what is a .mst file?

[mustng2]

I have had very good luck setting up a spawn in the air mission for dive bombing and dog fighting practice that allows me to be in the air and bombs dropped in about a minute.  Great for practice.  I have 3 friendly planes, 1 piloted by the player and 2 AI, and 3 enemy planes, all AI.  The enemy planes attack the friendly AI planes with both sides in the attack mode, but don't seem to fire at the player plane.  They do try to avoid the player plane guns.  Any idea why they don't shoot at the player plane?  Also, when I use the build res library, it creates a folder with a .mst file in the missres folder that does not seem to do any thing since I deleted it and everything still works.  What is the .mst file for?

[jimson]

No one has answered this question and I believe no one really knows. It may just be part of the build file and really serves no purpose after the mission is built.

[MrKrabs]

.mst is a resource file for external files such as custom sounds that has no real purpose anymore...

As for issues with AI behaviour you should attach a copy of the mission se we can help troubleshoot, but from what it sounds is the AI don't consider you a immediate threat....

And jesus jimson, give people half a chance to look at the bloody boards...

[mustng2]

MrKrabs, Thanks for the reply.  I used your tutorial to get started, great help.  How do you attach a file to a post?  I don't see that option in the post or post reply window.  On another question, I uploaded the file to a custom arena.  Does it work the same in that any unassigned planes are assigned to AI?  The program crashes when I try to run it in custom arena with mine the only assigned plane, so I deleted it from the uploaded missions.  When I build the res library it gives me an errror message in that the plane can't fly the first segment which is the spawn at 12000 feet in a take off segment with an end altitude of 10000, but it creates the mission file and works well offline.  Any guidance on creating an inair spawn first segment that does not produce the error message?  I am assuming that is why the program crashes in the custom arena since we upload the .mis file rather than the .res file.  I tried various combinations of speed, altitude etc, but it still gave that error.

[jimson]

In the staged missions forum just below this one, when you start a post, you will see additional options. There you can upload .mis files.

Theoretically, the mission works the same on and offline but practically, that hasn't always been the case.

At first glance, I would suggest changing the take off segment to a cruise warp segment with a matching altitude on the Y axis of the aircraft spawn, but I suspect there may be an issue with air starts crashing missions online in general.

Mrkrabs may have an answer, but that is one of the things I am going to be trying in the next couple of days. Perhaps I can confirm or eliminate the idea that there is an online air start bug.

[MrKrabs]

Problem is that the simulator offline and the one in the custom arenas are not the same,  if anything the offline variant is more or less out of date but more forgiving than its custom arena counterpart

As for airstarts, avoid them entirely... I would suggest what Jimson said above and stick with what is reliable...

And as for a bug with airstarts, that really is not the case, it is simply unstable only because live users don't have perfect aircraft control required to not just fall out of the sky... which is what the editor measures when deeming a segment  Possible or not

[jimson]

Problem is that the simulator offline and the one in the custom arenas are not the same,  if anything the offline variant is more or less out of date but more forgiving than its custom arena counterpart

As for airstarts, avoid them entirely... I would suggest what Jimson said above and stick with what is reliable...

And as for a bug with airstarts, that really is not the case, it is simply unstable only because live users don't have perfect aircraft control required to not just fall out of the sky... which is what the editor measures when deeming a segment  Possible or not

i have a test mission with an airstart that works OK offline but it CTD's online. That is what I need to check out to see what part of it is crashing.

[mustng2]

That is what I get also.  The inair spawn is good offline, but not in the custom arena online.  I did get a similar mission with a warp segment to work online and strangely enough the AI on line sometimes do shoot at the player plane.  I think I will abandon the inair spawn for now.  The warp segment version only adds about a minute or so to the time to begin bombing the target.  Thanks to both of you for the help.