RTS-4 ArmA Released

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

UPDATE:  RTS-IV version 1.11d released

-No Addons are required for RTS-IV

This consists of three missions, Sahrani South, Sahrani North, and Sahrani North-South.

I haven't added Mando Missiles 2.2 yet, because I'm still figuring out the best way to implement them.

DOWNLOAD RTS-4 v1.11d ArmA Here

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version 1.11c changelog:

ADDED:  New gameplay type options:  

Annihilation - destroy enemy base

Victory Point - capture strategic points and run the   enemy's victory point ticker to 0 to win

ADDED: New economy options -

Capacity Only - Build units based only on resource capacity

Credits - Relaxed resource requirements, but now you purchase units with credits (money)

Hybrid Economy - Requires Credits and Resource requirements to build vehicles

ADDED:  New sounds

ADDED:  Protection against suicide chopper attacks for refineries and forward bases

ADDED:  Protection for land vehicles against long-range AA attacks

FIXED:  Various bug-fixes and optimizations

version 1.00 changelog:

ADDED:  New ammo loadout menu.  Loadout any of your AI with a few clicks and create up to 5 custom loadouts which you can save.

ADDED:  A10

FIXED:  SU-34 GBU magazine name was changed in version 1.08.  I hope this fixes the crashing issue.

REMOVED:  SU34 AA version (because of scripting limitations with the SU34 GBU--I had to choose one or the other)

ADDED:  SU34 Anti-tank version (to counter A10)

ADDED:  Sahrani North map

UPDATED:  Several territory locations on the North-South and South versions needed updating and tweaking for fairness and because some repair pads were on hills.

Beta Changelogs:

FIXED - AI created locally on clients wasn't recognized globally.  Found out it's some bug with createUnit <array> and changed back to old createUnit so now the AI are still stupid, but twice as deadly!

FIXED - Bug where wrong vehicle would get deleted when capping a flag

FIXED - Updated ammo crates to have all weapons and refresh every 60 seconds.

FIXED - Players would lose command of their AI after dying since I forgot to make all squad leaders Colonel status.

ADDED - New Group list in the -Status Menu- so you can see all units plus vehicle and position in vehicles.

ADDED - Option to release units from your group with a button underneath the group list

ADDED - Soldier cam script based on Kegetys's Spectate script.  I'm still polishing this to work properly with the mission.  ATM it shows ALL units on your side.  I just want to be able to filter by player group as well.

ADDED - New Custom Squad menu--configure up to 4 custom squads as you like them and deploy them from the Barracks or a Forward Base with one click.  Note--they still take as long to make as if you were clicking them out one at a time.

Beta02E Changelog:

FIXED - EXIT button on build menu didn't work.

ADDED - Modified Kegetys's spectate cam so you can now filter out all units but your own group, and when you show all units on your side in the target list, your group shows up in yellow text.

ADDED - Fly in height feature allows you to tell your AI pilots to fly at a certain altitude.

ADDED - Paradrop script - now you or an AI pilot can deploy paratroopers anywhere with this new action added to the transport choppers

ADDED - Color coded custom squads - All custom squads you make are now deployed as team Red, Blue, Green, or Yellow.

ADDED - new Ranking points system.  If you or an AI in your squad capture territories, destroy enemy refineries, or complete other team-oriented tasks, you earn ranking points.  At the moment they aren't in effect, but I'll soon be tying AI limits and other items to the ranking points so you'll be rewarded as a team player.  I'll also make it so these points are remembered when you disconnect and reconnect to the server.

ADDED - Base building distance limiter - All base buildings must be created within 500 meters of the first building you create.  This is to prevent people from hiding base units all over creation.

Special thanks to Victor, one of the Bootcamp regulars who made this trailer for RTS-4 and the RTS-IV logo above.

RTS-IV FILEFRONT TRAILER LINK

For those unfamiliar with the RTS series, it's essentially a Real Time Strategy that I started with in Operation Flashpoint in late 2001.  The last OFP version was RTS-3 v1.52.

RTS-IV is PvP MP only--no single player or coop has been built in.  Basically, the AI would be too stupid to make the mission very enjoyable anyway.

For those familiar with the series, this one is a departure from the past.  No longer is the name of the game rush to the enemy base five minutes after the game starts.  Instead, the territories have much greater importance.  Money no longer exists-instead everything is based on resources and strategic territory decisions.

Building a Base and Commanding

Commanding in RTS-4 is much, much easier.  No longer does the commander have an overwhelming burden on his shoulders to build the base and baby-sit it for the entire game.  Instead, he can build the base and concentrate on motivating his squad leaders to take territories.  Since all vehicle build commands are handled "wirelessly", i.e. the squad leaders don't need to physically be at the base buildings to create units, the commander doesn't have to deal with a flood of build requests.

Territories:

At the moment there are 18 territories in this version.  Territories can be captured in any order.  Each territory provides one of three resources:  Oil, Ore and Energy.  You can only capture a territory using a Repair truck or an Ammo truck.

If you capture the territory with Repair Truck, a Level 1 Refinery is automatically built and your team gains use of that territory's resource.  The longer you hold the territory, the more a refinery will upgrade--to a max of level 4.  So at first you'll gain 1 unit of a resource, and an additional unit of that resource for each level.  Also, the refinery becomes more difficult to destroy for each level it gains.

If you capture the territory with an Ammo Truck, your team will not have use of that territory's resource, but you will gain a Level 1 Forward Base which will allow you to spawn and deploy vehicles from that territory.  As that base automatically upgrades over time, you'll have more units available there, and the building will become more difficult for the enemy to destroy.

The only way to take a territory from the other team is to destroy their forward base or refinery.  Then the territory goes neutral and your team can capture it with either a Repair or Ammo truck.

Strategically, it makes sense to only put forward bases where you need a foothold in enemy territory.  From there, you can create more supply trucks and send them out to other nearby territories for resource captures.

Resources

Oil and Ore are the primary resources needed to manufacture vehicles.  Energy is important for building speed.  The more energy your team has, the faster units will build.  Also, if your base buildings are destroyed, the more energy you have, the faster they'll repair.

You now can choose what sort of economy you want to play with:

    Resource Capacity Only:  Your can build anything you have the resource capacity to create

    Credit Economy:  You earn credits for capturing resources and earn more money the longer you keep them.  Those credits are used to buy vehicles.

    Hybrid Economy:  You must meet resource requirements and earn credits to build vehicles.

For example, if a unit costs 4 Ore, 5 Oil, and 1 energy and your team controls resources in that amount, then you can build that unit.  That cost of building the unit is not deducted from anything.  But if you lose a territory, then the resource loss is immediate and you cannot build that unit if your resource level falls below it.  Think of it more in terms of capacity.  Either your team has the resource capacity to build certain units, or it doesn't.

Building Vehicles

Action menus for each factory are no longer attached to the buildings.  Instead, all orders are handled from your -Status Menu-.  There's also a Help menu with information for beginners.  To create vehicles, you pull up your status menu.  This menu will show you which base buildings are online/offline.  Click on the base unit name and click the Inventory button.  Now you'll see all the available units at that factory.

There's no longer a need to "Upgrade" to advanced air, or advanced tanks, etc.  In order to use more advanced units, you need more resources.

How to Win

There are currently 3 ways to win.

1. Control all territories and your team wins immediately

2. If the enemy holds 3 territories or less, you can destroy their base to win.

3. Victory Point Control - If you choose this gametype, you must hold strategic points and run your opponent's victory point ticker to zero.

So in other words, during the mission, if the other team holds 4 or more territories, they will not lose if their base is destroyed.  Also, base buildings auto-repair so the commander no longer has to baby-sit them with the MCU.  The more energy resources you have, the faster they repair.  In other words, to cripple the enemy base, take away their energy territories and destroy a couple of base buildings to put them out of commission for a while.

Repair Pads

Each territory has a white Heli Pad which can rearm/refuel/repair all vehicles and even heal soldiers.  Only the team which controls the territory can use these pads.

UH60/Mi17 Tow script

The UH-60 and Mi17 can hitch and tow light vehicles and carry them across the island.  This is particularly important to facilitate the quick capture of remote territories, especially if you want to sneak one in the enemy's back door.

Ammo Crates

Any support truck - Fuel, Ammo, Repair - can drop ammo crates anywhere.

Join In Progress (JIP)

JIP works very well with only minor glitches caused by the ArmA engine itself.  Sometimes it doesn't exec all the code from the init.sqs file.

Known Issues

Some soldier cam bugs, mostly minor

Whew.  Well that covers the basics.  There's a help menu in the mission itself that can also help you out.  It's under the -Status Menu-.  I'll add to this if people have more questions.

[SeppSchrot 0]

Sounds very promising. Gonna upload and test it tonight.

[Rumsfield 1]

Well done as usual Karrillion! Though, I wonder is there any chance of releasing a coop version anytime in the future?

[BLSmith2112 0]

1. This needs to be front page news on every OFP/ArmA site out there.

2. Thanks for accrediting me to the trailer

Now to business:

Quote[/b] ]Posted By Rumsfield:

Well done as usual Karrillion! Though, I wonder is there any chance of releasing a coop version anytime in the future?

I believe he answered that.. kinda

Quote[/b] ]Posted By Karrillion:

RTS-IV is PvP MP only--no single player or coop has been built in. Basically, the AI would be too stupid to make the mission very enjoyable anyway.

The AI Are really dumb. They cannot shoot an aircraft out of the sky if their binary lives depended on it. So having the AI create a base from a random position and attack strategically --- and to make it fun and not insanely repetitive + the fact that after you play it 2 times, you know the AI's build/defence/attack habbits.. Crazyness.

Anyways, my hat is off Karr.

Hip! Hip!, Karray!

Edit: Zig... Or Mr.Zig... or Sir. Zig had some suggestions:

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Originally Posted by: Mr.Zig

I wrote down a bunch of ideas for rts4. check em out

In status-menu, make the resources on the left bigger (hard to see) and make it maybe only for your side, seeing the enemy's isn't that informative and just kinda clutters the area.

Markers should be just plain bigger.. Text is hard to read.

Be able to create groups at a time, and up the AI limit.

Make the que system like a real que system - able to put a bunch of units on a que so you can tend to other stuff.

An "AI-Helper" of sorts. AI-generals that will send out infantry with vehicles (trucks, uaz's etc), and tanks etc to friendly towns to set up defendable positions, or to enemy towns to attack them. Support AI could create refinery trucks that send out repair trucks to uncaptured towns, maybe with a truck full of soldiers to company him. All this Ai stuff will help take the load off players and keep the battlefield going, so that it wont just be a drag. I think the AI element would be the biggest game-play changer out of all of these.

Instead of choosing whether you want a town to be a refinery or a forward base, just make all captured towns forward bases.

A further idea, which might make it more like RWS im not sure, would be to make your primary base the first town you capture. This makes it so that the enemy wont just go looking for your base when they're bored, but just go for territories, ambush convoys etc.

Now I'm sure you need a break Karr , a well deserved one too. So I say, let everyone soak the awesomeness in, and then when your up to it, add the eye candy.

I myself suggest:

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*5t trucks act like 5t trucks.. not 500t trucks... A setVelocity in order? Perhaps BIS will fix instead hehe.

*Perhaps an ammo menu?

*Previous weapon loadout-saved to player to save them from going thru the troble of re-selecting all of their weapons.

*Save weapon load-outs if they leave the server for whatever reason.

*Dynamic Flags? The lesser amount of players, the lesser amount of flags - as to keep the action:bordism factor at a minimal and keep the action as high as possible? Currently, playing w/10 people could be fun but the battle is so stretched out that players hardly see eachother.

*Vehicle Locks

*Squad Creation and/or build ques. At least one or the other.

*While scripts initializing, could commanders click on-map to decide where they want to put their base? This would make "random base start" more random + you wouldn't have to drive to where you want the base everytime. You would be ready to go once the start. -- However I do realize that random/opposite side of map respawn is really a good idea too.

*Halo

*Voted Options? 1. Weather. 2. Time. 3. Start-up music after you die?

*Hitch manned vehicles?

*Hitched vehicles parashoot to the ground?

*Dynamic Soldier AI Limit? More players = lesser amount of AI? Although idk how JIP would work then.

Anyways, congrates karr on the hard work paid off. I hope this becomes extremely sucessful. It'd be nice to have a 30v30 with everyone knowing what their doing .. Whew for that help menu.

[SeppSchrot 0]

Hmm. I died and had no longer permission to access the build menu after respawn. :/

"Only East com is allowed to access this menu" or similar.

[BLSmith2112 0]

When you die, the buildings have to rebuild. Once the structures are up and running again you should be fine. Have you waited for this?

[SeppSchrot 0]

No, I mean, I couldn't access the truck at all. There was the

MVT menu item available as action but when I selected it, it gave me the above denying message.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

EDIT:  To get around that issue, simply build the entire base right away.  The script is supposed to reassign you as commander each time you die, but it can't since it never initialized a commander for the opposing team and is stuck looping, looking for a player on the other team to assign as their commander.  With AI enabled, that should fix it.

Decompile the mission first. To enable AI so you don't run into this issue, edit the description.ext file.  Change the disabledAI=1;

to

disabledAI=0;

BTW, Victor, the base only rebuilds if you drop from the server or JIP, not if you die.

@Rumsfeld:  The reason a coop/SP version wouldn't work well is because of the territories.  The AI won't destroy the buildings on the territories and so they'll never take them from you.  I'm sure with an addon or something it could be made possible, but ATM it isn't.  You'd probably need a new FSM module for the RTS AI to work properly as well.  I don't have the time for that.  

I made RTS-3 coop/SP enabled and I never once enjoyed playing against the AI.  There's nothing quite like PvP, IMHO.

@Vic:  Some of Zig's ideas are good, but it'd detract from the strategy to make very single town a forward base.  The entire idea is to make the team make a strategic decision--what's more important, a forward base to deploy units and respawn from, or the resources?    It's all about battlefield flow.

I suspect it might take people longer to adjust to the concept than a simple "take the territory" approach, but in the end, it makes for more realistic warfare.

--For the marker size--I can't increase the size of the text, only the marker itself, and that doesn't increase the text size, only the icon.

--building a squad of AI at once is a good idea

--having a queue is something I might consider, but the reason I didn't include one is to keep the base from getting cluttered with unused built vehicles and also to keep people from making a ton of Cobras/etc at once.

--Status menu text-if I make it too much larger, it might run off the side of the screen.  And it wouldn't make a difference if I removed the other team's info, because the text size tends to run out of room vertically.  Also, I think it's a good idea to track the enemy's resources so you'll know where their weak spots are.  It's a strategic resource.

--dynamic flags would be very hard to get to work right.  What if you start with 4 people and then 20 more join?  It would be difficult to have the mission adjust.

--I prefer the random areas starts to commanders choosing a location.  9 times out of 10 both teams would choose the airport or some "perfect" location, and it'd suck for gameplay.

[BLSmith2112 0]

Correcto on all points. This is a perfect example on how I don't think things through

[russin 0]

good job i am eager to try this out

ill toss it up on RoughNecks Server

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Well we had some great games tonight. Had up to 43 players in one game without a hitch and 41 in another one.

The only issues I see are related to netcode--apparently AI created on client machines are not seen very well by other clients' AI's. I've tested building them server-side but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

Also, you can't get a count of units in another player's group either, and if you try to build AI server-side and join them to a player's group it doesn't work. I'm pretty certain it worked in 1.02 with RWS, which operates on similar principles. I hope that gets sorted with 1.06.

[BraTTy 0]

I played some last night and this mission is awesome.

Blows BF2 or any other game outta the water.

You can make a squad and do work with them.This stuff is so kewl I can't wait to play later.

(will a engineer repair vehicles?) that would be kewl too.I skidded my chopper north and was stranded.Too much FUN!!!

Great job Karrillion !!!

[causticwindow911 0]

I really enjoyed what I played, although I have a few thoughts / suggestions.

1. Make the default lowest view distance 1000. 500 is really freaking short! It makes helicopters frustrating to fly.

2. Increase tank / air build times slightly. The mission seemed really armor oriented. I understand why, and I would only propose maybe a 15-20 second increase at most.

3. More build time for special infantry units. Why does an AT guy cost as much as a rifle troop? What would be the point of even getting a rifle troop to begin with?

4. The ability to delete units out of ones squad.

[-DirTyDeeDs--Ziggy- 0]

what? Karrillion has brought more fun to ArmA?

Who does this guy think he is? Bozo the Clown?

hehehehe thanks for your efforts, as always.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Thx Bratty, and yeah Ziggy--I'm Krusty the clown!

@causticwindow--

1 - you can change your view distance in the status menu at any time, up to a maximum of 3000. It's on the right side.

2 - I'll be tweaking values to balance things as it goes. I've already upped costs and times for some aircraft.

3 - Infantry are sort of a gray area. The AI tends to be so stupid sometimes, that they don't seem all that valuable to me. Sometimes the AT guys engage tanks--sometimes the AA soldiers decide to shoot down aircraft. I'll adjust them somewhat, but BIS needs to improve their brain capacity a touch more.

4 - I've thought of this one and I'll probably implement it at some point. I'll be designing a soldier-cam interface so you can watch any of your squad members from wherever you are, just like in RTS-3. I may add a button to delete them as well in case you get some idiot trying to swim the river or getting stuck in a bush. With the AI, you never know.

In addition, I'm working on a command mode for the commanders, but I'm still thinking it out. I want the commander to have the ability to create independent squads to guard territories, but I don't know if it'll work with the bug in the ArmA netcode as it is--units built on remote clients/server don't seem to be able to join a player's group, etc.

Anyway, thanks for the ideas!

[causticwindow911 0]

Oh, so view distance is client side? I always thought that the AI would only engage at the max value of a view distance. Could that be why the AI doesn't engage sometimes, since everyone has different view distances?

I could've sworn I tried to change my view distance multiple times, but it kept reverting back to 500m. I'll keep trying.

I played a little more today on your server with about 20 people - really fun. This is easily one of the best missions for ArmA right now, and it doesn't even require addons!

[Ozzzzzzy 0]

RTS is great, bis should pay you. bonus money or something

-- Off topic ---

what would be cool if there was some way to make a trigger at the edges of a map north - south -east and and west where when you got to them they kicked you out of the server and into another server .with the same vehicles and ai u have . would make 4 an unlimited battle field.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Ozzzzzy--I'll get right to re-coding ArmA for that.  ;P

@causticwindow911 - Make sure you click the button to change view distance.  Simply changing the combo box to the number won't do it--you have to confirm it with a button to the right of it.

And TBH, I don't know if AI are constricted by view distance or not.  I've had my squad AI shoot at stuff that was out of my view range plenty of times before.  And yes, it's client side.  Unfortunately, until 1.06 comes out, the haze in ArmA prevents a decent view even at 10K.

[russin 0]

it would be really cool to have the whole island to play seemed a little small for this style of play

[BraTTy 0]

Yes and of course make one or more of the small islands a point.

Would make mandatory use of the chopper "hitch" feature

[ck-claw 1]

Uploading to =22SAS= public server now!

[Penfolde 1]

hi-ya,

Could do with some installation help.

I've place it into "mpmission"folder but the game dose not apper in my listing.

Q. is this the right place?

Penfolde

[BLSmith2112 0]

So how many flags are you planning on implementing again Karr? Total of 16?

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

@penfold : Yes, it goes in your MPMissions folder.  If you're trying to play it by yourself, you need to start ArmA, click "Play" then "Multiplayer".  When the server list comes up, click new.  It should then be selectable from the mission list.  

@Victor--I'm looking over battle flow, etc.  I'm gonna put up two versions for testing tonight.  Both with 16-18 flags, one which uses most towns on the south island, and one which uses part of north and south with Corazol at the chokepoint.

Just noticed there are 54 players on the server playing it right now.  I might hop in and see how ArmA handles that many peeps with this mission, lol.

EDIT: BTW, I figured out why AI were acting funny. Apparently the createUnit Array command doesn't transmit groups or something globally. I switched back to the old style createUnit and voila, all AI are fully engaged and active! I use that term loosely, since AI are still idiots.

[Dwarden 1125]

v2b fights were awsome ...