[CAMP] Chesty Puller

[sle 0]

Bardosy, I just wanted to thank you for this campaign. I've played the whole thing and thoroughly enjoyed it, it's pure class.

The lack of voiceovers didn't matter to me, as they're usually pretty rubbish when people try and put them on, so the atmosphere was quite good as a result. Thanks again!

[Drumheller 19]

So Bardosy when is CP2 coming out? :)

[Bahger 11]

I'm loving this campaign. I go for military authenticity over cinematics and tactical gameplay over Rambo.

One thing that struck me as odd in the Force Recon mission:

In order to get past the IED in the village you have to detonate it with an M203 (which is why I think Bardosy gives you the M16 with grenade launcher at the start of the mission). This means you kill a bunch of civilians standing around the "car accident". The only alternative is to skirt the town, which you can do, but then you don't trigger the autosave, which is undesirable. Any theories?

[jasonnoguchi 11]

@Bahger, or you can simply drive through the site quickly. The IED somehow triggers only when you convoy goes past it. Obviously designed for story telling, not for killing.

By the way, the use of the term "FORCE RECON" as a verb in this mission isn't accurate. Force Recon is a noun used by the USMC referring to that small group of elite marines (still marines though) that usually run specops prior to an attack like what the force recon guys in red harvest do. It is not a verb referring to going through an area or scouting an area by force. Not a biggie anyways, just for the information of those mil fans out there.

[therev709 10]

man I really need to get on the ball and play through this campaign. Now that Jackal Hunt is out I think this will be my little vacation before my next project!

[Njayjay 10]

wtf is jackal hunt?

[therev709 10]

wtf is jackal hunt?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=94507

[Bahger 11]

Jason:

@Bahger, or you can simply drive through the site quickly. The IED somehow triggers only when you convoy goes past it. Obviously designed for story telling, not for killing.

I've been killed or lost men every time I've tried driving through that IED site. If only the civilians were coded to run away, as they are at other points in the same mission when you have to destroy the terrorist cell in the objective village, this aspect of the scenario would be as ingenious as the rest.

I have a lot of admiration for this mini-campaign, it's real graduate-level ArmA mission design and so much better than any official mission or campaign that I've ever played.

[jasonnoguchi 11]

@Bahger, weird indeed. I did the campaign twice and twice my MTVR + Humvee drove through the site without harm. Explosion happens about 2 seconds after first vehicle past.... weird...

[bardosy 158]

@Bahger: Not every civilian is terrorist, but not all of them is innocent. ;) In Chernorus there is a very complex nationality-problem. So not every civil is loyal to CDF and the yankees...

The IED is set up by those women (the young and the old). They pretend the accident and they are waiting for you. They have the detonator. If you kill them, you can pass. The men are innocent, don't hurt them!

[Potatomasher 0]

@Bahger: Not every civilian is terrorist, but not all of them is innocent. ;) In Chernorus there is a very complex nationality-problem. So not every civil is loyal to CDF and the yankees...

The IED is set up by those women (the young and the old). They pretend the accident and they are waiting for you. They have the detonator. If you kill them, you can pass. The men are innocent, don't hurt them!

Have you something against women ? Just kidding nvm :D

After the first try when me and my team was blown to pieces i parked my MTVR before village and disembarked with couple of team mates and wiped out everyone in the village and then proceeded. No one remembers couple of civilians. right ? (taken from US "field manual") ;)

[Bahger 11]

Hey Bardosy, I'm very glad you checked in here. I have to tell you, your campaign is just fantastic, by far the best experience I have had of any ArmA game I've played. I like the fact that a well-populated, tactically authentic mission forces me not to play ArmA 2 like a shooter but to maintain situational awareness and synchronise my squad's movements with those of the supporting units. As in real life, mission success and low casualties in the unit you command are much more important, and satisfying to accomplish, than personal kills, yet very few ArmA2 SP missions are sophisticated enough in their design and execution to promote this kind of simulation (vs shooter) gameplay.

IED discussion:

The only weakness, in my opinion, of that great IED idea in Force Recon is that you can circumvent the bomb by having the squad dismount and skirt the village on foot. It's easy to believe this to be the right way to proceed -- because it's what a real-life squad commander would do -- but you then miss the save trigger/briefing update and if you leave the truck behind there is no local source of satchel charges when you need them at the next but one objective. I've had to run all the way back to get the truck because I have never, ever found satchels anywhere near the power grid. Killing the women? Hmmm. I assumed the trigger guys would be safely hidden in the woods, not crouched on top of the device.

One of the many things that I just love about this campaign of yours is the women at the beginning of Force Recon who seem to be flirting with the Marine and who wave at the motorcyclist who rides by. Details like this, and the integration of civilians, wildlife, aircraft, vehicles and MEU assets is ArmA 2 mission design at its very best, kudos!

I am also a huge fan of a mission designer disabling player-saves in favor of well-placed autosaves in a soundly-designed mission. The experience of playing this campaign would be much inferior with a player-save option because you can trial-and-error your way through a mission that way rather than be forced to approach the missions as if your life, and those of your Marines, is at stake.

If ever you design another campaign, I will get you all the American voices you need and will script the dialogue for you in accurate U.S. military language. I did a lot of this when designing scenarios for "Steel Beasts".

You are pretty active in CMSF too, huh?

I have posted a link to "Chesty Puller" over at the SimHQ ArmA forum, where some rather serious grogs have played it and are digging it, including Magnum, the admin who runs all the ArmA 2 coop activity there. I told him that CP was not playable in coop; maybe he can find someone to convert it, if that's possible.

Thanks again for making ArmA 2 SP interesting for me again. I cannot stand the stock SP missions, I loathe the dopey official campaign and don't play "4 SpecOps against the world" scenarios. Tactical, authentically military missions requiring fire and maneuver, with a well-populated battlefield and realistic support are "it" for me in this sim but such scenarios are not easy to find. I might learn the Editor and do some myself but it will be a year or two before I get to your level.

[bardosy 158]

@Bahger: Thanks for this comment. As a mission designer, these comments inspirate me to work. ;)

I'm not a military in real life (I'm a software developer), so my missions cannot so close to the real military actions as you mentioned, but close enough from my reading experience (articles) and - of course - from movies. But I also don't like the 4 spec ops against the world style. The main problem is: OFP was designed for real infantry battles, but ArmA2 needs much more CPU and if I populated a battle like in OFP (300 vs 300), my PC could be cooked. (And worst: no one can play with my missions). So I (and of course other mission makers) have to "cheat" (using script to create and delete memebers of battles), but it's not too easy. And very hard to do it realistic. In this case, I really understand the missin designers who hate to do this and create official-like missions/campaigns with specops. But I love OFP and I try to create OFP-like missions.

IED:

This is an amazon terrorist cell :D leaded by that Tereshkova. And suicide bombers - acting as an innocent women - can do this. ;)

But OK, I learned the lesson - lot of guys had problem with this IED attack - I'll more carefuly in next time, when I set up an IED.

Steel Beasts was fantastic! I tried to edit mission for it (when it was new) but somehow I found it to hard. But I loved to play it.

Combat Mission series is similar to me as OFP/ArmA/ArmA2... always love it! CMSF is very different to editing (eg. no scripting) but also fun to play. And if I need good missions/campaigns, I have to create a few ;). Now I'm working a campaign for British module, but I'm very close to finish it. And when it's done, I'll (I hope) return to ArmA II again.

Yesterday I just played with Force Recon again (it was the first time when I played it on 1.05) and with this new patch, it was different. Somehow the AI was better and the mission was harder... (Or I just lost my experience...? :P )

P.S.: I didn't turn of your gamesave possibility. It was by some of your addons...

And you downloaded the v1.1 ? In it, the English was fixed by native speakers.

Edited January 28, 2010 by bardosy

[Tonci87 163]

How I solved the IED place

First let the Truck stop, then let everybody dismount from the Jeep. Get in as driver and drive trogh the IED Site pretty fast, IED explodes, problem solved.

By the Way, why didn´t you give the Enemys behind the Hoses a Waypoint to the Front of the House after the IED explodes, they are preatty easy to take out if they stay where they are

Did you try out ACE Bardosy? It improves the AI even more

[jasonnoguchi 11]

@Bardosy, if you want to see how REALLY DIFFICULT the Force Recon mission can get, try playing it with GL4! Jesus, those guys call in artillery on my position! :) In fact, we are calling the Chesty Puller campaign the perfect campaign to play with GL4 over at the GL4 thread. It really adds so much to the campaign.

[therev709 10]

@Bardosy, if you want to see how REALLY DIFFICULT the Force Recon mission can get, try playing it with GL4! Jesus, those guys call in artillery on my position! :) In fact, we are calling the Chesty Puller campaign the perfect campaign to play with GL4 over at the GL4 thread. It really adds so much to the campaign.

Gah I just started it this morning and forgot to turn on GL4!! Oh well, I'm only done with the first mission :)

[Bahger 11]

Bardosy, yes, Patch 1.05 is literally a "game changer". The AI seems much more capable of survival, you don't have to babysit them as much. They get wounded with various degrees of severity -- as does the player - rather than constantly killed outright, and this is much more realistic in a Marines vs militia confrontation with the US forces in full body armor. The medic healing system is now not hopelessly broken, which means that you can restore your squad to full strength after a vicious firefight if necessary...and if your medic has survived. All this amounts to much more fluent, satisfying gameplay, especially in missions or campaigns like yours that do not permit (nor should they, IMO) constant saving.

@jasonnoguchi, I have done a search for GL4 and found the download. Is it modular, i.e. can it be installed in such a way that it can be "switched off" returning the sim to its "vanilla" state?

Edited January 28, 2010 by Bahger

[jasonnoguchi 11]

@Bahger, well, you could make a shortcut that has GL4 activated and another shortcut without. You cannot turn it off ingame. You can however turn off specific features from the userconfig. It has almost every feature capable of being turned off from the userconfig which makes it extremely user friendly and customisable.

[soupdragon 10]

Jason What config settings do you use?

any chance you could post your configs?

Cheers

SD

[jasonnoguchi 11]

SD, basically, in order not to break mission triggers, I set reinforcement to off, advancing on rifles from 600m to 400m and in order not to get knocked out by my own flashbangs, I also set explosion FX off. That's all the setting I did. :)

[Njayjay 10]

I just did the part where you have to decide whether to help your CDF buddies or leave them in the shit. I decided to help them. In the next mission I decided to take the sniper assignment. Do these decisions affect the outcome of the game in any way, as in the BIS campaign?

[Tonci87 163]

I think they do, but I´m not sure. If you don´t help the CDF, you won´t be able to make the sniper Mission. i don´t know if the Enemy arti is supposed to strike on you at Steam Roller if you don´t blow em up as sniper. I didn´t notice them

[sgt gul 0]

guys i am stuck on the second mission, the recon on pavlovo. Ive eliminated everyone in the town, got past the car crash site. So when all the stuff was over, junior radiod about terrorist attack. But didnt get any reply, so now i am stuck in pavlovo. What to do next?

[Tonci87 163]

You have to find the Terrorist Leader, shes in a House at the North End

[sgt gul 0]

ahh really? how did i miss that? i never got any message about that. so i have to search the norht end of pavlovo for the girl in a house. thanks