Help with Vehicle Following and FTL for dailies

[knopstr]

I have used the search engine and read articles like the following;

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=17956&highlight=dailies+vehicles

I use Bartender4 and Jamba. I prefer to use the FTL system for character management. It seems as though there are many ways to make the following of vehicles work but I'd like someone who has practical experience to just state the easiest way to do it. The examples offered in some cases seemed rather confusing and in others I couldn't make them work.

I want to be able to have everyone jump on a bear/plane/horse and be able to with the least amount of effort duplicate actions ie; joust, bomb, etc.

Thanks for answering the same question posed before but with streamlined answers.

[sedory]

The simple answer is I doubt you'll be able to do what you want.

What I found was that you cannot have a slave /follow a toon that's already within a vehicle. I have the slaves get in their vehicles and /follow the master, then he gets in. If they break follow, the only way to re-follow is to have the master get out.

Note, many vehicle actions, such as jousting, will break follow and thus force you to go through the above pita to re-follow. For ToC jousting, I'd just place the non-active toons to the side and have them assist and shoot the shield-breaker shots while i pound down the target on the active toon. For ToC instance, you're sol.

[Eggy]

I got a key setup so it uses F2 to target my group leader, then on second press it follows, works fine.

[olipcs]

At the moment I'm using a simple state-key to change my follow from FTL-based to fixed-on-my-leader with HKN.

But for an alt-team I currently discovered the '/jamba-follow target <target> <tag>'-command, which i then have different versions for every toon (like /jamba-follow target Toon1 all). I think this should work like an FTL and also for vehicles (the last one i need to test).

[Bettysue]

Make a macro that has the following in it and name it something:


/click JambaFTLAssist
/click [bonusbar:5] BonusActionButton1

then close out the macro setup screen and use the following 2 script lines, filling in the KEY and MACRONAME variables with the proper names of course. (yes they need to be in quotes)

/script SetBindingMacro("KEY", "macroname")

/script SaveBindings(GetCurrentBindingSet())
If you use jambadev, it will work to target your leaders target and then will click the first vehicle action button. If you don't use jambadev just change out "JambaFTLAssist with the name of the button your FTL macro exists on in your out of vehicle UI. The buttons are still accessible by name even though they may be hidden.

Follow is a touch trickier since you can't follow target or assist when in a vehicle. What you can do is follow your focus, so you can use something along the lines of:


/click [mod] JambaFTLAssist
/click [bonusbar:5] BonusActionButton1
/stopmacro [nomod]
/target focus
/click JambaFTLTarget
/focus
/targetlasttarget
/follow focus
/focus target
/cleartarget

With that macro you can have a focus target and store it, should you feel the need to, however you will lose your target on the followers each time. Don't worry I just do that to hide the current target on the followers. No real need for it since there is no PvP in vehicles at this point but no reason not to future proof yourself.

That will click your FTL assist big button (I use the Jamba created button in this case. It will attack using the vehicle button 1 attack and then it will stop on the leader. The followers will continue to process the macro.
They will target their current focus to store it as the last target in a second. Then they will target the leader, focus them, target their last target (the one we stored earlier), follow the leader (the current focus), then focus their stored target, and clear their current target. Sounds really complex but on screen it will look like this.

TL;DR
Try to attack target with vehicle button 1, follow leader, and if they had a focus before all of this happened they will still have that target focused. If you copy paste that macro you will be left with 60 characters for personal modification. I personally have found button 1 to be the best for adding the follow portion to, and I bound these keys to the numberpad keys, with the script. You won't be able to see these macros unless you have a bar addon, but they will work to click the vehicle buttons.

So make 5 macros, like the first one at the top of the post changing the bonusactionbutton# <--number for each one to correspond to a vehicle action. Make 1 macro for bonusactionbutton1 with the follow macro, and bind that to a key that will correspond to vehicle button 1.

[KvdM]

Follow is a touch trickier since you can't follow target or assist when in a vehicle.


You can actually assist and follow a vehicle. It's just not possible to target the person that's inside the vehicle. This is why the FTL-macros on this site don't work for vehicles, they first target and then follow/assist that target.

Here's an example of an assist macro that will work for vehicles

/assist [mod:ctrl,mod:shift,nomod:alt,target=ToonA][mod:ctrl,mod:alt,nomod:shift, target=ToonB][mod:alt,mod:shift,nomod:ctrl,target=ToonC][mod:ctrl,mod:alt,mod:shift,target=ToonD][mod:ctrl,nomod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonE]And here's the follow macro that will work for vehicles:

/run if IsControlKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() and not IsAltKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonA") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and IsAltKeyDown() and not IsShiftKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonB") elseif IsAltKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() and not IsControlKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonC") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and IsAltKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonD") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and (not IsAltKeyDown()) and (not IsShiftKeyDown()) then FollowUnit("ToonE") endWith the above macros and a bar mod that allows you to replace the vehicle bars, FTL will work seamlessly for vehicles. Seperate follow and assist keys, leader or focus based macros are no longer needed.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'm beginning to understand why the FTL folks hate vehicle stuff. :P I've never had to change my focus-based setup for vehicle combat.

[Pocalypse]

And here's the follow macro that will work for vehicles:

/run if IsControlKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() and not IsAltKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonA") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and IsAltKeyDown() and not IsShiftKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonB") elseif IsAltKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() and not IsControlKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonC") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and IsAltKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonD") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and (not IsAltKeyDown()) and (not IsShiftKeyDown()) then FollowUnit("ToonE") end

Awesome, you just gave me my Focus back to use for other stuff! Thanks!

[Bettysue]

You can actually assist and follow a vehicle. It's just not possible to target the person that's inside the vehicle. This is why the FTL-macros on this site don't work for vehicles, they first target and then follow/assist that target.

Here's an example of an assist macro that will work for vehicles

/assist [mod:ctrl,mod:shift,nomod:alt,target=ToonA][mod:ctrl,mod:alt,nomod:shift, target=ToonB][mod:alt,mod:shift,nomod:ctrl,target=ToonC][mod:ctrl,mod:alt,mod:shift,target=ToonD][mod:ctrl,nomod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonE]And here's the follow macro that will work for vehicles:

/run if IsControlKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() and not IsAltKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonA") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and IsAltKeyDown() and not IsShiftKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonB") elseif IsAltKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() and not IsControlKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonC") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and IsAltKeyDown() and IsShiftKeyDown() then FollowUnit("ToonD") elseif IsControlKeyDown() and (not IsAltKeyDown()) and (not IsShiftKeyDown()) then FollowUnit("ToonE") endWith the above macros and a bar mod that allows you to replace the vehicle bars, FTL will work seamlessly for vehicles. Seperate follow and assist keys, leader or focus based macros are no longer needed.

I like the run macro and have used it before, I was just providing a solution that doesn't "require" an addon to use. Yes I know I used the jamba created macro, but it could easily be replaced by the "normal" FTL bigbutton macro.

It's nice to see several viable solutions to a problem though. Thanks for posting those macros.

The second thing i wanted to mention was using assist to attack works perfectly, but you can't use assist to follow, unless of course you have the leader target themself and then hit the /assist /follow macro. I guess I could have stated that in a different manner to make it clear.

@pocalypse, both solutions maintain your focus, my just drops the target on the followers, but refocuses any focus they had, and since macros process all at once, it doesn't even mess up addons that track CC on the focus.

[Pocalypse]

Yes, I was using a shittier focus macro for following on vehicles before, one that didn't save my previous focus.
I was about to switch to yours when I saw KvdM's macro, which appeals to me more for some reason.

I don't use Jamba to maintain my macros, I have them all generated in excel with all my character info there.

Your macro is great though, I expect that logic will come in useful elsewhere too.

[Bettysue]

Ya I used to use silly focus/target logic to switch my target and focus when I soloed a mage in arenas. There were a lot of time when i was just a CC method and maybe a finisher in 5's, so I had a counterspell focus and sheep target setup, but with diminishing returns I would hit a button to swap them and just keep spamming the same 2 buttons till i finally got to kill something.
The logic has proven helpful in a few multiboxing "encounters," so even if it's never used it's a good trick to have in the bag.
btw I really like the run macro and used it for a while, now I usually tend toward the addons free playstyle.

[ElectronDF]

I'm beginning to understand why the FTL folks hate vehicle stuff. :P I've never had to change my focus-based setup for vehicle combat.

Quoted for truth. I focus my main. Everyone gets in a vehicle, the alts lose the focus (not sure why, thanks Blizzard) and I just push my focus key again and everyone is in a vehicle and all have a focus. Boom, everything works, /follow focus, done, /assist focus, done, too easy.