RTS-4 ArmA Released

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

@ KaRRiLLioN:

After lots of games on RTS4 servers I must say I love it, but to add some more reality I wanna make some suggestions:

1.) The Truck race: After mission start it matters only who has the closest and best roads to the towns gets the best resource flow. There I like the crCTI approach of a 3rd force.

2.) Resource management: I like it, much better then in crCTI where just money matters. But the thing with 1 item only in queue makes it unhandy.

3.) Majority of airforce: ArmA as such as well as OFP didnt match air and AA very well. In RTS4 it means: Once you have a harrier, you can toast your enemys resource buildings, shilkas and AA soldiers can do almost nothing. Remove all air attack until more addons available and/or configs are more RL

4.) bug: I lost several times the commander ability - after building MCU/SLA and attempting to use it it says suddenly "ONLY EAST/WEST COmM...isa allowed to use...bla"

5.) can you move comm duty? If not pls introduce as in crCTI, current comm can give comm to any other. If comm leaves, next in line becomes comm.

Cheers and thx for the excellent map!

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

1) I thought of adding RACS to the towns, but TBH, it'd slow down the gameplay a lot.  Even though one team may get an early jump on towns, I've played plenty of games where the team with fewer towns at first comes back strong.  If you have team members who have strong logistics skills, you'll find yourself ahead.

2) The reason there is no queue is to prevent people from spamming a lot of vehicles.  You can still make your own custom queue if you create a custom squad.  In the latest versions, I've added armored units to the custom squads list.

3) In the latest versions, GBU planes and attack choppers are much more expensive and take longer to make.  With the new ammo menu you can carry more AA rockets with you as well and load your AI with more.  Now it's much harder to completely devastate a team with GBU's unless they really suck.  I'm still looking into Mando missiles, though.

4 & 5)  I'll be fixing the commander auto-reassign script at some point, and add in a way to change it.  But once the base is built, the commander isn't that important.

I'm inching closer to Beta3.  I may add in one more thing for Beta 3--the ability to do player upgrades with your rank points.  For example, the AI limit might start out as 10 units per player.  For a certain number of rank points you could upgrade that to 15 and so forth.  You could also purchase field repairs, etc.  Rank points are earned by capturing territories, destroying enemy refineries/forward bases, and by killing enemies.  I'll be figuring out some other ways to earn points as well, so team players will get the benefits.

Now I just need time to work on it.  

[breeze 0]

I agree 100% and the bombers are so devastating alot of our guys can dive bomb not even needing a sighter and we bomb 2 energy spots and then the base, game over.

Also the begining truck race would be alot better with the AI resistance. I think what I like about this most is the fact that it instills team work from the very begining.

What I like about RTS over CTI is first off the amount of players the lack of need for a commander for the entire game and the addition of some territories being more important than others. These elements really do it for me and make me want to run this map all the time the other thing I love!! RTS join in progress works it works without crashing to desktop and as much as I love CTI if Join in progress does not work properly we will never have it on our servers.

I do not like how Arma itself has rendered the Vulcan and Shilka useless against airplanes. either that or stingers should kill a plane their first shot. Ground troops should be motivated to take out air defences before getting airplanes enter an area by what it costs the team..

Right now as soon as we can make a plane everyone on the team can make one same time and send it to the airbase queing 20 at a time if they want because they all have their own que. The air is just to strong for the game to have balance

[colligpip 0]

As much as i love this mission ive kind of stopped playing it untill something is done about the air. It really is too hard to knock out jets in this game. If infantry aa shikas etc worked better it would be fantastic. Please I beg you for some anti air that works. Perhaps the patch 1.07 fixes this

[Dwarden 1125]

Kar i was thinking bit and i came over this minor request :

split air vehicles production to

Hangar = airplanes

Helipad + some house/tower = helicopters

this solve problem with airplanes surrounded by spawned helicopters etc

thx for considering

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Yeah, the AAA and AA suckage do hurt. The good thing is that in version 2R, you need a lot of oil and ore to build GBU planes, plus the time has increased a lot.

Last night, we had an air offensive against a southern forward base, and our GBU's got their asses kicked. Why? Because one guy sat next to an ammo crate and used the ammo menu to keep himself and his AI armed with plenty of AA rockets. The new ammo menu allows a player to rearm all of his units at once, or one at a time. You can also save up to 4 customs loadouts. So anyway, this guy and his group held off our offensive until his team destroyed one of our oil refineries to prevent us from launching more bombers.

From what I know, Mandobile is working on a fully MP compatible version of his scripts for Mando Missiles. I want to add in an AI version of them to see how powerful they are. I still want air to be viable, of course.

Another thing might work as well. Because I'm thinking of using rank points as upgrade points, perhaps players would have to use them to gain pilot status or something at some point. That would limit the number of people who could actually fly.

The other thing I've been thinking really hard about is whether to change one fundamental of the game and instead of having the ability to make unlimited units, to instead make it so you actually "earn" ore and oil, while energy is a static resource. So your resources would earn you more oil/ore as they upgraded.

That would mean players would have a limited amount of resources to "buy" vehicles. But it would also mean anyone who JIP'd would be screwed for a while, until they could afford something.

I dunno if I'll do it or not, but it's a serious consideration.

Thoughts on it are welcome.

[breeze 0]

I totally agree and it follows the RTS theme resources being hit is the big deal when a team loses aircraft their resources should be hit hard so they need to really think about where to place them to be most effective. be it tanks versus planes for money etc.

Can the damage setting for AA rockets be increased?

[Dwarden 1125]

hehe so finally someone realized that You built in great unlimited ammo cheat

i was scaring some guys with squad of 8 man shooting at once RPG at single tank

then AA missile at copter ... then RPG at another apc ...

was so scary they cried in hate

i think the squad instant rearm via menu should use some "cooldown" period like 300s before repeat

and at crate like 120s

p.s. about mando, i hope he adds this nice chaff/flares script to air units for countermeasures (limited amount ofc, reload-able like ammo)

[breeze 0]

Air should be viable but then we should cap the amount of AA devices made in a set time period so that certain areas can be protected properly If I put up 4 missles by my base a gbu shouldnt get even close to my base until ground forces have taken it out.

Air strikes would then be more surgical and precise and with the co-operation of ground troops and that will make it quite realistic

[colligpip 0]

Just an idea how about making it so that jets can only be spawned from the airbases. You could only get them if you sent an ammo truck there and made a forward base. Would make for some intense battel for airbase and limit use of airpower.

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

Quote[/b] ]For a certain number of rank points you could upgrade that to 15 and so forth.

Naa, makes it to complicated.

It is better to use an increasing time penalty for respawn after killed. Avoids suicide attacks where they waste a lot of material once they have a lot material. They crash plane after plane into your base but do not care for their life.

You would force more RL behavior if spawn time with each death doubles and after 15-30 min of not being killed it reduces the spawn penalty.

And please add more buildings as in CTI to be able to set up real fortifications at strategic points to get a kind of front war.

[vipermaul 246]

I am one of Mando's testers for the MP version of his Missile System.

Last week he was finished. However a freak storm out of no where hit his house and killed his computer and all communication devices that were on at the time. All he has left is his laptop which unfortunately doesn't run Armed Assault.

It is too early to tell if his hard drive was too severely damaged. But the good news is I have one of his final beta versions for MP.

So before I get off track let me answer some of the questions about the missile system. You have BIS missiles (which are stock) and you have Mando Missiles (which are custom). It has support for the mission writer to change the parameters of the Mando Missiles including the damage which was one question.

My focus was the chaff/flare system. Yes the Mando Missiles System has it. It has support to allow the mission writer to set for automatic deployment (recommended for Helos) and manual deployment with a key press (recommended for fixed-wing). The chaff/flare system has limited stores. So Ammo Trucks are required to reload these stores. Ammo trucks to reload Mando Missiles are completed. Reloading Chaff/Flares are almost done.

The automatic SAM sites are cool and working as well.

The Bells and Whistles were completed but thanks to the lighting storm Mandoble has to re-add them after he replaces his computer.

Sadly this means approximately 2-3 weeks delay. Unless someone donates a computer to him in Spain until he gets a replacement.

RTS rocks!! I'm looking forward to more enhancements!!

[Dwarden 1125]

VM thanks for update ...

sad what happened to Mando, i hope he recovers all data ...

and get insurance / warranty exchange of the stuff (hopefully used APC surgeprotector or so lol)

[vipermaul 246]

WOW. I'm talking to Mandoble right now 6 days after the freak storm. He says his "Lets cross fingers .... .... suddenly my PC woke up ...."

The hard drive seems erratic but is working.

The network card is fried. But a wireless card allows the computer to be operational somewhat. Although some pings are being rejected and so that is spotty. So I am recommending him backup his pride and joy and buy a network card after that and return to duty. LOL.

He has recovered all but two unsaved scripts. So we may not have to wait 2 to 3 weeks afterall. This is good news for RTS fans. But very weird.

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

I hope he gets it back up and running. I'm looking forward to testing his scripts in RTS.

[Jack-UK 0]

Seems like someones against his mando missile scripts for his pc to explode lol. Good to hear that he's recovered most of the data, this is a very exciting project for ArmA

And its combination with RTS will be excellent if it works

[ck-claw 1]

Uploaded latest version to our public server!

And we been on it all day!

Excellent fun!

Thank you!

Edit:- especially when i managed to cap Jack-UK bf2 style!

Lol driving Hmmvee then jumping to gunner slot!

[breeze 0]

Latest Version is R?

[Jack-UK 0]

Uploaded latest version to our public server!

And we been on it all day!

Excellent fun!

Thank you!  

Edit:- especially when i managed to cap Jack-UK bf2 style!

Lol driving Hmmvee then jumping to gunner slot!

Yeah hehehe,

Couldnt get my aim on ya in time before i got wasted by your onslaught of HMMVW bullets :O

Still enjoying this map

[ck-claw 1]

lol yeah first time i've really gave it a blast!

Am loving it alot!

We all knew someone was at the base Jack,but buggered if anyone could find ya?

[Jack-UK 0]

Monks and i flew in on a rapid capture mission, i got as far as blowing up ur structure but couldnt get the truck in place in time as i came under fire from you

I also didnt see the reworked ammo menu in that version i played... was we playing an older version? Or has it not been released yet... i thought we already had the version with the improved ammo menu...

[KaRRiLLioN 0]

Yep, latest version is Beta 2R.

Speaking of which, I'm thinking of upgrading RTS-IV to either Beta 3 status or version 1.0, since the core seems to be pretty solid at this point, and JIP doesn't have any major flaws.

I haven't had much free time to add anything else lately, so the next download I put up will probably be Beta 2R renamed to Beta 3 or version 1.0. So let me know if there's anything fatal in version R.

[ck-claw 1]

Tbh Karrilion i couldn't find anything wrong?

That is once it had been explained wtf i had to do!

Only thing i saw was the dodgy damaged helo textures,but thats nothing to do with your map!

Also never heard rest of the clan complain bout any bugs etc!

Evolution seems to have gone outta the window now,all they wanna do is play this,as no lag,runs better and a more open scenario!

[JR*BDA* 0]

Hey Karrillion,

We've been playing North South RTS a lot lately on the BDA server and we love it. However, there seems to be a greater advantage to having the Northern side of the Island at the moment.  We've also had a lot of discussion on how quickly one team can dominate the other after they have a GBU. From what I hear you are working on a missile mod that will eliminate some of that right now.

I was wondering if you have considered altering the refineries so their production increases continually instead of maxing out at 3 and increasing and spreading the resource costs of the vehicals.  This would give teams a better chance at fighting back when a resource is destroyed, since their production does not stop completely until all are destroyed. The increase in the cost of the vehicals should increase the struggle for dominance since teams will have to work harder at holding the resources they have long enough.  When one team gains an edge it would still leave the other team with a fighting chance since their fate doesn't lie in the hands of a single oil refinery.

I had considered suggesting make the vehicals costs points from the refineries and only allow the commander to make them but that would take the commander away from doing anything else and borders on becoming MFCTI.

I notice everytime I die the AI begin to ask where I am and the one that temporarily took the lead begins to tell all the AI to get back into formation... This causes the AI Spread eratically across the map.  Is it possible to stop the AI from changing their assigned locations after you die or is this something we have to control on our own?

Last but not least... The customized squad menu will not allow you to produce UAZs in customized squads until the Base reaches level 4. You have to manually produce them one at a time still.

[colligpip 0]

I notice everytime I die the AI begin to ask where I am and the one that temporarily took the lead begins to tell all the AI to get back into formation... This causes the AI Spread eratically across the map.  Is it possible to stop the AI from changing their assigned locations after you die or is this something we have to control on our own?

I also had been getting this. Its a bit annoying when you set up a defence postion you die and the AI all start going walkabout.

Still loving this mission I really hope that it starts overtaking Evolution on the servers.

Also would there be a way you could add a sort of ammo pack full of equpment explosives etc to the helis.

so you could fly off on spec ops missions with loads of extra satchel charges. I know you can add them to your men but it would be good if you could fill the black hawk up with extra goodies such as sniper rifles explosives etc so when behind enemy lines you could conduct sabotage missions and rearm at a spec op heli.