Combat Patrol

[solzenicyn 130]

Hello there!

 

Today we have released a new mission on development branch. It is a prototype of something that we are working on for a while and we would really like to hear your opinions about it. It is a Combat Patrol mission that currently takes place on Altis. Mission provides several different locations with a given objective to secure. It aims to deliver a team play experience of striking within the enemy territory and pulling out afterwards.

 

Later in development we wish to add more objective types along with several other options. At this point you can choose the adversary, daytime & weather, basic or reinforced garrison and reinforcements, all within the mission parameters.

 

We are also preparing devblog about this mission for you and we hope we will be able to release it next week.

 

We would like to invite you to give this mission a try and provide us with your valuable feedback in here. It will help us to shape up and polish the mission further during the development. Thank you very much!

[boss00521 27]

Cool!!! And thank you very much, BIS!

[R3vo 2654]

Have been playing Combat Patrol on one of the official servers today and I generally like the idea, although it kinda wish it would be a bit more different from what the community has already created  http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=23671

 

Nonetheless here's some feedback:

 

- Player characters should have their voice removed. Otherwise enemies are constantly called out.

- More loadouts, especially some with weapons from the Expansion/DLCs, fully optional of course

- Medics can revive way too quickly

 

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

Are there any intentions to have SP support?

[darkfurby1 18]

Is there a way to try the mission, without being on dev? 

[OMAC 254]

15 hours ago, HeroesandvillainsOS said:

Are there any intentions to have SP support?

 

Good question.  I assume that there is currently no way to play the mission in SP?  I haven't tried it myself.

[nark0t1k 16]

3 hours ago, darkfurby1 said:

Is there a way to try the mission, without being on dev? 

It's a default mission ^^

[Brisse 78]

I like it. This is exactly the sort of scenario vanilla Arma 3 needs. It's something that shows the game from it's best side while also mostly hiding it's more awkward side. Would be cool if there was a single player implementation as well.

[fn_Quiksilver 1636]

+1

 

Yes it might be similar to already-existing community content, but that isn't a bad thing.

 

Keep going in this direction guys!

[OlegAckbar 47]

Pretty interesting and fun scenario.

I only think players inventory must be persistent, so it would not reset after respawn.

[petek 62]

On 16/12/2016 at 1:25 PM, OMAC said:

 

Good question.  I assume that there is currently no way to play the mission in SP?  I haven't tried it myself.

I've had a mess about by saving as a single player scenario and opening in editor - kept getting killed;-). Does anyone know how to enable save game on this? I've enabled it in the settings in the editor and it's still greyed out. Also set saving to 1 in description.ext.

Thanks for any suggestions

[Tom_48_97 523]

Just a quick notification to mention that a sample of Combat Patrol scenario is available here.

 

Currently, the saves aren't available in Combat Patrol scenarios (deactivated on initialization).

[domokun 515]

I think that it's great that BI devs create mission frameworks like this. It not only shows that they understand and appreciate what it's like to design missions using their platform but it also recognises the community's contributions. Finally, it injects extra life into this maturing, dare I say, middle-aged platform.

What would now be really awesome, would be if someone could develop a unit replacement config that replaced vanilla units with CUP, RHS or IF3 units, i.e. try Combat Patrols but with 1940s, 1980s, 1990s, 2010s or modern units.

[Will_The_Gamer_PT 25]

Pretty good scenario, but just something I want to point out: I'm not sure if this is intended but when you die you can respawn in you dead body

[Variable 322]

With the risk of sounding like a broken record... Please allow to set respawn at zero in the UI.

[daza 36]

Had a play through with a friend today.

Some thoughts;
I presume BIS will be adding in new objectives besides the destroy ammo and fuel truck? seems to be the only objective. Perhaps its just one objective for testing purposes?

I would like to see variety like eg; 
>POW rescue. 

>Kill Target X

>Get Intel from X and it will show where you need to get more intel or where the a hostage is or compound where the primary objective is (Steal/destory)
>Lazer Mark a target for a Jet to sweep in and take out.
>Vehicle missions; either all players as a tank crew or maybe air vs ground missions to mix it up. I know they wanted to keep it simple compared to the mods that have dynamic missions, but these ideas could still be simple but just more variety. 

>Humvee Patrol between two of the cities near each other (this would widen the AO) the objective could be protect a couple of trucks in your convoy. This mission could have enemy Armed Technicals.

 

Even if there were only say 6 or 8 types of missions, having them at any AO will be what will make this re-playable.  I found this more fun than the Project Argo. 

Ambiance Civs:
It would be interesting if in the parameters you could choose to have Civs populate the town and mill about. Killing Civs could put a dent in your score or for every 2nd Civ killed (by your side) you loose a spawn ticket. This would have ambiance to a town and also watch your targets. Making it optional means slower computers wont bear the load and some players might not want this.

Tent redeploy:
The SL should be able to deploy the Tent more than once, sure you can go back to it and pack it up but that takes time. Perhaps each time (after the first time deployed) it uses up a Spawn ticket each time your deploy it, so you make sure you use it wisely. This could be a second tent, so when you die you can choose X tent positions or where you died. 

One Unit in the team, could have extra ammo:
Running out of ammo is easy to do, of course you can pickup enemy weapons OR another idea is have several random areas in a town where an ammo crates will be.

Exfil: Is too far away (not sure if distance is random min max) 
Bit of a long run to get to it. No enemy patrols were run into on the way there either. 
Would be nice if there were some civ vehicles in town, which may get damaged in firefights. But if you can use one, get to exfil without all that running. 

Other ideas: TvT variant
It might be worth seeing if a TvT version could work, leave the objectives in, the independant side could be the 3rd enemy presence as per usual (they patrol)l. And one side has to do the objective and the other has to protect the assets. 

 

Final thoughts:

 

Voice;

Another poster in this thread suggested removing Player Character voices. I think that this should be put in the Parameters, sometimes its very hard to get a bead on the enemy, yet the Ai knows where you are. The voices help even up the field with this. 

 

Squad AI;

Allow team to be Ai controlled if you want to, by default it could be Nobody but be able to select Ai, this would be ideal for 1 player or 2 players. It would be nice if Ai could revive players. 

This may be a bit off topic- but why hasn't Squad Radar come back? the Tactical Ping is great, but SR helps knowing which way your squad are facing at any given time. It was suppose to come back after tweaking, and that was months ago. 

 

It would be neat if there was a hardcore option in the parameters where your respawn tickets left carries over into the next mission you choose. And count how many missions completed. Perhaps the overall map should show markers of towns completed. (i don't think it does). 

 

[delta99 34]

Can the mission be provided somewhere for those of us that don't want to install all the samples?

 

Also, does this current version require something specific in the DEV branch or can we run it on stable?

[aronh17 26]

Played this mission for about four hours on my server today, and I have to say it's really fun and replayable even now in its fairly limited state. I'm really looking forward to it being expanded upon, so I wanted to leave some feedback on what I observed from the sessions today.

• Firstly I would greatly appreciate the introduction of non urban missions, maybe make a few custom base compositions that can be randomly spawned in if a non-urban area is selected.
• Friendly fire support should be added, but limited in uses and limited to the Squad Leader. This would help a lot with the advanced enemy reinforcements turned on.
• Although it seems like it does not attack much I'd prefer the big enemy UAV drone to not be spawned every mission, make it more dynamic. I do like the little drones though.
• There needs to be a default mission spawn, preferably near the starting location as spawning on your dead body is no good. Also needs options in parameters for spawning on allies or reserved to the spawn tent only.
• Someone had the idea of possibly rearming at the spawn tent, or you could have the option to call in an ammo drop instead. Either one would work.

 

That basically covers what I could think of right now. Once some more objectives, maps and units are supported this will be my go to mission. It's a good start at the moment, keep up the great work!

[mjolnir66 48]

Could do with some more fidelity in terms of enemy numbers. I imagine that with vanilla AI, the enemy numbers are fine, but if you have something like ASR_AI or Vcom running, the number of AI suddenly seems insane when they all come to fight you. So yeah, a few different options on enemy numbers could be good.

[froggyluv 2136]

 

 Not really fair to ask mission designers to calibrate a fair AI fight if your using mods that literally pull ALL of the AI to one area as backup. The calibration has to be on your end..

[mjolnir66 48]

7 minutes ago, froggyluv said:

 

 Not really fair to ask mission designers to calibrate a fair AI fight if your using mods that literally pull ALL of the AI to one area as backup. The calibration has to be on your end..

 

That's what I'm asking, for the parameters in the lobby to be more than "Standard" and "Reinforced". Just a few extra options to allow for extra difficulty options.

[bilu90 10]

15 hours ago, daza said:

Had a play through with a friend today.

Some thoughts;
I presume BIS will be adding in new objectives besides the destroy ammo and fuel truck? seems to be the only objective. Perhaps its just one objective for testing purposes?

I would like to see variety like eg; 
>POW rescue. 

>Kill Target X

>Get Intel from X and it will show where you need to get more intel or where the a hostage is or compound where the primary objective is (Steal/destory)
>Lazer Mark a target for a Jet to sweep in and take out.
>Vehicle missions; either all players as a tank crew or maybe air vs ground missions to mix it up. I know they wanted to keep it simple compared to the mods that have dynamic missions, but these ideas could still be simple but just more variety. 

>Humvee Patrol between two of the cities near each other (this would widen the AO) the objective could be protect a couple of trucks in your convoy. This mission could have enemy Armed Technicals.

 

Even if there were only say 6 or 8 types of missions, having them at any AO will be what will make this re-playable.  I found this more fun than the Project Argo. 

Ambiance Civs:
It would be interesting if in the parameters you could choose to have Civs populate the town and mill about. Killing Civs could put a dent in your score or for every 2nd Civ killed (by your side) you loose a spawn ticket. This would have ambiance to a town and also watch your targets. Making it optional means slower computers wont bear the load and some players might not want this.

Tent redeploy:
The SL should be able to deploy the Tent more than once, sure you can go back to it and pack it up but that takes time. Perhaps each time (after the first time deployed) it uses up a Spawn ticket each time your deploy it, so you make sure you use it wisely. This could be a second tent, so when you die you can choose X tent positions or where you died. 

One Unit in the team, could have extra ammo:
Running out of ammo is easy to do, of course you can pickup enemy weapons OR another idea is have several random areas in a town where an ammo crates will be.

Exfil:
Bit of a long run to get to it. No enemy patrols were run into on the way there either. 
Would be nice if there were some civ vehicles in town, which may get damaged in firefights. But if you can use one, get to exfil without all that running. 

 

 

Final thoughts:

 

Voice;

Another poster in this thread suggested removing Player Character voices. I think that this should be put in the Parameters, sometimes its very hard to get a bead on the enemy, yet the Ai knows where you are. The voices help even up the field with this. 

 

 

It would be neat if there was a hardcore option in the parameters where your respawn tickets left carries over into the next mission you choose. And count how many missions completed. Perhaps the overall map should show markers of towns completed. (i don't think it does). 

 

I'm OK with all you said and all this point have to be in the final version to make it a very good mission.
But first of all : the mission have to adpat the number of ennemies with the number of players. I've played with five others mates and there were a number of ennemies like we were 12 ...
But thank you BIS and this is on the good way to make it very great !

 

[bad benson 1733]

22 hours ago, daza said:

Had a play through with a friend today.

Some thoughts;

Exfil: Is too far away (not sure if distance is random min max) 
Bit of a long run to get to it. No enemy patrols were run into on the way there either. 
Would be nice if there were some civ vehicles in town, which may get damaged in firefights. But if you can use one, get to exfil without all that running. 
 

 

great post all around but i'm only quoting this part because i was going to post the exact same thing down to every detail. i know arma prides itself with realism and large maps and stuff but there is just no good reason to make people walk this far especially, if all they do is reach a trigger to end the mission. seems like a waste of precious life time.

 

also i was in a session with like 10 people and there was a continuous stutter every 2-4 seconds. since FPS overall seemed fine, i'm assuming it's caused by a script loop. it was fun in its accessibility but the stutter ruined it so i stopped playing after 10 minutes. impossible to aim.

 

also, i only jumped in so i'm not entirely sure how the mission works as a whole so i might be off here. but it seems to me the mission ends after each AO. if that is correct i wonder why that is.

 

i have made a similar mission prototype with a lot of replayability and one of the things that turned out to be one of the best parts about it, when i play tested it a lot with friends for some time, was that it was continuous. i don't really see why a mission this simple has to end everytime when you could just clean stuff up and make people move on to the next AO. it might make things more complex in terms of JIP but you could always make it optional. this type of almost survival mode mechanic also creates a simple incentive to stay with it until the end.

 

it would be cool to see how many AOs you can complete before respawn tickets (if there are any) run out. in my mission i also had ending stats screen (credit like end screen) showing how many kills, revives and completed objectives every player had. it's a nice little detail that made it more enjoyable than the good old quiet and at times confusing default ending screen. not trying to toot my own horn here, my mission was just a messy prototype, but i felt the concept is fairly similar and i thought i share what worked for us.

[Matth_ 68]

Hi ! I can't find the sample mission in Arma 3 samples, anyone have a clue ?

[R3vo 2654]

7 minutes ago, Matth_ said:

Hi ! I can't find the sample mission in Arma 3 samples, anyone have a clue ?

 

Select the tool dev branch.