Hello I'm Craig. I'm new to this forum and I would like to know ware I can find a lock on editing manual. I've had lock on now for a couple of years and have just discovered the editor and I would like to know if there is a manual for it just to help me use it

Here are some links to stuff that might help you with using the Lockon Mission Editor. It can take a day or two to get used to, but yo soon get the hang of it.

Intro Level

http://www.xs4all.nl/~nees64/flightsim/missioneditor.htm

More complex

http://home.hccnet.nl/hmms.janssen/Tutorial_complex_mission.html

IRONHAND VIDEO OF HOW TO USE IT

http://www.flankertraining.com/ironhand/flightbasics.htm

and scroll down to
VIDEO :: Getting Started Part 1: The GUI and Mission Editor
VIDEO :: Getting Started Part 2: The Mission


The Quick Start manual from page 48 onwards has some basic Mission Editor details. If you have Flaming Cliffs then this manual is in your Lockon/docs folder.
If you only have vanilla Lockon (v1.02) then IronHand has a copy of it it on his site for you to download, link below,

http://flankertraining.com/Hold/LO_FC_Quick_Start_Manual_1.1.zip

By the way, this UBI forum is a bit quiet these days. Might get quicker specific help over at either
http://forums.eagle.ru/index.php
or
http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Forums

I would say a good way to learn the ME is to fly a mission, then afterwards - open it in the ME and look at it to see how the mission designer made it work. Look at the aircraft, vehicles, ships that were used and the routes they followed. Look at the time of day, weather, wind, visibility distence settings he used. Many folks only ever set up a cloudless sky at 12:00 in the summer. The more interestingly designed missions give you a beautiful sunrise or a stormy night. Look at the fuel loads and weapon loadouts and skins for the player unit and the AI. Look at the mission goals. Not every mission is go out and kill something. You can set up defensive missions where the goal is to ensure a friendly unit or base survives by stopping the bad guys.

Hope this all helps. Come back with specific questions on this or any other forums and I'm sure you'll get the help you need.....



This post had some useful info in it...

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=12608


Later pages of this thread (link below) had some useful stuff too

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/38610606/m/7221059326


I just put down some thoughts of things that may trip you up in the future, not in any particular order.

Assigning unit(s) / group(s) / building(s) as targets using the TARGET button from ATTACK waypoints is what ensures the diamond appears in your HUD. Incidentally this is the mechanism by which AI units are assigned specific targets to attack.

But the SUCCESS / FAIL at the end of a mission is caused by having set MISSION GOALS using the icon on the left of the screen that looks like a sniper sight.
Having these as seperate actions means that a mission can have SUCCESS/FAIL goals set without necessarily having targets diamond'ed. Two examples - mbot's UrbanThunder which has an attack waypoint, but no TARGETs assigned

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=9039

also my Smerch Hunt mission, which has no attack waypoint at all...

http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d...merch_Hunt#dldetails


Be aware that if you set up some vehicles or ships in a group then the Mission Editor treats that group as a single item when you use TARGET button. Once you target it and then try to target another item in the group the mission editor will latch to nearest thing (usually a building) leaving you wondering what is going on. I still get caught out by this with ships as a group of them by default are quite spread out and they dont look like a group. I then try to target a second time and it targets a building a 100kms away!
When you have a group targeted then if you kill the 1st in the group, the diamond will move to the next in the group etc until all destroyed then moves to next TARGET'ed unit/group

Set SKILL to PLAYER for your own aircraft (you can only fly the yellow aircraft names)
If you want wingmen, add more pilots (not more flights)



If the mission designer has set up an ATTACK waypoint and used the TARGET button to mark particular target(s), then you will see the diamond as soon as you change to a2g mode (7). If the target is out of the field of view of the HUD it will have an X through it. If you kill the target and there are multiple targets are set up, the diamond moves to the next target, and finally dissapears when you have killed all the marked targets.
Some mission designers might only mark some or none of the targets you need to kill to get mission success, other targets may only be mentioned in the mission briefing.

If there are multiple targets in a mission, you can swap the diamond between them by pressing ' key (depends on your keyboard - anyway it is the same key that swaps airfields when you are in nav return mode).



Problems with other aircraft not taking off from your airbase?

If you have more than one GROUP assigned to an airfield then the 2nd GROUP won't appear until all of the 1st GROUP have taken off and cleared the immediate vicinity of the airfield.

The way round this is to make sure you are all in the same GROUP. Make the AI jets be one FLIGHT and you in the other FLIGHT. Of course you will share the same waypoints, make sure you are set to takeoff from parking area. Even though you share the same waypoints (of course you yourself don't actually have to follow them), you can be allocated different TASKS and even assigned different TARGET's from ATTACK waypoints.

Alternatively, there are some bases very close to others, so you can have AI taking off (or landing) from a neighbouring base.

For atmosphere, maybe have a friendly helo landing at your base as you taxi to the runway, have a couple of fuel trucks wandering around the base. Look for missions by a guy in the community called MBot, he is pretty good at adding atmosphere to an airfield with a few well placed static objects and moving AI vehicles / helo's / planes. Run the start of his missions to see how they look, then open them in the Mission Editor and see how he did it.

Mbot mission pack link

A problem you might find with certain airbases is that your aircraft will start in one part of the base, the AI might be clear across on the other side of the base. It depends on the base, the size of the aircraft - small AI jets will start from a HAS (hardened aircraft shelter) if there are any on the base. Also on some bases, the taxi time from the starting position (HAS or parking spot) to the runway can be a long time, the AI taxi at a fixed speed that you cannot alter. The taxi time can vary from a couple of minutes to over ten minutes I made an investigation into this - Taxi time link

By placing static object aircraft to occupy parking spots, it is possible to amend which spots you/AI start on.

If you want some arty to bombard a town/airfield to add colour to a mission,
1) target a co-ord, so arty keep firing. If you target a building, once destroyed then the arty stops firing.
2) if your arty is all in one group, then have same number of targets to ensure each arty in the group has a target to fire at.
3) if you mix the arty types (bereg, msta, nona, etc) then they fire at different rates and looks nicer