Advance & Secure gametype templates

[Rambo-16AAB 0]

Well, its been many many months of Hard work for our scripter, Armogeddon, but the Advance & Secure game type for Arma is finally ready for release.

The Maps have :-

Limited Vehicle respawns

Sequential capturable zones.

Capturable Spawn points

Multiple settings for Capture times

Multiple weather settings.

Adjustable view distance to suit your PC

Player numbers supported from 18 to over 80.

You can download the Mab Builders templates & instructions ( complete with a couple of sample missions ) from this link:-

http://16airassaultbrigade.org/site....emid=40

Here is the Survivors guide for those who have never played AAS type maps:-

AAS Maps in Arma.

Q. What is AAS ?

A. AAS stands for Advance & secure. Closest native game mode is Capture & Hold. The Difference is the objectives need to be completed in sequence.

Q. Whats is the purpose of this game type ?

A. AAS removes the randomness from Arma, giving a structure to the opposing teams battels. Insted of randomly picking a capture zone and heading off, and by chance finding the enemy, you are guarenteed a large conflict at one of the Capture zones, and from that point of contact the battle will continue through to the next capture zone and so on.

Q. I cant skip zones ?

A. No, zones can only be taken in sequence e.g. Blue must take Zone 1 then 2 then 3, Red would be Zone 3 then 2 then 1.

You can engage the enemy at any point to prevent their supplies or reinforcements reaching the front lines and no restriction is placed on movement (generally there is no invisable wall round the battle )

Q. How do you capture a zone.

A. Neutral zones are captured simply by remaining in the zone for the designated time. An enemy zone can be captured by a superior force within the zone and maintaining that force for the designated time. The Zones have 2 levels - The other zone and the Command Post, each are captured separately, outer zone first then the Command Post.

Q. Whats the deal with the vehicles ? dont they respawn

A. Yes they respawn, but the more importaint a vehicle is to the battle, the longer it will take to respawn - Take care of your tanks or choppers & get them repaired if there damaged .

Q. Wheres the AI ??

A AAS maps are ment for player v plaver, no AI to clutter things up.

Q. How do you win and whats the scoring system ?

A. You win by Capturing all the zones and holding the final zone for a set period of time There is no scoring system, your team will ether win the map or loose and the maps have no end trigger except for final victory.

Q. Can i respawn away from my main base ?

A. The captured zones do become spawn points for your team, but only if both the Outer zone & Command post are held. There is no spawn protection at captured zones, if your under constant fire at a captured zone and keep dying then fall back and spawn at an earlier zone.

[Tijai 1]

Wow at last

Many thanks guys

Let the games begin

[opteryx 1562]

Many thanks, maybe if server admins started to remove EVO and replace it with AAS I could go back into an enjoyable MP environment.

[Rambo-16AAB 0]

Well, our AAS server is now 24/7 so feal free to rop by any time.

[tomcat_ 0]

AAS, very nice game mod...takes me back to Joint Ops days...:)

Left my competitive days some time ago...now only coop...good to see Rambo you guys switched over to Arma...and from coop to competitive...:)

[Rambo-16AAB 0]

CoOp was never my cup of tea which is why you will raerly see me playing on our servers when coOp is running.

[.kju 3245]

sounds very interesting. i'll have a look.

you might wanna recommend it to the ECL for league play:

http://www.european-combat-league.com/

[Rambo-16AAB 0]

Im not a member at the ECl site, so if you want to pass it onto them, please feal free. If AAS was being played 16AAB would sign up.

[Tijai 1]

I must admit the first time I played Close combat I thought that would be great for competative play on a small level, maybe 8 v 8 or 12v12.

That makes it more accessable to the smaller ArmA squads for competetive play, which I'd imagine would be more popular at first.

Maybe a you should think about how a league or ladder could be structured with smaller maps like CC for 10v10 and the larger ones for 20v20 wars and so on and bill them as such.

I really hope this takes off and hope to see more servers running them.

GJ guys

[Rambo-16AAB 0]

The Close Combat size supports up to 18 players, but the layout make it playable even with 4 v 4 .

The infantry ones support up to 40.

[the unknown 0]

I like the idea I have seen this in other games before and it was fun to play, ill show it to my clan and see what those guys tink of it.

[dr_eyeball 16]

This is great work guys.

Enlarge screenshot

<span style='color:blue'>Attack & Defend markers</span>

I tried your Purgatory mission (based in Paraiso - see map above) and found the arrows and markers very misleading as far as knowing which sectors to defend and which sectors to attack, given that it seems to use a 2:g4:2 type flag capture sequence, with the g4 representing a group of 4 flags (and the 2 representing 2 normal sequential flags).

Have you considered using Project Reality mod's latests representation of what to attack/defend? It works really well over previous implementations.

It uses Yellow D and Red A markers to represent the CP's you must DEFEND and ATTACK, which obviously dynamically change throughout the match.

This is straight forward when flags are captured in order, having a single Defend marker and a single Attack marker.

But when you start capturing grouped flags, then the real benefit of using the D and A markers become apparent.

You could have:<ul>[*]1 defend, 4 attack markers

[*]1 defend, 3 attack markers

[*]2 defend, 2 attack markers

[*]3 defend, 1 attack markers

[*]4 defend, 1 attack markers, etc

It also emphasizes the need to defend.

Small note: I think the markers are way too big (marker text, flag regions), too thick/big (arrows) & too numerous (base perimeter).

[malick 0]

I hope at least some servers will implement this mission. Everyone is playing Evolution, which I don't really find enjoyable.

Good job !

Malick

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

@Dr Eyeball - good comments all.

re: other marker types and indicated 'where do I go now markers: the problem is that the map's engine doesn't care where you go next - it just enforces the 'truth-table' rules of what you are/are not allowed to capture.  All the marker logic is handled in the server along with timers etc., so the method used for showing who owns what, and therefore where you need to go next has to be able to display the information for both competitive sides.

With the size of markers, they just show what area is under challenge, and colour code accordingly - they are sizeable to whatever size you want in your maps, and can be elliptical or rectangular.

The idea of EXTRA markers to show where you need to attack/defend could be looked at I guess, using a client-side only script that reads through the current zone states, but the already-present markers are essential to the map-type as it's now evolved.  The order does NOT have to be enforced at all, nor does it have to go 1-2-3-4-5, therefore this is gonna be more than a little difficult and will also remove loads of the engine's flexibility.  This is why it's not been done already..

The AAS engine as-is can do cap'n'hold, domination, cap'n'hold+domination, and god knows how many other variations too. Multiple threads of capture-orders and other stuff, even prototypical 3-sided AAS too. You'd have to sacrifice much of the flexibility that currently exists in the engine to achieve those markers I think.

The markers being too numerous - well that Purgatory map was supposed to be a variation, a bit of fun really - not such a serious map as the others, hence AI in the green zones and the 'loose' green zones in the first place.

The arrow sizes are a matter of taste, they are just placed on map manually to help folks navigate.  They can be any size wanted, or absent.

A little thought over the zone-colouration and it's pretty simple to know who owns what and where you'll need to go already.

Am Open to further discussion on this topic though.

edit:

Any bugs should be reported here or on the 16AAB forum.

Known Bug: vehicle respawn - already have a new very reliable vehicle-respawn script to put into the next version 2.82 as the vehicle respawn at the moment can be a little flaky at times.

There will be an update once Queens Gambit arrives to take account of the new vehicles/characters and weapons.

I don't have a load of time for a week or two now to look at those moveable client-markers - but if anyone finds a simple way to implement without killing the flexibility or the engine then please do share your ideas.

p.p.s.

Is there a way to resize the text of the markers?

[dab_burns 0]

I had a little look at this earlier today and it definitly looks like fun. Although the capture times are quite long imo. maybe that will be a good thing i am yet to play with other people cos all the servers that use this were empty.

[Rambo-16AAB 0]

You can set the capture times at the mission start. Evening times are best for our server, just depends on who online.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

The time-to-capture timers are settable at map creators option. Each zone can have a different capture time set.

The times set on existing maps were put as they are to give folks time to counter-attack and defend. Works best when a group is working as a team though...

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

QUEENS GAMBIT

Multiplayer Advance And Secure maps for Queen's Gambit.

On Porto, uses the new addons and Porto Island.

The new QG bits are 'beta', however I played it this evening with a couple of guys and all seems to work as it should.

AAS_PlayMeQG.zip

38 Player 'Close Combat PORTO' map and

42 player 'Porto-1' map.

Have fun with them - and please feel free to host these and mirrors for download would be welcome!

Will be uploading to 16AAB server as soon as one of them is updated to QG, in the meantime please feel free to host this map yourselves, and if you need to rip the QG-specific stuff to update your own AAS map templates then go ahead - after test phase I'll update the whole lot of templates to a QG version.  Looks like it'll have to co-exist with the non-QG version anyway.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

Now another map has been added, and both maps have been tweaked a bit for playability and some rough-edge details have been polished up.

Both are v1.02 now - link in previous post is updated to new file.