ORIGINAL: thewood1
Lua is there so that features that aren't built into the interface can still be accessed.
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The devs can't put in everyone's personal high priority feature, function, or obsession immediately. Use the forums, other members, or your own skills to do what the devs don't have time to do now. In fact changing weather and breakdowns are things I think might have already been done by other players.
^ This.
The Lua API was specifically added and expanded to allow for things that the dev team hasn't gotten around to yet, for one-offs that are needed on a specific scenario but don't really apply anywhere else, and/or items that for one reason or another are not currently available through the simulation or UI.
(This also covers mechanics that are difficult to present in a graphical user interface; if you go through the methods currently listed on the Lua docs site and try to put them up in a GUI, you may end up with something like THIS).
Take comms jamming (not disruption) as a recent example. Some people have been asking for it. It's natively included in the professional edition, but not available on the commercial version. But it was really needed for the
Bekaa Valley scenario in Shifting Sands, as it was a decisive factor in Israeli tactics. So a Lua script was added that models it. It's far less elaborate than the PE-integrated real-deal, but it gets the job done quite well. You can copy that script from the scenario, adapt it and use it on any scenario in which you need the same feature. I think it beats waiting for the dev team to make the feature available through "normal" game mechanics.
Cheers.
