[SP] Close Air Support (A Random AH-6 Assault Mission)

[sxp2high 22]

what you use for recording radio communications

The sounds in CAS are from ArmA 2 OA. In the "dubbingradio_e" is a ton of radio sounds. ;)

I just merged them together and slightly edited them... I'm using Magix Video deluxe MX, which has an preset radio audio effect, to make voices sound more radio like.

Two other tts sites i now of:

http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php

Hope that helps a bit.

[Derbysieger 11]

Yeah - I forgot my in game music would breach copyright somewhere. I got an email about it from youtube, but they seem to still be allowing it. Perhaps EMI think Meatloaf needs the publicity! They advertise the album on iTunes next to it so I guess that's fair!

yeah here in germany almost every video including some music isn't available. No problem for me though - I just use a proxy^^

[jedra 11]

The sounds in CAS are from ArmA 2 OA. In the "dubbingradio_e" is a ton of radio sounds. ;)

...

Hope that helps a bit.

Yeah that's great thanks. I'm using Logic Pro and Soundbooth so I now have all the tools needed without having to buy a licence for a 'good voice'. Cheers.

[4 IN 1 0]

Oh I hate Meatloaf! Deep Purple would be better choose IMO:p

[jedra 11]

Oh I hate Meatloaf! Deep Purple would be better choose IMO:p

I'm not a big fan, I just thought that Bat out of Hell would be appropriate for my first helicopter attack mission!! It seemed to work as previous attempts ended in disaster! Perhaps something for the Army Air Corps to think about!

[Derbysieger 11]

First of: Very nice mission I enjoyed playing it!

But one thing is really bugging me:

With enemy AI on expert I have absolutely no chance to finisch that mission. When I don't manage to destroy a vehicle on the first run I'm almost certainly dead. And there are a lot of vehicles. In one attempt there were 2 or 3 BMP2s and 5 or 6 offroads. Way too many for 14 Hydra rockets. Especially because you can't fire one Hydra at a time. It's always two (BIS please don't do this in Arma 3 again!). The guns are too unreliable with the deadly accurate vehicle-AI.

On normal I have no problem at all, it's almost too easy that way.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Derbysieger

[jibemorel 10]

You might want to adjust skillEnemy & precisionEnemy values (both set to 1 on expert) located in your C:\Users\username\Documents\TKoH\userprofile. For example I kept skillEnemy=1 but decreased precisionEnemy to 0.6. Otherwise for sure they will headshot you in the dark 1 kilometers away with an Ak74.

Edited November 11, 2011 by jibemorel

[Derbysieger 11]

I know that. It's just the way I use to play Arma 2. Not possible here. Probably because flying is much more difficult^^

[sxp2high 22]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm still trying to find the right balance, to make it challenging and somewhat possible to beat... I agree, it is a lot more difficult than flying assault missions in ArmA.

I was struggling myself at the beginning, but after quite some rounds of training i'm now able to beat the mission most of the time.

Please bear in mind that the mission will have a different difficult level each time, due to the randomness.

Let me explain that further:

1. The number of overall friendly and enemy units is different. Sometimes it's 20 vs 30, sometimes it's 20 vs 50. So, the distraction and support from the ground is not always the same.

2. 55% Chance, that a friendly heli is cycling the AO. If he's there, it is a great relief for you, since he is good at killing anything and drawing attention away from you.

3. The number of enemy vehicles is min. 4, and max. 8. The chance for a BMP spawning is ~60% lower than for spawning a Jeep.

So... if you have 2 or 3 BMPs driving around and 5 or 6 Jeeps, you almost reached the maximum difficult level the mission is able to provide to you. Unlucky! ;)

[Panther353 10]

I downloaded the mission. I created an AddOns folder in my Documents\Take On Helicopters folder. I fired up the game and went to Singleplayer Challenges and it is not showing. What did I miss?

[Derbysieger 11]

That's not how it works. You might want to use a mod folder in your installation directory or put it in the AddOns folder but I don't recommend the latter.

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Mission_Export#Addon_Format

[OMAC 254]

Whew. After hours of frustration and seat-of-my-pants flying on Expert with kb/mouse:

Maintenance complete. AFTER I had completed desperate CAS task:

Here is how CAS task ended for me. Grand total of opfor NOT taken out by light heli armament: ~8.

Second time through, starting from autosave on same mission:

Second CAS ending the same; prone, m4a1s hot, opfor toast. Grand total of opfor NOT taken out by light heli armament: 2.

After firefight, remaining blufor g-2-g in up-armored HMMWV, happy indeed that we came to save their ass:

The mine site, safe once again:

The 4 (to 8 ?? :mad:) vehicles can be handled, but use up most, if not all of your hydras. The issue for me is the ~50 ground troops who can barely be seen from above, cannot be targeted using TAB, cannot be distinguished from allied troops from the air when they are near the base, and invariably make you run out of ammo. Not fun. Killing often running, single men with a chopper minigun is a form of torture, especially on expert.

The cloudy weather resulted in very dark conditions that rendered the ground forces nearly invisible from the air unless my game brightness was increased almost to max.

And the FOB is too far away to rearm without the opfor wiping out the pinned-down troops, right? So once you run out of ammo, you are totally screwed, unless you land, get out, and take them on with your m16 or partially disabled hummers or technicals at the mine. Once, I ran out of ammo, landed and killed about 30 opfor with my m16 and they kept on coming. They sneak up on you from all directions. I eventually got wasted.

When I finally completed the CAS task, I had run out of all ammo, landed under fire, went prone, and took out about 7-8 opfor foot mobiles about 200m away with my m4a1. I ordered my copilot to disembark, and he finally helped me by taking out the last ofpor as I was reloading. :cool:

The key is to protect the blufor at the mine by wasting the incoming forces before they reach the mine. The more of them are preserved, the longer you have to kill all incoming opfor. One time I nailed the armor and technicals but not before they killed about 10-15 blufor at the mine. That meant that it was impossible to complete the CAS task, as the waves and waves and waves of incoming foot mobile opfor would eventually kill them and fail the task NO MATTER WHAT mayhem I created with my chopper minigun.

Some suggestions:

1) make autosave no more than 3km from mine to save time

2) reduce number of foot mobile opfor

3) make FOB no greater than 8-10 km from mine, as otherwise it is impossible to perform heli maintenance and return in time so save blufor troops. The way it is now, maintenance trips will never happen, so references to such maintenance procedures are misleading and a waste of time.

4) consider having a AI-flown, additional light heli fly in with you to take care of business (or make it an option - never seen anything like that before in an A2 mission :cool:)

5) As you mentioned earlier, add sorely needed Event Handlers for blue-on-blue fire.

6) to get a checkmark in Challenges List after successful completion, add a doneKeys statement to description.ext file, something like:

doneKeys[] = {"btk_close_air_support_key"};

In the mission folder add a line to the ___.sqf file for full mission completion before the line 'endmission "end1";' to activate the key:

activateKey "btk_close_air_support _key";

7) It's probably not possible, but thermal imaging goggles would be totally cool for this mission so you could more easily spot those foot mobiles!

The above lines are just approximations using A2-style editing. I am not familiar with the ToH editing templates (yet). Perhaps Gaia could provide you with exact syntax.

Needless to say, the mission is intense. Thank you, sxp2high. As the shots of my two completions show, running out of ammo with no real possibility of rearming is an issue (with that many foot mobiles), but is surmountable via good 'ol A2 CO-style ground combat!

Edited December 28, 2011 by OMAC

[OMAC 254]

Here's my effort...

Jedra,

Nice gameplay! However, that is the worst music I have ever heard in my entire life. :eek: Jesus? Angels? Revelation? Over and over again? Holy mackerel, is that bad. Thank the stars for the mute button! I would suggest removing the music and just have the awesome in-game sounds! A2 = WAR. Jesus = peace. :)

[sxp2high 22]

Wow, what a post... Even though you seem to be a bit frustrated, that was fun to read...

Your report in one word would be FUBAR, i guess. :D

Great suggestions there, and i feel your pain regarding the infantry spotting. I'll see if i can do anything to make that easier, because that's not just the case when it's cloudy.

You are referring to the "mine" but bear in mind that the mission is located at a different spot each time you start it.

But that doesn't mean that i cannot move the FOB closer to the AO, wherever that is. Great Idea.

You surely motivated me to make another update for the mission. Thanks!

[sxp2high 22]

I just taught the squad how to mark enemy positions with smoke grenades:

:cool:

[OMAC 254]

Nice! Looks cool.

[sxp2high 22]

Thanks.

I had to create it as particle effect, since there are no smoke grenades in Take On. First time i really tried to create a particle effect, so I'm still tweaking it a bit.

But it looks good and improves the gameplay of the mission a lot - no more searching for barely visible men. At least it gives you a general idea where the last known position was. The smoke will be created randomly from time to time.

Also, the FOB is not static anymore, it will be created near the task, wherever that might be. Also a great improvement. I can now use the whole map, that's 63 possible positions instead of 34.

Thanks again for your input!

I'm also changing the mission to be MP (dedicated) compatible. It will be for 4 players (2 choppers).

Anyone tried "take control" as co pilot yet, in MP?

New update will be out in a few days.

[nosecone 1]

For some reason I don't have and fire power. The right info screen tells me I have ammo but I can't seem the fire anything.The mouse scroll wheel doesn't seem to show any fire options?

Rhys