Col. Faulkner

Then this means that the game mechanism and the UI for directing soldiers is inadequate if one cannot perform as well as an AI squad leader "no matter how hard you try". I have to say, though, that the Arma player squad AI is a slight improvement over the OFP one. However, it is apparent that such tedious micromanagement is the only way to command a squad in the game (in its current state) with any sort of success. You might want to experiment with voice control to remove some of the button mashing that this inevitably demands.

I'm pretty sure that in OFP a man "dead" wasn't always "killed"; he was sometimes just "down". The after action reports at the end of the missions seemed to confirm this since the number reported KIA would often appear to be fewer than the number of bodies lying around. Getting a bullet through the leg ( ! ) would pretty much incapacitate someone (unless he's John Wayne). I presume it's the same now in ArmA. Anyway, that's how I [still] see it. The cas' figures on both sides in these ArmA engagments are often [unrealistically] enormous since the AI manoeuvre recklessly, they are all stone cold killers and all fights seem to be usque ad mortem!

What sort of n00b sniper [qua sniper] climbs up into a freakin' church bell tower anyway!? A real sniper takes a perch where he can engage targets trying to avoid the church bell tower! Â Â

But only if you fire again rapidly before the weapon has returned to rest from the previous shot. That way, for example, you could fire a long burst and watch the muzzle climb if you made no effort to restrain it by repositioning your mouse. If you fire more steadily then the rifle should return to centre again. In the real world, if your hold is correct (my old marksmanship coaching notes for the British SLR say: "The rifle must point naturally at the target without physical effort") your rifle should return to exactly the same aim point after each shot. A major objective of musketry training was [i assume it still is] to get you able to do this instinctively from any position even under stress. I'd be surprised if this behaviour was possible to add just in a mod though. The "stay pointing up" thing I suppose could be done by tweaking the recoil config, but it's not realistic (and I know it would annoy the crap out of me). I think it would also be nice if essential personal attributes like marksmanship were more conveniently and precisely adjustable per AI unit.

Haven't you got it all the wrong way around? Isn't your first motivation supposed to be the desire to tell a story, rather than that you just want to make some sort of video? I'd have supposed you should be thinking "I have a great idea for an interesting vignette. I think it'd work well as a short video", rather than "I wanna make a video (maybe someone else will help me make up a storyline for it)!"

The submarines will definitely add "immersion"!

Actually I feel that the MGs are far too "wobbly" when prone. There is no sensation of them being supported on their bipods at all in the game. edit: This impression also isn't helped by the way one always has one's left hand shoved up the M240's ejection slot (ouch! ) Â

I reckon you could, without too much further ado, knock up something acceptabe for all of your scenarios except for the "counter sniper" one. An AI sniper might well attempt to "flank" you but he won't behave at all like a real sniper in his use of cover, concealment or movement or in his choice of firing positions. At least not "out of the box" without considerable ad hoc scripting. It'd be fun for the first couple of tries but would get predictable quite quickly, I think. I did once try to set up a mission in OFP where you had to track and eliminate an enemy scout/sniper team using things like bootprints, reports from NPCs, dropped brass, cigarette smoke and stuff like that, but it required a lot of fiddling and "ad hockery" to get it interesting enough to play and its "replayability" was almost zero (but that may just have been amateurish design on my part).

They need a good kick in the reticles!

Great! I'll get out my old combat jacket (from 25 years ago)! Where do I apply? Â Yes, he was only 5' 5" on enlistment. During the award of his Congressional Medal of Honor many commented that he looked "like a little kid". Many also disliked his portrayal in the semi-autobiographical film "To Hell and Back" because they thought he looked too small and it made his combat scenes look unconvincing! Here he is just after receiving his Medal of Honor (looking like a little kid). Once modders get divers working (I'm especially looking forward to that) I hope there'll be lots more addon wreck models appearing. Having done it for some years already in the real world, it'd be fun to explore some wrecks in ArmA too. For a place with "historical" nautical connections like Sahrani there'd likely be dozens, if not hundreds, of wrecks lying around it. Also in lots of places in the real world military hardware (especially tanks) has been sunk to form the nuclei of artificial reefs. That sort of thing seems quite fitting for ArmA.

Never mind then lol

Bah! double post. This forum tardiness is getting annoying! There's an earlier thread with more "easter eggs". The inscription on the M9 pistol for example reads "STFU" and the newspapers among the garbage have some real life headlines. I also fancy I once saw a tree with an inscription cut into the bark but I was too busy at the time holding off the enemy from my M113 like a virtual Audie Murphy* to get a closer look. * Absolutely no offence intended. I have nothing but awed reverence for Audie L. Murphy.

They probably bought them off e-bay! Is "air assault wings" the one with the helicopter?

I've never played that crappo "battle comic" mission and rarely use "satchel charges" in game anyway, but does it still go wrong like that if you set the timer rather than command detonate?

*head desk* the first few times I did that I thought I was only changing the select fore from single to auto. I should have pressed it one more time. Thanks! Not really your fault. It's a whacko control mechanism anyway. Fire selector also selects frags and smoke grenades Whisky Tango Foxtrot!?

You obviously have some talent for this retexturing thing. Have you thought about doing some kind of digitised DPM pattern for the men? It seems likely that UK forces will adopt digicam sooner or later and it'd be an interesting "futuristic" variation on the usual. I'd do it myself but I've already given myself too much with to do with the other little ArmA projects I'm working on. Here's an example "concept" swatch of digitised DPM:

And this one will be small but top quality   SPECIAL SERVICE Army commandos 1940-43

No it isn't. TOWs use SACLOS guidance. You just keep the telescopic sight trained on the target and guidance commands are sent automatically over the wire. From US Army FM 23-34 "TOW Weapon Systems" Para. 6-3: "When the missile appears in the sight picture, ignore it. Never try to guide the missile. If distracted, tracking becomes poor and chances of hitting the target are reduced. Continue to track the target at a smooth tracking rate, keeping the cross hairs on the center of visible mass until missile impact" (emphasis in original) In their present state of development, the ArmA ATGMs are a great simulation of a Congreve's Rocket, circa 1814. "...and the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, la la la la la laaa da da daaa dee dee dum"

There are several other WW2 projects as well as that "Battle of the Bulge" thing. Trawl through this Addons discussion forum for them (or use the forum search function if you have a lot of patience). As far as I am aware there are at least two N. African campaign projects, an Australian forces in the Far East one, a British commando one, a Slovakian forces one and sundry other addon sets.

Well I dunno. It seems that ArmA never fails to surprise. Just last night I set up a quickie firefight in the editor and watched through binos as my AI infantry section attempted to shoot a bunch of septic special forces guys standing skylined on a hill. Range 300 yards. Hundreds of rounds noisily and enthusiastically expended! Green tracers whizzing everywhere. The hillside exploding all over in little cloudy puffs with bullet strike. All over except on target, of course! Hilariously bloody awful shooting! Â Â Anyway, an HD config is pretty simple to do. If you want it that eagerly then it's something you could easily do for yourself.

Javelin? Thermal sights? Â The ArmA universe has clearly not progressed beyond an early 1970s level of technology, where fuzzy 1st Gen. image intensifiers are the ultimate in "high tech". Laser guidance is there but no worky, laser range finding is non-existent, tank and aircraft gunnery is pre-WW2 level, fire control systems are unheard of and guided missiles have about the same range and probability of a hit as a Napoleonic cannon. Â Â But looking on the bright side, this makes it great as a platform for WW2 and post war mods! Â

Those AT5 things on the OPFOR side are equally frustrating to use.

Well the XL70 actually is an SA80. The same Armalite AR-180 action stuffed into a bullpup format firing 5.56mm NATO, it's just that the furniture and some external details are different. I remember those old promo pics where they showed a bod with the "new IW" standing beside a bod with an SLR. The IW was always held across the chest so it looked short and handy and the SLR was always held out towards the camera so it looked a mile long! And, yes, the SLR and SMG were phased out of British service over 25 years ago - even the Senior Service don't use them any more! They were still in use through the 1990s but by now all of the SLRs are destroyed, legally deactivated or are now in the hands of "soldiers" in Sierra Leone (most of the rifles were all old and well-knackered anyway although some lucky British lads did get brand new wooden furnitured ones from a war emergency stock just before they were phased out and withdrawn). They were carried [reputedly] by the SAS in GW1. Some Brits took SLRs to the Gulf and derived some merriment from screwing the gas regulators up tight (so they'd kick like f**k) and then letting unwitting American boys fire them so they'd go away thinking "what a real man's rifle them thar Redcoats have!"! The L2A3 was replaced in its role by the SA80 - they were never especially popular anyway. The crappo ammo we got in the 1980s didn't much agree with them either. You would often either get to watch the bullet hit the ground 20 yards downrange or have the gun run away with you as the ammo failed to force the bolt back far enough to engage the sear! Yeah, the wooden stocked GPMG became obsolescent when Maranyl was approved for use for weapon furniture in October 1969! So plastic stocks were being used almost before I'd got my first Action Man! In any case the shape of the butt on the M240 is wrong for the British wooden butt, the flash hider on the M240 is wrong too for a British gun and you'd need to remove the "picatinny rail" affair on it as well, and add the proper dovetail for the C2 and the IWS. But, OK, if one just wants to rush it out and doesn't much give a crap for detail or authenticity then yes I'm sure a quick repaint of the BIS model would satisfy. Â Roll on the release of the UKF stuff! Not "different"..."better"! Â Â edit: Sorry, the M240 butt shape is only wrong for the first style of wooden GPMG butt. I believe that the wooden ones are only really used by the Royal Navy and TA these days, though. Here's the first style of wooden butt illustrated in the User Manual for the L7A1 GPMG, dated 1962: I'll have to be doing this early model for the boys of SPEARHEAD (qv in a thread elsewhere in this forum)

I think the consensus is that implementing multiple gun barrels on a vehicle is entirely possible but would need development work (ie. not something you could easily mod, if at all). Given the crapload of other stuff BIS still need to work on (in the opinion of some), and given that the guns do actually perform their intended purpose well enough, it's unlikely that this will get a high priority for consideration. Trying to mod in your own small-calibre-smokeless-tracer FFAR to use as gun pods does look like it might be worth some consideration. It's likely you might well get a decent machine gun substitute from that. I know the ZSU 23 was in Flashpoint, but I don't think it worked properly even there, did it? In any case it has none of the real life fire control systems of the real vehicle at all, so "immersion" there is something of a non-issue I think.

The man-carried machine guns in ArmA are apparently reloaded merely by hand waving and gesticulations and the vehicle mounted ones using some sort of telekinesis. Â