CO 54 Conflict - Infantry teamwork in a scaling coop

[_pingu 10]

After a fair bit of alpha testing, refinement, conversion to revive, and more refinement, here is a beta!

CO 54 Conflict (ACE)

Synopsis:

This is a mission that can be played equally as intensely with four people as with fifty. The more players in the server, the more the enemy throws at you.

This mission is quite dynamic, attacking the same town/objective will be different every time, all AI are created intelligently on the fly.

Artillery support is avaliable. This is done with physical artillery so mountains might get in the way. You need a radio pack to call in support.

Vehicles and aircraft are limited to their crew's slots. Weapons are also somewhat limited to weapons marines would realistically carry.

Revive on top of all other elements makes it very teamwork oriented, even for pub players. If you stray away from the group and go down, you have plenty of time rolling around in agony as your teammates get shot at trying to help you to think about how stupid your last move was.

So this is highly recommended for organized games, but is designed to work fine on pubs too. All the vehicles respawn and the bases are indestructible, so it shouldn't be too easy to ruin a game.

All together, this makes for the most intense firefights I've had on a coop. It definitely doesn't feel like you're just on a turkey shoot with some stupid bots, as some coops make me feel. When you open up, be ready to move or stand and fight the lot of them.

The mission has been designed to be relatively realistic, and yet fun. I say relatively realistic because a 3:1 engagement ratio is not always that fun.

Time of day and overall difficulty is configurable at setup. Saying anything else would be spoiling it! Please just give it a go. You can play this with just two people fine.

Download here: conflict_2-4a7

Briefing:

Four months ago a small, mineral rich Eastern European country was invaded by uniformed Russian forces. The Russians were quick to respond stating that this was not a calculated act of aggression. Instead they claim that that a rebel contingent has deserted and, led by extremists, have performed this invasion autonomously.

The UN have yet to react in any unified liberation, forcing the USA to take action. The Americans claim that they will liberate the country and reinstate it's rightful leaders.

Over the past few days air superiority has been gained and naval forces have been moved into position offshore. The time has come for the liberation. We are only sending a platoon of marines because we want to prove how manly marines are.

If the Russians want to stick to the guise that this was a militant break-away, they will be without air support or main battle tanks in their defense. Civilian casualties are to be minimized.

Gameplay notes:

This mission now requires ACE!

Only those with radio packs can call in artillery.

Every vehicle has spare ammo in it, every FOB has weapons and ammo.

Vehicles re-spawn after about 10 minutes if they can no longer drive. They won't re-spawn if simply left somewhere (feature).

Laser guided, SADARM and smoke salvos are only avaliable from the howitzers, which have a minimum range.

Wind and weather is synchronised between players, so sniper/spotter pairs can work together.

Credits:

Mikey for mk_fTaskHint

Deadfast for the very nice viewdistance setter

Norrin for the revive script

General Barron for his set pitch and bank function

Kronzky for the urban patrol script

Dr.E for the spawn dialog

Sorry if I forgot anyone, just let me know and I'll add you.

All feedback welcome, thanks.

Edited February 2, 2010 by _pingu

[dale0404 5]

Mirrored at SWDepot and Frontpage News:

COOP 54 Conflict

[l mandrake 9]

great idea... but you need to really increase the number of enemy troops when only 1 human player is playing - i killed 8 troops to conquer the first 2 towns, so it's no challenge at the mo. (The dynamic difficulty is still a great idea though) :)

[_pingu 10]

Okay, I will test and do that.

When I've been testing in the past, with two players there have been at least three squads of about 8 enemies, plus emplacements per town. There were no reinforcements even? You were playing it on normal/hard?

It's also important to note that it will let you move into the town and secure it, but it's likely there will be a counter attack you need to hold off. If you just move onto the next town immediately it will be overrun.

[l mandrake 9]

yeah playing on normal - nope no reinforcements, just a tiny bunker and a few soldiers in each town.

[gnarly_rider 0]

Pingu, see recent play testing feedback in GamingSA thread as well.

[gnarly_rider 0]

5 of us played this again last night, had a ball, got up to and started clearin Chernogorsk before we called it a night.

No problems with anything, EXCEPT precisely the same problem as last time, as soon as we cleared Pavlovo (no more than 10 seconds), an entire infantry squad literally spawed right on top of us (50m south of town).

Forunatley we all died in seconds, and simply respawned and moved onto next objective, but again, real immerison killer. Somehting obviously off with one of your spawn point markers/positions.

Is there any updated version of this? Would love to see a random start base location, rather than always asssaulting Kamenka at the start.

[Jackrum 10]

Any plans to update this with ACE2 Pingu?

[_pingu 10]

I've converted this to ACE2 and added enemy mortars, pilot slots and armored crew slots, revive, random starting objective and objective order and have changed the way it plays in general. Quite a bit of work has been done and it's quite different, I think it's much better now. Still retains the same concept and feel, though. There is also an additional objective now.

Will be testing this mission tomorrow, details are on the ausarma site here: http://ausarma.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=208

Should the test go well and not uncover anything horribly wrong I will be releasing another beta here.

Only thing I'm yet to fix is infantry possibly spawning too close to players, which shouldn't happen in theory anywhere unless the players are somewhere weird. I will fix it shortly, though. Just haven't gotten around to it.

[gnarly_rider 0]

I've converted this to ACE2 and added enemy mortars, pilot slots and armored crew slots, revive, random starting objective and objective order and have changed the way it plays in general. Quite a bit of work has been done and it's quite different, I think it's much better now. Still retains the same concept and feel, though. There is also an additional objective now.

Will be testing this mission tomorrow, details are on the ausarma site here: http://ausarma.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=208

Should the test go well and not uncover anything horribly wrong I will be releasing another beta here.

Only thing I'm yet to fix is infantry possibly spawning too close to players, which shouldn't happen in theory anywhere unless the players are somewhere weird. I will fix it shortly, though. Just haven't gotten around to it.

Awesome news Pingu!! Lurve this mission!

Update, Pingu we'll try and get a few ZSU bouys in there tonight.

Edited January 31, 2010 by gnarly_rider

[_pingu 10]

Test went well, no bugs or desync with 25 players or so.

I've updated the topic with an alpha release, still have some more changes to make.

Changelog for 2-4a6:

* Converted to ACE2

* Random objective order

* Less AI on the map at any time == less desync, tested up to 25 players with no problems.

* Enemy physical mortar system with enemy radio packs.

* Markers for artillery

* New objective

* New enemy types

* Dedicated crew/pilot slots

* Extra boxes for snipers/sf

* Other stuff

Edited January 31, 2010 by _pingu

[mosh 0]

Link on first page didn't work for me, I'll try again later.

[_pingu 10]

My mistake, fixed that link.

[larsiano 12]

Sinds our server does not use ACE as of yet im hoping for a version without it for now?

[_pingu 10]

I don't really want to be maintaining several versions of the same mission at this point, sorry.

Maybe later.

[cri74 10]

Uploaded to server 4 :D join the server to test it out

[_pingu 10]

Updated to 2.4 alpha 7, just a *very* minor bugfix, would not bother updating.

Changed in alpha 7: Name displayed properly on artillery markers.

[cri74 10]

Thanks .. uploaded :)

Need a few more players on the server to test it proper, ran through it myself and i didn't encounter any enemies

[toxic-nova 0]

hi,

it seems to be a nice mission, but we have problems. some missions repeat continuous. in our first test that was a mission to rescue a teacher near bor and at the second try it was the mission "Clear SAM site" north of pavlovo

we couldn't solve the missions a second time.

i had the feeling that it have sth to with guys who connect during our session.

[Pauldarrington 9]

Hey fella there seems to be an issue regarding the revive and script you are using, it seem to be uncompatable with 1.5patch

[bloodbomb 12]

Look forward to playing this with the boys tonight, havent checked it out yet but have heard good things.

Im lead too so should be fun :)

[BF2_Trooper 0]

Any chance of a non ACE version?

[bloodbomb 12]

Bloody good missino pingu, hadnt played it before and thouroughly enjoyed it. I knew we were in for an arse raping when I heard some of the boys go "never played it with this many people before...uh oh". So yes, the scaling certainly works lol ;) We took all sorts of mortar and arty fire, all while rushing to find and counter it with our own arty....was intense and hardcore!

We got through alright in the end, but it most certainly requires teamwork, quick wits and a sharp eye.

Feedback wise:

- kept getting double (or triple) ups on mission objectives. We took one town only to have "Take town X" tasks come up like 3 or 4 times suddenly, all saying to take the same town we took.

- People got slightly different tasks, not the same ones as others were getting, though I assume this is to do with the doubling up and glitching of the tasks as above?

- Squad leader couldnt be revived. If I died I spawned immediately back at base. Apart from once, which confused me lol.

- More MK19 hummers or maybe some TOW ones please!

EDIT: Seems several people experienced revive/heal/spawn issues. Ive directed them to this thread to put down their specific problems, hope this helps mate

Thats all I can think of now, its 3am lol so im gunna go crash. Any other feedback ill chuck your way. Thanks again for a badarse mission man.

Any chance of a non ACE version?

Whats "non ACE" mean? :P

Edited August 20, 2010 by BloodBomb