janosgolya

Any kind of emotional state/morale system that would give the robot like soldiers some life! Currently if you open fire at a group of soldiers (like in ambush situation), they just stand there for a while and then go prone and shoot at you (killing you instantly from 500m from AK with fist burst... yeah thats insane too). No reaction at all to the bullets flying all around them and their friends dying. It should look like this: For example - standard line soldiers without too much experience. You open fire. The group first reaction would be to disperse to nearest cover or to get down, some should panic a litlle bit and stay in the open. Some would get shot, so others will react to their buddies been shot, so they would try to help, cry, swear etc. They should start to look around for our position, but if we keep firing they would be scared as hell and try to avoid getting shot doing that. Some more experienced would drag the panicked ones and wounded behind cover. After some time they woud start to lean from they covers to get our position and try to return fire. The whole action would then look like they were actually suprised! And the more experienced the troops, the faster they will return fire and pipoint your position, but the initial confussion is a must have! Below are some real life references of soldiers, insurgents, and non armed observers under fire that shows what I am talking about. caution strong language here and graphic footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwtT35TuB4Y&feature=related this one is especially interesting as the guy was actually shot by sniper but body armour saved him, watch his reaction after he stands up and seeks cover:

Oh the best thing would be the built-in behaviour (fsm?) editor for soldiers, so you can set up your own batlle drills, specific reactions on situations etc... then bind them to a fully customisable menu (both existing complex one and fast menu should be customisable).... This way you would be able to sort of "train" your soldiers to your own commanding style. And even avoid some unwanted AI behaviours you dont like. No scripted macros only few understands, but user-friendly built-in editor. I like scripting but I am not effcient enough with it to alter behaviours, . They did that with weapon customisation so its possible for sure :) Another thing: The splitting of teams is very uncomfortable to use right now. And in real life you have team commanders - low level NCOs, and you assign soldiers to them, so you only command two or three NCOs not every man. And NCOs choose what action would be best to execute orders you gave them. In my opinion thats how the AI should be improved - to be actually driven by low level commanders, so when you loose your precious veteran NCO, privates become less effective. It will also give you some kind of basic unit management tasks - the responsibility every unit commander should be familiar with. I really liked back in the OFP days that your soldiers and equipement stayed with you from mission to mission and progressed in their skills. Adding management of such a soldiers would bring a whole new level of fun to ARMA [at least for me :) ]. I also like the idea to switching to the high-command interface (for your own group) if you split it to teams (of course you should still be able to switch back to individual soldier commanding interface). In my opinion it should be used on many levels - for your Squad, platoon, company... and you should be able to take commannd of any soldier if you command f.e. company. so it should be tree like. This would reflect real life hierarchy and would give you much more control over your whole force. How many times AI driven squads messed up your plan and you couldnt correct it because you had no ability to command individual soldiers from this AI squad? Thas only some of the reasons why I would rework command system. Not only the menus but the whole idea of commanding in ARMA to reflect real life, traditional military hierarchy system which works quite well most of the time in almost every army.

It popped my mind that the skill system is far from being realistic but can be greatly improved to give both fun and realism. It would be nice to have a AI skill based on the training the particular unit had. For example: insurgent civilian militia would move without any formation, in swarm-like manner, firing mostly from hip (like in Black Hawk Down somalian insurgents) while f.e. USMC would be highly based on battle drills, keeping formations and working closely with eachother... Apart from typical hearing/aiming skills, different levels would have different tactical skills. I can figure some basic training skills the AI can have (with fluid transition between them) 1. Untrained - civilians with guns, unacurate, no formations, swarm like mob, no chain of command, very low morale (easly pinned down), no fancy tactics usually charging in numbers. 2. Basic training - draft military or similar experience, know how to fire a gun, know very basic formations, low morale but effective chain of command (could be easly pinned but with officers and NCO present could act better). Very simple tactics - pin down and charge, holding ground but not too long and hard. Cant use support without officers and NCOs. 3. well trained - good shooting, well morale and chain of command, know some battle drills and using formations well, kind of standard unit. Holds ground well, using basic flanking manouvers. using moderate support. 4. veterans - good morale, well executed batlle drills, even without high rank officers and NCOs. good weapon handle, holding ground well. Using a lot of flanking, avoiding direct aproach, holding ground well. Using support well. 5. Elite - all kinds of very well trained units, very effective, high morale, using formations, battle drils, well use of equipement and tactics, self sustained, can whitstand even larger forces. Using sophisticated tactics like door to door cleaning, advanced suppress-and-flank manouver, artillery, air support, heavy weapons support, can use all kinds of weaponry and collect it from battlefield, use ambushes and sneaking etc. 6. specialists and special forces - commando likes, best at everything, uses all of above and more, can act singlehanded as well as in teams, snipers, spec ops etc.

I was always concerned about command system in OFP and ARMA series, as I command a lot in real life situations. No, no real combat situations, only Historical reenactment and BB gun simulations - but still leading men using real tactics rules and commands. I study the topic a lot and trying to forge that into practice. I was in real military few years ago and I know for sure it uses the same basic rules of combat I use. Thats why I dont mind having both complex and simple context driven command systems in one game as I use both complex and simple commands in real life. The former for slow paced stealth aproaches and carefully planned ambushes, the latter for fast paced shootouts when I need a battle drills to kick in. In many many cases I have to give orders to specific stances (both real life and in Arma game) I have to chose specific formation (I use at least half dozen of them in real life fluently with my men), give orders to take point (oh I use that a lot), different states of awerness etc. I played OFP 2 and I hated not to have such a complex system i have in Arma. So I would really wouldnt want ARMA to be stripped down to some "four commands for all situations" solution like in OFP2.. I think the problem with the current command system is that it lacks the real life commands and the AI doesn't response in real life manner to them. For example - supressing fire. Does it even work? Usually in battle drill this command means that soldiers should fire in some broad area (pointed by commander) where the enemy could be, or to a known place to pin down the enemy. I should be able to point the direction to my soldiers and they should fire steady volume until told otherwise or run out of ammo. Thats what I train them for in real life. It doesnt matter if they hit, it should scare the enemy enough to not fire back. In Arma AI fire only if they see the enemy. But in real combat you fire just in case on the area, if you have a slightest suspicion of enemy presence, just to cover your movement. The current "supressing fire" command is more like "cover me" command, when soldiers have to react on any enemy contact by immediate fire AFTER they have contact. Where are real life commands like "brake contact" "flank the enemy" (instead of flanking my own unit), "charge", "use smoke", "create perimeter", "MG here" (pointing the direction of setting up), "clear the area", "fall back", "rally point here" etc. etc.... And thats are only some of my most used, considering my lack of real combat experience... The whole idea of military is to use battle drills - teach soldiers some basic manouvers triggered by simple command. The Arma way of doing this is too much of pointing out exact place for every soldier EVERY TIME. We do that in our group only on basic training with very fresh recruits. They learn very quick some of the simplest manouvers and commands or just follow the example of more experienced men. BTW. It would be a nice feature to do less and less of pointing exact moves, and battle drills to kick in, depending of the training experience of our soldiers. For example USMC would do some things by drill while local civilian militia would act like non coordinated mob and to lead them you would have to point them where to go, like it is done now in Arma. What BI lacks is a real combatant line officers as a military advisors... If I can learn this being non-combatant reenactor, they can too - the knowlege is out there to take. We started some training with real combatants lately, its not so hard to find them and hire them. You can search YT and field manuals, and read some combatant memoirs to do some really close to real life simulation. In my opinion, the menu is ok, but lacks many of real life commands. Some commands just have misleading names. Using typical (at least for most commonly known US doctrine) naming convention would lead to less confusion for newbies and more clarity for hardcore arma fans. For example: menu 1 1. Fall in 2. take point 3. guard rear ... 10. rally point here (setting a place to fall back in case of routing) etc. menu 3 1. open fire (AI fire whatever it targets or if no target fire just in the direction they facing) 2. hold fire 3. supressing fire ( with pointing the area or the enemy - AI provides steady volume of fire) 4. Charge (frontal attack on target as long as possible, using smoke and snapshooting) 5. Flank enemy (AI tries to find safe way to outflank the enemy) 6. Brake contact (faling back, providing steady volume of fire)6 7. create perimeter (360 defence, using cover and concealment if possible) 8. cover area (for MG units it should change to "MG here" with proper hand signal) 9. cover me (AI looks for possible threats to the player/leader) P.S. I very like the idea of customisable menu, for my own gaming and mission style. It would solve at least some of the current command problems. I also think all menu commands should be accesible from script commands and be common to AI leaders and player.

actually, low rank officers up to captain did see A LOT of action during ww2, especially paratroopers. Lieutant is a leader who goes first into combat -(thats why most of them get shot quickly). There are numerous examples of high rank officers leading into combat in Normandy, Anzio, Holland etc.. So please consider making at least Lieutants, it would be very hard to make historical based missions without them. your models looks great, i was waiting for a long time for somone to create historically accurate models. one litlle mistake I noticed though - m42 uniform have quite different collar - your looks like from m43 uniform. It should look quite different, more similar to brown shirt collar, and have small, vertical pocket for knife instead of flaps like your models have.. check the photos again, you will notice it for sure. I noticed also that you mixed up magazine belt for garand with thompson magazine holster on the first picture - it was extreamly unusal for soldiers to have two types of magazines (and weapons) for primary weapon in the same time. good luck with your excelent work!

this mg needs to be modified cos it is shooting only single shots at long range. To achieve proper speed I needed to change weapon type for that static class in config.cpp, and change speeds of shooting at different distances for that weapon class. And give them a lot of magazines. with four magazines it took only 2-3 minutes for MG to stop shooting. I still need to figure out how to make ammo bearers working. and stop them to eject from MGs like in a plane and.... it looks funny when they sits at low tripod MG in mid air as to shoot from bunkers they have to be set up higher. making omaha landing mission is a LOT of tweaking.

I checked the distances from some of the buildings in vierville to buildings next to the beach on both your arma map and historical map. but i know making proper scale in visitor could be a bitch. so dont worry, your maps is great work whatsoever. and it is almost impossible to correct that without reworking your map completly. i checked the height of tide for you. it is 1 m high. waves looks ugly as hell on flat beach.

sorry for posting twice, my net went down during posting, please mods - remove this

little mistake in my previous post - i am working on Utah beach not omaha, already corected. back to the point. the waves are a problem as you said. hadnt figured out what to do with them. I noticed that using bad weather gives slightly better effect tough. but it is still a real tide. i hope Arma II will fix that. i will try to measure how high is the tide for you. longitudes are in the config file. ah one more thing. if you care about it at all, i noticed that your map is slightly off scale, 30% bigger then orginal terrain. the beach should be around 300m according to the historical maps, that scale bug makes yours 500m. I am anough crazy that I checked your map against historical so dont listen to that if you dont care about mental historical disease of mine

hello there I really enjoy your map, i was trying to create the exact same terrain from the same maps for OFP long time ago. It is nice to see someone is trying to make it finally. but let's get to the point. I don't think you need to make two maps for low and high tides, as arma supports tides! And those are dependent on longiude, date and time of the day. I'm in progres on my normandy map (Utah beach and airborne landing terrain.) and after some tweaking with height I was able to create convincing tide just setting real longitudes, date and time and tweaking elevation. The elevation difference beetween low and high tide line can't be too big, as ArmA tides are 1-2 meters high. (but it wasnt big in reality either). just dont give up on that as it really matters when recreating different waves of US attacks. I am assure you it is possible.