2","unitType_3"];
ALiVE_PLACEMENT_CUSTOM_VEHICLEBLACKLIST = ["vehicleType_1","vehicleType_2","vehicleType_3"];
ALiVE_PLACEMENT_CUSTOM_GROUPBLACKLIST = ["groupType_1","groupType_2","groupType_3"];