96D

And you think they aren't, that VON is to blame for the patch not being out yet? It's like you think BIS is holding off on developing this wonderful silver-bullet patch full of fixes and optimizations and fast cars and easy women and all your wildest dreams coming true just to work on VON functionality. It may just seem to be a throwaway feature to you, but it's a major part of what BIS is trying to do with ArmA. Also, look at it another way: thanks to portability, much of the progress made in ArmA development will carry on into ArmA 2. The bottom line is that VON is being given attention, and no amount of mentioning how little it benefits you personally will change that. You can either make use of a feature provided or keep on folding your arms and scowling at it.

How can I be right about that when I never made such a claim? The word "impossible" occurs nowhere in this thread, much less in my post. Stop countering things you wish I had said and focus on the argument I'm actually presenting: to avoid disengaging from combat just because there is a non-zero chance of you killing someone is colossally stupid. It's just plain the wrong mindset to have. Waiting until you're completely out of ammo to disengage is even worse, as all the scenarios presented thus far have as a factor. I'm going to assume that, by this two-word post, you mean missions that span many hours. Will you suddenly be able to accomplish a mission of great length where you could not before because you had a knife on you? Do you run dry after 90 minutes, say "oh, if only I could punch people, I'd be able to finish the last hour of this mission," and then quit? I bet not. I bet you search for ammo, don't you? Well, great! That's what you're supposed to be doing. Don't let the possibility that you could knee someone in the groin stop you from doing it.

I don't know what kind of action-movie missions you guys are playing where you regularly run out of ammo and then wish you could lie in wait for the enemy rather than, you know, go find more ammo, but even if your melee functionality of choice was in ArmA 2, it would still be extremely stupid to attempt any sort of engagement with a weapon whose maximum effective range is "arm's length." I said it in the other melee thread: if you are not holding something that is able to go "bang bang," you're in a bad way and need to disengage. Forget knifing, forget bayonetting, forget struggling valiantly with the enemy as the orchestral score swells. Find some ammo, put it in your weapon, and fire it, and if you can't do that, then get out of there.

The only unrealistic part of this is your reaction to running dry. Usually, when out of ammunition, one disengages from combat. It's a much more realistic course of action than calling it "the end" and walking out to get shot, as you put it. Generally, when you can't make the weapon in your hands go bang-bang anymore, you're combat ineffective. ArmA already simulates this nicely. Or hey, who knows, maybe you just need to carry more magazines and fewer hand grenades, satchels, and AT rockets.

Sometimes when visual contact with a unit that is on the move is established and then lost, the game will predict the unit's movement on the map based upon the direction and speed it was last "known" to be heading. Often, the markers will drift quite a ways before either disappearing or being reestablished at the correct location—it looks like the marker "teleports" when this happens, but really ArmA is just moving it to where it needs to be. Seeing as how you were in a forest, contact is gained and lost very frequently considering how often the trees will obscure units, and each time the marker will drift in a new direction and at a different speed. In short, ghosts are not a part of the simulation.

Dust your monitor screen. Then reboot—just on general principle.

You guys can't sit back and keep tossing out lists and encouraging words and expect someone else to make your Ideal Public Serverâ„¢ for you. I can't help but notice everyone is choosing their words very carefully so as not to make it seem they're the ones who are going to give it a shot. Either you feel you know what a server needs for public consumption or you don't. If you know, then make it happen. If you don't, then the best you can do is join all the others in wishing out loud on the Internet.

Wanting a server like this is the easy part. After all, most people do want a server with reliable and fair admins and with 24/7 availability, clean from idiots and morons. There's no new ground being broken here. When someone hosts an ArmA server, I'm willing to bet they have your laundry-list of features in mind. I don't think a single host (or at least the one who pays the bills) creates a server while saying to himself "this server will be a haven for idiots and morons, will only be up one hour per day, will have childish and corrupt admins, and will be full of missions that nobody wants to play." He does not say that because he does not want that. What one wants, however, must be tempered by reality. A pubbie server free of drooling idiots? Sorry, you can't provide it. They're a part of the public as well, and they're the reason that many of the mature, competent players who would otherwise play in pubbie servers gravitate toward the passworded servers of tighter-knit communities. It's just easier. It's a more tangible safeguard. So what are you left with in the Land of Pubbie Play? You're left with turn-key missions that can run indefinitely with minimal admin interference and minimal organization on the part of the player. That would be Evolution, Sahrani Life, and their ilk. Highly-structured, well-organized missions are less flexible, even with join-in-progress. There is a set start and a set ending. This necessitates people showing up at the same time rather than wandering in piecemeal and it also requires them to be able to play for a set amount of time. Let's say you have a base of players willing to do this. Now you just need a place for them to organize some times that they can show up knowing that others will be there to play with. All right, we've made a forum that lets them do that. Okay, so now you have a set group of people who use a single forum for discussion and a set time that you're going to play missions together. They keep up to date on the forums and they all generally get along well and know their stuff. Now if there were only a way to keep random knuckle-dragging losers from wandering in and ruining the experience for all the mature players... guess you should password-protect the server. Uh-oh, look what you just did. You've just made a gaming community, and all you did was follow the logic required to ensure the ideal public server. Unfortunately, your ideal public server is no longer public, so the pubbies who are left out wander over to a Bezerk server instead. The cycle continues, uninterrupted. In short, there is a reason things are they way they are.

To counterpoint: your best bet is to just sit tight, keep submitting those bidmp, mdmp, and RPT crash logs to BIS as you play the beta*, wait for the final patch†, and stop all this hand-wringing. * we're supposed to help test, after all †whereupon these boards will be full of people complaining about what the patch did and did not do anyway

Well, yeah. I mean, "this one pubbie I know who plays ArmA" doesn't make for much of an interesting source. Besides, the article is about mid-scale organized co-op and the culture of people who participate in wargames on a regular basis together.

I recommend getting up a good number of members and then implementing ranks and divisions as needed. You have six members now, but with five ranks (at least) and three divisions. It'd be more feasible if you had dozens of people to manage, but right now I'd recommend keeping the organization simple. Also, your website needs content for people to become interested. You said "see our site forums for more info" but making people register just to see it is off-putting.

Soo, will u awsome STi engineers and designers be making the same stuff for Toyota? I mean im not driving Subarus ONLY... I sure as hell will buy a Toyota as well..