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[Wing Walker]

How are you using the triggers in your mission building?

I'm interested if anyone is trying these out in creative ways.

I find they are changing my mission concepts since I like to make big ones with a lot of things going on.  I fire up one mission with multiple missions for an hour or so.

Right now working them into making multiple "missions" available on one "multiplayer" map where depending on where I spawn "triggers" a particular mission based around different a/c in an operation.

Always wanted to make a nice full scale Operation Torch mission representing all the action of the first few days, but with an adherence to reality.  These triggers are making it very interesting.

[vonofterdingen]

Larschance and I use triggers quite a bit in our campaigns.

Usually, we use them to generate a target (air or ground) at a particular time and place. This is often a second target, where we will not know for certain when our player will arrive, so the trigger takes that guesswork away.

I think perhaps our most creative use was in the Thai campaign. We had a Thai pilot trying to defect from Japanese control. We had our player fly to the Japanese base while escorted by a Japanese fighter, wait for the Japanese escort to start his landing approach, and then fly off to a secret Thai base. We used the trigger to generate a radio message from the Japanese base telling all units to be on the lookout for a rogue Thai plane.

One word of warning, there can be fps penalties from too many triggers, and too large triggers.

[genXgamer]

G'day Wing Walker

Great topic, I'll look forward to see responses although you would probably get more at M4T.

For me spawning aircraft during a mission causes a stutter or a pause in game, a real spoiler telling the player "Hey! somethings about to happen".
Hence I never spawn aircraft during a mission preferring to have all aircraft present at the start, either sitting on the runway or patrolling.
Messages are great to have communication from the ground to air.

Not long ago I complained to WxTech that smoke and fire from destroyed buildings only lasted 10 minutes, so now I use triggers to spawn both with the advantage of being able to place it where I want and it will last to the end of mission.

You should also check out C&C commands it also has some great mission building features.
Agracier recently posted a question about it and in the screenshot I saw the option to spawn troops, this can be great for ground attack missions.
There is also an option to de-spawn aircraft which previously with VP Modpack once aircraft used for eye candy or radio chatter had done their job I would fly them into a mountain (something that can't be done with B.A.T.).

[vonofterdingen]

The stutter that you see will only occur if your  spawning aircraft is the first instance of that plane in the mission. If no instances of the plane occur earlier, just add one somewhere away from the action (offstage if you will) that will appear at mission start. One is all you need. Subsequent spawns of that plane will cause no stutter.

[genXgamer]

G'day mate

Never knew that, haven't seen it mentioned before.
I will have to test it out as this will open up a number of possibilities.

Thanks for the tip.

[vonofterdingen]

Credit Wheels at M4T.  He is the one that identified this first as far as I know.

[tomoose]

As mentioned the Command & Control objects (which are awesome) have eclipsed the Triggers now but I've used triggers in various ways but have found that certain triggers won't work in online play.  This has only been in HSFX so far.  I haven't done the same in BAT.

For example;
I triggered a green light to appear at the tower once I swung onto the runway (i.e. green light = clear for takeoff)
I triggered a smoke to appear as a target indicator once i entered a specific spot on the battlefield indicating our ground attack target
NOTE:  both of these work offline but only the host saw the triggered action online, the other players did not

I've used Triggers (before the C&C objects came along) as rudimentary radar warning in a Battle of Britain campaign by placing them along the Channel to get text warnings of approaching aircraft.

I triggered a fire engine and ambulance to move to a spot nearer the runway if I was damaged and making an emergency landing.  This required a small trigger area on the route back to the airfield and at a certain altitude so I had to deliberately 'detour' to this spot to initiate the 'emergency'.  This was to keep the trigger clear of any other aircraft and being triggered unintentionally if you get my meaning.   This works online too, i.e. generally speaking "moving" triggered objects will be seen by the other online players, certain static objects...not, only the host sees it (but I've done limited experiments in HSFX).

For our B-17 campaign, I placed triggers on the channel with low altitude parameters so that if a player ditched in the trigger area a PBY or Sunderland or a Navy ship would spawn and move to the ditching site.  Eye candy mainly for someone sitting in their raft so to speak.

With a bit of imagination the triggers can really add to a mission.  They only drawback as I mentioned is that online certain objects despite being triggered and being seen by the host are not seen by the other players, again, this seems to be only an issue with static objects (lights, smoke etc).

[Kopfdorfer]

I use triggers in nearly every I make mission now.
I have been messing with them and messing up with them since they
came out in HSFX years ago.
They provide wonderful and different dimension to your missions with a little imagination
of application.
It should be noted that certain triggers do cause catastrophic game lock-up with certain other mods.

Interesting that triggers , which as I recall were first introduced in a CFS with CFS2 -
IE Waaaaay back there , took so long to be adapted to IL2.
In my mind they are a fundamental of interesting and diverse mission building.

Have fun with them.

Kopfdorfer

[E69_Haukka]

I've used triggers since they first appeared in HSFX, this was in version 7.0.3 and I've been using them ever since, discovering their benefits as well as their limitations. I've gotten to abuse them profusely in some online missions, getting all kinds of problems, although this was when I was just starting to get familiar with them. For example, in a two-sided dogfight mission on Mixx's beautiful Kalkin Gol map, I chained numerous triggers back and forth from planes from both sides that appeared as the humans approached the border line; in turn, these flights stepped on other triggers, and these then others. On that occasion I added so many flights that the mission was a complete disaster.

As Vonofterdingen mentioned, the trick so that a spawning plane doesn't cause a stutter, is to place a plane of that specific type at the furthest point from the start of the mission, placing two waypoints at a good altitude on the same edge of the map. Recently I have given this type of flight an extra utility, and that is to function as a title trigger, like the ones we can see in the initial videos of a campaign. This is achieved by calculating the times very well and doing many tests, with small consecutive text triggers, that this plane that we have placed there will go stepping one after the other. In this way I have managed to make an introduction to some online missions that we have flown in Squadron 69 at the end of last year based on the French campaign in Madagascar. I have calculated the time it would take for the entire group of pilots to be in the air and heading to the objective, and considering that the trip was long, at ten minutes or a little more after the mission began, and when everyone was already on their way to its objective, the titles began with "Welcome to the Madagascar Campaign", followed by an introduction to the campaign, and then accompanied by the corresponding credits (creators of the campaign, in this case my colleagues E69_PILILI and E69_LEZOS, being me only the converter of the campaign from the HSFX to the BAT). This turned out to be very useful and entertaining, as well as giving an extra point to the introduction and the theme of the campaign.

In one of the missions, a plane of French refugees fleeing Madagascar had to be escorted, but these refugees first had to reach the airfield and board the plane. I achieved this with a first trigger that started a bus that traveled through the center of a city, and that when it reached the head of the aerodrome runway, it generated the appearance of an old French plane with few passengers, which started its engines and took off. Many other triggers had generated a whole front of British armor advancing towards the airfield from the north. The times were very tight. The humans had to hurry to give air support because the refugees were about to take off, and enemy armor and vehicles (which had to be stopped or destroyed) were advancing dangerously towards the airfield. Adjusting the large number of triggers that make up this mission took me many days of work, but finally the mission was a success. I mean by this that the possibilities that triggers provide are extraordinary, it just depends on using them creatively.

Another example. This was a very big challenge for me at the time, and I did it entirely in HSFX for the first time, successfully, and last year I got even better results with BAT. Several years ago I was working on a mission to capture Fort Eben Emael with German gliders. Trying to stick to historical facts, I needed a way to represent the blowing up or dynamiting of one of the Albert Canal bridges by Belgian forces to hinder the German advance. With some license I used a bridge in the Maastricht area (don't ask me what map I used, I don't remember, I know I had to build Eben Emael from scratch, walls and all). I racked my brain for days trying to figure out how to blow up a bridge. I finally got it, with triggers of course. I was able to repeat this action in an online campaign from Korea that was flown in my squad in 2021, where the American forces (humans) had to rush to eliminate enemy engineer columns that were about to blow up the bridges over the river, in Seoul . Both the engineering columns and the dynamiting mechanism were executed with triggers.

Now you want to know how the damn bridge is dynamited. In this last case, the column of engineers advanced through the streets of Seoul, between columns of smoke. Humans had to detect and destroy them, which was not easy, because these vehicles were moving in a zig zag to avoid being detected. Upon reaching the base of the bridge, the enemy engineers activated a trigger to spawn a Ju-87 Stuka with a 500 kg bomb (now I don't remember if it was exactly 500 kg or if it was a bigger bomb, but to exemplify the dynamiting mechanism is enough, then you will do your tests; keep in mind that the bigger the bomb, the more the destruction of the bridge is assured, especially if it is a concrete bridge). At the moment of the explosion, the same trigger that activates the "bomb" sends a message that the engineers have achieved their goal and that the humans have missed theirs. Well, the first Stuka waypoint should be placed two meters below the bridge, very close to one of the pillars near the shore, and the second waipoint should be placed about five meters further, at an altitude of " zero" meters. You'll need to edit this manually and check that it stays that way. This ensures that the Stuka immediately appears and crashes without being seen, as it is under the bridge. As expected, the bridge is destroyed on the spot.

In the following video you can see an example of this: the first explosion is activated by some vehicles, the second explosion is activated by a train:

https://youtu.be/fVOzqnuyKLE

A variant is to place red artillery (for example) within a blue environment, to represent sabotage or simple dynamiting of facilities. Artillery is activated with a trigger:

https://youtu.be/g7jBDVZgbZ4

At the moment I can't upload examples of the missions because I'm away from my computer for an indefinite period of time, taking care of a family member in another city. But as soon as I can I will publish missions with these examples.

Kind regards and good missions with triggers!!

[vonofterdingen]

Good to see you again Haukka. That's a great tip about using a Stuka to blow up the bridge. Thanks a million for that one.

Love your YouTube videos too.

[E69_Haukka]

Thanks Von, I'm glad to see you again too. I have installed the latest version of BAT on the laptop I have with me, and I have requested E69_PILILI's permission to share here the latest mission of his Chromite campaign, now adapted to BAT. This mission was originally flown many years ago on E69, in HSFX 7.0.3. At the end of last year we adapted the campaign to be flown with Ultrapack, and it was in that last modification that it acquired the current state of the triggers that can be seen now in BAT. There may be some inconsistencies in the mission, as I removed all the secondary objectives to focus on what I want to show, which is bridge blasting via triggers. I also deleted a lot of static objects that, coming from the Ultrapack, weren't recognized by BAT. To speed up the work I avoided the replacements and simply deleted all that content. In that sense, it's a bit like a spider web with parts missing, and some threads may not make sense. Anyway, the purpose of this mission is strictly educational.

Some details to highlight. First of all, I must point out the fact that the plane that will play the role of "dynamite" also needs a witness present from the beginning of the mission somewhere far from the action, this is to avoid stuttering at the time of its appearance. Secondly, when editing the mission I remembered that the minimum altitude of the explosive plane at its second waypoint is two meters, and not zero meters as I said before. Finally, there's no Stuka doing that job here either, but something a little spicier.

Enjoy the show.

The mission, for BAT 4.2.1 fLASHPOINT, WAW period:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LkJqsHBEJg-TvQXEbnBY0PwB4B4iSePP/view?usp=sharing


Best regards.