MP Game Mode Support Feedback

[neokika 62]

Hi all,

Yesterday we've released a new MP Game Mode "Support" to the development branch of Arma 3.

"Support" is a new, helicopter-oriented MP mode based on Sector Control gameplay with a non-combat focus. Players are tasked with transporting their team's forces in and around the Area of Operation, whist providing logistical support by delivering supplies, executing medevac missions and responding to Close Air Support requests.

Based on a community-friendly, modular framework, 5 official TvT and co-op scenarios introduce a variety of locations and gameplay conditions, in which competing factions use different types of helicopter to fight for control of the battlefield.

Documentation on how to create missions with Support functionality will be posted soon, meanwhile, we have released the following scenarios:

• [PvP] Support Katalaki
  
• [PvP] Support Sofia
  
• [PvP] Support Pyrgos
  
• [COOP] Support Rodopoli
  
• [COOP] Support Stratis
  

Feel free to discuss it here.

For more information about how to switch to Development Branch, see http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149411-How-to-change-Arma-3-branches-between-STABLE-amp-DEVELOPMENT-versions-STEAM-client

Thank you and have fun flying!

[jcae2798 132]

Just wanted to stop by and say this was really fun. I plan to play a lot more in the coming days. Thanks for the new addition.

[jcae2798 132]

Does anyone know where we can find the current PBO for these missions to edit?

[the_demongod 31]

Does anyone know where we can find the current PBO for these missions to edit?

The missions might be in the encrypted .EBO files and cannot be opened. However, once we get the Documentation how how to create missions with Support Functionality we can make our own.

Hopefully one of the Devs will post a Steam Guide like Karel Moricky did for Zeus, explaining essentially how to copy the missions on your own.

[kremator 1065]

Played it yesterday and loved it. I like the new icon for troops needing transport.

[jcae2798 132]

Feedback, maybe it would be good, maybe not. Have AA troops shoot at the helix? I noticed there are no AA units. ALso sometimes i noticed troops don't always enter the hell. Sometimes i need to shift the hell around a bit to get them up and running towards it. It's like their stuck. If you go too high, then you only take a certain number and leave the rest behind which is fine. Not sure if having support CAS helix would be cool to, but maybe that can be done on custom missions in the community. Overall though i think it's great. Again thanks for this.

[Anachoretes 10]

1. Friendly squads ignoring helicopters. And game is not given any chance to understand how TO MAKE this properly. They calling for you, you landing before this squad and they just ignoring you, continuing the run(maybe, wrong helo, but no fk warnings about that). And what this transport mission means. What idiot would unmask an infantry platoon at a distance of 500 to object? Realy?

2. Performance of mission is too low, 40-60% of GPU is bottlenecked. It's very strange task to make fast landing with 20 fps.

3. Even with precision about 0.4 enemy MRAP can destroy 150kmh litllebird from the first shot.

4. My GhostHJawk guuners instead is a very stupid. They fire just somtime. I think it's a bad idea to make such missions based on your stupid AI. They don't even understand when to avoid landing helicopters, but it's just an areal trigger that start the behavior - "run or move away". They like a stupid animals, you can't just land on this sweet spot because they run over here and don't care. It's not realy immersive.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Anachoretes

[sgtpepper 11]

Yesterday I spent some time playing the support game mode on one of the official servers. It's a nice mode and I really enjoyed it!

But I noticed some Bugs/Issues:

• I was standing on solid ground while picking up a squad. Two AI kept running into the helicopter until it flipped (and exploded of course). I wasn't moving any controls so I'm pretty sure this was no error on my side.
  
• A friendly strider was standing on a uncaptured sector for some minutes and it was not marked as captured - at the same time no transport request to this sector was active. I scanned the area for hostile units but it was otherwise empty. This happened at a time were the other team had captured one or two sectors and we had none - we lost the points so fast that the round was over before we could anything at all.
  
• The PvP tends to get chaotic - every time you try to land a hostile helo shoots you down. So most of the time there are dogfights going on. During this session I experienced at least five collisions with another helicopter from the other team because they were attacking Harakiri style from a close distance. I think it would be a good thing to increase the respawn time if you crash in another helicopter. Or lock the CAS helicopters for some time. Reckless flying shouldn't be rewarded. I also think there should be less armed helicopters. This enforces the focus on transporting troops.
  
• There should be some kind of death cam since often I wasn't sure what happened - I just exploded.
  
• I find it frustrating if you try to medevac two guys and get shot down by a player - I can think of two improvements: a helo has a special sign on it during medevac and if this helo is shot down the attacking player looses points. Another possibility would be that the HQ launches a revenge air strike against a hostile sector/all helicopters/... if a helicopter is shot down during medevac.
  
• The rounds are lost fast, if you manage to capture some sectors the points of the other team go down so fast that most of the time it is impossible to turn the match. As soon you have taken the lead you just need to wait until enemy helicopters try to bring troops and shoot them down during the landing approach.
  
• I had to wait a few minutes until the last AI unit has boarded - often it worked good but not always.
  
• The AI should move away from the helicopter when it is getting out - some guys where standing so close that it was impossible to take off without pushing them away.
  
• Randomly occurring commands from the CO Pilot. I was flying along and suddenly the CO pilot said "check your fire". This happened every few minutes.
  
• The COOP mission has less slots that the PvP. Even some PvP missions have less than 8 slots. Is there a reason behind this?
  

As I said: I really like this mode so hopefully it is further improved (and stays on the official server).

[beaar 78]

The missions are good fun. Would like to see a template asap to allow easy porting to mods and other maps. :)

[ethrendil 11]

Documentation on how to create missions with Support functionality will be posted soon

Any update on this? I'd love to create my own version of this gamemode.

[zozo 104]

Any update on this? I'd love to create my own version of this gamemode.

End of this week, guys ;-)

[fabio_chavez 103]

"support" (aka bot taxi) contibutes nothing to the structural problems with MP and will not have any meaningfull or lasting impact on MP.

please introduce a proper server browser, server lobby, squad management and loadout management PLUS a proper official conventional PVP gamemode...

Edited November 20, 2014 by Fabio_Chavez

[zozo 104]

Guideline is there:

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/MP_Support_Guideline

An example mission will come the next week.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

"support" (aka bot taxi) contibutes nothing to the structural problems with MP and will not have any meaningfull or lasting impact on MP.

please introduce a proper server browser, server lobby, squad management and loadout management PLUS a proper official conventional PVP gamemode...

I think it is a great scenario for aspiring A3 helicopter pilots to get some practice, with consideration for precise landing spaces, infantry movement around the heli, some light CAS, and of course being fired at. The infantry don't grumble when you make a mistake. :)

Criticisms of MP Support:

• AI Accuracy - They are too accurate, especially the HMG vehicles. This is common in SP or small-medium scale MP. I suggest something like this, applied to spawned high-caliber-weapon units:

  _this setSkill ["aimingAccuracy",0.10];

  Regardless if its realistic or not, it's not good for gameplay to have players getting sniped out of cockpits of moving heli by a fast-moving MRAP at 600m.
  

• Other AI air traffic - I didn't see any. Would be nice to have some AI heli's working through their case switch FSMs completing their own support tasks.
  
• Felt repetitive - Requires some elaboration, and perhaps some more intricate support missions. (ie. vehicle broken down, fly engineer to the scene). (ie. minefield located, transport EOD to the scene). The medevac I felt was a good step in this direction.
  

[ethrendil 11]

Guideline is there:

https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/...port_Guideline

An example mission will come the next week.

Thank you for the excellent (and comprehensive) guide. It answers a lot of the questions I had when trying to setup the mission and I appreciate this kind of support for the community!

[fabio_chavez 103]

I think it is a great scenario for aspiring A3 helicopter pilots to get some practice

thats reasonable. i guess one cannot say that practice oppotunitys are a neglected feature in arma 3, unlike those other features :}

Edited November 23, 2014 by Fabio_Chavez

[ethrendil 11]

One aspect that doesn't seem to be addressed in the guide (or maybe I just can't find it) is the resupply boxes for Ai squads. Does any ammo box work to fulfill the resupply tasks? Are we supposed to sync ammo boxes to the base module to get them to work? I admit I haven't experimented much with this so it may be something simple.

[tvamvarg 0]

I'm not sure I get why the heli gets locked once you enter it? If your heli gets damaged so you have to do an emergency landing, maybe even on the airfield, but miss the helipad by a few meters, you cannot exit the chopper... Also, you can't play two people in the same chopper (of course you would like to be able to have a player gunner, copilot, crewmaster or whatever).

I just don't understand the point of this.

Otherwise I should add I think the mode is really cool and a great addition to the game!!

[ethrendil 11]

I'm not sure I get why the heli gets locked once you enter it? If your heli gets damaged so you have to do an emergency landing, maybe even on the airfield, but miss the helipad by a few meters, you cannot exit the chopper... Also, you can't play two people in the same chopper (of course you would like to be able to have a player gunner, copilot, crewmaster or whatever).

I just don't understand the point of this.

Otherwise I should add I think the mode is really cool and a great addition to the game!!

I agree with you, and while I understand that having the heli locked probably made it easier to create that kind of gameplay, I prefer being able to get out of my helo if I crash land.

When you create a support mission if you don't sync the helicopters or players to the base module and set the gameplay to have no respawns, then you can achieve what you are looking for. The tasks are still assigned and you can still run the mission (mostly) but you can also get out of the choppers and cap flags on foot. The only problem is I can't get the resupply tasks to work and you need a script to rearm/repair/refuel your chopper.

[Sterlingarcherz101 15]

"support" (aka bot taxi) contibutes nothing to the structural problems with MP and will not have any meaningfull or lasting impact on MP.

please introduce a proper server browser, server lobby, squad management and loadout management PLUS a proper official conventional PVP gamemode...

I think Fabio has pretty much laid out what bis objectives NEED to be. From now till marksman. If they can get to grips with that list for a start will improve the ground work of the game greatly. Then mess around with,missions like this no offense ment..

[warkonaut 133]

I'm not sure I get why the heli gets locked once you enter it? If your heli gets damaged so you have to do an emergency landing, maybe even on the airfield, but miss the helipad by a few meters, you cannot exit the chopper... Also, you can't play two people in the same chopper (of course you would like to be able to have a player gunner, copilot, crewmaster or whatever).

I just don't understand the point of this.

Otherwise I should add I think the mode is really cool and a great addition to the game!!

If your helicopter is damaged to the extent it cannot fly and you manage to land anywhere, the crew should automatically disembark when you land and you should get the instant respawn.

If you get locked in the helicopter that cannot fly it's a bug. We didn't experience this but I noticed that in rare occasions the canMove command returned true even if the helicopter was damaged the way it couldn't move and vice versa. Were you flying with the advanced flight model?

---------- Post added at 11:19 ---------- Previous post was at 09:39 ----------

One aspect that doesn't seem to be addressed in the guide (or maybe I just can't find it) is the resupply boxes for Ai squads. Does any ammo box work to fulfill the resupply tasks? Are we supposed to sync ammo boxes to the base module to get them to work? I admit I haven't experimented much with this so it may be something simple.

Any supply box will do it - you don't need to synchronize it. The completion distance is 100m and the cargo must be dropped carefully so it is not destroyed.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

If your helicopter is damaged to the extent it cannot fly and you manage to land anywhere, the crew should automatically disembark when you land and you should get the instant respawn.

If you get locked in the helicopter that cannot fly it's a bug. We didn't experience this but I noticed that in rare occasions the canMove command returned true even if the helicopter was damaged the way it couldn't move and vice versa. Were you flying with the advanced flight model?

---------- Post added at 11:19 ---------- Previous post was at 09:39 ----------

Any supply box will do it - you don't need to synchronize it. The completion distance is 100m and the cargo must be dropped carefully so it is not destroyed.

Could this be a fuel-related issue? I'll have a look to see if fuel == 0 would affect canMove

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

I think Fabio has pretty much laid out what bis objectives NEED to be. From now till marksman. If they can get to grips with that list for a start will improve the ground work of the game greatly. Then mess around with,missions like this no offense ment..

You do realise that the people required to complete those tasks and solve the perceived issues are going to be differently skilled compared to the mission designers who developed this mission framework right?

It is the equivalent of saying to a scenario maker on the Workshop "hey you're mission isn't important, go build some more vehicles because we need more content!"

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on that supporting documentation to see exactly how the various modules work and what can be shoe-horned into other scenarios.

[fabio_chavez 103]

oh, ah yes sorry i was completely unreasonable, your arguments make a lot of sense across the board needless to acknoledge them one by one!

forget what i said, leave everything as it is! :}

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

Tweaked: Accuracy of vehicle gunners was seriously lowered for Support MP

TY! Perhaps there is still a chance to do the Stratis one solo yet :)