Arma 2 Warfare ideas and needed suggestions.

[janster01 1]

After playing Warfare a -lot- I've found it to be a great concept, flawed badly by its current form.

Basically, it could have been 'war' but it is now a gamey concept that is undeserving of Arma 2 and more in the lands of battlefield 2.

Heck, even battlefield 2 seems to favor infantry combat today, while Arma warfare for some reason caters to the guys who likes to drive hardware around.

Here is what I hope someone would make.

Adjust prices, infantry should be cheap and plentiful in its basic form, tanks should not.

Remove 'ticks', base score on achievements, again, as infantry , particularly basic types (gun + maybe rpg 7) should be free/cost little, you will still be able to fight.

I know people wanna ride tanks and fly planes, but at the scale of war there just isn't airsupport or MRLS available for every single squad, so maybe the ENTIRE side can save for a single air fighter, but at least it would be WORTH it then.

Trucks, and simple movers should also be cheap(compare prices to tanks if you want)

Lastly weapons for infantry and your own upgrades should be limited aswell, so no heavy optics/sniper loadouts unless you got serious money to equip it, preferably it would be lost on death too.(price could be seen as including training + gear which can be very costly)

I hope someone would do this, I think many more would play if they actually got stuck in a war and not in someones version of bumper tanks.

In advance, thank you :)

Janster

[Murklor 10]

But bumper tanks is fun :p

But I dont really like warfare in its current form either. Personally what I would have wanted in terms of "warfare" is really more like a traditional Command&Conquer RTS:

- Single pool of resources

- Commander buys infantry and vehicles from this pool, which are recruitable by players (players may put in "orders" for vehicles/infantry, which would be locked to them).

- "Harvesting" money if you know what I mean ;)

- Specific objectives rather than just generic "conquest": if one side has to conquer a zone, the other have to defend it, if one side have to kill a person, the other side has to transport him to safety, etc and so on.

[lockjaw-65- 0]

I would do away with the money system altogether (hate it when it comes up with the amount when you make a kill). Instead i would do everything on a time scale, each unit is available in a certain amount of time and depends on towns etc. not sure how to implement but thats the line I would go down

[Murklor 10]

I would do away with the money system altogether (hate it when it comes up with the amount when you make a kill). Instead i would do everything on a time scale, each unit is available in a certain amount of time and depends on towns etc. not sure how to implement but thats the line I would go down

The problem with the "time scale" is that its a direct theoretical value. Arma II is capable of something much more physical.

For example, you could do it like this instead: Each town has a "resource" pool. It is being generated at varied speeds (if there is a "factory" in town maybe its faster). In order to make it into something you can use (ie money), a truck has to drive to the town, pick up "resources", then drive back to your camp and deposit it.

If the other team destroyed it en route, tough luck.

[janster01 1]

Tbh, simple solution that could be implemented would be a seriously increased pricetag on heavy weapons/scopes/tanks/planes.

Seriously, this is hardcore sim, why on earth is this warfare just not following the example.

[lockjaw-65- 0]

The problem with the "time scale" is that its a direct theoretical value. Arma II is capable of something much more physical.

For example, you could do it like this instead: Each town has a "resource" pool. It is being generated at varied speeds (if there is a "factory" in town maybe its faster). In order to make it into something you can use (ie money), a truck has to drive to the town, pick up "resources", then drive back to your camp and deposit it.

If the other team destroyed it en route, tough luck.

I kinda agree and arma is capable of much more, I suppose we still in early days yet for this sim. I like the idea of resource pool but I think my aims are for the bigger picture more like a full invasion. Your supplies are brought in from a fictious home land, thats why I thought of a time scale to represent travel. On the other hand I like your idea of transporting your resorces from town to town, this would make for good secop missions i.e. "Ambush that supplie convoy" :)

[-Shifty- 10]

It just wouldn't work janster01. First of all, I only use the HMMWV M240 w/ 2x rifleman 1 SMAW 1 SMAW and 1 Corpsman. I can capture towns this way and it's lots of fun. Sometimes I use artillery support though.

It just wouldn't work properly if people didn't have vehicles at a cheap price, especially when the AI is amazing and you can't stand a chance against them with a standard rifle. They just immediately headshot you if you barely stick your head at.

My favorite tactic is to buy an MV22, 10 men and parachute them from 1000m into a town :D It's so fun!

There will always be some annoying person who will TK the expensive jet, or do something of the sort. It just won't work.

[janster01 1]

Well I do get it, but its got nothing to do with realism, what you would have to do is to fight your way in to town with your squad of whatever men you can recruit, if the average soldier is very cheap, you'd always have plentiful of them.

Also I do believe with such a system , perhaps the AI soldiers should be removed totally from the battlefield, they are simply put a distraction imho, except the bots to replace actual players.

In real life there is no way a humwee with 4 guys would EVER take on a town by themselves, and look at the army, do you see every soldier carrying hi-optics weapons around?

[KNac 10]

As I've said in the other thread, there are options for both, more arcade & more sim type games.

To start with, if you want tos ee less usage of advanced weapon systems like attack helos, aircraft or tanks, remove 3rd person view. I tell you this will cut a lot the number of players using them, as they ar eno longer soe asy o use and requeire better tactics, specially for armour, because armour tactical awareness agaisnt infantry is poor specially in areas like Chernarus (except probably the valley that is around Stary, which is more open to armoured battles).

Ocupation forces and even resistance can be tweaked to use less vehicles if players, but I don't find it a problem even now tbh, with such open availability of AT assets, heck even RPG7 (with right ammo) and AT4 can be very harmfull to most armoured vehicles except maybe MBT (and even these will suffer when hit by various light AT assets, broken tracks, optics or guns and you have disabled them).

Gear respawn should be removed (can be done allready in Benny edition in parameters) and compelx weapon systems price icnreased a lot, and probably 'building' times (because the logistics tog et these to a warzone would be costlly).

You can even do a lot with a bit more some edition: i.e. increase the space between camps and the numbers of camps in each town and you will get longer battles for towns involving a lot of infantry fighting. Features like camp insertion in AWP version help pvp, but adding an easy way to respawn AI squads would increase the war-like atmosphere even more.

Shifty tbh, you shouldn't be able to singlehand take a town, warfare should almost force cooperation between different playwer forces and even some combined arms. Big towns (120 points) shouldn't be able to be captured by at least 4-5 players with AI infantry (a reinforced platoon of strength) and heavy AT assets or soem armour support, and smallest towns (50, infantry occupation/resistance) should need at least 2 full strength squad (mayeb less with some armour support).

Building times for air assets should be increased a lot, bar transport helos maybe. Same for MBT and advanced IFV's. There is a lot of stuff that can be done to have 'beliable' warafre mode (I prefer that word to realist, because only way toa rcheive realism in the game is with some heavy mission edition and fixed objectives & forces, dynamic games never will be realist but can at least be beliable).

Edited December 29, 2009 by KNac

[janster01 1]

Well I guess, but seriously, this is a hardcore military sim, why can't arma warfare reflect some of that. If you want a realistic encounter, then we GOTTA remove all the hardware, sure, they can exist on the battlefield, but seriously, the footsoldier should be the most numerous asset, not M1 battle tanks.

I don't see increased build times really doing anything there imho, but maybe.

[Murklor 10]

If you want a realistic encounter, then we GOTTA remove all the hardware

That is not enough though. You got to seriously reduce the amount of warfare towns if you want a realistic encounter, simply because you need to muster more players in one spot so that they can focus on different things - sort of like a real army.

We're not all commanders that can control 100+ men with precision and tactics... I believe most of us struggle with just a few. I definetly know I am, lol. Its far easier to send a tank into battle than a truck with 2 squads of infantry in it, the logistics of the latter is a painfull procedure. So what do you do? You send 2 tanks into battle instead :p

Edited December 29, 2009 by Murklor

[Pilcrow 10]

It seems like everyone here wants to turn Warfare into an infantry-centric match, which isn't a bad idea, since ArmA is supposedly an infantry simulator.

But have you ever watched the behavior of an AI commander in a ClearRock CTI/Warfare mission? That's what I want to emulate.

The AI commander assigns each squad roles, so Alpha squad might be the heavy weapons squad, Bravo might be the transport squad, Charlie does rear security, and the others are plain Jane infantry squads.

[Murklor 10]

The AI commander assigns each squad roles, so Alpha squad might be the heavy weapons squad, Bravo might be the transport squad, Charlie does rear security, and the others are plain Jane infantry squads.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean... IMO a player should be just a squad at most: not a freakin miniature army. It should be focused so that you know what your task in the war is, what you're commanding and what your limitations is.

The problem is of course if one even want to limit players to what they get. If all armoured/air/etc spots are taken and they're forced into infantry... Would they accept it?

[janster01 1]

You can always have a carrot, but uhm should not the people who like gamey stuff be elsewhere?

Simply put, do well and save your coins and maybe have the entire team scrounge up for a M1. I know I rarely use em and happily will give away money for some M1 support while my troops advance.

Heck, I would even lend a few guys to protect his tank while he advances.

I always play infantry tho, I'm always there with my squads, watching the terrain in my binos, setting up fire zones and deploying guys. Given, its not easy, the AI and the UI is a real pain to get to know, but once you know these things your fine.

a) set danger whenever you even smell danger

b) set the squad to advance while you point your nose in the direction you want em.

c) follow AFTER them, so that you aren't the first one dead ;)

Ohwell, but again this thread, is a plea for some mod maker or something to take a look at how to fix this, and I -think- it can be done with some easy adjustments without having to rewrite the entire mod.

It would REALLY help warfare imho.

Edited December 30, 2009 by janster01

[KNac 10]

I wanted to do a more realistic warfare at some point. I don't think it's that hard to archeive what you want using an existing mission as base and editing it.

I have been planning to do a SP campaing though, but will try. No promises.

[SFJackBauer 10]

Agree with limiting the towns. Anyone who plays the AAS missions know that. The entire Chernarus seems good to divisional battles. A smaller map could be an alternative. This would help people stay focused and battles would be more intense.

Air strikes can be abstracted. An air strike could be available like once every 10 minutes. I dont think we need players flying - aircrafts are way too omniscient of the battlefield in Arma. Maybe helos can be allowed, but somehow they must be limited - but I'll gravitate towards the "abstraction" side to give more emphasis to the ground war.

Spawn - you spawn in the rear. Period. Otherwise (which, unfortunately, happens in AAS missions...), you can't really control a zone, since you kill a guy and have to keep scanning to see where he will magically appears. And then not dying suddenly has a new meaning.

Instead of money or supplies - reinforcement points. Say like each side starts with a thousand points. Every time one of the team dies - 1 point less. One of the victory conditions can be to zero out enemy reinforcement points. This simulates attrition, otherwise battles would last forever. But the main objective can be to kill the enemy commander, or capture him.

I dont know, maybe those ideas are crap, but I agree that something can be done to make warfare more hardcore. Maybe we aren't even talking about warfare anymore, but something else.

[Emberwolf 0]

The problem is of course if one even want to limit players to what they get. If all armoured/air/etc spots are taken and they're forced into infantry... Would they accept it?

Probably not. It seems like every day on the server I play on we get at least one player who joins (any non-Warfare mission we run) and complains if there aren't any jets available.

Some people seem so focused on vehicles that they'll refuse to play if they need to take an infantry role. A couple of guys I've seen join even said so themselves, and then proceed to waste a roster slot by going AFK to build up funds to buy a jet. I've also seen these guys shamelessly camp the bonus aircraft pad in Domi.

In any case I can't seem to find the opportunity to operate a nice mixed squad with MG, corpsman, marksman, grenadier, etc... I always seem to need all AT guys near the start of the game and all AA guys near the end of the game.

[rübe 127]

Spawn - you spawn in the rear. Period. Otherwise (which, unfortunately, happens in AAS missions...), you can't really control a zone, since you kill a guy and have to keep scanning to see where he will magically appears. And then not dying suddenly has a new meaning.

I think the problem could be solved with a nicer spawn-approach: instead of spawning randomly in a defined circle, one should spawn _exactly_ at a defined spawn-point, preferably one that for the most part makes the spawning not percievable for others: there are several nice objects that can be easily used for this: warefare-barracks (at least the UMSC one), or most generic tens: let soldiers spawn inside such a building. Now you can easily pinpoint the entrance to that building, while you secure the strongpoint/switch off the respawn-mechanism for the other team. Of course, you should not have to concer that exact building for that.

And to prevent spawning units at the same place and time.. just have a queue instead of a fixed respawn countdown. there. problem solved :D

If done right, this also encourages teamwork, for you can't pinpoint such a spawn-point and secure it at the same time!

Also, seeing soldier's coming out of such a buildings doesn't have to be out of place at all, thus it can help believability.

Because spawn-points are a good element gameplay-wise, if done right.

[janster01 1]

I think the current economy system works ok, but I belive the 'trickle' needs to go, replaced by money/points/whatever scored for actual objectives done.

Also the spawn in the city honestly needs to go, they are just bothersome and we have spawn from vehicles, people can use them.

So for me these easy fixes..if someone could implement them

1) Pricing, gear and hardware, in return cheap troops, to the point of free basic infantry.

2) Income, more mission based, less trickle, this would also stop afk'ers.

3)No spawn in cities, only spawn on certain vehicles and on your bases, this will increase their importance.

4)Loss of gear on dying.

I would LOVE to see this done.

Edited December 30, 2009 by janster01

[Murklor 10]

Ohwell, but again this thread, is a plea for some mod maker or something to take a look at how to fix this, and I -think- it can be done with some easy adjustments without having to rewrite the entire mod.

Depends on what you do exactly. I've been thinking for quite a while to make a dominaton/warfare hybrid with Warfare BE as a base and a single objective popping up that you have to conquer and hold for like 30 minutes while the other teams try to dislodge you. If the other team take the zone it has to hold it for 30 minutes, etc and so on. Mostly because it would work great as singleplayer (the player is always the attacker against AI defense, if the AI is cleared from the zone it will counter-attack), but could also easily support multiplayer simply by removing the AI defense and counter-attacks. And it would have the truck harvesters of course gathering from random fields, haha. "Warfare BE CnC" ;)

Unfortunetly I never have the focus to complete anything :/

[Pilcrow 10]

I would like the trucks to actually be worth killing.

Imagine the impact of a destroyed or delayed convoy in real life? I just think it'd be neat to encourage players to take on unconventional roles. Like SF-like players who take their squads behind enemy lines to disrupt and delay enemy supply lines. Or combat MP-like players who take an active interest in convoy security and rear security.

And again, if you guys haven't already, check out ClearRock's older CTI missions. That's what perfection looks like.