Operation Manager Issues

[LordAldrich]

After extensive testing I am simply unable to get the Operation Manager to work, at all. I understand that this is a recent addition, and am trying to sort out what is a bug vs. what might be user error. That said, I've read all of the available documentation and blog posts regarding the Operation Manager, and believe I understand how it is supposed to work.

For context: this is on the current Steam stable Build: 1307.3 and a save file is attached.

I'm testing using "Strike Tutorial 5 - Pealing the Onion" and my desired goal is to have one of my SEAD equipped F-16C's drop their CBUs on a radar site, then proceed to launch their HARM at a SAM site. (It is not possible to do this in a single strike mission because the WRA for the HARM is just "Radars" - I can't tell the mission to use the HARM on the SAM site's radar but not the early warning radar.)

I've set up two missions with the appropriate WRAs: one to strike the radar site, one to strike the SAM site. I've flagged a single F-16C with a SEAD loadout as "dynamic" and assigned it to both missions. Both missions are active. Neither mission has had a flight plan created yet.

Strike Tutorial #5 - Pealing the Onion.zip

(136.38 KiB) Downloaded 5 times

This is where things start to go wrong. These all appear to be bugs:

1. The Operation Manager does not respect mission priority. If I set both missions to "triggered", "Strike Radar" is always tasked, even if I assign "Strike SAM" priority = 1 and "Strike Radar" priority = 99. I tried all permutations of priority values to see if this was a simple issue with the "Priority" column description, but nothing had any effect, the "Strike SAM" mission is never tasked.

2. When the Operation Manager creates the mission, the "Strike Radar" description changes to "Mobilized/Assigned Units [1/2]" even though only 1 unit is assigned.

3. The "Strike SAM" mission is never mobilized, so long as the "Strike Radar" mission exists. I allowed the "Strike Radar" mission to proceed, manually marked it as "satisfied" (in all combinations of: before and after the unit returned to base, with the mission marked as "active" and "inactive"). The only time I've ever seen the "Strike SAM" mission mobilized was when I manually deleted the "Strike Radar" mission.

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The above three points are my biggest concern and are the simplest test cases I could devise. While testing, I also encountered several other more complex issues that might be bugs, or might be feature requests.

4. Strike missions are NOT marked as "satisfied" when all targets are destroyed. Why not? "All targets destroyed" seems like the literal definition of a satisfied strike.

5. I cannot get the LUA template that checks for "Unit Destroyed" to work. The default template returns true instantly (I suspect ScenEdit_GetUnit is returning nil). As an aside, I'm a software engineer with 10+ years of industry experience, I should be able to figure this out. Even if I could, having to set up a LUA script that checks the status of each strike target is extremely silly - the mission should be doing this for me once all targets are destroyed.

6. While I can't get it to re-task units at all, what I really wanted was for the the Operation Manager to re-task units in flight. I suspect this isn't possible with the way that flight plans are generated.

[blu3s]

Hi LordAldrich, only to point that the current stable version is 1307.14 so maybe some of the behaviors that you are describing might already be fixed.

[thewood1]

This is the latest official update to 1307.13...

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=394632

And there is a 1307.14 beta update also.

[LordAldrich]

Thanks folks, after verifying local files on my Steam install, I'm now at Build 1307.13

Testing updates:

1. Mission priority seems to work as expected now.

2. The mission description is still incorrectly incrementing the "assigned" units when it mobilizes (shows [1/2] when only 1 is assigned).

3. I've still never seen a second mission be mobilized. No combination of "waiting for trigger", "triggered", and "satisfied" has any effect. The unit executes the first mission assigned, returns to base, and then sits there forever (long after it shows it's ready to go back out). The operation manager simply doesn't work.

Points (4), (5), and (6) stand.

I'm not going to test this on the 1307.14 beta update: I was playing it earlier but rolled back (which is probably how my Steam install got corrupted) because I was experiencing more impactful bugs (related to convergence zones not showing up on the display, and event triggers not firing correctly.)

[Deserere]

LOGGED 15114

[artao5]

I'm brand new to Lua. I thought it was just me not knowing Lua which was making the "unit destroyed" checks not work.
Interestingly, I too have been doing testing using "Pealing [sic] the Onion." I'm trying to send one mission to take out the north radar and SAM and another to take out the south radar and SAM, ideally both at the same ToT; which triggers the recon going in, which triggers the strikers launching. Also using H-hour and L-hour.
I have yet to get it all to work together smoothly.
It really would be nice to have more explicit explanations as to how to use the Ops Planner. Using the triggers and phases and satisfaction conditions and multi-missions and packages and all that together, the way it's meant to be. It's all explained piece by piece, but not so much all together.

[Geoffropi]

This is an example of using the operation planner.
This is using unreleased build 1327 - Current closed beta is at 1326. This build has a bugfix on triggers but the bug wasn't preventing the operation planner to work in most cases. The issue is that the time elapsed counter was incrementing before the mission was triggered.

This is a video, where I execute 2 times the plan.
https://vimeo.com/820074536?share=copy
I have attached the scenario.

What it does :
-30 aircrafts are patrolling in sequence the following zones Patrol 1,Patrol 2,Patrol 3,Patrol 4
-After patrol 4 is "satisfied", some of the aircraft are assigned to strike 4 ground units.
-Another group will also patrol the area north
-A group of friendly ground units is stationed north, and they will move to "Salins" ((former?) enemy arty position), if the enemy units are destroyed or if it takes too long to destroy them
-Once the ground units reach Salins, they split into 2 groups, one will stay in position and another will move to Pontarlier. This also triggers the start of the helicopter escort mission assigned to patrol around Pontarlier's group.
-Once Pontarlier's group has reached its destination, the escort helicopter will fall back to a patrol zone around Salins.

To give some context, the operation planner was first designed to be a framework for a pro tool. It was expanded and had QOLs added to be usable across Command and hopefully enough user-friendly for scenario designers.

I'll let you guys experiment, I'll keep a close eye on your feedbacks.

[LordAldrich]

Hey Geoffropi, thanks for posting the example! I can see it working in your video, but I'm unable to use the scenario file you provided: it's trying to load a database that doesn't exist in the DB folder. Which I assume is related to it being created on the closed beta build.

My testing so far was heavily focused on strike missions, I'll try planning out some patrol missions and see if my troubles are strike mission related or possibly more general.

[DavidRN]

Thanks folks, after verifying local files on my Steam install, I'm now at Build 1307.13

Testing updates:

1. Mission priority seems to work as expected now.

2. The mission description is still incorrectly incrementing the "assigned" units when it mobilizes (shows [1/2] when only 1 is assigned).

3. I've still never seen a second mission be mobilized. No combination of "waiting for trigger", "triggered", and "satisfied" has any effect. The unit executes the first mission assigned, returns to base, and then sits there forever (long after it shows it's ready to go back out). The operation manager simply doesn't work.

Points (4), (5), and (6) stand.

I'm not going to test this on the 1307.14 beta update: I was playing it earlier but rolled back (which is probably how my Steam install got corrupted) because I was experiencing more impactful bugs (related to convergence zones not showing up on the display, and event triggers not firing correctly.)

Interesting I agree with you particularly Testing update 3, you are correct. I’ve spent the weekend using operations manager to get to know the ins and outs of it, I find it difficult to master and I thought Steel Beasts boolean was hard to grasp. The operations manager could do with a YouTube guide, I followed the documentation update to the letter.

I have never seen running or on hold when I am using the Operation Manager only waiting for trigger, triggered and satisfied, Im not suggesting this is a bug more likely poor user input (me).

Screenshot (54).jpg (16.98 KiB) Viewed 783 times

I have 1307.14.

DavidRN

[artao5]

This is an example of using the operation planner

Thanks! That's cool, but quite basic; and explanations would be nice, particularly regarding any Lua you're using.

[thewood1]

Did anyone ever resolve the db issue in the example scenario?

[Dimitris]

What is the status of this issue/report ?

[thewood1]

No.

Screenshot 2023-07-23 133213.jpg (21.12 KiB) Viewed 544 times

[thewood1]

Is this going to get addressed?

Edit: I can see why it doesn't work. It has some kind of custom db and it was built in Command PE. Not much hope of using it for us.