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There will be a nice PDF version of this within a week or so. And by "nice" I mean really, really, really nice.

You're welcome to believe whatever you want. Everything in that guide works in ArmA, as it did in OFP. We've been using those kinds of tactics extensively in the past to good success. And yes, this is in both coop and adversarial. We don't play CTF or DM, because that's not really what ArmA/OFP are meant for, and I don't believe most tactics have any application in those. You're practically playing a different game than we are. The guide is not titled "The Ultimate CTF/DM ArmA tactics!". It's oriented towards realism mods like WGL/ACE and realistic, authentic combat scenarios. Scenarios where, surprise surprise, these tactics do apply, do work, and are completely reasonable to use.

Only the basic guidelines like look and listen around, keep a low profile, flank often and zig-zag under fire work. Human vs human tactics resemble a football match. Usually they just decide who stays back and who is on offensive and the players will perform as they see fit. Very bold statements from someone who, by the looks of their sig, is mainly interested in CTF/DM styles of play. You're welcome to have that opinion, of course, but I doubt you've ever played scenarios like those that my group does. If you had, you'd know that there are a load of real-world tactics and such that come into very real and very applicable play in such situations. In CTF/DM, they have little application, but in actual realistic scenarios they have realistic uses. That shouldn't come as a surprise. Really, though, judging by the amount of attitude you're slinging in your post, I don't think you're open for discussion on this.

Good luck trying to find large groups of players in VBS2. The price of admission alone will prevent that from happening on the civilian side. I know that if I were to switch to VBS2, I'd lost 98% of my group in the process. It doesn't matter how much realism there is when you aren't able to play with the people you want to play with.

To the questions about the ACE mod: It isn't out yet. ETA is unknown, but if I had to guess I'd say we'll see an initial release sometime in the next three months. I wish it'd get out faster, but in the long run I know that it's going to be worth the wait, so I'll be patient. I have no doubt that ACE is going to do to ArmA like what WGL did to OFP.

Thanks. I plan to update it based upon what ShackTac plays. Since I anticipate this being primarily the Advanced Combat Environment mod combined with Chain of Command mods, that's what you should expect to see in the future. I will also probably showcase notable mods in some capacity in the document. Time will tell - there's also another page that I haven't yet established that's going to be an "Intro to ArmA" thing that very briefly describes the game, links to various important resources, links to the mods we use as a group, and shows off some of the more prominent ArmA mods that have been released.

I would understand this complaint being leveled at OFP, but ArmA? ArmA has loads of vegetation. It seems completely appropriate to the terrain. Microterrain, yeah, the game obviously suffers at that due to the sheer scale of the terrain being modeled. I won't argue that point. Vegetation, though? I think you're expecting something unreasonable.

I guess those of you that are complaining about the ArmA AI never play with the more intelligent AI scripts and such. They are most certainly capable of providing a challenging fight to even the best and most well-coordinated teams.

Silly CQB paintball or paintball in forest over semi-large area? :P Comparing paintball to combat is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to begin with, after all. There are a whole slew of paintball-specific tactics that have no place in real combat training or real combat, and the same can be said in reverse. Take paintball people, give them real guns, real gear, put them in an environment where they have to move more than 50 meters to find let alone shoot at the enemy, and so on and so forth, and I'm sure you'll see different results. ArmA and OFP's combat environments are much closer to "real world" combat than paintball, too. I would happily challenge a similarly-sized group of CS:S players to a ShackTac style adversarial ArmA mission. Put us in ACE and it'd be an even more lopsided battle in our favor. Really, as I said... I wouldn't have wasted my time going as in-depth as I did in my guide if it weren't for the fact that those things really do come into play with realistic scenarios, and utilization of such tactics provides a significant increase in lethality, combat effectiveness, and survivability for the team using them.

It will. I intend to do stuff about ACE in the future, at the very least. There are also sections that I never put in due to running out of time, so they may show up in the future as well. I need a break for now, though. This has been dominating a great deal of my free time for quite awhile. It's time to actually play games instead.

If they didn't work, I wouldn't waste my time writing about how to apply them to a gaming environment.

You're a fool if you believe this. Infiltration has a slew of features that would be a godsend to have in ArmA. Your ignorance is showing quite clearly with this latest batch of comments from you. Already explained why it would be useful in various situations, if you choose not to read or ignore them, that's on you. You're wrong, in a very fanboyish way, and you're using fanboy tactics to try to prove it. ."olol DEATHMATCH god we don't need those stupid features only lamers would use them". Typical fanboy crap. Oh, give me a break. Once again you aren't actually addressing the core issue but are instead trying to justify it with tactics, which is completely irrelevant. If we applied this same logic to other areas of the game, every infantry feature would end up being a "tremendous hassle" and never would have been implemented by your logic. You're really over-complicating this, and when you're literally fighting against how reality is, you're in a losing battle. Do you want the game to be modeled around an "average human" or a "trained soldier"? I know my answer. I don't know if you've served, but you are making points and using examples that make it seem like you have not, and thus you're over-exaggerating the discussed topic (reloading while moving), taking it to extremes, and trying to use that to make your point. It's frustrating to see some of the apologist explanations for why a clearly missing feature is "ok" to not be present. If it weren't for the engine limitations that prevent this from happening, this conversation would never happen, because it would already be a feature of the game and you guys wouldn't have to sit around trying to justify why it wasn't there to begin with. The same can be seen with binoculars. What kind of lame excuses are you going to shovel at me when I say that you should be able to realistically move with your binoculars out? It's the same principle. Animations for it are not present, and while it may be possible (binos are easier to do than reloading due to how it would be animated), it's not there. As to the question about ArmA being modded by Beppo, I think he'd be more interested in working with a different engine like the Crysis or Unreal Tournament III one. I personally would rather he concentrate on one of those engines and not ArmA - I think that a lot of the cool features he could potentially implement would not be half as neat (or even possible) in ArmA.

lol, you can be also really funny. my reply is no: because like i said, i don't need the vehicles, choppers, planes, etc. One thing interests me the engine. You're not even here for the game, just the engine/mods, am I understanding you right? So basically you're the last person on the planet who should be commenting about ArmA's realism or focus?

Oh look, another amusing comment from you. You're on a roll. I see that your preferred form of discussion involves heavy use of wild hyperbole. If you just want to "play a game", why would you be looking towards something that purports to be a realistic wargame like ArmA? You're contradicting yourself.

It's amusing to see comments like this show up. If I wanted to be in the military still, I would have reenlisted. I didn't. Now you're telling me that I shouldn't desire realism in a game that is meant to be a realistic combat simulator, that such requests is excessive? Haha. Just because you don't think you would use it does not make it a "trivial gameplay" element. Good for you, I guess? I play ArmA, like OFP, pretty seriously, so if your "full veteran mode" comment was supposed to illicit some kind of "Oh, wow! You're hardcore!" response, you're not getting it from me. When I play I very frequently find situations where being able to move while reloading would be useful. Again, you miss the point - moving during a reload would allow a person to get out of the way of unexpected enemy contact. I'm sure you have been surprised by an unexpected enemy even when reloading behind what you thought was good cover. That's one of the situations such a feature would be able to address. I'm pretty sure I know the reason why the animated trigger finger was introduced, and I'm almost positive it was not because of any forum commentary about it. I also am sure that it was not something that took long to put in. In any case, your comparison between being able to move and reload with having an animated trigger finger is a bit off-target. One is eye candy, one has practical gameplay ramifications.

If I had a place to film it, I'd grab my AR and show you just how possible moving and reloading is in reality. Many of you are way overstating how "difficult" it really is. Anything short of a belt-fed machinegun can be reloaded on the move as a standard, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary event.

Well, I disagree. The fact that the view no longer bobs crazily makes it possible to move and shoot in a fashion that is MUCH closer to real-world capabilities than before. You can think this is a "trivial" change and doesn't do anything, but for me and many others, it is a very significant and useful change. Disagree again. There are countless situations that I encounter in every OFP or ArmA session where in a real-world situation I would be able to move and reload in a fashion that would be completely realistic and logical. This is not modeled in ArmA. It's not there because of an apparent technical limitation. You're making an excuse for it and trying to minimize the impact of such a potential change, instead of simply acknowledging that it's something that can be done in reality and would flesh out the infantry model of ArmA. You're fighting an utterly pointless battle in that respect. I've put plenty of "actual" (as opposed to fake?) thought into it already, thanks. Uh, those things have to be taken into account right now. The fact that you're lumping them into this "moving while reloading" issue is pretty irrelevant. Any change requires things having to be "taken into account", you're not stating anything new here to be perfectly honest. Do you really feel compelled to start using personal insults here? I think we can stay above that and still accomplish something in this discussion. I want features like that, and others, because - as I said previously - it increases the depth of the simulation and fleshes it out further. I guess you have a different idea of what "realism" should be, and you're entitled to it. I don't share it, though. Trivial to you, perhaps. Thankfully BIS takes a wider range of opinions and suggestions into consideration than just from you, or else we'd be in a bad place.

Actually, surprise surprise... it'll be out this weekend. I'm putting the finishing touches on it on Friday and should publish it Friday evening, Saturday, or Sunday. It's over 55,000 words worth of tactical goodness, and is filled with all manner of screenshots and illustrations to flesh things out. I'm rather fond of it myself. I think the community will enjoy it as well.

I don't believe that this is true. Infantry is the core of the game - everything else, and I mean everything, is there to support the infantry. The fidelity of the infantry movement model and related issues is of a massive priority. It is the foundation of the game itself. Anything done to it to improve it will pay off huge dividends. One prime example of where this has happened in the past involves the way weapons used to move. I've always known that it was a huge issue in OFP, and I knew it was a huge issue in ArmA. I could have told anyone that changing it would have a significant, positive impact on the infantry experience. Lo and behold, when it was changed, what was the response? It was huge. It did a tremendous amount to un-clunkify the infantry. The same is true with reloading while moving, firing AT from different postures, firing from Littlebirds, or the backs of trucks, or whatever. It's fidelity. Throw us in human form and then tell us that we can't do basic things that we'd be able to do in reality, and what does that get us? Frustrated, that's what. I like ArmA. I really admire BIS as a developer, and I am a huge supporter of them. That doesn't change some fundamental things - namely, that the general infantry movement and weapon/gear/etc modeling has been done better in other games, and BIS could do well to learn from them and adapt various elements to ArmA where technically feasible. Infiltration, the ooold UT mod, is a prime example of an infantry game that had great depth and fidelity. If even half of Infiltration's features made it over to ArmA I would be ecstatic. For all of them (and more! to show up would put ArmA in an infantry realm that would be untouchable by any competitors. I hope that Game2 delivers on this, but I think it is absolutely imperative that BIS understands why that is so important right now, before Game2, so that they can go into it with the mindset of improving it all to the level it needs to be instead of the ArmA model where many elements were glossed over because it was planned to "just" be an overhaul of OFP. I don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of why specific features would be useful, and where they'd have tactical application, aside from saying that they would flesh out the infantry and would be positive additions in general. I think that should be good enough for now. However, if you (and others) insist on telling me (and others) how such-and-such feature would be pointless and not change anything, I may have to reevaluate my stance and start citing the countless incidents from past OFP sessions where such features would have meant the difference between life and death for an individual, fireteam, squad, etc. There are plenty to be cited if necessary.

That's not the point. The point is that it should be an option, with realistic pros and cons for how it works. Well, of course they would! What idiot would stand still while being shot at when they're reloading? Again, I think you're missing the point. It should be an option for a huge variety of reasons, and saying that it should not be included because it's "poor practice" is bogus. It's not poor practice, and that's before we examine the really ridiculous scenarios that occur in ArmA where someone is stuck reloading a weapon and dies because of it, because they have no capacity to move or seek cover. This is an excuse for the gamey and unrealistic behavior currently present. I do not agree with you here - individual tactics are a completely separate beast from actual infantry simulation fidelity.

I'm sorry, but this is a really poor excuse. I'm a former Marine, and we were definitely taught how to reload while moving. That's beside the point, however. A fully fleshed-out infantry sim will have a huge amount of possibility in what you can do, and it will be based off of how things work in reality. It may not be a good idea to try to reload a rifle while jogging, but a fully-featured infantry sim would have that option. You'd have the realistic drawbacks, too - it would take longer, or you might fumble the mag or drop it entirely. Whereas if you walked, you'd be able to reload just fine, maybe with a sliiiiight speed penalty. You're making an excuse for why ArmA doesn't allow for reloading on the move. It's not a design decision, it's a limitation of the animation system (apparently). Accept that and realize that there are many tradeoffs in ArmA and it's fine to acknowledge them and recognize why they're there, without having to make excuses for why they might be there. Same thing for firing from Littlebirds. It may not be the best thing in the world, but given the choice to fire back at the enemy while heading in to a drop (and potentially suppress them or even wound/kill them), or sit there and smile as the enemy plugs you full of holes, I think the choice is obvious. Let's not kid ourselves and say that things like these are core design decisions. They are clearly limitations or oversights and should be thought of and treated as such.

For the record, that may be the first VBS2 vid, but it certainly isn't the last. Anything you think you haven't seen already will be shown in the future.

Maaaaybe. Maybe not. Time will tell.

I would suggest that you don't get too wound up in trying to hypothesize why VBS2 is different in certain respects from ArmA. It's not a very fruitful thing to do. Your current hypothesis is quite flawed, but I don't think I need to fuel the speculation by being any more specific than that. Let it rest - the two are different products, priced and targeted at wildly different markets. As to realism and such in ArmA, I think people will find some extremely high-quality mods in the future that will really redefine how the gameplay in terms of realistic combat. I'm sure many of you have played Wargames League for OFP. Well, the team that did that is coming back for ArmA - the mod they'll be doing is going to be just what a lot of you are looking for, I think. It's going to be mentioned extensively in the massive ArmA tactics guide I'll be publishing this weekend, so... stay tuned. Biggest project I've done on my site by far.

I think it depends on what you were expecting ArmA to be. As an update of OFP for the more modern age, I think it's pretty good. I think that there's a ton of potential in it to become something really amazing with a bit of time - for instance, via realism mods. I also think that there was a serious lack of vision on BIS' part with ArmA. I'm disappointed by the fact that there are so many elements, compelling ones, that are not addressed in the core game. Wargames League for OFP is a prime example of what kind of superb gameplay you can get in OFP. SLX introduced a lot of small features that may not have been super polished, but added a great deal to the experience as well. The fact that these kinds of touches are almost completely absent in ArmA is distressing, but the degree of that distress depends upon what you think ArmA was meant to be - if it's "just" an OFP update, it's somewhat understandable. However, if it's indicative of what Game2 may be like... well, that's worrying. I am also bothered by the animation system, and the limitations of it. The fact that we cannot stand or go prone and fire AT is troublesome. Same with not being able to reload while moving, or fire from the seat of a Littlebird or CRCC. These are extremely compelling gameplay elements that would have done a great deal to add to the experience. They are, alas, completely absent in the full game. There are numerous other elements that would have been nice to have, but I won't go into the specifics here. I accept ArmA because of the strengths - solid engine, massive mod potential, excellent dev support - but I now have quite a few reservations about future projects. If Game2 does not have massive, sweeping overhauls or complete rewrites of various aspects of the game and design, I don't know if I will be too excited to play it. I hope that competition in the form of Blackfoot Studio's game, Operation Flashpoint 2, and other games helps to inspire BIS to take a long, hard look at what went right and wrong with ArmA and what they need to focus on in the future. I hope they also take some cues from the mod community. For now, though? ArmA is good, and it will be made better with time. I'm happy with it. I'm very happy with the prospect of mods for it. I think the mod community is what will ultimately "sell" ArmA for me in the long run. Things need to change for future projects (Game2), but for now this will do nicely. Pretty much everything you said there is complete bollocks.