ArmA2 Community Issue Tracker

Apparently, there is a minimum range for indirect fire (which is obviously short for mortar and extremely long for rockets). I suspect that if you get in the arty and try to use indirect fire GUI you will be able to work out the minimum fire distances.

Indeed, I think you answered this on your own. I would encourage you to play with the Secop Manager-based method of calling artillery to get an idea of minimum and maximum ranges.

It has nothing to do with the minimum or maximum ranges, everything except mortar doesn't work.

I tested various ranges, nothing happens. Replace arti battery with M252 and here we go.

Btw, I'm not the only one who found the problem, there's another report in a german forum about it. He also replaced the battery with M252 and he was able to call a strike.

Xeno please attach your demo mission.
Spooner got it working, so there must be a problem in the setup.

Though there's no need to make a demo mission as I'm only using what's described in BIKI I've attached one.

You can move the invisible H whereever you want, the M119 AI goup will never fire.
Replace the M119 group with M252 and it works as expected (though the maximum range is not that high).

Forget it, I was wrong.

I've played with the different ranges again and suddenly the artillery fired.
The range where M119 for example works is really small.

Would be nice to get some feedback from the system about the ranges.
Otherwise it is just try and error which gets frustrating.
Or is it allready in the module somewhere ?

Agreed. What do you say Headspace - doable?

As an addition, the AI artillery battery described in the BIKI won't work in a MP environment.

Simply by the fact that the script that executes the mission has a nice if (!isServer) exitWith {}; at the beginning. Means, the mission maker has to send a variable (or whatever) to the server that then executes BIS_ARTY_F_ExecuteTemplateMission.
This should be handled by the ARTY system in my opinion to make it easier for mission makers that don't have scripting experience.

The AI artillery batteries work fine in MP, as long as they're called with an editor trigger (or with something server side) which was the intended use in the first place. There are several good reasons why things are set up the way they are. It's pretty reasonable to assume a mission maker with no scripting experience is going to put their stuff in an editor trigger.

As for min/max range checking, you've probably found that already.

Easier way to use arty is with SOCOM, but the BIKI example is less than detailed enough to work. You must wait until the socom is fully inited before setting up the fire missions (again, the instructions assume you will put the code in a radio trigger, which makes sense in a test mission, but not a real mission):

1 // Assumes you have called your SOCOM module "socom".
2 waitUntil { not isNil { socom getVariable "initDone"} };
3 waitUntil { socom getVariable "initDone" };
4 
5 // The request commands in the biki are fine.
6 [["artillery_barrage"], player, [[]]] call BIS_SOM_addSupportRequestFunc;

You will get a hint that the mission type has been added, then communication->socom->request artillery will allow you to click on the map to place arty (and clearly shows min/max ranges). This is definitely the best way to use artillery, IMHO.

Yeah, that works. I went ahead and updated the community wiki with your snippet, Spooner (credited to you) in a new FAQ section.