reymasofashborne@gmail.com

Created By REYMAS (aka Capital) "WELCOME TO THE MUQ" March 16th, 2019: DEVGRU unit, designated TALON, is deployed to Airbase Kingmaker in Mogadishu, tasked with the rescue of four captured US citizens within enemy territory. INTRODUCTION Operation Slamdance is my very first released mission for Arma 3. I am very new to modding, scripting and mission making, so please go easy on me if I've made some egregious errors. That being said, I am open to all manner of feedback and critique. The mission is inspired by the release of MOG by Variable.A, Operation: Gothic Serpent, Black Hawk Down, Act of Valor and Lato's "Hunter-Six" mission. The main concept behind this mission is bringing a fictional near-future Somali conflict into the focus, through the eyes of a 16-man DEVGRU unit known as TALON-Blue (formerly VIKING-Blue). This will not be the only time I create a mission centering around TALON and will hopefully find ways of fleshing them out character-wise in the future. This is a fairly heavily modded mission and relies on many excellent mods to work properly. Most of these mods are unit mods however and do not change gameplay so you may use your choice of gameplay mods as you see fit. I have toyed with the idea of doing a vanilla-as-possible version but it just doesn't feel right. If there is high demand for it I might give it a shot. The mission is designed to be semi-sandbox, with lots of randomization for objective locations and should engage the player in some highly intense medium to close range urban combat. As I am very new to modding ArmA I was advised to focus on making a solid SP mission before venturing into the realm of CO-OP. That being said, anyone is allowed to change this mission for their own purposes and that of their clans' (see full licensing below). Please feel free to provide any feedback or bug reports directly to centermassstudios@gmail.com - be sure to include which version of the mission you are referring to. I hope you all enjoy playing this mission as much as I enjoyed making it! DOWNLOAD (Mediafire) DOWNLOAD (Armaholic) INSTALLATION Extract any of the included .pbo file(s) to your Steam/SteamApps/common/ArmA 3/Missions folder. FEATURESCommand a 16-man DEVGRU unit. Ability to dismiss and re-attach SEALs from your team as needed. Intense urban close and medium range combat. Custom AI - Highly aggressive but highly inaccurate. Artillery and mortar support. Take out enemy AA in order to earn CAS and air transport. Dynamic Helicopter crash missions (if one of your support choppers goes down inside the city, you may be tasked with securing it) Multiple motorized vehicles for player use. Zealot's Field Repair for vehicles. Multiple dynamic objectives with randomized objective placement. Randomized enemy placement. Enemy occupying buildings and on rooftops. Radio control for toggling your team's IR lasers (0-0-1), silencers(0-0-2) and NVGs(0-0-3). Ability to wait 6 hours so you can undergo the mission at different times of day (0-0-4). Civilians who may pull weapons on you. Dynamic AI Spawns that hunt you across the city. AI optimization script. Multiple versions optimized for various PC specs. VERSIONS Several versions of the mission are included for those with varying system specs: BARE = Lowest spec version with no frills whatsoever. Smoothest gameplay, least challenging. Approx. 200 enemy infantry, 10-15% present chance on enemy in buildings and on rooftops, low dynamic spawns, no dynamic civilians. No tire fires. MIN = Some extra base elements including friendly guard patrols. Approx. 300 enemy infantry, 20-25% present chance on enemy in buildings and on rooftops, low dynamic spawns, low dynamic civilians. Minimum tire fires. LIGHT = More extra base elements including gate guards. Approx. 400 enemy infantry, 30-40% present chance on enemy in buildings and on rooftops, low dynamic spawns, low dynamic civilians. Light tire fires. MEDIUM = Full static base elements, low friendly patrols. Approx. 600 enemy infantry, 50-60% present chance on enemy in buildings and on rooftops, medium dynamic spawns, medium dynamic civilians. Medium tire fires. (Recommend for average PC setups) HEAVY = Full static base elements, full friendly patrols. Approx. 800 enemy infantry, 70-80% present chance on enemy in buildings and on rooftops, high dynamic spawns, high dynamic civilians. Heavy tire fires. MAX = Highest specs needed, all elements included. Approx. 1000 enemy infantry, 85-95% present chance on enemy in buildings and on rooftops, high dynamic spawns, high dynamic civilians. Maximum tire fires. RECOMMENDED SETTINGSMake sure enemy SUPER AI is OFF. If ON, it will override the specific AI settings and make every Somali militiaman an expert marksman which is not very believable. It's recommended to turn extended armor ON unless using ACE3. KNOWN ISSUESBuildings in this map are very fragile, two or three 40mm or M67 frags is enough to decimate some of the smaller buildings. 50cal fire can also tear a building to pieces. Be aware. AI will occasionally get stuck in buildings while moving through the dense urban terrain. Use team switch to become that unit and move them out of that building if this happens. Istan202 - the large U-shaped building - is the biggest cause of this and each of them have been blocked off by barbed wire for this reason. Team switching to a subordinate AI unit will prevent you from getting into vehicles (until you switch back to the CO). A player must be playing the unit CO. NOTES Be advised of the following:A Virtual Ammobox is provided for the sake of flexibility (e.g.: if you need ACE earplugs or other modded items of that type). It is suggested that you do not bring thermals to the AO, as it will vastly cheapen the intensity of the intended experience. This mission is not yet optimized for CO-OP but does have 16 built-in playable slots. Try it out at your own risk. I am seeking any groups who may want to help me get a co-op version up and running by testing it for me. This mission employs an AI Control script by GrumpyOldMan which hides all units outside of a certain radius from the player/s. The radius for this mission is 300 meters. This does two things, the first of which is optimize the mission so not all present AI are loaded at once and second focuses the mission on medium-short range urban engagements. You won't be heading up to an elevated position and sniping enemies from a klik out. This is intense, direct action urban combat. You can dismiss and re-attach any of the SEALs from your team at any time using the action menu. If you are playing co-op, it is recommended that you do not dismiss any players. Unit Control: Using 0-0-1 you can togggle your team's IR lasers. Using 0-0-2 you can togggle your team's silencers. Using 0-0-3 you can togggle your team's NVGs. Time Control: Using 0-0-4 you can skip six hours of time in case you'd prefer to begin the operation at mid-day, in the evening, or in the dead of night. Team switching is enabled so you may get an AI unit out of a building in the case they become stuck. It is not recommended that you team switch permanently to anyone who is not the unit commander. Vehicles will not respawn, use them wisely. Included is Zealot's field repair script should your vehicle go down in the field. You get one free repair per vehicle and after that you need a repair kit. Be sure to bring explosives to the AO, you will need them. Watch out for enemies on rooftops and in windows. Take things slow, and try to be methodical, rush in too fast and you will get bogged down and surrounded. Patience and precision are key. In singleplayer save as often as you can. This mission tends to be very unpredictable and things can go very wrong very quickly. Your AI teammates are at maximum AI ability. For the first 15 seconds you are forced into walk, after which you can run, this is working-as-intended for the sake of immersion/atmosphere. REQUIRED MODSMOG by Variable.A/7Cav - ARMAHOLIC - STEAM (Seems to require AiA for some users - if getting AiA or CA_buildings errors, download AiA HERE - be sure to check for prerequsities) Massi's NATO & Russian Weapons - MEDIAFIRE - STEAM Massi's NATO & Russian Vehicles - MEDIAFIRE - STEAM Massi's SOCOM - MEDIAFIRE Massi's MARSOC - MEDIAFIRE Massi's African Conflict - MEDIAFIRE RHS Escalation - ARMAHOLIC - RED HAMMER STUDIOS Leight's OPFOR - ARMAHOLIC CAF Aggressors - ARMAHOLIC HAFM Humvees - ARMAHOLIC EWK Humvee Extension - ARMAHOLIC Sabre's Civilian Units - ARMAHOLIC - STEAM LP-GPNVG-18s - ARMAHOLIC CBA3 - ARMAHOLIC - STEAM RECOMMENDED MODSACE3 - ARMAHOLIC - STEAM JSRS3: Dragonfyre - ARMAHOLIC Blastcore Phoenix - ARMAHOLIC Blastcore Tracers - ARMAHOLIC ShackTac UI - ARMAHOLIC - STEAM CREDITS Mission created by REYMAS (aka Capital), made possible by the following contributions:Lato, for giving me the inspiration to try my hand at this in the first place, his patience and willingness to guide a total noob through the basics of ArmA scripting, as well as the groundwork he laid for the dynamic helicopter crash missions, and the AI radio options. GrumpyOldMan for his AI Control script which saved this mission from being an unplayable mess. Variable.A and 7th Cavalry for providing an amazing urban map with MOG. Massi for his incredible USMC, African and Special Forces units. The CAF Team for their CAF Aggressors unit pack. Leight for Leights Opfor Pack. Red Hammer Studios for RHS Escalation. SabreD for his Civilian Units pack. BangaBob for his Civilian Occupation System. RGR for his Dynamic AI Spawn system. Wolfenswan for his WS Assassins script. Zealot for his Field Repair script. Teeha and Warlord554 for their GPNVG-18 addon. Varanon for FHQ TaskTracker The amazingly helpful and courteous gurus at the BIS and Armaholic forums. You guys rock! Bohemia Interactive and the ArmA dev team for the countless hours of fun! CHANGELOG V1.0.1:Fixed syntax issue with CIA hostage not properly setCaptive. (All Versions)V1.0:Added specific names for HVT, Hostages and CO AI. (All Versions) Added "MISSION" section in briefing. (All Versions) Added header images for Briefing categories. (All Versions) Added red flares fired by enemy platoon leaders when they detect your presence in sectors. (All Versions) Changed start time from 0630 to 0600. (All Versions) Fixed Doctor's INIT. (Med Version) LICENSINGThis work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Full license in ReadMe. You are free to SHARE - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. You are free to ADAPT - remix, transform and build upon the material. ATTRIBUTION: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NON-COMMERCIAL: You may not use the material for commercial purposes. SHARE-ALIKE: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. NO ADDITIONAL RESTRICTIONS: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. EXEMPTION: You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation. PERMIT: Receiving written permission from the material author for a special circumstance may override one or more of the above restrictions. BRIEFING EDIT 1: A few corrections and additions. EDIT 2: Added Briefing Content. EDIT 3: Troubleshooting mod install added.

Of course man, I am starting to see more and more this side of things. Can't be too picky or else so few people get to play. I think when time allows, (this coming week hopefully) a VAP version will be worth making for sure! Shouldn't be THAT much work, tbh.

Totally fair critique, guys. 100% understood. To be fair, Lato said the same thing and he helped me make the damn thing! HA! It doesn't help that I run like 80+ mods anyway unless I'm playing some public MP. Would you guys believe that there were MORE mods required prior to release? I paired it down to this, haha! Overkill seems to be the hallmark of a lot of new mission designers, and I'm no exception, but I do always say "there's no kill like overkill." But in all seriousness, yes, this is the kind of demand I was talking about that might prompt me to do a VAP (Vanilla As Possible) version. However, in the mean time let me detail precisely what each mod is used for: MOG by Variable.A/7Cav - This is the map of course, ha! Massi's NATO & Russian Weapons - Prereq for any other Massi mods. Massi's NATO & Russian Vehicles - Prereq for any other Massi mods. Massi's SOCOM - Player characters are DEVGRU from this pack. Massi's MARSOC - Kingmaker airbase elements are USMC from this pack. Originally was using RHS USMC but they do not look right at all comparatively (they don't look like deployed Marines). Massi's African Conflict - SLM honor guard and UN combat liason are from this pack. RHS Escalation - RG-33 vehicles (carries 9 total infantry, important option when commanding a 16-man unit), C-130 and M109E are from this pack. Leight's OPFOR - provides great African civilians and vehicles that make sense in 2019 (as opposed to the 2035 technicals which look weird to me and don't fit into a more modern setting) CAF Aggressors - African Pirates come from here, some civvies but does not have the vehicles that Leight's does. HAFM Humvees - EWK Prereq. EWK Humvee Extension - Up-armored Humvees with lots of variety and functionality, as well as MEVs. as opposed to RHS which provides 3 unarmored desert Humvees. Too many enemy RPGs and HMGs to go in like that. Sabre's Civilian Units - Several of the hostages come from this pack. LP-GPNVG-18s - This is what DEVGRU teams often use in the field, as opposed to standard ArmA 3 NVGs. CBA3 - Pretty much a prereq for everything. So as you can see the intent behind a lot of these mods is more about immersion, atmosphere, variety and authenticity, than some direct functionality. Could we lose half these mods and still have a functional mission? Absolutely. Would the experience still feel the same? I'd say not. Regardless though, a VAP version may be on the horizon, thanks to your and others' feedback. Stay tuned! ;)

Ah good to know, awesome! I think the AI mod likely overrides any trigger-based settings so yeah that makes sense. Thanks again for the feedback, great stuff! And yeah I have 16gigs of DDR2400 which is probably where the advantage is, and my processor is i7 and has 12 cores hyper-threaded. My graphics card is AMD though and has 4gigs vram so idk. Also you can set custom options in the launcher so ArmA will use more ram/cpu threads, etc.(you probably know that though). Makes things a lot smoother for me usually.

Wow man this is pro, I'll be sure to try some of these out!

Yes indeed, it says first "released" mission, but aside from messing around in the editor to preview modded units before, or manipulating others' missions to my own liking, this is the only time I've made any mission from the ground up. It seems a pretty common noob thing to overload a mission with AI, and I fell right into that trap! But, like I always say: There's No Kill Like Overkill! I did do my best to optimize it for sure, thanks mostly to GrumpyOldMan's AIControl script. Medium is probably recommended for most average PC setups on singleplayer (I will note that in the description), I can get 40fps on MAX at Very High but that's not good enough for most people, which is understandable. Thank you SO much for the feedback. Very cool of you to take the time! I am so glad you noticed the atmospheric elements, very cool! Some questions, if you don't mind: Did you get to mission completion? Did everything seem to work okay, did you try skipping time, equipping silencers/NVGs/IR lasers, dismissing and reattaching units? Did you use any support elements, if so did they work properly for you? Did you find the AI aggressive but inaccurate? Did you die and reload a lot or were you fairly safe the whole time? Was your team AI doing its job or would they bug out from time to time? Any AI team mates get stuck in houses? Any other details you can provide would be a great help as I am SO new to this. If you'd rather not take the time though, no worries! Interesting! So CA_Buildings is part of AiA or A3MP but I do not have either of them active in my mods, I just have them installed and I can play the mission fine. Maybe it doesn't matter? I will add that to the mod list just in case. MOG does not require either of those addons (as it comes with them pre-packed) so it says but perhaps you need at least those files to get it working. That's so strange that it's not working for you but works for me. Ugh more mods to add, SORRY GUYS! I am the nooblord! You're awesome for trying it out btw! I hope you can get it working!

Hotfixed to 1.0.1

Can't wait to hear what you think!

There IS a mission somewhere where you can stealth melee-kill people, I'll see if I can find it.

Eh, it's not too big of a deal. Unit switching shouldn't be necessary. I'll play with it and see but I'm pretty happy with how this is all shaping up.

Hey all, I am very new to Arma editing, but having a ton of fun. Currently I am making a rather unit-intensive mission (approx. 400 units in a 900x900 area) and am trying to use "enableSimulation" on a series of sector triggers to curtail the load on the server/client. The intent is as follows: 1. 900x900m AO divided into 9 overlapping sectors, approximately 350x350m. 2. enableSimulation for all AI in those sectors disabled at the start of the mission. 3. When player or player's group member enters one of these sectors, "enableSimulation" switches to true for all AI in that sector (or sectors if they overlap) they're in. 4. When player or group memeber leaves sector "enableSimulation" switches back to false, thusly reducing the amount of AI being processed by 1/9th. 5. AI retains all INIT params and waypoints between deactivation. So I have the 9 triggers for the sectors set up. They overlap to avoid any weirdness, which is a bit more intensive when player is in an overlap zone but still better than nothing. Player and their group is grouped to triggers so no other blufor activate them (ie, AI CAS flying over or the BluFor hostages that start somewhere in the AO), like so: (shown is example, want to avoid spoilers for the actual mission as I intend it to be my first release) Here is how each trigger param works (just east shown atm): So this is not working at all. The hint "NW Opfor DeActive" kicks off at the beginning of the mission so the trigger does fire BUT, I can see the AI is still doing stuff within the trigger area. I tried putting a big 1000x1000 trigger over the whole area to turn off Simulation at the beginning (No Dea.) but it seemed to override the smaller ones and go forever, instead of just "ONCE" - even though it was a ONCE trigger the smaller repeatedly triggers would never turn on Simulation again. Also a weird bug. One of my groups in my mission is set to guard an Opfor technical. With no trigger over them they do just this but with the above trigger over them they beeline to the nearest Blufor unit and try to attack, even though all their INITs have "Target" AI disabled. That being said the dudes on the rooftops near them don't have that issue, they stay put (probably because they have "forceSpeed 0" in their inits). So when you disable simulation during a mission does it get rid of any waypoints for those units or re-enable all their AI parameters despite their inits saying otherwise? Any help getting this to work properly would be amazing, even if it's a script I have to run. I am no coder though, can't script myself, but I can fill in and replace stuff pretty darn well, haha! Thanks in advance to anyone looking to help with this. I plan to make several versions of the mission with differing AI numbers for those with slower systems but having this optimization feature working across the board would just be amazing. PS: Would there perhaps be a way to incorporate hideObject as well or is that going to give me the same problems?

Fantastic stuff! The termination was for a random spawn script I have going, not for the optimization, but understood, just so the random spawning doesn't keep happening if players go back to base. Could the unit just be "this" in the unit init? Or could I add this to an overall trigger with the same "if side east then" param? I'll try that and see. I'm also assuming the higher the value the more skill they have, so this guys spots you pretty quick and doesn't shake too much but is inaccurate as all hell and doesn't aim very fast. I think I may switch that up so that he aims fast, but shakes a lot. So: _unit setSkill ["aimingShake", 0.1]; _unit setSkill ["aimingSpeed", 0.6]; Thanks again for all the help man, should have something playable today or tomorrow thanks to you! EDIT: So now the support is recognized as being there, I can call it in, but it is not firing. When I get back in range it starts firing. AIcontrol = [] spawn { _excludedVehicles = [Havoc1, Havoc2, Mayhem1, Mayhem2, Whiplash1, Whiplash2, Whiplash3, Mustang1, Mustang2, Humpback, Halbeard1, Halbeard2, Snakebite1, Snakebite2, Snakebite3]; _checkDistanceSqr = (300 * 300); _toCheck = (allunits - allplayers - _excludedVehicles); while {alive player} do { { _dist = getposatl player distanceSqr getposatl _x; if (_dist < _checkDistanceSqr) then {_x enablesimulation true;_x hideobject false;_x enableAI "FSM";}; if (_dist >= _checkDistanceSqr) then {_x enablesimulation false;_x hideobject true;_x disableAI "FSM";} } foreach _toCheck; sleep 0.1}; }; Artillery are designated Halbeard1+2 and Snakebite1-3 for mortars ( the rest are various CAS and transport choppers that can't be called until you take out enemy artillery pieces) Maybe it'd be easier to just do the exception for all Blufor? There's not that many of them on the map. EDIT2: Actually yes this will need to be the case (side exceptions rather than specific vehicles) because your AI teammates also deactivate if you get too far away which causes a lot of issues. Could I just do _excludedSide = West instead of excludedVehicles? NEVERMIND! Got it working WOO So I take it I can just add my squad members to that array as well and it'll exclude them? It seems that if you switch unit that breaks the script completely, the script doesn't account for the player being a new unit. Any way to get it to do that?

Indeed. I would use ALiVE but it's not compatible with the map I'm working with. Also it tends to give me the access violation error after about 20 mins. Thanks Grumpy this is a great approach, Will give it a shot when I get a chance and let you know how it goes. Before I do, however, I gotta ask the noob question: where does all that code go? In the init.sqf? Or somewhere else? Make a new sqf, run through execvm? (NM I R TEH DUMB) And yeah it's a lot of peoples, but it's dense urban environment so sightlines are very limited and something like this is probably exactly what's needed. Many of the AI have a lot of their AI turned off, ie: move, target, suppression etc, since they're on rooftops, and that seems to be helping for sure. EDIT: This worked like a charm! I recommend this for ANYONE with lots of AI in their mission, it doubled my fps. Grumpy Old Man you are a life saver! Now I'm just testing to make sure all the AI's inits and waypoints are in tact. Will report. EDIT2: Inits and Waypoints are working beautifully but I ran into one issue. Is there a way to stop this from happening to AI squadmates and support units? Make an exception somehow? Could I do like "allplayable" (Is that even a thing?) instead of "players" or limit it to certain sides? The supports will not react when outside the 350x350 radius. EDIT3: Also there are ghost vehicles, aka vehicles and statics that are driven and gunned by invisible enemies, (the guns fire, the vehicles move, and the invisible drivers and gunners can be killed but they never show up even after getting in their gun position so as to move the body to the floor (I CANNOT loot them), even when up close. This happens whether I do moveIn or they just start in the vehicle). Any way to prevent? Update: found one vehicle with visible guys in it. Hrm... NEW QUESTION: Is there a way to set up a deact. for an execvm? Like let's say I want enemy spawning around the player but only when the player is in a certain trigger or marker area. What is the opposite of "nul = execvm"? NEW QUESTION #2: Any way to turn down AI accuracy but leave their acquisition rate up? So they see you easily but have a hard time hitting you? Thank you again for all the help, this has been great!

Can creating sub-tasks be done just by syncing or grouping tasks together?

How would one go about adapting this to another map, or should it just work? Like, does it HAVE to be Altis? Also, what file do I edit to change what types of civvies spawn? (Modded civvies like Takistanis, for example) EDIT: found it EDIT 2: Testing on MOG now. WORKS! Beautiful! Now trying to get this working with ws_assassins I have this in addScript_Unit but it isn't working [[_unit,["Hello","ws_assassins.sqf"]],"addAction",true,true,false] call BIS_fnc_MP; [[_unit,["Hello",{null=[_unit] [true,"arifle_mas_ak74",100,100,west,1,0.3] execVM "ws_assassins.sqf"}]],"addAction",true,true,false] call BIS_fnc_MP; (Using the Hello command to debug, would rather not use it and just exec the script regardless)

Wow Larrow, this is great! Thank you! Just to clarify the steps to get this to work in my scenario... INTENT: Player starts with Mortar and Arty support BUT must destroy 3 artillery pieces to unlock CAS, Transport and Supply drop, This is how I imagine I need to make this happen: 1. create requester, sync to artillery, sync to provider, sync provider to player (player starts with arty support) 2. create provider(s), sync to CAS (ex), DO NOT SYNC to requester 3. name the player "P1" name the requester "support1" and name the unsynced provider "CAS1" 4. Put the following in the...um...mission completion trigger "on act"...maybe? (I am always fuzzy when people write these things out WHERE they are supposed to go) [P1, support1, CAS1] call BIS_fnc_addSupportLink; Is that about the long and short of it or am I missing something? Thanks in advance Larrow, I am teh noob. EDIT: HELL yeah it works!

So, super noob question to the OP: How did you link the death of the AA to unlocking the support element? (Pretty much just started making missions and can't find any tutorials on this anywhere). I am assuming I sync the...provider...to the completion trigger? Or maybe the task state? Help... EDIT: Nevermind, found a solution (was searching the wrong terms): https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/155687-script-modules-that-are-updated-on-event-completion/

Hey there Lato, Amazing mission, definitely my favorite SP mission, so much replayability! I sent you a PM regarding a Fallujah adaptation of Hunter Six I've been working on, hopefully I hear back from you soon!