Moving vehicle picks up troops and moves again...

[Erwin]

Interesting phenomenon I just experienced in a Rollbahn D mission.

A HT was moving to a location to pick up troops.  A few meters short of its final waypoint, it was temporarily halted by another vehicle.  During that halt, the inf ran to the HT and embarked(!)  After they embarked, the HT carried on to its final waypoint - all in the same 60 second turn.

If this can be replicated that provides a "workaround" to have units embark on a moving vehicle which halts temporarily for embarkation...  and then continues moving.  Tricky to set up as it depends on a 2nd vehicle causing the carrier to temporary halt, but...  some interesting possibilities here.

And yes I do have a savedgame file if anyone wants to check. 

 

[Davis06]

Dang, that would be interesting if able to replicate!

[BornGinger]

Vehicles can pause for a number of seconds just to pick troops up before they carry on to go somewhere but they can't pause and let troops jump off before they carry on. I don't know why this difference exists but of some reason it either must have been viewed as more important to be able to pick troops up or maybe they missed this while writing and control checking the code for the game engine.

Edited March 9, 2022 by BornGinger

[Erwin]

24 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

Vehicles can pause for a number of seconds just to pick troops up before they carry on to go somewhere but they can't pause and let troops jump off before they carry on.

Another step backwards from CM1.  In CM1, if a vehicle slowed sufficiently eg a sharp turn, troops could disembark.  But, pausing to pu troops in the middle of vehicular movement is something I hadn't seen b4.

[chuckdyke]

You can order a unit to embark at any time and it will go to the last waypoint of the transportation unit. It is useful to know that they will embark during a pause of the transportation unit. I will try that out. 

[Erwin]

13 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

they will embark during a pause of the transportation unit.

As mentioned, in my example it was an unplanned pause caused by the "passenger" vehicle running into another vehicle.  If one can use a regular waypoint with a regular pause that would be a feature that I cannot recall existing in older versions of the game.  Never tried that as am sure that it never worked that way b4.  Will be trying that now as an experiment.

[Glubokii Boy]

I did a quick test yesterday with a 30 sec pause at the second to last waypoint...The troops did not mount up...They headed straight for the final waypoint and mounted up at that location ones the vehicle got there.

This was only a qiuck simple test though...in some situations it might possibly work...

 

[Erwin]

48 minutes ago, Glubokii Boy said:

I did a quick test yesterday with a 30 sec pause at the second to last waypoint...The troops did not mount up...They headed straight for the final waypoint and mounted up at that location ones the vehicle got there.

Yes, this is the way have always expected the system to function. 

The workaround I accidentally found is that when the transport vehicle is halted by an obstructing vehicle for a few seconds... if a leg unit can run to the transport and commence embarking during the few seconds that the transport is halted, the unit can embark and then the transport will continue to its final waypoint.

[BornGinger]

3 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

I did a quick test yesterday with a 30 sec pause at the second to last waypoint...The troops did not mount up...

I think the pause was too short. You need to guess how many seconds it will take the team/squad to move towards the waypoint where the vehicle is pausing, the few seconds it will take the troops to fidget around a bit, like the troops always do with running back and forth of some strange reason before they do what you want them to do, and the few seconds it will take them to finally jump into, or onto, the vehicle.

The larger group of a team you want to embark a vehicle the more time you need to give them.

Do the test again after having guessed how many seconds it will take the team or squad to move to the vehicle's "pause waypoint", fidget around a bit and embark the vehicle and you'll see that it works.

Buf then I haven't tried this for quite a while and Battlefront maybe removed that "embark troips on a pause" ability in the latest patch.

Edited March 10, 2022 by BornGinger

[Glubokii Boy]

1 hour ago, BornGinger said:

I think the pause was too short. You need to guess how many seconds it will take the team/squad to move towards the waypoint where the vehicle is pausing, the few seconds it will take the troops to fidget around a bit, like the troops always do with running back and forth of some strange reason before they do what you want them to do, and the few seconds it will take them to finally jump into, or onto, the vehicle.

The larger group of a team you want to embark a vehicle the more time you need to give them.

Do the test again after having guessed how many seconds it will take the team or squad to move to the vehicle's "pause waypoint", fidget around a bit and embark the vehicle and you'll see that it works.

Buf then I haven't tried this for quite a while and Battlefront maybe removed that "embark troips on a pause" ability in the latest patch.

I may run some more tests but the one i did had the troops start 1 or 2 actionsquares away from the 'pausing' waypoint...This was a 3 man team.

The team did not even try to move towards the 'pausing' waypoint. They headed straight for the location of the last waypoint in the transports path.

 

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, BornGinger said:

I haven't tried this for quite a while and Battlefront maybe removed that "embark troips on a pause" ability in the latest patch.

There have been no changes that I know of in this area. The load during the middle of a move is extremely unreliable. I am pretty sure I have seen it by accident and then not been able to make it happen again.

You cannot rely on it.

You can rely on using dismount to unload passengers before the vehicle starts to move. You can rely on passengers disembarking after the vehicle stops moving. And you can also rely on giving a vehicle a pause before it moves allowing time for passengers to embark but you have to be careful that the pause is long enough - at least one passenger needs to start loading before the timer runs out. So, once you have set the pause you think it will need - make it longer It is way better to have a vehicle sit around for a few seconds longer than absolutely necessary than to have your men running down a road after their ride.

[Erwin]

However, in further testing this doesn't always work.  If one orders a transport to where an inf unit is waiting, give the vehicle a waypoint pause at that location and then a final waypoint, the inf will NOT embark at the waypoint pause but will run to the final waypoint in order to embark.

So, this embarking procedure may only work if the transport is already moving at the start of the turn and then one gives it a pause of sufficient duration so that the inf can run to and embark, the inf will do so, and after embarkation, the transporting vehicle will then move off.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Erwin

[Glubokii Boy]

I belive i know how to do this now...What the deciding factor is 

- The pick-up vehicle will...NEED TO BE STATIONARY AT THE PICK-UP LOCATION (pausing point)...When the boarding troops STARTS their embark move...

Doing it like this...having the vehicle move to the troops actionsquare and pause there enables me to board a 3man team in as little as a 15 second pause on the part of the

vehicle. It then moves off with the troops onboard. 

Timing will be cruisial when doing this but if you are able to time it so that the vehicle is at the pause location when the troops starts thier boarding move...This works every time it seems...

A larger unit will obviously take longer to get onboard compared to this 3 man team...

 

[BornGinger]

38 minutes ago, Glubokii Boy said:

The team did not even try to move towards the 'pausing' waypoint. They headed straight for the location of the last waypoint in the transports path.

Was the waypoint for the team the end point, where you wanted them to go, or was it the vehicle?

You need to give the team a waypoint on the vehicle and then make another one where you want them to end up, get dropped off.

Edited March 10, 2022 by BornGinger

[A Canadian Cat]

1 minute ago, Glubokii Boy said:

time it so that the vehicle is at the pause location when the troops starts thier boarding move

Do you mean the vehicle has to arrive and stop at the same time the troops are about to sick of their Embark move segment?  So, you need to have the vehicle and the troops move to the same place and time it so they arrive together. Or have the vehicle go to the troops and pause the troops to time it so they are ready to start again just after the vehicle arrives and pauses?

I suppose I could see that working. Sounds challenging to time.

[Glubokii Boy]

1 minute ago, BornGinger said:

Was the waypoint for the team the end point, where you wanted them to go, or was it the vehicle?

The vehicle only...

 

[BornGinger]

That should work too.

[Glubokii Boy]

Just now, IanL said:

Do you mean the vehicle has to arrive and stop at the same time the troops are about to sick of their Embark move segment?  So, you need to have the vehicle and the troops move to the same place and time it so they arrive together. Or have the vehicle go to the troops and pause the troops to time it so they are ready to start again just after the vehicle arrives and pauses?

I suppose I could see that working. Sounds challenging to time.

The way i did it in this test was to have the vehicle start a short distant away...I estimated that it would take the vehicle about 5+ seconds to get to the pick-up location.

At the pickup location i added a 15 second pause to the vehicle before moving on to its next waypoint.

During the same turn I gave the troops an embark order on the vehicle with a 10 second pause....

The vehicle arrived...halted...the troops boarded and the vehicle moved away...tried several times....It works !

 

But timing will be tricky in a game situation i guess.

 

 

 

 

[Glubokii Boy]

To clarify...The troops did not start to move until the vehicle was stationary on its pause command.

[Erwin]

16 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

The troops did not start to move until the vehicle was stationary on its pause command.

If the vehicle is moving at the start of the turn (ie it started moving during the previous turn) then one can simply give it a a pause (no waypoint) and if the pause is long enough for the leg unit to run to the stationary vehicle's location then the leg unit will embark, and when the vehicle's pause ends, the vehicle will move off with the embarked inf. 

ie:  The inf unit has to be no further from the transport than the distance it can run during the time the vehicle is paused.  ie:  The vehicle has to be stationery long enuff  for the inf to run to the vehicle and commence embarking.  AFAIK, that has to be accomplished during the same 60 second turn.  Not sure what would happen in a RT game.

I will check what happens if the vehicle is paused for longer than a minute...  Perhaps the inf can start moving towards the stationery vehicle from much further away(?)  ie:  Perhaps the inf would embark during the 2nd 60 second turn.

The order in which one issues commands may also have an effect.  

However, this method of embarking by making a pause during a vehicle's movement phase definitely works.

[A Canadian Cat]

21 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

To clarify...The troops did not start to move until the vehicle was stationary on its pause command.

Makes sense. That would be the key. The detail plan for next move by infantry is not formulated until they get to the way point and the timer runs out. That is also why you can place way points on one side of a wall and the other side and as long as you time things so that the wall is breached before they get to the way point before the wall they will move to the other side of the wall using the new breach.