GITS Evolution (new main thread)

[eggbeast 3673]

anyone know how to reduce the amount of spawning attack aircraft?

yeah try SAM's lol

---------- Post added at 04:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:02 PM ----------

Eggbeast hiya! - you mentioned in this post something about a "new revive" where the AI can revive players now?

Could you explain how this works exactly so I understand how to use it?...when i recruit AI into my group they do not come to revive me at all after I've been downed. Thanks abunch!

PS - im using v5 RACS Lingor

hiya yeah i noticed it didnt work too. will look into it

[vengeance1 50]

Eggbeast,

Have to agree with Bigshot on this one, I have added RACS SAMS, Ammo Trucks to the mission so they don't run out of ammo but when there is not enough players to keep the constant spawning aircraft down the SAMS eventually get destroyed and it makes your awesome mission not very playable. Your AI get destroyed, you can't make progress, it becomes frustrating and i just change missions.

Just one guys feedback!

Vengeance

[HazJ 1288]

I place (tow them with a truck) AA static guns then protect them with sandbags and then finally put AI in them, also put them away from open grounds and into the forests :D.

HAZ

[bigshot 62]

yep...even if there were just a simple on/off switch in the parameters that would be better than nothing...at least then 2 or 3 friends could play together without constantly having to jump into either a SAM or plane.

Also...there seems to be a join in progress bug on dedicated servers....sometimes when you join a persistent server the grey circular town marker that tells you which town is active shows up on the wrong town (with us it seems upon reconnecting hours later to our server it shows on the first town even though it should be showing down south somewhere)...disconnecting and reconnecting again sometimes helps but between this bug and the non-configurable attack planes im having great trouble getting people to want to play this one...there are some other bugs as well regarding respawning vehicles but you know already im sure.

Love this mission, really...especially on the new Lingor...but it's becoming a lonely passion as you're not testing too good before releases :-)

[eggbeast 3673]

Hiya thanks for feeding back, glad you're enjoying the mission.

We actually do a lot of testing before releases, and we do fix bugs and improve things along the way.

the grey circle JIP bug has been vexing me for a full year.

i think i need to pack the variables for the towncount into the JIP variable pack but i haven't had a chance to try it. i tried a lot of other fixes and it always broke something else but only realising this after porting to other islands etc and letting the bug spread for months... so it's on my to-do list but it's not really a big deal.

TEMP SOLUTION = if someone else connects, they trigger the update and the previous last player in (who should be the only person suffering the bug) will get the update. the last guy in just needs to ask where the target is - the MHQ is usually an indicator. If you're really unsure, take a littlebird and scout.

regarding planes - again I made this a variable in parameters but it doesn't work properly, so i put it on ice while working on other things. i do plan to reintroduce it.

TEMP SOLUTION =

1. park a jackal and coyote SAM at spawn and use these to tackle planes near to base. ALWAYS fire 2-3 SAM's at a plane to kill it. NEVER rely on AI to do this safely.

2. stay out of vehicles or keep engines off when planes are spotted.

3. for recon or MHQ (forward attack positions) have a friend select AA class and carry an empty stinger launcher - they can make SAM launchers wherever they go.

4. You can also pick up a 57mm AA gun cunningly positioned near the respawn point and then select respawn MHQ and set it down. switch it to HE and it annihilates planes. It will respawn when destroyed so it's a permanent feature. It will automatically rteturn to base if not occupied for 60 mins, meaning you can recover it easily. Or you can load it into a repair truck and take it with you (Don't TOW it as there's a bug in RACS vehicles with bounding boxes which will put your gun in the air making it useless. we have reported it to wld and it will be fixed in time.

5. have a player select pilot class (or play unlocked) and there are some cool AA dogfights to be had - best planes are: F16 CAP at main base has 8 AA missiles or Mig21's have 6 and 8 AA missiles. Respawn at the southern airfield and there are mirage AA with 5 AA missiles and 2 x F15 with 10 AA missiles each. Respawn at HMS GITS aircraft carrier and there are 3 x F35 with 8 sidewinders and 2 x AH64 apache with 8x sidewinders. Clearing the air every hour or so is all that's needed.

6. base your MHQ on a FARP and put an AA truck about 50m away. if you get bounced by enemy planes just fix it using the FARP and take them out. if it turns on it's side TOW it to the MHQ or recon HQ and drag it back to the FARP.

7. don't drive convoys about when the radar is full of red markers! that's just madness. plan your journey! work together.

8. No pilots or AA class or SAMs nearby and loads of enemy air incoming? then stay out of vehicles and fight on foot. it's a lot safer.

the mission is designed to be hard and require teamwork. we always have one guy who keeps an eye on the radar.

You can't play it like Arma 1 - just laying waste to cities with tanks and vulcans. also HILLS should be avoided - park your vehicles in plenty of cover. like between two tall buildings. choose your arcs oif fire carefully. use your sandbags (support fortification and officer HQ) to protect the MHQ. keep MHQ at rear of action and use recon HQ for fighting forward. this reduces stalling time having to bring MHQ forward. we almost NEVER lose and MHQ when we play.

As a lot of people seem to love flying all the time (just count the public who come in and immediately run for the planes) I made the mission to keep them occupied.

talk to your buddies about tactics. surely they will enjoy the victory knowing they had to fight hard to achieve it?

Edited June 9, 2012 by eggbeast

[hcpookie 3770]

On the new versions of the missions we've never been overwhelmed by aircraft. The "solutions" mentioned by eggbeast work. Whenever we are out of AA support we abandon the vehicle until our pilot can get airborne and lend a hand. That said, we do have issues with the Mig-21 and Su-24 as their AA missiles seem to be impossible to spoof. Compared to Su-34's and/or Su-25's, the Mig AA missiles are intolerably difficult to spoof.

One Mig-21 is enough to ruin your helicopter assault. If you take them head-on you simply cannot spoof the missiles, even in an F-15. I haven't dug into it enough to know if they are using a radar-guided missile or IR-guided missile. I suspect it is the config and not the mission that makes their missiles so invulnerable to countermeasures. We usually just give up and shoot the MIG-21's with SAMs. Everyone who has tried going head to head with the MIG-21's has commented on their Magic Missiles of Doom. We have therefore taken to keeping some of the SAM launchers near the FARPs we build.

A thought - have your AA guy build his AA battery near the FARP so it can be reloaded. That way you don't have to worry about it getting completely destroyed. Both of the RACS 57mm and 37mm AAA guns have "infinite" magazines that don't need to be reloaded, so you can usually take anything down in the area if you check your radar and keep the gun pointed in the direction of the incoming plane. If you don't get the RACS guns deployed by the AA specialty just try deploying again to cycle through the AAA gun rotation. Then just rail on the planes with the AAA cannon! If you start shooting at them they will probably target your gun, so you have to watch the map to ensure you don't get rocketed to death on their next run. The good thing is that you can usually line up and shoot them out before they fire their salvo of rockets. Usually :) Between the MHQ and FARP it usually isn't a problem for us.

And listen to Egg's advice - we have learned to use those tips the hard way!

Oh and I've discovered that any AA rocket is best the closer the aircraft is to you. Within 300 meters, and ideally within 100 meters. The AI will magically spoof any incoming missile you shoot at them, which is completely inaccurate but unavoidable in Arma due to the radar configuration. So the closer the better. Outside of 300 meters, forget it. Also try lining up incoming aircraft or wait until they fly overhead them shoot them in the ass. This is what we do to shoot down the helicopters in the immediate vicinity. The inaccurate modelling of the heat-seeking SAMs can be frustrating at times, but a backpack full of AA rockets is usually enough to counter the helicopter threats. I tend to be the AA gunner in our group so the other guys can do their AT work. Depends on the map.

If you're at the main FARPs or spawn area, use the reload/repair function of the airfield to your advantage. Keep the biggest SAM launcher you have parked by the airfield respawn point. Whenever we respawn and notice the entire base it blowing up due to a helicopter patrol, we "respawn airfield" then launch the telephone pole-sized instant-death SAMs at the helicopters. Switch to driver, switch to gunner, viola! you have a fully reloaded SAM launcher. Repeat as necessary. Since we started doing this, AA threats are no longer a concern in the vicinity of the airbase. Depending on the map this can cover a nice chunk of the map. I've noticed that putting supply trucks near the SAM's doesn't always work - I assume because the supply trucks aren't equipped with SAM magazines by default. Noticeable on RACS missions. Also if you're using a HAWK missile battery, it takes a LONG time for the missiles to reload. So be patient. We have noticed that any of the RACS SAMs require exactly ONE missile per aircraft unless they are > 3km away. Anything farther away either gets spoofed or (more likely) tracks into the ground. Other SAMs seem to be more likely to be spoofed. The SA-6 is a shining exception. They also tend to require exactly 1 missile :)

Personally, I would like to see less of the MIG-21/Su-24 threat since their missiles are woefully over-powered. Whatever is happening, it simply doesn't work correctly and their missile loadout should be tweaked with a more practical AA loadout (aka one that can actually be spoofed in-game).

I would also like to see more Su-25 / L-39 patrols as they have spoofable AA missiles, but also pose a really challenging CAS threat! The Su-25 is really difficult to shoot down and so when you do it is really gratifying :)

I'm really not sure why the AN-2 patrols are present. They don't appear to do anything and simply fly around. As long as one of those is present, we usually let them stay because they are unarmed and other AA threats usually won't spawn until we do shoot them down.

OK. Now for an observation. We have noticed that for whatever reason the aircraft patrols will sometimes "home" to a previously captured city point instead of the current city point. I'm not sure what is happening, but the patrols will stop being a problem when it does happen and you can assault the towns without worrying about an airborne threat. It usually takes 3-4 ? towns to be captured before this happens. I wonder if it has something to do with the grey circle update bug? An example - the town in the NW corner of Duala is usually the last town we worry about aircraft threats. Once you start moving S on the map the aircraft stop following the towns. The exception is the helicopter patrol of 3 Mi-24's that roam the countryside. Those seem to not have the bug. It is usually the airplanes (that we have noticed) that will patrol the previous town.

[eggbeast 3673]

great advice mate - i would concur with all of it. I think i can manage to script edit the Mig21's and Su24's at spawn point to reduce their AA missiles.

I will also reduce their prevalence in the selection arrays.

the sticking of choppers at a point is just lazy scripting - each patrol respawn calls the flightpath script and this chooses 3 random points from an array of 11 towns. if it happens to randomly select say town 4 3 times (low odds but it happens) then the choppers stick there. there are a lot of ways of sorting this out - will edit!

I'm also going to try and bring back the scalable plane levels

we played lingor last night and our poor pilot BigRik was shellshocked by the end of his watch lol. every time he went for a beer or bathroom break we got trounced.

this is because the mission had started with the enemy air respawn time at lowest setting (it's randomly set at start of mission), so they came in huge neverending waves....

normally this doesn't happen so bad.

still it was a good example of how the lovely SAM's from RACS combine with the pilot class being useful IN A TEAM.

yeah i'll take alook at this as i can see how if you don't have a quality team in theatre you're gonna suffer real bad...

the spoofing comments are spot on - the RACs mig21/su24 don't work properly.

i even gave us a mig21 in lingor to see if we could use it to counter theirs but NO! it's just as bad...

[hcpookie 3770]

Thanks for all the work you do Egg! Really appreciated and I can't tell you how much time me and my couple of friends have spent playing these missions :)

[vengeance1 50]

Question:

In EVO RACS V5 why does it spawn RAC's soldiers as enemies along with Russian?

[eggbeast 3673]

are the red brigade enemies or friendlies? wehave noticed the odd mash up fight going on in a city at start of battle... sometimes a BMP comes in and defends us lol. is it red brigade units?

[HazJ 1288]

I never noticed it before until tonight when they all started coming up the hill, they are both paratroopers but a good way to know who is who is by looking at there hats. The ones with red hats are enemy and the ones with green hats are friendlies :).

HAZ

[vengeance1 50]

No the ones I came across had Helmets and RACS patches on the arm they are shooting at us so not friendly's? Regardless how do I edit to stop RACS from being produced as enemies?

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

So I have a completely vanilla game (aside from BIS beta patch) and want to download this mission. It's a little unclear to me which is the latest version I can use.

[HazJ 1288]

No the ones I came across had Helmets and RACS patches on the arm they are shooting at us so not friendly's? Regardless how do I edit to stop RACS from being produced as enemies?

Look in the init.sqf.

So I have a completely vanilla game (aside from BIS beta patch) and want to download this mission. It's a little unclear to me which is the latest version I can use.

Lingor v5 can be downloaded here, the required mods are:

Copied from Egg's post on the first page of the thread:

All use RACS mod:

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/mods/@RACS_AIR.rar

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net...@RACS_LAND.rar

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net...@RACS_MAIN.rar

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/mods/@RACS_SEA.rar

Copied from Egg's post on the first page of the thread:

Lingor RACS (new!)

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net..._v5.lingor.pbo

Additional mods:

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net..._units_v13.rar

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net...Lingor1337.rar

and RACS above

(RUG_DSAI_RUS enabled)

HAZ

Edited June 12, 2012 by Dirty Haz

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

So there's no Evolution mission for ArmA 2 that is designed to be played vanilla? I've got a SSD and I don't like taking up unnecessary write cycles if I don't have to. That and I don't really care about mods. They tend to bloat the game and cause numerous bugs which would be otherwise avoided, although they do improve aspects of the game.

[HazJ 1288]

Oh, here.

[eggbeast 3673]

So there's no Evolution mission for ArmA 2 that is designed to be played vanilla? I've got a SSD and I don't like taking up unnecessary write cycles if I don't have to. That and I don't really care about mods. They tend to bloat the game and cause numerous bugs which would be otherwise avoided, although they do improve aspects of the game.

am planning to revise the taki andcherno vanilla at some point

[hcpookie 3770]

Egg,

I've been experimenting with some different configs in the missions for a bit of variety. So I have a (hopefully) quick question - can the group arrays in init.sqf be altered?

For example "EGG_EVO_east2" = 7 units. Can I alter "EGG_EVO_east2" to have more than 7 units?

Another question - which is the array used for the paratrooper reinforcements? Can that array be altered?

[eggbeast 3673]

yes - you can put any east units you like into that so long as they are enabled in the server.

look in the inits for my other missions and you can copy and paste different groups over.

paras

look in reinforce and makepara scripts

i think it uses an array referenced from the init. possibly ...east3 as this is usually the spetznaz troops in vanilla

again no problem altering this - that is why i made it this way so you can easily swap out units and vehicles without lots of searching in scripts.

what are you thinking of doing out of interest?

zombies?

lol

[hcpookie 3770]

LOL Zombies - made me chuckle :)

Two reasons really - first, the island units' camo patterns - I want to substitute the Tigeria and Panthera maps's units (with their jungle camo!) for the Chdkz insurgents. IMO The INS camo doesn't look as good for those maps.

The other reason is I'm considering adding some different OPFOR like Stagler's units for some situations. That more for the variety vs. "just" Taki troops. Could be interesting :)

[eggbeast 3673]

i think all the arrays you need are in the init and are called:

EGG_EVO_east1 = ["RU_Soldier_TL","RU_Soldier_SL","RU_Soldier_Medic","RU_Soldier","RU_Soldier2","RU_Soldier_AR","RU_Soldier_MG","RU_Soldier_AA","RU_Soldier_AT","RU_Soldier_LAT","RU_Soldier_HAT","RU_Soldier_GL","RU_Soldier_Sniper","RU_Soldier_SniperH","RU_Soldier_Spotter","RU_Soldier_Marksman"];

EGG_EVO_east2 = ["MVD_Soldier","MVD_Soldier_MG","MVD_Soldier_Marksman","MVD_Soldier_GL","MVD_Soldier_AT","MVD_Soldier_Sniper","MVD_Soldier_TL"];

EGG_EVO_east3 = ["RUS_Soldier_Sab","RUS_Soldier_GL","RUS_Soldier_Marksman","RUS_Commander","RUS_Soldier1","RUS_Soldier2","RUS_Soldier3","RUS_Soldier_TL"];

EGG_EVO_east4 = ["Ins_Lopotev","Ins_Commander","Ins_Bardak","Ins_Soldier_1","Ins_Soldier_2","Ins_Soldier_AA","Ins_Soldier_AT","Ins_Soldier_AR","Ins_Soldier_GL","Ins_Soldier_MG","Ins_Soldier_Medic","Ins_Soldier_CO","Ins_Soldier_Sab","Ins_Soldier_Sapper","Ins_Soldier_Sniper"];

EGG_EVO_east5 = ["Ins_Villager3","Ins_Woodlander3","Ins_Woodlander2","Ins_Worker2","Ins_Villager4","Ins_Woodlander1"];

the following are not used but i tend to keep them as they are for use if the mission is ported elsewhere

EGG_EVO_east6 =

EGG_EVO_east7 =

EGG_EVO_east8 =

EGG_EVO_east9 =

EGG_EVO_east10=

EGG_EVO_east11=

EGG_EVO_east12 =

lastly i did also make some different arrays for use in the side missions etc but not unit types except in the later (often RACS) versions of Evo

init marker is:

//hybrid arrays - used in modded missions scripts: side

cheers

p.s. am working on a VETERAN edition of evo at the moment for all the new dayZ players in our clan... it has random loot finds and not much kit to start with and is in chernarus

you can find the very early beta here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolution_veteran_v1.Chernarus.pbo

this version requires

aircraft

weapons

aircraft patch

gitsmod_patch2

from our download server

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/mods/

i'm going to make the friendlies as guerillas and have half finished the loot script

atm you get 3 ofevery weapon and mag in a box based on rank at base, but this will change

the vehicles are set up as low probability of presence

[kdjac 19]

Eggbeats do you have an unmodded cherno evo?

Have a large group playing and paying for a decent server and want to push them gently towards proper arma2 and not just zombies.

[eggbeast 3673]

sure

this should do

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolutionV32.Chernarus.pbo

or possibly this might be better

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolutionV33.Chernarus.pbo

the guide to the mission is here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/EvoBlueBriefing.pdf

the backpacks guide is here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITS_Evolution_Backpacks_Guide.pdf

takistan unmodded is here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolutionV14US.Takistan.pbo

good luck!

egg

[kdjac 19]

Cheers :)

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

sure

this should do

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolutionV32.Chernarus.pbo

or possibly this might be better

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolutionV33.Chernarus.pbo

the guide to the mission is here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/EvoBlueBriefing.pdf

the backpacks guide is here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITS_Evolution_Backpacks_Guide.pdf

takistan unmodded is here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/missions/GITSEvolutionV14US.Takistan.pbo

good luck!

egg

Thanks I needed those too. Are those the updated versions? I remember you said you were working on new unmodified Taki and Cherno missions.