ACE_A&D_30 pack (America's Army style missions)

[galzohar 31]

First I need to say many thanks to Tom Anger for making the original versions of the missions and allowing me to use them. See original mission pack here. What I changed was replace all scripts with my scripts and only keep the mission.sqm, and them modify it from a "siege area" mission to a "destroy antennas" mission, as well as slightly adjusting the scenery when needed in order to make the objectives more difficult to defend and snipe.

Play-style:

Attacking team starts at 1 side of the zone. Defending team starts somewhere closer to the antennas. Attackers need to make their way to the antennas and destroy them with a satchel charge before time runs out. This plays out very much like a round of America's Army 2, except with a somewhat bigger area, and with some equipment balance to give attackers a chance (if the mission was made symmetric, attackers would practically always lose, and even now I'm not 100% sure they have enough "extra punch" to make it equal).

Features:

- Pre-set weapon loadouts made for realism and balance - USMC FR units have higher quality weapons while insurgents run around with basic AKs. No weapon selection other than choosing your role in the role selection screen before the mission, so once the mission is started you start playing right away. USMC FR are equipped with M4A1 with ACOGs and M203s, M4A1 eotech and M136s, an SPRSD, a SMAW HEDP team and an M240 humvee, while insurgents are equipped with AK-74 PSOs for leaders, RPG operators with PG7V rockets and AKS, riflemen with AKMs, automatic rifleman with RPKs and a SVD sniper team.

- Adjustable time limit: Default time limit is set to 7.5 minutes, which should generally be more than enough, but an option to set it lower for less players (or higher if you prefer to have a slower match) is available via mission parameters. If time runs out, defenders (insurgents) win. Just like in America's Army, the short duration of the mission should make it playable without respawns as dead players don't need to wait much between rounds.

- Extra cover - Thanks to Tom Anger (and some of my modifications), these missions have a lot of extra objects in the combat zone to provide additional cover, something Chernarus/Utes currently lack even in towns and cities. Objectives are not visible from a large distance, so defenders are forced to stick around the objective if they want to be able to prevent attackers from destroying it.

- Playable with or without AI, as long as group leaders are human (AI have no waypoints, so groups with an AI leader will stay at the starting location). Of course you can also disable the AI before you start the mission. If played with AI activated, players can switch at will (or upon death) to take the place of an AI unit by using the "team switch" key (default 'T').

- 7 different missions of this type are included in this pack - 2 on Utes and 5 on Chernarus.

Filefactory (v1.05):

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b0c0g9f/n/ace_ad_30_pack_v1-05.rar

Armaholic (v1.05):

ACE A&D pack A&D-30 (@)

Edited March 21, 2010 by galzohar

[mosh 0]

I hope some some servers try this. I'll put them on mine for the hell of it... maybe some popular servers with people on it will try it too though since it has ACE. I like the concept. Short games for short attention spans (me).

Thanks.

[galzohar 31]

Yeah I do hope to see servers actually try this. This isn't just about attention span, it's also (and mostly) about keeping PvP fun to play while keeping it with no respawns.

[That guy 10]

I really like the concept of the game type. I like the idea of not every one running around with the "uber" load outs, like a DMR and SMAW, or all acogs or what ever. balance by gear availability rather than statistics

Americas army was pretty fun. realistic-ish, but still fast an fun

really hope this kind of mission takes off

Edited January 23, 2010 by That guy

[Johnny_GetEm 10]

So has anyone seen any servers with this?

[mosh 0]

Feel free to jump on mine for now. Hopefully some of the popular servers pick it up though, you'll most likely be by yourself on my server.

Anyways, jump on, vote yourself admin (#vote admin whateveryournameis), pick a map, have fun. I'll be out for awhile, but I'll look for whoever is playing this tonight when I get home.

Moshpit is server name.

[galzohar 31]

Updated to 1.01:

Fixed some glitches in some of the missions such as civilians that shouldn't be there and misplaced triggers.

Added more markers with location descriptions (ex: "green house", "south road", "roadblock") to all missions.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/a2e2a98/n/ACE_AD_30_mission_pack_v1-01.zip

[galzohar 31]

Updated version 1.03:

Fixed some small bugs and exploits.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b001ac8/n/ace_ad_30_pack_1-03.rar

[galzohar 31]

Updated to 1.04:

Replaced the buggy black ACE M4A1 EOTECH with the green camoed one which does not appear to suffer from the same bug.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b08g8h8/n/ace_ad_30_pack_v1-04.rar

[galzohar 31]

Updated to 1.05:

Fixed minor issues with the loadouts.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b0c0g9f/n/ace_ad_30_pack_v1-05.rar

[nkenny 1051]

These sound just down my alley. I'll download these once I get home from work.

On the off chance that the creator (or someone who has played these is on) I'm wondering if these are ACE required?

-k

[nkenny 1051]

Yes it requires ace.

The good

1. Its cool how the same familiar mission type can be translated to a number of different locations -- yet still play differently.

2. I love how the essential squad load-outs remain the same. This means you know what your getting every time.

3. The amount of debris and cover was excellent.

Commentaries

1. I understand that it may be a design decision, but I missed the simple availability of hand grenades.

2. The way satchel charges work in ACE2 -- its a VERY possible to kamikaze charge the towers. This puts certain inhibitors on the insurgents style.

3. US: The one command + 3 fireteams + 1 SMAW group is very cool. Its particularly interesting how one of the fireteams gains access to a M4SPRSD. Perhaps each fireteam could be given one such speciality? Replace SAW with Mk48 for instance?

4. It creates very interesting gameplay to see how the insurgents have access to one RPG7 per team vs the US 40mm + M136 per team add one dedicated SMAW unit.

5. I felt there was a flood of acogs -- to make ACOGs a real force multiplier it'd probably be better to limit them a little more.

6. Even though there were few artificial constraints I felt the actual action zone was a little too claustrophobic and small for Arma2. A slightly longer "setting up the attack/patrolling" phase would probably have gone a long way.

For the future

1. While one objective is probably simpler it would probably facilitate more interesting tactics to offer two options.

2. I'd love to see a similar concept scaled for slightly larger maps rural+woodland action and perhaps a 20minute timeframe rather than the blazingly fast 7minute one.

3. Possibly one with added equipment scarcity. Avoid giving Binoculars, Acogs, and GPSes for everyone. (hell avoid the GPS at all)

Overall? Interesting an interesting concept -- but unfortunately one which doesn't really play into the strengths of ARMA2. Either way I'm going to suggest these maps the next time our play-group has a get together. We usually have a blast playing small CTF type maps, so why not this.

-k

[galzohar 31]

Some of your suggestions would mean tipping the balance more in OpFor favor, while currently it seems the balance is already tipped to favor OpFor anyway, so those would probably be bad choices.

If you let an enemy walk up to the antennas, you probably deserve having them destroyed.

Any ideas for other specialities are welcome, though I think most people wouldn't want an MK48 for a CQB environment.

Making it bigger would not only require placing a lot more objects down and make it overall harder to find a good location, but it would also risk turning it into something too boring. Though only more experimentation can tell, as I didn't get to play these much with more than just a few players.

[Minoza 11]

I will test this with my squad, thank you! Maybe we could organize some PvP here?

[rome 0]

Going to test that. I just reinstalled Arma II for it. Thx Galzohar.

[Erratic 10]

Sounds like the kind of thing I'd want to play man, thanks, just downloaded! I hope some servers give this a try, I might host a 4v4 one myself.

[galzohar 31]

One of the ACE versions seemed to have messed up the satchel charges in a way that makes them fail at destroying the antennas. Hopefully it gets fixed (if it didn't get fixed already) - If it doesn't, I'll revise the objective to something else...

[Minoza 11]

Hi again!

Me and my squad are still trying out your missions. What I dislike so far is very short time limit, I mean I am not against time limits but 10 min for some maps is just ridiculous. When we train, it usually takes from at least 30 minutes to 1 hour or more (depending on area size) to complete our objective. Why rush? Especially since this is ACE, we should make use of tactics and I simply don't find some of the current time limits suitable for this tiype of game.

One more thing I would like to know is if there is squad here interested in some PvP? I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask but I don't know where can I find squads to play your missions.

This is our forum where we can arrange details if anyone is interested:

http://www.mrcine.org/forumi/index.php?/forum/57-international-visitors/

Thank you for this missions and I hope we can arrange to up the time limits if anyone decides to play with our squad.

[galzohar 31]

It should be very easy to edit the description.ext file to add more time limit options. Though I don't really see how you would need more than 10 minutes for such a small combat zone. I have other missions in the works that are on a bigger zone with a longer time limit, but surprisingly enough I can't really get people to play them more than once so balancing them out will be impossible.

Do you find 10 minutes not enough for those small areas for actually playing, or do you plan your moves during the mission as well? You might want to use the briefing phase for planning and then just execute the plan during the time limit.

The main reason for trying to have a strict time limit is that defenders simply sit there and get bored if you take 10 whole minutes just to move 100 meters forward. Usually it seems that if you give attackers too much time they will just sit on some hill/corner and wait for defenders to get bored and come attack them instead of actually attacking. The only times I noticed attackers ran out of time is when 1 or more of them simply didn't feel like trying to reach the objective. I tried to keep the mission area size and time limit to what I already know works in America's Army to see if I can get an already working concept to work in Arma 2 before trying to change it more.

Of course you can feel free to port the concept to any other zone, it should be rather straight-forward, with the only real work is actually adding all those objects in a similar manner to what Tom Anger did in the missions those are based on. Though some towns in Duala might work well without any added objects.

On a side note, I have noticed that with one of the ACE versions, satchel charges became too weak for 1 to be enough to blow up the 4 antennas when placed in the middle. Unless they fixed it back, lowering the antenna starting HP would be needed for 1 satchel to be enough (sure it could just require you to place more than 1, but it seems hard enough for attackers to place a single satchel as it is, and requiring more satchels will hurt the balance).

Edited May 17, 2010 by galzohar