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Yes, please avoid using QG at all, if possible. Very nice models, BTW.

Nice to have a new patch. Hopefully it's coming out soon.

What do you mean by "loads of them" surrendering? I only saw more than 5-10 surrender when there were some bugs in the mission - in those cases there were many of them left, but otherwise I never see more than a few left. I easily killed 70-80 during a single defend the town mission and they only surrendered after that. I only use support when there is armor around and I cannot deal with them, but I take out infantry myself (and my team, given enough distance.)

I think the enemy surrender is just right. Most missions are fairly hard, especially if I don't use support options, so in many cases it's good when they finally give up. Having them surrender at some point is also good to avoid having to find that very last one or two enemies hiding away. Having to overpower the enemy would make some of the missions very hard - I'd vote against that. Besides bugfixing, I'd say, MrN, add more variations to missions: more and more locations, some hardcoded stuff (like in one of my earlier post - snipers, etc.) I'm pretty sure changes like those would make this (already great! ) mission even better.

It took 9 or 10 missions. (I didn't know it can go longer - the mission always ended for me after 10, so I thought it was hard coded.) I haven't yet used the other bases yet - I was so busy in the last two weeks that I even missed the fact that there was a new version. All in all, the mission play good: the enemy AI is quite formidable and on some missions (for me, the search & destroy) is a challange. The friendly AI is mostly useless - they're ok if they're used at a distance, but in close encounters they simply die away. (I know this is not the mission's fault.) And I did reload quite a few times, so "godlike" is probably not the right phrase to use. But I did enjoy the mission immensely and I just started on 0.92j. I like the different landing zones idea, but haven't seen much else yet.

Hmm, I somehow missed that last update... Anyway, I just finished 0.92i - 704 confirmed kills. I just had to brag. (Although I did lose about 30 people. )

I don't think you need to worry about that. Just put a note in the readme that explains what they are - I'm sure most people would be fine with those. (Of course, if you want to fix it, that's fine, but I think the mission is quite good and I rather have more stuff in the mission than having this small thing fixed. )

For me, 1.09 runs better than 1.08 (even with lowplants.) I think the vegetation is fine but the different LOD levels look so much different that it's very noticable when the game changes the LOD for a tree/bush. BI should tweak the LOD models so that they're closer to each other, that would help a lot.

Stiff, thank you very much, much appreciated! PROTOTYPE 001: the reason I asked for a lighter version is because most missions use one-time addons, that is, addons that are rarely used in other missions. I do use addons (~15 of them), but they're all replacement packs, that work with any mission. In general, I don't mind addons, but I'd like to avoid having a lot of them because they take up resources and I have to keep checking for updates to get fixes - I don't have a whole lot of free time, so it becomes a chore. And with Queen's Gambit in particular, I simply don't like it. I wouldn't mind if it was a simple island addon, but it comes with unwanted baggage. I'll download the light edition and eventually I might end up downloading the full one, too. But anyway, I'm glad that there is a lighter version, I appreciate stiff's extra effort, so I'll definitely give this one a try.

Would you consider making an addon-free version of your mission? I like the mission idea but I don't like the long list of addons (beginning with QG), so I'd really appreciate it if you made a version that runs on plain 1.09b.

Yes, you should restart the mission (don't use pre-1.09 saves) and try again. I didn't have load-related crashes on any missions since 1.09, so if you get some while loading, it might be something else. (It's of course possible, that the patch needs some tweaking, too, but I played some big missions and no problems so far.)

No, don't. Aiming is extremely hard and frustrating with a mouse when the computer randomly moves the weapon around. The mouse have hardware limits to its precision and randomized aiming means that the player would have to make highly precise, very small movements with the mouse to try to counteract it.

While you're logically right, I don't think this would be a very good addition. It'd probably take a lot of code to make it happen, a lot of extra animations, etc., for something that's not very common in the game to begin with. I, too, sometimes run out of ammo, but if the situation is so bad then I probably screwed it up, so I just restart the mission. I don't think BIS should concentrate on this, when there are still a lot of things to tweak/fix. (I'm not saying it'd be a bad feature to have, but the game doesn't have it yet, so I think it'd be a waste of resources.)

With the insertion, I normally start running away from the chopper right away, so that others follow. Before calling the chopper, I always tell everyone to stand up and to get back into formation. This seems to work 99% of the time, I didn't have any casualties since MrN reworked the landing script.

Here are a few suggestions: 1. Can you please add an ammo truck to the airport base (and maybe the other bases, too)? At the airport base I had several base attacks (which I think the most fun ) and I used up almost all ammo in the two trucks and the Humvee, and I couldn't find a way to rearm them. Going to the ammo crate doesn't seem to work and I didn't find anything else. 2. Add a bit more organization to the enemy. In many missions, they just appear as a horde of soldiers but there doesn't seem to be any order among them. For example, in the terrorist base missions or in patrol missions, there are never soldiers on guard or snipers placed on top of towers/buildings. I know it might be very complicated, but it'd be nice to have a few special locations for every mission where there are patrols, snipers, guards in certain places. (There could be a few for each mission type/location combination so these preset locations wouldn't always be the same.) For example, if the terrorist base can be near Bagango, there could be 3-4 preset places where an enemy sniper would be placed. There would also be 5-6 possible locations for standing guards and a few different patrol routes. In a given instance of the terrorist base then, when the location gets set to Bagango by the mission, only a subset of each would be selected (one sniper, 3 guards, one patrol route), but in a different terrorist base instance (but still around Bagango), a different set would come up. This way a bit of order would appear in the missions yet they wouldn't appear hardcoded. 3. More mission types: 3.1: Enemy establishes a base near a city. Enemy tents, machine gun nests and armor, along with several squads of enemy soldiers would be generated outside a city and the player has to take over these bases. 3.2: Free prisoners. Around some cities an enemy camp would be generated with a fenced holding pen that holds several civilians. The player has to find a way to free them. (Simply open the fence and let them go.) The mission is finished when all civvies leave the holding pen. 3.3: Escape. The player and the squad gets sent on a mission to some locations where the player and a few others from the squad get captured by the enemy. (The remaining squad members are able to flee and are placed back at the airport base.) The player has to find a way to get weapons and break free, get a radio and call for extraction. (Or simply get back to the airport.) This might require a fair amount of hardcoding so that a believable enemy base with patrols is generated. 3.4: Clear out a civilian drug/criminal ring that supports enemy forces. A civilian enemy force would be generated around a city (with trucks, weapons and a few tents, oil barrels, etc.), along with an enemy support squad. The player has to attack this civilian/enemy base. 3.5: Get the snipers. A few (random number) enemy snipers arrive to a city full of civilians and start shooting them. The snipers hide on top of buildings, towers, etc. The player has to go there and save as many civilians as possible by eliminating the snipers. (Similar to the other save the civvies mission.) 3.6: Extract civilians from city. A city is surrounded by enemy forces. There are civilians in the city and the player has to find a truck and extract as many of them to a safe location as possible. The civilians wander around and may get shot by enemies, but when the player is nearby, (s)he can give orders to the civvies to board a truck. That's all for now. I realize that some of these might be very complex even for a standalone mission, but these are just ideas anyway.

I'm not sure if this is a bug, but it looks like one, so I decided to report it. Here is a screenshot: http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4906/dwbugfx5.jpg that was taken after a base attack mission - this is inside one of the bunkers at the main airport base. The mission was already successfully finished (I was between missions), but it seems that none of the enemy soldiers have been removed from the map (neither dead nor alive.) The same is true for vehicle wrecks. As the screenshot shows, here is a big bunch of unarmed enemy soldiers that supposedly appeared inside the bunker during the mission. I've seen this same behavior (problem) with several mission types where there are lots of enemy soldiers, the most notable one being the defend civilians, where (on several occasions now) the enemy soldiers appeared not far from civilians and they got slaughtered by the civs without even firing back. Somehow the mission should create enemy soldiers farther away and have them move to the target location instead of making them appear very close to their target. It seems that in these two mission types (at least), a lot of enemies appear in bunches and they never move away from their spawning points. Edit 1: it seems that this is definitely a bug - looks like that after enemy soldiers are not removed from the map, when a new mission is created, no enemy soldier is spawned. I got the terrorist base mission (at Mercalillo) and as the second screenshot shows, all vehicles were spawned empty. (There were 4-5 more UAZs, they just didn't fit on the screen.) http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5687/dwbug2al2.jpg Edit 2: I'm not exactly sure what happened. After I took the 2nd screenshot, I got in the BMP, put a bit of distance between myself and the UAZs and blew them up. I got the message from the base that the mission is accomplished and I was about to get out when a bunch (40+) enemy soldiers appeared charging. I'm not sure if this was an enemy ambush or if they really belonged to the just-finished terrorist base. I suspect it might have been an ambush since they all had weapons which are normally removed upon mission completion. Also, most of the leftover soldiers and wrecks (mentioned in edit 1) have been removed by the time I got back to the base, but not all of them. (~10 was left behind, 1 alive.) Another minor issue (more of an observation): sometimes the helo fails to land when getting back to base - it seems to hover ~1m above the ground and nothing happens for an extended period of time. If I give an "All, disembark" order, the helo then touches down and everything is fine. As I said, this is more of an observation if someone else runs into this.

Even though I think there are still many, many things to tweak, I think ArmA with 1.09 became a good game and I'll start recommending it to friends. Good job BIS and don't stop now.

That sounds seriously cool.

It happened to me, too, but it didn't kill my officer inside the base. It did wipe out everyone outside but they respawned after a while. This happened several times at all bases, not just the main base, but all the destroyed units respawned. I thought it was actually cool, but of course, I didn't loose important characters.

I found a problem with lighting with the party headquaters building in Bagango. Here are 3 screenshots: http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/1835/lightbug01bw8.jpg http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/2554/lightbug02am0.jpg http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/7667/lightbug03we8.jpg All of them were created by standing at the same spot and slowly turning to the right. Initially (as the 1st screenshot shows) I was facing south. In this case, I had the strip of light right in front of me. On the 2nd shot, I turned ~10 degrees to the right, at which point the light suddenly disappeared. On the 3rd shot, I turned another ~50 degrees to the right to reveal that for all the screenshots, I've been standing in front of the building - sunlight in the 1st screenshot passed right through the building! I included the watch for reference, but this problem can be reproduced readily with this particular building, during daytime or night. While it's not a showstopper, it'd be nice to see it fixed, as it looks rather lame.

We'll eagerly await your return. Your campaign was very good to play. All the best till you're back.

Whether it's realistic or not, keep in mind, that in real life you can place the gun on objects support it. In ArmA, the only way to support machine guns is to go prone, so they're nearly unusable in 1.08 if you're not prone. I'd pick the recoil in 1.09 over 1.08 any time, because it makes the weapon usable. (Realism aside - this game needed a bit of balancing because of engine limitations.) I still remember the AI being able to shoot me with 1 shot from 500+ meters in 1.08 while stanind and shooting with a machine gun. I agree that realism is important, but only if all aspects of a given thing are realistic, not just one that people seem to moan for. (No offense intended to anyone.) I think machine guns (and sniper rifles) lack many important details in ArmA, so I don't mind these "cheats". They make the game playable. (BTW, I use Q1184's realistic recoils.)

It seems that the persistent muzzle flash is not yet fixed. It's not a showstopper, but it looks kinda lame. It happens to several weapons after reload and goes away if the gun is fired once after reloading. Unfortunately, if machine guns are out of ammo, then the flash remains, since the gun cannot be fired. Here is a screenshot showing the problem: http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/549/muzzleflashbc2.jpg As it can be seen, the UAZ is already destroyed, yet the machine gun still has the flash.

MrN, Thanks for the updates, I like them. I did a few missions with the latest version, but I found a few problems and I cannot continue. On the POW mission (2nd mission), I got this error, just after I contacted the POWs and got the message from them to call an evac chopper and the rest of the squad will stay behind. Then, on mission 5 (ambush traveling infantry squad around Bagango), the mission cannot be ended. The mission marker is removed from the map and the "Call evac chopper" menu item shows up in the radio menu (0-0-9), but once back at the base, the officer doesn't have the End Mission action. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the problem, but I had to reload the game during landing. Can you please also take a look at the heli landing script? Almost every time I get returned to the base, 1-5 of my team die because of the chopper. (The reason I reloaded the game during landing was because I lost 6 people at that time, while no one was even injured during the mission.) It seems to happen less when getting deployed for a mission, but it does happen almost every time when returning to the base.

As I understand, the problem with sound is that people who play online (PvP, etc.) had to scream to hear each other in vehicles (just as in real life.) This is not very convenient when the above happens in one's home, with the wife and kids already fast asleep, so BIS decided to turn down the volume. It'd be nice to have a separate volume control for vehicle sounds, but if it's too much work, I prefer the current (1.09) volumes, for the above reasons. Some of the previous vehicle volumes might have been close to real life volumes, but they were way annoying while playing, even in SP.