Playtesting - SP Airborne Airfield Seizure

[apex_predator 0]

Here's a quick little single-player airfield seizure mission for playtesting. 128 BLUFOR + 2 Supercobra's Vs. 100 OPFOR in emplaced machine guns, vehicles, and armor.

Right CLick Here and Choose "Save Link As"

Mirrored at Armaholic

*Edit*

Some hints, tips, and clarifications.

Clarifications:

- The object is realism in mission design. I can only play so many "You and your 4 man recon team take on an armored division" or "you are a sniper deep behind enemy lines" missions before I feel like I'm watching Commando. Airfield seizures are the bread and butter missions of the 82nd Airborne Division and (to a lesser extent) the Ranger regiments.

- Airfield seizures happen fast (thus the mission brevity). When seizing a small airfield such as the one on Sahrani they happen faster. It is usually only a matter of minutes before the Airborne force has effective control of the field.

- In real life the air assets (usually A-10's, Apache's, and Kiowa's) prep the airfield just prior to the drop --not during. I made it simultaneous for both atmospheric reasons and for "plot" ones. The Cobra's add an immersive element of combined arms warfare, they also serve to explain why Sahrani troops aren't pouring out of the garrison.

- The player is not essential to the mission. 7 times out of 10 the BLUFOR AI will complete the mission without you. You will sustain much higher casualty rates if you do not fight effectively and use teamwork. I did it this way becasue I get bored with missions designed to inflict 80%/90% casualties. In real life 30% casualties would be horrendous losses. If you play the mission well you will absorb 30% casualties in your squad. The AI only squads' casualty rate will be higher. Also too many SP missions place all of the burden on the player so that he becomes the "more equal pig" of the team. I wanted the player to make a significant contribution but not be essential to the success of the mission.

- Obviously the parachute handling in ArmA is screwy. Nothing I can do about that. I could have used the C-17 from OFP but it was frankly pretty dated even in OFP and wasn't worth the headache so the mission starts just after aircraft exit.

Hints & Tips:

- Engage from the far side of the runway and the grass won't block your view.

- Move at the speed of your team. (This may be frustrating, but trust me, real Airborne ops are all about linking up in little groups and staying together until everyone is accounted for).

- Exercise muzzle and fire disicipline. There are 120+ friendly units on a flat open surface with little cover. Lateral firing will often bring a "Cease Fire!". Engage targets in your sector and watch for people running in front of your gun.

[nubbin77 0]

Sounds great. I can't wait to try it. I hope more of these types of missions are explored and produced.

[hellfish6 7]

I'll give it a go. It always amuses me that people hold up OFP/Arma as the Holy Grail or realistic combat simulations then make stupid, idiotic and unrealistic missions for it.

[apex_predator 0]

Hey thanks guys. Let me know if you encounter any problems with the mission, or if you have any suggestions.

[igor drukov 0]

Thank you for this very inspiring mission. This is IMHO the sort of mission the game was devised for (regardless of, hum, the package of official missions we have been delivered).

***SPOILER WARNING *** ***SPOILER WARNING *** ***SPOILER WARNING ***

Report:

I played on veteran settings on a P4 3.2 GHz/7600GT/3Gig RAM rig and experienced no noticeable fps drop.

Landed at the west end of the runway to be caught in one hell of a fight. Went prone, scanned horizon, asked for SITREP, identified, acquired and engaged targets to my SSW, ran for cover to a wall. By the time I got there, my mates had secured the first three objectives. OPFOR is now entrenched over the wall I'm walking along. I take a peak inside: a few infantries crawling for cover and two BMPs. I save here, and after a few Rambo tries, pull myself together and play as if I hadn't saved. I grab an AK and an RPG because those choppers don't seem too concerned with that BMP blocking our way: once again, it's us infantry grunts that'll have to do the job. After destroying the BMP, I carefully proceed inside the compound and take out the few remaining targets. The mission ends as it should, with a nice debriefing. Score: 8400, one star.

Maybe my only gripe is the insertion: I don't know much about how things go in real life, but being dropped right over the combat-zone seemed strange to me. Wouldn't the troops be dropped further away from the objective and first regroup at some Objective Rally Point?

***END OF SPOILER ***

This mission feels right to me: you know who you are, what you are a part from and why you are fighting, all of which are necessary conditions for optimised gameplay.

You are showing the way, man, at least to me. Thank you again.

[apex_predator 0]

@ Igor,

Thanks for the detailed report. I'm glad you liked the mission and that it worked well for you. I really appreciate you taking the time to play it through.

The mission is really all about immersion and feeling part of a team --hopefully-- instead of feeling like it all rests on your shoulders; as well as providing a nice realistic fight.

As far as the insertion goes, when Airborne troops do airfield seizure missions like this one (at least the Airborne troops that I have served with) we drop right over the airfield at low altitude. That's why the air assets come in and knock the crap out of emplacements until a few minutes/seconds before the drop. Basically the air units keep their heads down then you drop right on top of them and fight your way off of the DZ.

I have landed right on the runway several times (though you try to avoid that if you can by "slipping" the parachute, because you are descending at 10-20 feet per second and concrete hurts). But they drop you right on line with the airfield. Wind and altitude do their thing which causes a spread in forces but they put you right down the center line. Once you hit the DZ you link up with anyone around you --no matter who they are-- and fight to your assembly area --which is usually at the center of the airfield or runway. From the assembly area you wait for your platoon or company to gather strength and then you assault your main objective.

That was the vibe I was trying to emulate.

In real life, after capturing the airfield the units would proceed by foot or transport to the secondary objective after the follow on forces have landed at the captured airfield. I may expand the mission to include the assault on the town which is what would happen in an actual airfield seizure.

Again I really apreciate you taking the time to play the mission and comment on it.

[Yeb 0]

This mission is really impressive and that's exactly the mission type i was looking for and that's what arma campaign should be meant for: powerful mission (I am not sure of the translation ). I just noticed few script bug(arma issue i guess), the only problem i found is that mission is too short, maybe as you said, you could expand the mission including for example an assault on a town. Thanks for your mission and Happy new year (and sorry for my english)

(you can use this screenshot to illustrate your mission)

[apex_predator 0]

Thanks Yeb. I've decided to lengthen it out. The drive to Paraiso is a lot shorter than I assumed and I already have the mission there finished so I'll be linking them up in the next couple of days.

[k1ng 0]

this is a great mission.. enough said

[kingnl 0]

Great mission!

I really enjoyed playing it.

This is how the Arma campaign missions should have been (the scale of the mission).

Cant wait for your next version

[hellfish6 7]

I liked it a lot! Best SP mission I've played in Arma. I especially liked your Frago/Opord (I was an 11B for six years, I appreciate things like that )

[apex_predator 0]

Thanks for all of the feedback! The expanded version will be out in the next couple of days. I had some problems with my hosting provider so if you tried to download it and got an error, give another shot.

Hellfish, I'm particularly gratified that you liked it and maybe found a familiar feeling. I spent 7 1/2 years in: 2nd ID, Camp Casey ROK/4th (and 3rd) -325th AIR, 2nd Inf Bgde, 82nd Abn Div/ Aco 303rd Armor, 161 inf Bgde/ WAARNG Recruiting Command/82nd DISCOM (worst assignment ever). Got out in 2001.

I think you'll like the expanded mission.

[Clavicula_nox4817 0]

Downloading now and will play it when I can, sounds great though. Full Combat, Mass Tac!

*edit*

Awesome mission.

[8Ball596 0]

Well, I had a big long rant about how great this mission was, but my browser crashed before I sent it, so you'll get the short version.

Basically, this mission is the best one I've played including the campaign! I've had similar feelings as everyone else on this board about the whole 4 man team behind enemy lines thing, and this is just the thing I needed! Keep 'em coming apex, you're doing great!

(yes, I know I had alot of exclamation marks)

[70gunner 0]

Great mission, maybe a bit short but nice to see that proper missions can be made thanks.

[essemm 0]

Excellent mission. It was a bit frame-intensive for my old PC (AMD 2.3GHz and Radeon x800 pro), but it was playable and an enormous amount of fun. It really gave me that "all hell has broke loose" feeling. I managed to make it through only having to load once (but I was quite cautious).

*Very* good mission. I'd give it a 9/10.

[Adv 0]

Hi, I downloaded the mission and am looking forward to playing it. I have only one problem. The file is a rar in OFP you had to have a program to extract it but that was so many years ago i've forgotten what to do with an rar to make it playable.

Forums search for rar turned up nothing. Thanks for any help.

Adv

[big 0]

rar is a file compressed, use winrar or similar program to open it and then extract the content.

[hellfish6 7]

http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar362.exe

[Adv 0]

Thanks very much.

[Adv 0]

Great mission it really created alot of confusion on the runway just after landing. I didn't shoot very much for fear of hitting friendlys in that stage.

The Cobras added alot to the mission. It seems they where moving at a much more realistic speed then the default "Limited" produces. The limited speed setting still causes them to move too fast in some missions I've played around with. Did you use scripting for this? If so I'd love to know how ya did it.

Overall it was alot of fun and to me gave a sence of how confusing that kind of operation must be especailly at night. Great job.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Mate, I don't mean any offense here, this is just my opinion, but this mission still needs a ton of work. People who would give this 9/10 have no idea what they are talking about.

I'm talking things like:

- More intelligent enemy placement:

Having spotlights being manned out in the open really doesn't sound smart to me. Also, the enemy are meant to be defending, right? The enemy waypoints need some work, methinks, as even after we'd shafted the contingent defending the hangars, troops still ambled out of the barracks in ones and twos right into my squad's waiting arms.

- Radio messages.

Sure, you can titletext till the cows come home, and the hints were helpful and bugless, but for true immersion you'll need to put in radio messages. Custom sounds too, if you can get that far.

- Something special?

The whole operation just seemed lacklustre, take off your NODs and all you see is black... and seeing as the SLAgs don't have a total night-fighting capacity, how about working on getting the OPFOR to fire some flares around? Anything to break the routine.

- Give the mission a story.

I hope you're working on an intro and outro for this mission. Would make it at least 10x better.

- Better OPORD.

Enemy strengths? I don't remember seeing one word on disposition of forces, morale, etc. It was good, but if you know your HTML you should be able to come up with better than that.

Just for what you said about having the player being a better-than-average grunt, I scored ~9000 on Veteran mode.

[apex_predator 0]

Thanks for the tips Cameron.

-Spotlights & Enemy Placement-

The spotlights aren't manned or even operable, that's on purpose. If enemy ofpor are around a spotlight it's because there are gun emplacements. I'll admit that the enemy opfor might could use some tweaking. Though having them hunker down in place would not be realistic. When you get attacked you don't just wain in your barracks you go to a pre-assigned fighting position. That's what I was trying to emulate with their behavior.

-Radio & Sounds-

I had thought of doing radio and sounds on the expanded mission, but frankly radio text tends to get lost in the scroll (which hints and titletext do not) and I hate listening to to the same pre-recorded "radio messages" in other missions so unless I could make them dynamic (or semi-dynamic) I don't think I would include them.

-Something Special-

Well, no. Sorry. I might consider using flares on the OPFOR side, but since --from what I have read-- the OPFOR AI would react the same whether or not they could "see" the BLUFOR it would only be window dressing. As for something to break up the monatany --as I stated from the outset the goal was realism in mission design, not entertainment. This is pretty close to how every airfield seizure I ever participated in felt.

-Story, Intro, Outro-

Likely not. I toyed with the idea of intro and outro's, but frankly I don't like them and wind up skipping them with the spacebar on the first playthrough. The only thing I might include is pre-jump, JMPI, and load-up, but --again-- people would skip them if they were cut scene's and it would be horribly boring to play through "Mock Door", "PLF's", and "JMPI" as the player.

Just to give you a guideline of what I think of as a great mission from a player's perspective: "Battlefield's" from OFP:R is still my favorite mission to play. What it lacked was realism. I play the game for realism and wanted to make a realistic mission with realistic goals and objectives. Like it or not, a real army would not send a 6 man team to destroy a hangar, rescue a pilot, blow up an armored platoon, assasinate the base commander with a sniper rifle, then egress via zodiacs while defending the beach from a division of counter-attacking infantry. It may make for a hell of a movie (or a lengthy mission), but it scores piss-poor in the realism department, which is the one I am primarily concerned with.

-Scoring-

Certainly you can score high and do almost all of the mission yourself. That's the nature of the game, not the mission. It's open-ended. My point was that had you decided to simply sit on the far end of the airfield eating an MRE and reading Hustler, your unit would have accomplished the mission objectives without you. The player is not essential. Likewise if you wish to not stay with your squad, ignore the pace of movement and engage every target you see, you can do that too and get a great score. I frankly have no idea what an average score would be on this mission as I have never checked my scores. I either accomplish the mission or not, all else is lace on the tablecloth.

I hope I am not coming off as defensive as I am sure that this sounds; I do truly appreciate your feedback and playing the mission through, but I think my goals in mission design may not be what you are searching for in mission play.

[hellfish6 7]

Mate, I don't mean any offense here, this is just my opinion, but this mission still needs a ton of work. People who would give this 9/10 have no idea what they are talking about.

I'm talking things like:

- More intelligent enemy placement:

Having spotlights being manned out in the open really doesn't sound smart to me. Also, the enemy are meant to be defending, right? The enemy waypoints need some work, methinks, as even after we'd shafted the contingent defending the hangars, troops still ambled out of the barracks in ones and twos right into my squad's waiting arms.

- Radio messages.

Sure, you can titletext till the cows come home, and the hints were helpful and bugless, but for true immersion you'll need to put in radio messages. Custom sounds too, if you can get that far.

- Something special?

The whole operation just seemed lacklustre, take off your NODs and all you see is black... and seeing as the SLAgs don't have a total night-fighting capacity, how about working on getting the OPFOR to fire some flares around? Anything to break the routine.

- Give the mission a story.

I hope you're working on an intro and outro for this mission. Would make it at least 10x better.

- Better OPORD.

Enemy strengths? I don't remember seeing one word on disposition of forces, morale, etc. It was good, but if you know your HTML you should be able to come up with better than that.

Just for what you said about having the player being a better-than-average grunt, I scored ~9000 on Veteran mode.

Respectfully, I disagree with 99% of what you said.

You're asking for a lot of unnecessary fluff - custom sounds, intros and outros - that add little to nothing to a mission compared to the effort required to put into them. As for taking the NODs off and it being all black. Duh. Thats one of the Army's huge advantages. In a real world scenario, I don't see the SLA popping off flares because 1) they're fighting for their lives, 2) contrary to popular belief, not many soldiers ever carry flares on their person or even at their guard post, and 3) popping a flare tells everyone where YOU are.

[Adv 0]

I think the problem is that realistic military operations are often not very entertaining. Arma offers an oppertuinity to make a realistic mission or an exciting one. The best missions combine the two.

In the this mission we have a realistic snippet of a fictional operation to seize an airfield. I marvel at these types of missions and in the end is what I play arma to find. Some players require more fireworks to please them and this is normal. The people playing this game all have thier own idea of what realistic is. This ranges from movies they've seen at one end to real life military experiance at the other extreme, and every point in between. I think this is why no one mission will probably ever completely please these two approches to mission making.

I prefer more realistic missions both single player and multiplay types. It all depends on what your looking to get out of the game and thats only my preferance. Speaking only of this mission in particular I'd even enjoy a longer build up to the actual drop even if its "boring" for the sake of realisim. I want to do the mundane things as strange as that sounds.