Arma 3 Apex: Old Man Feedback

[rübe 127]

6 hours ago, Ex3B said:

CAR-95-1 with a suppressor

 

Same (just with an ERCO which is absolutely efficient for silent kills. A quick brrrt and all is fine; so much more reliable than a silenced pistol). Incredibly OP, given how silence kill/alarms work in this mission.

 

6 hours ago, Ex3B said:

Viper suit+Helmet

 

I think it's hilarious how you can show up with the whole Viper equipment to a Syndikat gig and they don't shoot you on sight. They most definitely should do so. Anything can happen with mixed equipment, until they properly recognize you. Many edge cases, I can see why they dropped this for Arma3 - hopefully not forever. A proper system, maybe with easily tweakable rules, could be splendid.

But yeah, Viper gear is super nice. I went for the NATO Stealth uniform + Helmet

Spoiler

found on a cache on a tiny island SE to the end boss island.

with regular NV goggles for the final act. And then I took a tank. The end.

 

6 hours ago, Ex3B said:

the Orca

 

ohhh. And I thought any of the armed vehicles (e.g. MSE-3 Marid, or a BTR-K) was already as OP as it gets. Not sure if that's a good thing, or some really heavy response forces should show up and rape your ass as soon as you operate such heavier equipment? Basically making it a pointless suicide mission. And not something that is so easily tricked like the jets that show up sometimes.

 

5 hours ago, Ex3B said:

a repair van... I think in Georgetown

 

Yes. It's mine now.

Spoiler

I think there's a scripted event the first time you show up there, driving down the road. Or that was one hell of a coincidence. A Syndikat mg-jeep came down there too, followed by a small Syndikat army. They murdered them all. And then even a Syndikat patrol showed up, as if that is their territory now. That was pretty cool. I just watched and maybe murdered one gendarme.

And if you then keep driving around the island in the NW part, you come across another lovely scene at the bridge next to a lake. The stopped convoy was lovely too. Hard to say how many such small events are in there all over the place. Plenty of larger regions I've basically never been in one and half play-troughs. Maybe also something to take away for another time: to make sure there are enough obligatory missions that cover all "regions" at least once. Well, maybe not. We already had the comparison to GTA, and there I always liked the world progression, with a tiny world that slowly opened up to you and became bigger and bigger, until the full map was unlocked.

 

Btw. should a service car/van be able to repair itself? E.g. a front window with some "speed holes"? Do you guys always steal two of them? Just in case?

 

3 hours ago, Variable said:

The diving mission ("recover intel") is bugged.

 

Sucks. This one each time worked well for me. But I also ran into the bug where you can't upload the virus for some reason (thanksfuly reverting a bit and trying again worked). But yes, some of this stuff is very buggy and tends to fall apart. The Syndikat "distraction" calls stopped working for me at some point all together. I got angry with them, so I called again to talk with the boss. He just sent beeper message as always. Rude. So I tried to click a location on the map, and I couldn't accept: no man available. Checked the logs. 0/10 available. Probably all dead because there was some stupid Syndikat gig every half hour. Good job Samjo.

Well, screw them anyways, especially in the end. See who laughs last. Shortly after that, my "smart phone" interface on the map also fell apart for some reason. I think that Miller jackass uploaded Virus to it, as a joke. Again, see who laughs last. Right, Miller?

 

Spoiler

I went with Miller anyways. Good ol' chap. Giving the antidote to Syndikat is out of the question since they stopped calling me or calling me back. Also the stupid boss would just swallow it for himself and then that's that. No. But giving it to the doctor, who I don't even like very much, is equally stupid. What's he gonna do? Give it to his five hobos? Good job. You see? Miller is the best. Miller has a personal analyst, a sexy secretary, and a fucking sub! And they're doing their best to synthesize more of it. Miller. What a lad.

 

But the last bit had me hell of confused. Where is the secret antidote? I never found it. So I said screw it, I just head over to Miller and murder him if necessary. But Miller was all like, hey you made it and you've got the antidote too! Miller. What a bro. Turns out some "regular medicine pills/package" I snatched, probably, were the antidote all along? Maybe? I look all over that research dome. So many objects with inventories. All empty. So confused.

So I checked the buildings nearby. One was very suspicious. I had a decorated room, visible from outside. Murdered another jerk in the corridor. Then there was a huge generators. Cables going upstairs. Neato. That lead me straight into an office. The officer was already murdered. Checked his stuff. Found yet(!) another, brand new key card. No duplicate. A fresh one. What do. Tried to check the computer, but it didn't work. So that had me confused too. What now? Nothing? Also where is the antidote? Ahhh. I should not have shot at the computer with my tank. Was that the problem? Or, ahh, wait. Was this just some kind of last chance room to upload the virus if not done so already? That's it, isn't it. Well, now I feel stupid. But only a little.

 

I also would wish that "taking a side" wouldn't just lead to a slightly different tale. It's kind of a tease. Here's what should have happened: force the player to make a decision half-way through, maybe a bit earlier even. Team Miller will offer NATO gear and fun in the sun. CTGR flavored extra dirty missions. Syndikat doesn't like you any longer. So better not show up. Doc/Civilians don't care. Or, you go with Syndikat to be real guerillo hero. Miller doesn't like that. No NATO toys for you. He might also wanna murder you next time he's around. Who knows. Also you get guerilla flavored missions with good old russian toys from last word war. Many fun. Not sure if a Doc/civilian route makes sense, why not. Maybe even go and join the IDAP, go out on medical emergency adventures and save many lives. Maybe not. The point is to make "taking a side" count for something. Don't just tease with it. And then let events unfold accordingly. Sure, sure, out of scope for Old man. And that's fine. But maybe for another time?

Anyways, ideas are cheap. And it's always good if something leaves you wanting for more, isn't it.

 

[Shift 10]

5 minutes ago, rübe said:

And not something that is so easily tricked like the jets that show up sometimes.

 

For me the Xian stopped showing up after i raided the nothern airfield on the big island, killed everyone there and left in a Xian, and a Neophron stopped showing up after i killed everything in an airfield on the north-east island and stole a Neophron from there. So now only the heli shows up for me. Gotta find where its base is i guess... Although not long before my savegame bugged i saw a heli far away in the sky frozen in one position with noticeable pitch and roll angles (so not hovering) and rotor not moving, and after that it stopped showing up too, but then my savegame bugged so couldnt really enjoy lack of enemy air support for long.

[Ex3B 266]

7 hours ago, rübe said:

ohhh. And I thought any of the armed vehicles (e.g. MSE-3 Marid, or a BTR-K) was already as OP as it gets. Not sure if that's a good thing, or some really heavy response forces should show up and rape your ass as soon as you operate such heavier equipment? Basically making it a pointless suicide mission. And not something that is so easily tricked like the jets that show up sometimes.

There's only 1 neophron, if you kill it, it won't show up any more. I killed it with a Tigris.

After that they send in a Xian. Kill that and it won't show up anymore

After that, its just Kajmans.

 

Even so, I just use the Orca (its armed in the Orca/killer whale black and white camo) to go from point A to point B, it doesn't attract more attention when flying around than a Xian does.

I haven't tried yet, but the Orca should be able to sling load picksup and SUVs, and take them back home.

[John Madoxx 0]

Hi, I need to know how to create a marker as the markers from old man, in 3D with text below and an image, is there a script or someting to do that?

Thanks for answering this.

[Iglooslowbutmlgpro 1]

Bug report 1: the characters at Dr Drábek’s hideout. Their voice lines make them sound like their talking over a radio when their right in front of you. Also one of them ( I think it’s Howard but it’s someone who wears a blue shirt and white pants) doesn’t even have a voice actor it’s just text to speech... I don’t think this is a bug I think it’s more of a mistake and they just never added the voice actor for this character.  

 

bug report 2: the doctor himself... so far I’ve done 3 play through’s of old man and every single time the doctor bugs out. It goes one of two ways: you walk up to him he doesn’t speak to you you give him the medicine and he still says nothing but the task updates the time he has before he runs out of supplies. The other way is the same as before but this time instead of updating the time until he runs out of meds gets stuck and he calls you and says he is running low on supplies and eventually runs out. 

[Dedmen 2716]

On 4/30/2020 at 5:48 PM, pierremgi said:

Despite an increasing long loading for resuming the mission.

You pile up stuff in your stash, and items laying around and stuff, so natually more data to save/load accumulates over time.
Did you restart from fresh after the hotfix? I assume so.
The save/load system is some 10+ years old, cannot really change much on it to make it better.

[Ex3B 266]

On 5/4/2020 at 4:18 AM, Shift said:

Although not long before my savegame bugged i saw a heli far away in the sky frozen in one position with noticeable pitch and roll angles (so not hovering) and rotor not moving, and after that it stopped showing up too, but then my savegame bugged so couldnt really enjoy lack of enemy air support for long.

I've encountered frozen flying units twice. Once was when I was shooting down the neophron, the second was a time a kajman was sent for me.

I *think* its related to the way you can enable dynamic simulation of stuff in the editor, where it stops simulating unless a player (or unit?) is nearby. In the case of the Kajman (and I think the Neoph as well, but I'm less sure) I had a save with a frozen kajman off in the distance. I was at the bridge connecting the two islands (I forget which one is balavu). I was on the southern end of the northern island, and the helo was near the southern end of the bridge, to the east... frozen. As I drove down the bridge (in an ifrit GMG or qillin) it unfroze and attacked. It seemed to unfreeze based on distance from me, so I think its related to distance from the player, and trying to make the game play smoother.

 

On 5/4/2020 at 4:08 AM, rübe said:

with regular NV goggles for the final act. And then I took a tank. The end.

...

ohhh. And I thought any of the armed vehicles (e.g. MSE-3 Marid, or a BTR-K) was already as OP as it gets.

...

I also would wish that "taking a side" wouldn't just lead to a slightly different tale. It's kind of a tease.

So I finally stopped messing around with endless syndicate assists, and cache hunting, and went to Tuvanaka to desroy the lab... went with Miller, because... why not, the doctor can't do anything with the cure except give it to maybe 5 people. Syndicate won't have the resources to make more of it, sure they could sell it to the highest bidder, who then makes more, but that just delays things.

 

But I have some questions: where did you get the tank? I just fley in with a Xian -actually got very close to a Tigris, which left me alone for some reason, but tried to light me up when I took off to leave, maybe I was just flying low enough on the way in. Xians I think are way more OPd than the Orca (could have rocket strafed the lab and been done). I heard about a tank, but just went in on foot with no explosives. Luckily they have a fuel truck in there, and anothe truck with an rpg-42... convenient.

In the end, the auto turrets don't seem like they would have been too much of a problem to get past anyway...

 

Samjo did tick off a list of my achievements when asking for the cure... I wonder, would this dialogue have changed if I went further with the syndicate missions (never did the car bomb stuff in this save)? 

Also, how does the ending change if you give the cure to the doctor or Samjo, even the NATO ending said the cure was slow to be synthesized (why?), but I can't imagine giving it to Samjo or the doctor gets the cure done any faster.

 

Lastly, can anyone post a summary of the other side quests... I heard about something with a body in the mangroves, a mysterios body quest, some smuggling with planes, robbing the gendarme... haven't done them.

 

Well, actually I got the robbing gendarme quest to show up with intel from vaglala, and somehow I completed the quest by robbing a house in georgetown using a map of caches and points of interest online... but I seem to be missing something in between that would have actually directed me to that house.

 

 

[rübe 127]

1 hour ago, Ex3B said:

where did you get the tank?

 

Spoiler

There is an "armored base" right next to a QRF base, roughly in the middle of the big bad island, maybe a bit more to the south. You can collect intel about the QRF base from back home, but I don't think you can get that for the "armored base", so you have to find it for yourself in person. It's not really much of a base either. It's a tank, and the crew waiting outside in front of a building to be murdered quickly, so you can snatch their tank. Way too easy. 😇

 

It's a classic setup of an empty tank and a race between you and the tank crew. I just wish this would have been set up a bit more intelligently. Don't have the crew standing out in the open just like that. That's ridiculous. Move them into the building. Put them to sleep, or have them sit at a table and play cards and drink schnaps a lot. Meanwhile some regular units are on duty outside, guarding the place. Something like that.

 

1 hour ago, Ex3B said:

but just went in on foot with no explosives

 

Spoiler

Don't forget to bring some explosives! I snatched a Speedboat HMG from the west CSAT harbor/base on the main island. Landed on the southern tip on the big bad island, just outside of the red circle marker. And proceeded on foot inwards, came across the armored base, snatched the tank, drove to the airfield, murdered everyone, then drove up to the lab, dismounted and went to plant some explosives I brought with me (I was looking for the antidote anyways - which I never found. Technically. Another, proper object could really have helped here. I'm still not sure if some regular medicine boxes were considered the antidote, or if that was simply implied by being there in the dome and destroying it. I was so confused...).

 

 

1 hour ago, Ex3B said:

In the end, the auto turrets don't seem like they would have been too much of a problem to get past anyway...

 

Spoiler

Ehh, don't be too sure about that. I've found some of them scattered around all over the island (again, no intel, unless you stumble on it). E.g. pointing right at that armored base, so if you were to do anything funny there, you probably were going to get slaughtered.

 

[rübe 127]

2 hours ago, Dedmen said:

You pile up stuff in your stash, and items laying around and stuff, so natually more data to save/load accumulates over time.

 

We all know it's really just all those duplicated radios. 😫😂

[Ex3B 266]

17 hours ago, rübe said:

Don't forget to bring some explosives! I snatched a Speedboat HMG from the west CSAT harbor/base on the main island. Landed on the southern tip on the big bad island, just outside of the red circle marker. And proceeded on foot inwards, came across the armored base, snatched the tank, drove to the airfield, murdered everyone, then drove up to the lab, dismounted and went to plant some explosives I brought with me (I was looking for the antidote anyways - which I never found. Technically. Another, proper object could really have helped here. I'm still not sure if some regular medicine boxes were considered the antidote, or if that was simply implied by being there in the dome and destroying it. I was so confused...).

...

Ehh, don't be too sure about that. I've found some of them scattered around all over the island (again, no intel, unless you stumble on it). E.g. pointing right at that armored base, so if you were to do anything funny there, you probably were going to get slaughtered.

#1) As I said, I forgot explosives and it wasn't a problem. There's conveniently a truck nearby with an RPG-42 and some rockets (HE and HEAT). Inside the dome is a fuel truck. Open one of the doors, stand outside the structure and aim in at the fuel truck... boom.

Now that I think about it... I wonder if a 20mm gmg could have taken it down. I was able to get at least one of those from a checkpoint. I could have flown in with a disassebled gmg, placed one backpack where I could see the dome, get the other, set up the GMG, and just unload on the dome from a distance.... or done it with multiple RPG/Vorona/titan rockets/missiles from a distance.

 

#2) As I understand it, you don't find the antidote... I don't remember the exact dialogue, but when I blew up the facility, Miller mentioned something baout me making a big distraction. As I understand it, he somehow gets the antidote out when you blow up the facility. I didn't do the doctor or L'ensemble endings, but

Spoiler

don't you need to kill Miller and his men to get the antidote?

 

#3) Maybe the autonomous weapons are a bigger problem than I realized, but the path I took in from the mountains (near the Tigris), to the facility (with the double high H barrier wall), I only noticed 1 (or was there a 2nd?) auto-HMG guarding the entrance.

Also that H barrier wall was annoying, near the back where the terrain is higher, its only about hip-height, but you still can't vault over it... so much for sneaking in the back (although I think you can sneak in through a warehouse).

If I had some grenades or a 40mm launcher, I could take them out withouth directly exposing myself, as soon as I see the tripod legs.

[Chris Young 3]

Hello all,

 

With the Simple Single Player Cheat Menu mod, it is possible to have access to the console in-game.

Does anyone knows whether we would be able to fix some task trigger problems with this ?

 

I am still stuck with the virus being impossible to upload to a PC, I was wondering if there was a command lien I could type to have this task validated and go to the next.

No way I'm restarting a 30h game with no certainty that it won't do the exact same again...

 

Cheers

Chris

 

[rübe 127]

On 5/5/2020 at 2:57 PM, Dedmen said:

The save/load system is some 10+ years old, cannot really change much on it to make it better.

 

I wonder why you guys went for a single mission format instead of a (recursive) mini-campaign. Care to share some thoughts on this?

[DJ EgO 0]

On 4/25/2020 at 10:23 AM, DJ EgO said:

Hello, my interaction with the characters in the Old Man mission has stopped working for me. I'm playing the full version of the script. I can't hand over the drugs to Dr. Drábek, nor can I hand over the plans stolen from the enemy base to Keystone. It does not offer me the possibility of a wheel and pressing the space bar at all 😞 Thank you for the advice.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Dobrý den, přestala mi fungovat interakce s postavami v misi Stařec (Old Man). Hraji plnou verzi scénáře. Nemohu předat léky doktoru Drábkovi a nemohu ani předat plány ukradené ze základny nepřátel Keystonovi. Vůbec mi to nenabízí možnost kolečka a stisku mezerníku 😞 Děkuji za radu. 

 

Hello, I have not received an answer to my question. So I started the game from the beginning. Interaction with characters now works. However, the aircraft mission does not work, exactly as described by the "Variable" user. Obtaining a dive device will not complete the task. The document interaction on the plane works, but it doesn't start a call with Keystone. Is any repair real? Please, I don't want to play the whole game from the beginning for the third time 😞

[Dedmen 2716]

On 5/8/2020 at 4:38 PM, rübe said:

I wonder why you guys went for a single mission format instead of a (recursive) mini-campaign. Care to share some thoughts on this?

(I wasn't involved in that, just guessing)

Harder to build up progress, and also doesn't give you the ability to just jump back and forth between different missions (I haven't played Old-Man yet, don't really know how it works )

And the save issues themselves wouldn't necessarily be fixed by that, you can just as well write a good single-mission.

[seacaptainjim 67]

Just tried to host a MP server and I get a crash to desktop:

 

a3\Missions_F_oldman\systems\UI\Sleeping\RSCTestControlTypes.inc is missing.

opened the expansions folder and navigated through to \sleeping and indeed RSCTestControlTypes.inc does not exist!

 

I've tried varifying my game files.

 

Do i need to redownload Apex? 🙁 Arma?☹️

 

 

[Dedmen 2716]

12 minutes ago, seacaptainjim said:

Just tried to host a MP server and I get a crash to desktop:

 

a3\Missions_F_oldman\systems\UI\Sleeping\RSCTestControlTypes.inc is missing.

Why does a MP server want a singleplayer mission only include?

[seacaptainjim 67]

1 minute ago, Dedmen said:

Why does a MP server want a singleplayer mission only include?

I'd love to know!

 

Just had a buddy check for the file too - he doesn't have it either

 

[Dedmen 2716]

Well my servers don't need it. I guess you have some mission file on the server that needs it

[seacaptainjim 67]

3 minutes ago, Dedmen said:

Well my servers don't need it. I guess you have some mission file on the server that needs it

 

....but it doesn't exist!

i think i know what the issue is! I was poking about in the oldman mission files to see how it works. I'll delete those copies and perhaps everything will be better!

[Dedmen 2716]

The pbo doesn't exist in the server files, because why would a MP server need a singleplayer only scenario.

[seacaptainjim 67]

12 minutes ago, seacaptainjim said:

i think i know what the issue is! 

 

It was the delinquent unpacked copies of the oldman mission... That'll teach me a lesson! Thanks @Dedmen for the nudge!

[rübe 127]

9 hours ago, Dedmen said:

I haven't played Old-Man yet, don't really know how it works

You what.

 

9 hours ago, Dedmen said:

Harder to build up progress, and also doesn't give you the ability to just jump back and forth between different missions

Well, that depends on how things then are further structured. You could have the very same mechanics in place. Just because it would be a campaign, doesn't mean it would have to work like the typical hub/select mission thingy. I was just thinking that progressing in such a campaign would allow for more robustness, since the whole thing would be setup again from scratch from time to time, only restoring the essential progress. Maybe the savegame issue wouldn't be fixed by this, but chances are you could reset a broken smart phone interface and hanging FSMs and what not, I don't know.

I'm also not trying to be a smartass here, just genuinely curious. I also had a quick look at the unpacked pbo, and from what I can tell all the individual pieces/locations have been prepared in their own missions so multiple people can work at those (and maybe also so that they can be tested individually?), and the main mission then imports and merges those as needed somehow. Pretty interesting. Again, I'm pretty curious what thoughts went into this, while building it. How to deal with arma's engine limitations, and how those things will be all fixed in enfusion. Such stuff. 🙂

[Dedmen 2716]

11 hours ago, rübe said:

You what.

Well not entirely true, I played a couple times. All of these times just killing myself after loading a savegame from someone else.

 

11 hours ago, rübe said:

Again, I'm pretty curious what thoughts went into this

Same, would be neat if we could get something like a interview with the creators, or a behind the scenes thing. looks at @Nillers

[Shift 10]

I wonder what virus upload mission you're talking about. For me, since i met miller, he only gave me a mission to inspect an abandoned CSAT sight, then he gave me the mission to go check out the harbor near the bridge on the south-eastern island, then from there he told me straight about the dome and also told me about the sunken plane, but since i got a mission to destroy the dome in the tasks list in the map, and since i've already visited that island before and knew where the dome was (and it wouldnt be hard to find anyway), i skipped going for the plane and just jumped into my Neophron, dropped a GBU on the dome and Miller invited me to the island, from which we evacuated on a submarine and game was finished. Never got to upload no virus anywhere...

[hneel 0]

I did the 'support attack' mission on Cerebu. But now it keeps coming with new such missions. Does it ever stop?

There are many other tasks I'd like to do, but these always have a very short time frame. 

What happens if I'd skip them?