Drenlin

So the gist of this is that I'm trying to use the game as sort of a budget version of Virtual Battlespace. VBS is cool but waaaay overkill for what we need, outside our budget by two orders of magnitude, and basically requires contracted support to run a scenario. I'm looking for something that I can teach some average joes around the office to set up, and maybe to be used for some team-building shenanigans as well. So as far as I can tell, I'm neither inside nor outside the EULA...it's not for corporate use, nor is it for profit, but it's also not for personal use, and I'm not 100% sure where to go with that. Does anyone have official guidance on this? I know I've seen a few gaming cafes with arma available so surely there's some way to work that out? I know some games offer enterprise licenses or something similar. Apart from that though, I'm trying to figure out if there's any way to ditch Steam and run it independently. These machines will not have a constant internet connection any may end up with none at all, which doesn't play nicely with having an always-on DRM service that requires a separate account for each machine.

To preface this, I am an actual IRL imagery analyst, working with real military RPAs/UAVs/UCAVs. (We can't seem to all agree on what to call them.) What I'm saying applies mostly to the Greyhawk and Sentinel, but also in most cases to the other UAVs and even some of the manned assets (armed Blackfish especially). The one glaring issue with these is that they allow only one operator, but require a separate pilot and sensor operator. Depending on an AI pilot for ISR ops and lining up strikes is not fun, and striking things from the pilot's view is basically just the same as a manned aircraft but with a crappy view. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to allow someone to connect to them individually? Other than that, the biggest problem with these, IMO, is that the thermals are all wrong. Personnel are way overexposed, while the rest of the image is almost a flat grey in some cases. Now I know there's only one "thermal vision" effect for the game, so they're not going to rewrite that part, but it would be an enormous improvement to give players control over the contrast settings. Just a hotkey for contrast up/down would be amazing. The real ones can do this. Thermals are a huge part of how these operate, visually, especially at night when it's their only option. The green "night vision" mode, on the other hand, is pretty unrealistic...this is not something you find on actual RPAs. They do leverage the technology (described as "image intensified TV" in Raytheon's advertisements) , but it's not a usable image, exactly, and I'm not sure it could really be implemented here anyway. This is just a distraction for many units, but a critical issue with anything trying to perform in an airborne ISR role. Another big issue is that the zoom levels on the camera are wonky. More of them are needed in general really, but the biggest shortfall is that the furthest zoom is still not enough...with the low ranges involved here, I'd say at least a 15x would still be appropriate. Adding it as a 4th zoom level would make the most sense. For context, from 5000MSL, the real ones can still get a much closer view than the game's units get from 1000MSL. Arma also doesn't handle LOD properly with long ranges and high zoom levels, so anything even approaching the proper range for something like this just looks awful...it's really distracting when you're trying to follow a vehicle while it's being rendered as a low-poly model and is constantly sinking up to its windshield into the terrain. Further, the lack of altitude options in the default UAV Operator's menu is a significant hangup. Adding 750m, and then 500m increments from 1000 to 3000 would be ok, but if nothing else just add 1000 and 1500 in there. For most applications in this game, 500 is too low and 2000 is too high. The orbit standoffs available aren't actually too bad...2km would be good on the Greyhawk with some extra zoom available though. Similarly, the Sentinel 's options offer good ranges for its higher orbit speeds, but it doesn't really have enough zoom to make use of it. Related to this, we need the option to pick the speed they orbit at, which is way too high by default. You typically want this to be pretty slow compared to the aircraft's max speed. I script my Greyhawk to orbit at ~125kmh, which makes things much easier. Making the loiter altitude ASL instead of AGL would be a nice touch, too, so they aren't wobbling around trying to follow the terrain while you're trying to zoom in on something. End goal for these changes is to be able to park these things over a target and do actual ISR work and maybe some more realistic combat support. They're not great at CAS compared to the other aircraft since the current interface is so clunky, but being able to park one in an effective orbit over an AO and spot/lase targets for other units would be an enormous increase in its utility. This is something the real ones are very, very good at. Further, it would be a fantastic (and realistic) use of the craft to be able to do that from outside detection range of your average dismounted rifleman. Now, for some smaller stuff, for utility and immersion - Today's actual models are already using HD cameras. Why, several decades in the future, have we reverted to cameras from 2005? Just take the black border off of the sensor 's view, so you can see a full screen image with the HUD on it. It'll look much, much better, and significantly more accurate. The sensor's lens is "dirty", on all of them, and makes the thermal vision even worse. Why is this a thing? They would never be launched like that, and even if they did, it wouldn't be in focus the whole time....it's very distracting. The sensor ball should display the grids of whatever it's looking at, unless it's looking over the horizon, in which case it should blank out. Mostly comes into play on hardcore servers that actually make you pass grids verbally or through chat, instead of via the map. The real ones do this. Even on regular servers though, it'd look pretty cool, yeah? Discussed here before, but unless you're in 3rd person view, I don't think it's realistic or helpful to hear the aircraft's noises instead of your actual character's surroundings. This may be a game engine limitation, but if nothing else just give an option to mute it, maybe? The sensor turret seems to have trouble rotating quickly, for some reason? That's not a thing IRL...they can spin like a top. Rotation of the aircraft has basically no bearing on their movement, either. Last one, why can these things maneuver like fighters? The Greyhawk doing fast, high-G maneuvers without the wings coming off is flat out silly. The Sentinel is a bit better since it's got more of a scifi element to it, but still over the top...it's a tail-less flying wing design with a wide aspect ratio and no yaw control. No way is it stable enough to pull high G maneuvers at 900kmh.