[ALiVE, SP/COOP 1-20] Inshallah [Insurgency]

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

In preparation for the upcoming 3CB vehicles update, the mission now supports 20 player slots instead of 8. Players can now choose between two 8-man fire teams, 2 dedicated medic roles, and 2 dedicated pilot roles.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

BAM! Yesterday's series of 3CB updates have brought about some additions to the mission! Burnes Foxhound has been removed and replaced with a swath of incredible landrovers, including ambulances for players to use and for HC support, police vehicles parked near the civilian detention center, night gear crates and medical crates, 3CB vehicle resupply points and much more!

 

Updated and full change log in the first post.

 

A quick note on Steam Workshop. I will be bringing all of my missions over, however, I'm waiting for a platform and ALiVE update, and then some quick internal testing on ensuring the balancing is where I want it to be and that everything is working on 64-bit as it should.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Minor performance update, really unworthy of a change log entry. I was bored and felt like tinkering a bit. I also added an additional enemy group a bit closer to the main base for those who like to get into the action a little faster.

 

I noticed 64-bit has really amplified the issue with ambient vehicles exploding on mission start. This is fixed in ALiVE dev and will be live in their next release, which I expect soon.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Everyone, please update your ALiVE, which will get rid of the vehicles exploding on mission start, and eliminate some of the RHS rpt spam.

 

As soon as it goes live on Workshop, I'll add the new features to my missions (such as manned mortars and turrets), and continue to address some of the requests in my various threads in the process. 

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Update to ALiVE 1.3.0 standards. This includes manned mortars and turrets for CQB units. I've also edited the mission for performance and increased the rate of the Taliban proliferation speed.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Quick status report. I'm at the point where I'm feeling pretty good with the general layout and feature set here, so my intention is to bring my missions one by one to Workshop, as I put each through 5-10 hours of persistent dedicated server sessions, making sure the balancing is as tight as I want it.

 

I played this for about 90 minutes yesterday and it's looking good. The area furthest away from the Taliban Commander module, so the northern part of the map, is getting a little too barren too quickly, so tonight I'll likely push an update here with a few more groups up that way (the south looks great), and with a slight increase in Taliban recruitment as well.

 

Once I get 5-10 more hours of persistence online with it, assuming it's where I expect it to be, I'll push this to Steam and move onto the next mission.  

 

 

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Update. Additional Taliban groups have been added to the northern half of the map, insurgency proliferation speed has been ever-so-slightly increased, and performance has been slightly increased by reducing the profile spawn distance.

[Guest]

Can you give me a heads-up why this is failing?

23:56:14 Missing addons detected:
23:56:14   UK3CB_BAF_Vehicles_Coyote_Jackal
23:56:14   UK3CB_BAF_Units_Desert
23:56:14   UK3CB_BAF_Vehicles_Wildcat
23:56:14   UK3CB_BAF_Merlin

etc,

while they are loaded on the server?

23:55:53                                   3CB: BAF Weapons |     @3cb_baf_weapons |      false |             GAME DIR | da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 |  11fdd19c | /home/arma3server/serverfiles/mods/@3cb_baf_weapons
23:55:53                                  3CB: BAF Vehicles |    @3cb_baf_vehicles |      false |             GAME DIR | da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 |  11fdd19c | /home/arma3server/serverfiles/mods/@3cb_baf_vehicles
23:55:53                                     3CB: BAF Units |       @3cb_baf_units |      false |             GAME DIR | da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 |  11fdd19c | /home/arma3server/serverfiles/mods/@3cb_baf_units
23:55:53                                 3CB: BAF Equipment |   @3cb_baf_equipment |      false |             GAME DIR | da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709 |  11fdd19c | 

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

@JayS_NL Sorry you're having problems. It has to be because you are using bad/old versions of the 3CB mods. Do me a favor, and subscribe to Workshop for all the possible mods, and for 3CB Units, 3CB Vehicles, 3CB Weapons, and 3CB Equipment please use the Google Drive versions hosted directly by the 3CB team on the first page of their respective BI forums pages. 

 

Sites like Armaholic and especially Play with Six aren't guaranteed to be up to date so grab the official 3CB dev hosted downloads. Otherwise, make sure you're running 1.68 Arma stable (and not an older version and not dev branch) and it will work. I had this mission on my server the day before last without problems, and please for now only use the required mods until we can make sure the mission is working for you.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

So cool. I got two hours with this version on the server yesterday and things are looking nice. The northern part of the map still has some Taliban cells and the south at this point is a stronghold for them, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

 

I logged 16 kills, though I didn't encounter any installations (in debug, the south is stuffed with them, which is also good). I had to take out a landrover of civs about an hour in. I was near the central mosque and they were charging straight at me and wouldn't stop. Lol. I searched the vehicle and saw no explosives or anything so I guess that was a war crime but you can't be too careful.

 

I died twice, the second being as I tried to enter the stronghold area when I was promptly obliterated by a (newly featured) rooftop mortar. This is exactly what I was hoping for, with occupied areas being dangerous, which I hope will make players consider going in strategically (using recon; perhaps grabbing a UAV from the Arsenal, or going in through the mountains and taking the mortars out from a good vantage point, or maybe even doing an air assault before charging in, etc).

 

Anyway, this is all good.

 

I hope to get at least two more solid sessions in before assessing and pushing to Steam. The true balancing test generally comes at around the 5 hour mark. I did notice while playing that my friendlies didn't mark/reveal any installations on the map for me in this playthrough though, and I'm honestly not sure why. I'll investigate.

 

So all in all, we're looking good here. The real test is coming though. The Taliban have just established themselves so the next few hours will certainly shine a light on the balancing. But seeing as I've increased the playable slots, combat support respawn, and have continually given the player new tools, I want it to get pretty hard in some areas so the players have to think, and so far that seems to be happening in the central/south. Very nice. 

[Nicolas Pappalepore 1]

Hi !

 

Can you give me a heads-up why this is failing?

HV_Taliban_Static_M2 ?

I have reload Project OPFOR, but the problem persist.
But "Prophet" mission works well (and it is a great mission ! I realy love your job)
(Sorry for my english !)

[Guest]

On 23-3-2017 at 6:14 AM, HeroesandvillainsOS said:

@JayS_NL Sorry you're having problems. It has to be because you are using bad/old versions of the 3CB mods. Do me a favor, and subscribe to Workshop for all the possible mods, and for 3CB Units, 3CB Vehicles, 3CB Weapons, and 3CB Equipment please use the Google Drive versions hosted directly by the 3CB team on the first page of their respective BI forums pages. 

 

Sites like Armaholic and especially Play with Six aren't guaranteed to be up to date so grab the official 3CB dev hosted downloads. Otherwise, make sure you're running 1.68 Arma stable (and not an older version and not dev branch) and it will work. I had this mission on my server the day before last without problems, and please for now only use the required mods until we can make sure the mission is working for you.

 

I actually found out why. I used the Google Drive versions (because **** slow Armaholic downloads); LinuxGSM does not like capitals in modfolder and file names. So changed that: fixed!

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

5 hours ago, Nicolas Pappalepore said:

Hi !

 

Can you give me a heads-up why this is failing?

HV_Taliban_Static_M2 ?

I have reload Project OPFOR, but the problem persist.
But "Prophet" mission works well (and it is a great mission ! I realy love your job)
(Sorry for my english !)

Weird! They use the same mods! :(

 

I think it might be because your RHS isn't up to date, so I'd start with that. Though make sure all mods are the current version.

 

Remember, I only support the current version of stuff (which is why I highly recommend Steam Workshop and you should never use Play with Six), and also the current version of Arma 1.68 (and not older versions or dev branch).

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Ok so I'm now 4 hours in with a persistent save on this build and it's getting intense. I had another decent run, I killed 19 (my AI group had a bunch more), and took back one of the central villages from the Taliban.

 

They've established their insurgency at this point, and have set up a bunch of roadblocks and are beginning to ambush me with surprise hit attacks.

 

The northern part of the map still has some units sprinkled in (which is good), but the south is a Taliban clusterfuck. I'd say they've doubled in size.

 

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The atmosphere is especially dangerous now (which is again good). The next few hours will determine where I am with balancing. So I could see at the end just lowering amount of initial groups in the south, but this is also my opportunity to get creative.

 

For one, in about 4 more hours it will be night time (which I really need to see through before editing anything), and then I will (rightfully) have a big advantage so I can't rush to judgement here. Nighttime is our time to dominate these primitive fools! Also, I have Intel now on installations so I know where to go to start getting the edge back in my favor.

 

What I plan on doing tonight is taking a small team back into the mountains. I'll bring a mortar with me and rain hell down on one of their villages. Once I (hopefully lol) clear out the village, I will call in some CAS to support me as I ascend into the town itself and take the fight face to face.

 

If that fails (it could fail :) ), I will fly my own chopper in and destroy them from above, and I'll call in friendly nearby units to assist from the ground.

 

Its these kinds of decisions I want the players to have to make. The deeper you get, the more you'll have to think. What my job now is just making sure the mission itself is balanced for us to eventually win, which I have some ideas how I'll edit it in the event the next 4-6 hours keep seeing the insurgents growing. My job now is to stabilize their growth, then diminish it. If that can't be done, then and only then will I consider making balancing changes.

 

But I'm feeling good. Regardless of which way this goes, this is my best build of Inshallah to date! It's been a blast.

 

So all in all I'm feeling good, but the real test, and test of my skills just arrived so we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck! :)

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

7 hours ago, Nicolas Pappalepore said:

Hi !

 

Can you give me a heads-up why this is failing?

HV_Taliban_Static_M2 ?

I have reload Project OPFOR, but the problem persist.
But "Prophet" mission works well (and it is a great mission ! I realy love your job)
(Sorry for my english !)

Oh holy crap. I missed that earlier. Dude, you're using a really old version of my mission. I don't....I don't understand how that's possible. 

 

Months ago I removed the HV_Taliban requirement. That was a custom mod I made to use with Eric J's Taliban units and I removed both those as requirements forever and ever ago. I took a fine tooth comb through this mission and removed all of the HV_Taliban assets. 

 

Please delete my mission from you computer completely. Then download it again and you should be all set. If not, let me know.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Update. After about 6 persistent hours it became clear that the Taliban had grown too much in size. I've made some edits to slow the insurgency down further, and added some ambient Taliban vehicle spawns around objectives in the hope the AI will be smart enough to get in a drive them on their own so the mission is a little bit more dangerous. :)

 

Full changelog in the first post.

[Nicolas Pappalepore 1]

Yes the missions it's fix for me, I can play now, thx a lot ! She is realy cool ! But I lost my foxhound. :(

But, for the insurgency (alive task editor) who is the enemies ? I don't have Taliban on my list of opposants. And I have a proposition for this missions. Do you think a reviver mod can be great ? Some one look like in Dynamic Combat Ops (i don't have the name of this script/mods sorry), with a animation, repack soldier and give him a lot of order during yours death etc..

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

9 hours ago, Nicolas Pappalepore said:

Quote

Yes the missions it's fix for me, I can play now, thx a lot ! She is realy cool ! But I lost my foxhound. :(

 

Yeah it was a tough call, but considering 3CB will be bringing it into their mod (which I'll be including in my missions), and that the landrovers can have some decent cover if you pull up the protective netting, I couldn't justify the added dependency. I hear you though. It will be back. :)

Quote

Quote

But, for the insurgency (alive task editor) who is the enemies ? I don't have Taliban on my list of opposants.

 

Hmmm. They should be there. LOP_AM_OPF is the faction name and I've defined them for tasks in the C2ISTAR module. I'll double check but it should be working.

Quote

Quote

And I have a proposition for this missions. Do you think a reviver mod can be great ? Some one look like in Dynamic Combat Ops (i don't have the name of this script/mods sorry), with a animation, repack soldier and give him a lot of order during yours death etc..

 

I agree with you. In fact, I've talked with the DRO/DCO author about him releasing his revive as a standalone mod, which I'd love to incorporate into the mission, and he said once he worked out the kinks with it he would put it out as a mod.

 

I'll try asking him again. It's been a couple months since we spoke. No other revive out there works as good as his, and in fact, the others I've seen out there can break AI in crazy ways. So yeah, good call. I'll see how that standalone release is going for him.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Ugh. ^^^ Stupid site formatting. Yikes. :(

 

Anyway, I updated the mission again last night. I've been working on these insurgencies for over a year now, and am finally in the "final" stages. That means, balancing. Especially for long-term persistence (6+ hours of play), then a Steam Workshop release.

 

Right now I'm going through them all, and simplifying (as you'll see in this update), increasing performance wherever I can (which is a byproduct of the simplifying), and focusing hardcore on getting the balancing just right. 

 

The balancing part is the hardest part. And it takes forever to test changes and confirm how they're going. My ultimate goal is Steam Workshop releases for these, but they need to be as perfect as possible (Steam is a tough crowd!). I'm feeling good about everything, but updates may be frequent as I test, play, test play. So please be patient and I appreciate it that no one seems to object to these constant updates. So thanks for that. :)

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

3CB is on Steam now! :)

[danmannine 4]

Hello Hero I like the theme of your mission, feels very inmersive. I was playing this mission solo and used the generate task part of the alive thingy and set it to opfor, medium distance, set it to my player, and insurgent patrol and a task was created to the other side of the map near the other airfield (forgot the name of the village). Then I enter a helo and request a drop off near the assembly checkpoint. When starting my patrol there was already a frendly element whom engaged the enemies and the mission was completed without me firing a single shot.

 

How do I set the mission to only myself and my ai squad and whitout the intervention of the patrolling frendly ai? I must admit I am a noob in the use of the alive tablet and maybe I took too long to respond or something.

All I am asking is tips to get started with this mission and enter a patrol zone or the like, maybe there are no enemies and maybe they are. Please explain a little more how to setup a quick situation without the need to make endless patrols and use the persistence part of alive because its a nightmare to set at least for me.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Hi @danmannine I understand it's a total bummer when a requested mission gets completed without you having to do anything, but unfortunately, since nothing on the battlefield is fake and because there's a living and breathing war going on around you, that can happen from time to time and there's really nothing I can do about it.

 

Some tasks can't be completed 100% by AI (such as a hostage rescue) and would be safer for you to request, but others are definitely vulnerable to being completed on your behalf, especially when the mission is a kill order (such as kill the patrol).

 

Inshallah is designed with long-term persistence in mind. In insurgency missions like this, I don't request tasks very often, mainly because as time goes on and a few hours go by, there's always something to do (an installation that needs to be destroyed or Intel needs to collected from civilians (etc) ).

 

If you're only playing Inshallah an hour or two at a time and then starting over, you're definitely missing out on what makes ALiVE insurgencies so special.

 

Firstly, don't give up on the dedicated server thing. I'm pretty much as computer illiterate as anyone you know, and I was able to do it just fine. Here is a guide to get you started hosting a server on your own PC with the free community made TADST tool:

 

http://alivemod.com/wiki/index.php/ALiVE_Data

 

Though note, the guide was written before 64-bit Arma, so in TADST, you'd want to direct it to armaserver_x64.exe instead of armaserver.exe and I can always help you if you want (feel free to PM me).

 

Speaking of 64-bit, it's *possible* this mission will save and load just fine in SP now. I just haven't tested it myself. Feel free to give it a whirl if you want and let me know how it goes if you really want to try it (though you'll need to enable SP saving in the editor by opening the "ALiVE Required module and changing "disable SP saving" from yes to no).

 

But with all that said, if you're looking for a mode designed with quick hitting action, this is sadly not the mission for you. The idea here is you could patrol for 30 minutes, for example, and have nothing happen, but maybe then the next night you could be a constant fight. 

 

If you like the idea of Inshallah, but desire something more objective oriented and able to be played in short bursts, feel free to give Oasis of Marah a try. It uses automatic tasks and doesn't need to be saved and loaded to enjoy (though I'd still recommend it. It's just not 100% essential. It's basically just a random mission generator on Diyala Iraq). 

 

EDIT: If you're constantly short on time and want something fun you don't need a dedicated server for, try this. I tried his first version and it's very good:

 

 

[danmannine 4]

Hey hero many tanks for the reply! So the way I understand it, alive generates a patrol and everybody is free to engage them? as I say I am really a noob about this alive thing, I tend to play singleplayer only and the persistency thing just doesnt fit my purposes, maybe if there was a way to save the scenario not unlike Antistasi? Where it saves the overall progress of the mission? Anyway I will give a look at it later.

 

You totally got my attention on Oasis of Marah, I am already downloading the required mods :)

 

I have another question for you, in your mission description of Oasis of Marah, you say its very "demanding" and I like to know if is at least not as demanding as your scenario on Sangin, that one ran at the 20-15 fps mark on my system even when going outside of the FOB. I will try and see I guess.

 

What I am looking in terms of scenario is something akin to secops in arma 2, when you where dropped in the middle of an AO and given random task to complete, all in singleplayer because I like to save and leave the scenario at a moments notice because I must constantly attend to other mathers in my day to day.

 

Finally I will like if you could provide resources for optimizing my experience with Arma 3, as singleplayer scenarios does not run too good, even the official ones. For comparision I set the max view distance to 4000 and obj dist to 2000 because i like jets :) and the eye candy all in high as I heard that arma puts more strain in the cpu in medium settings, My system Specs are i5 4690 - 8 gb ram dual - nvidia 1070 and with these settings in the scenario Yet Another Arma Benchmark I average 28 - 27 fps (my guess is good enough).

 

I hope I would not be overwhelming you with all those questions, it is only that I recently found the time to play again arma and all seems new again :P many thanks in advance.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

@danmannine Yeah I totally understand what you're going for. When I first started playing Arma 3, my first true great experience was WLA by SaOk. As a SP'er myself, it captured something in my imagination. And I had chased finding another game mode like that for a long time until one day my buddy asked me to join his ALiVE server.

 

Even to this day, and that was several years ago, I remember what it was like to set foot onto Sangin for the first time. I'd never experienced anything that felt so "real" in a video game in my life. The open-endedness of ALiVE insurgencies really captivated me too. Unfortunately, playing online with other people isn't/wasn't something I can do often, so I chased other missions that could make me feel that way (because over time, WLA began having issues). Until one day I decided to finally just roll up my sleeves and start putting together missions for myself. These are the by-product of that.

 

ALiVE insurgencies save exactly how Antistasi does, with the caveat that you HAVE to have a dedicated server registered to ALiVE's War Room. Unfortunately, there is no other way around it. And I definitely understand if that's not for everyone.

 

Diyala will perform just about as well as Sangin does so I wouldn't get my hopes up too high. IMO these are two of the most demanding maps in the game. That said, I've updated both missions recently so performance should be better. But don't expect a night and day difference (though IMO you have a pretty good rig. If I was you I'd get at least another 8GB of RAM).

 

Long story short, although I play these missions alone, all of them (aside from The Contractor) are really designed for long term persistent play on a dedicated server.

 

If you're looking for strictly a SP experience in SP or LAN mode, with quick hitting randomized missions, unfortunately these really aren't going to provide you with that kind of experience. That's not really what I had in mind when I made them, and is out of the scope of what full map persistent ALiVE battles entail.

 

Dynamic Recon OPS or something similar may be more in your wheelhouse.

 

This mission is really amazing too:

 

 

[danmannine 4]

Hero Thanks again for the response. I finally put some time aside and decided to run a dedicated server on my machine haha... I will pm you for some help with setting the @aliveserver in the dedi as I think I am doing something wrong.

 

I tried your Oasis of Marah scenario and this is exactly the kind of mission I was looking! Amazing Work! It really immerses you, a bit hard mainly for the fps issues but thinking if I set correctly the dedi server on my machine I will get more frames.

 

And thanks again for the recomendations, I will try them later but i am fully commited to running Oasis of Marah and this scenario on a dedicated server :) I have other questions mainly for alive server but I hope we can discuss them in the pm i will send you.

 

Again thanks for all your help!

 

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