Kopijeger

This mission is one of the few with no obvious bugs in the execution, but it is probably the one with the most flawed concept. Special Forces attack a town in broad daylight. They have seemingly no advantage in range or accuracy or the supposedly inferior opposition. The team that is not under the player's control will blunder into the opposition and be annihilated. If you leave soldiers behind in the town when you go to the rendezvouz point, they will be killed by a bunch of enemies that seem to spawn out of nowhere, even when you had taken care to clear the town first. If you were allowed to attack under cover of darkness you could probably clear the town in relative safety from a vantage point in the hills above. In short, you have to wonder what they were thinking when they made this frankly ridiculous mission.

Not at all. Remote control turrets are quite real. See this link for an example of a system that is actually in use on a variety of vehicles. Note especially that the M151 is said to be the standard weapon on the Stryker. See also this wikipedia entry.

Because BIS has decided to give the North the Su-34 (in real life, a technologically advanced heavy strike fighter that is only now coming into service in the russian air force). It would likely not agree with unpaved runways, and at any rate it seems unlikely that they would not be able to afford a paved runway even if they are less wealthy than the South. As for the southern airfield, it seems more likely to be a joint civilian/military one than one constructed for the benefit of the US forces.

Most would say no. There are a couple of missions that are reasonably large in scope and decently designed, but the majority are either simplistic, and/or poorly thought out, and several were heavily bugged, but this seems to have improved with the latest patch.

No, it does not explain the fact that the north has more military hardware than the south when the south is supposed to be wealthier. Also, I found it slightly strange that the airfield in the south is paved, but the two airstrips in the north are unpaved (one on the eastern side of the island, another on a smaller island east of that again). Do you really think it "superb" that the North invaded at a time when they would be sure to draw the US into the war, and that the RACS attacks you without rhyme or reason (even if they south is tyrannic, it is ridiculous to attack your allies with such a weak force) just as you are about to make the final push? And that there are seemingly no consequences for the South?

I actually found a way to do this without losing any soldiers; by making sure the second team does not get involved. The first waypoint is in the middle of the town, if you reach that the second team will proceed to get slaughtered. If you position your team outside the town, on the north side, in such a way that they can view both the centre and the field west of town, they can pick off the lot and only be shot out a little bit (two of them got wounded). When you have killed all, proceed to the waypoint inside the town and then to the meeting point. When you reach the latter the second team will join you and the first team (which you left in their spot) will quickly pick off the new soldiers that spawn in town. Effectively, the town must be cleared twice, and the second team is effectively useless unless you can keep them out of harms way until you gain direct control of them.

I was referring solely to the geographical scale of the islands, which has nothing to do with the hardware available to the different sides.

The "microscopic" thing must be attributed to the limitations of hardware. Current hardware cannot handle an reasonably-sized island at this level of detail, so we must assume it is actually much larger in order to be able to support such forces. For that matter, this was worse in OFP. Kolgujev is so small (ca 10x10 km) that you have to wonder how the resistance was able to remain hidden when you'd be able to search all the island in a single day with a single company. Suspension of disbelief is required here. As for the matter of the campaign, I agree. I had some ideas for a better scenario: Presume that Sahrani is like Cuba would have been if it had been politically divided in the manner of Korea. The two states go to war for some reason, and the initial missions feature clashes between the two. They should be evenly matched in hardware, and have little heavy equipment. It should be mostly infantry and light armoured vehicles, with small numbers of old-fashioned tanks, like T-55s, T-62s, AMX-30s or M-48s, and a few old-fashioned aircraft, like Mig-21s and A-4s. After a while the US decides to intervene against the party they like the least. Then you'd play with US special forces conducting sabotage and recon, before a MEU lands and they together with the local allies push to gain control of the entire island. This seems to me a far more reasonable and realistic scenario compared to the current one. The campaign in general seems rather lazy and sloppily made. As for the question of player heroics; I agree, but I do not believe significant progress can be made in this area unless great strides are made towards creating better AI, one that can be given general instructions and then act autonomously in a realistic and reasonable manner.

Even so, with proper beta testing they could at least have assured that all these "demo" missions work properly.

I wonder if maybe they didn't have dedicated mission designers, but had the programmers knock up something in a hurry at the very end of the development cycle. They should have hired the ones who did the Retaliation campaign. That was the finest user-made campaign I have ever played.

A wider variety of units for the RACS, to fit their theme of having rather oldfashioned NATO type vehicles. - MBT: M-48, M-60, Leopard or AMX-30 would all be suitable choices. - Helicopters: maybe UH-1 in different configurations for transport and gunship. Gazelle would be another possibility. - Aircraft: Maybe F-5, A-4, Hawk or older Mirage types, like the F1.

It does not seem that these markers work. If I place them in the editor they do not show up on the map at all (the BIS ones do), and if I go in-mission and try to cycle through them with the arrow keys, the BIS ones again show up, but these give an error message "picture" and nothing else. Though when I unpacked the pbo I could view the .paa files without problems.

For your pleasure (hopefully), I, a ignorant neophyte in terms of mission editing, have created a silly little mission using these units. It is available from www.freewebs.com/kopijeger, a norwegian version called "Veirydning" and an english one called "Road clearance". I had to use a swiss CV90 since there is not yet a norwegian one. There are readmes included with each of the versions. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

I remember back when I first played the ridiculous red hammer campaign. I posted some commentaries on it, among them was that I wished that the conversations would be in russian with subtitles, for the sake of atmosphere. Severak people agreed with this, but there were some fools who disagreed, citing that it would take too much time to read the subtitles while in action (even though most conversations were in cutscenes. The retaliation campaign shames these fools, with its splendid voice acting and generally good subtitles (which I usually finish reading before the line they represent has finished playing). I especially like the incidental voices, like the joking crews in the "defend morton" mission and the singing of the gunner (or is it the pilot?) in the helicopter. I would think just about anyone who played this would like to see more.

(You might think this silly, but please indulge me.) I assume there will be some sort of single player campaign shipping with OFP 2. I hereby humbly request that this time BIS makes a campaign which has a coherent, logical and consistent plot, and that missions are based on real military doctrines and tactics. This means that certain features found in the CWC and Resistance campaigns (not to mention that campaign made by codemasters) should not be found in the OFP 2 campaign(s). These include: - Having the player captured and imprisoned by enemies that have already killed a number of other soldiers on the players side, without giving any sort of explanation as to why you are being spared. - Mentioning that a carrier group is on their way to assist and then never seeing any of either the carrier group or their air assets. - Having a resistance group make camp in an high-profile landscape feature or making any sort of camp that is very visible from the air or a road if the enemy has aircraft at their disposal. - Having a resistance group without proper technical expertise to maintain them or even the inclination to camouflage them capture enemy armour and then using them to conduct several armoured assaults against enemy bases. - Forcing the player to assault a bridge in broad daylight and then promptly demolish it. If one is simply to demolish it, it would be easier and far less risky to sneak up to it at night and plant charges. - Having any resistance group conduct any sort of missions that are not either reconnaisance, ambushes or sabotage. - and several other points people can probably think of.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (placebo @ July 17 2002,16:30)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">How many times do we say it, Red Hammer was made solely by Codemasters, not Bis, you cannot equate anything in RH with original Opf campaign or Resistance <span id='postcolor'> I already knew that, but since Red Hammer was published as an "official" expansion, I tend to think of it as being "officially" part of the game's story. Perhaps this is simply a kind of mental sloth. Given the well-known fact that severak ridiculous missions are present in Resistance (though to a lesser degree than in Red Hammer, which I perhaps should not compare it to), I wonder if there are any talented mission-makers out there who would create a more sensible resistance campaign, one where there are no large-scale direct assaults or armoured battles, but where the action instead focuses on supply interdiction, sabotage and ambush of isolated enemy units. Can anyone tell me if something like this is in progress?

Overall the resistance campaign was quite a bit more enjoyable than Red Hammer (and certainly less ludicrous), bringing it up to the level of quality evident in the original 1985 campaign. This is to be expected given that it was created by the original BIS team rather than some Codemasters hacks who have watched too many silly action films. The missions themselves were well designed and fun to play, with the exception of the tank-based ones, which like all such missions I find infuriating because of the great difficulty involved in controlling both ones own vehicle and the others in the platoon. Being the impatient creature I am, I skipped past these after a couple of tries. For similar reasons I am also quite thankful that there were no flying missions in the campaign. Tank and aircraft combat are really the weakest aspect of the game mechanics in what is the finest infantry combat game I have ever had the pleasure to play. I would like to see this part of the game either thoroughly reworked or removed altogether in any follow-up games based on OFP. Technically, the expansion packs graphical improvements makes almost everything look smoother and more detailed than they did before. The new island is very nice, and I hope we will be seeing some great custom missions in this landscape. It is a small drawback that the textures of some obejcts still suffer from significant dithering effects. This is particulary noticeable on the BRDM. It is also a shame that the game still lacks an HMMWV and BRDM with machine guns, an NSV or DsHK heavy machine gun for the socialist imperalists and a BTR-series vehicle. The new firearms do not add much to the game. I suppose the pistols add realism, but they are not particulary useful. I can personally confirm that the sound of the G3 is utterly inapproriate, the weapon makes a loud, sharp and quite distinctive crack when fired. This makes me question the competency of those responsible for the sound effects. The V-80 is also nice, but it is probably inapporiate to have an early(?) prototype of a new combat helicopter on the frontline in 1982. The greatest technical flaw in the new campaign is the inconsistency of the system for collecting and stockpiling weapons. It is ludicrous that one only get to keep what is carried by your squad and by controlled vehicles located in the designated "safe zone" when the mission ends. It is silly that you do not get to keep weapons loaded in a truck manned by one of your soldiers parked in cover a distance away from the aforementioned "safe zone". It is utterly ridiculous that liberating the capital from the socialist imperalist scum does not net you the weapons they were carrying when they fell, especially given that they were not counterattacking your position afterwards. Also, the capitalist imperialists who assist you in your struggle are curiously stingy in supplying you with weapons: a mere dozen of satchel charges, a handful of each of the firearms, some Stingers and no 84 mms (or Carl Gustavs if you like). Why not hundreds of charges, dozens of rifles and thousands of clips? It is also curious that the first time you get to decide which weapon you should carry, the stockpile contains a couple of LAW rockets, but no launcher for them. I would also like to comment on silliness in the campaigns plot: - Gastowski claims that officially he is on Nogova as a private individual and that the whole operation is shrouded in secrecy. Yet later he openly participates in battle wearing something which is obviously a capitalist imperialist army uniform. - One gets the impression that the invasion was carried out on orders from the socialist imperialist government, what with the communist party of Nogova scum travelling to Moskva in order to request that they are to be installed as vassal tyrants in their homeland. Given this, is it not a rather serious act of war (which could potentially spark a nuclear war) against the "Evil Socialist Empire" when the air forces of the "Evil Capitalist Empire" attacks them openly in the last cut scene. - Is it not odd that Guba was allowed to continue to command military forces and even received a promotion to general after his failure in Nogova? Especially considering his manic behaviour and willingness to commit war crimes, it is curious that high command did not send him off to Afghanistan to butt heads with the mujaheddin there. - It is rather arresting that seemingly the only Socialist Imperialist soldiers who refuse to commit war crimes and follow the madman Guba are Dimitri Lukin and his colleague Sergei (They are stereotypical charachters: seeming idealists railing against but not ultimately working to topple the corrupt system they are a part of. The rest seem to be either mindless automatons (which they strictly speaking of course are, given that this is a computer game) or bloodthirsty berserkers who have no qualms about killing civilians or captured soldiers or otherwise flagrantly violating the Genéve conventions. The capitalist imperialists and the resistance** are depicted as noble and honourable in comparison, and are never shown to kill surrendering enemies, physically abuse prisoners or murdering people suspected of collaborating with the enemy. I rather suspect the developers thought drawing the gameworld's "moral canvas" in shades of grey rather than the current black-and-white would hurt sales among the general gamesbuying public in certain countries at least. This is of course to be expected, but it would probably add to the realism and make the game's plot more interesting if we saw evidence of moral corruption on behalf of the "heroes". **: Note that in the real world, such people are usually referred to either "terrorists" (even if they are resisting a foreign invader on behalf of a government enjoying popular legitimacy) or "freedom fighters" (even if it is their stated goal to install a regime more opressive than the one they are fighting against), depending on what stance the referring party takes towards them.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (CanVagabond @ July 17 2002,02:12)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><span id='postcolor'> </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> Uhhh...carry the weapons or put them in a transport. Now, if the transport is full and so are your men when you leave, the you ARE GOING TO LEAVE THEM. You don't HAVE the resources to salvage every weapon around. Now, I'd like to have seen a mission or two where you "clean" up a battlefield or have transports move in and a cutscene fills them(I dunno if troops can be scripted to clean up). The point is that you are part of a very small(but apparently decievingly small, since you know, you can wage quite the tank battles) that has to keep moving or you get smoked(though you can wipe out regiments on your own) The point is, it is a game that has some flaws, and this isn't one of them since it works with the game.(except for the idea of this...safezone?)<span id='postcolor'> I know that they have to be carried by your men or kept in a transport! What I do object to is that I LOST ITEMS CARRIED IN A MANNED URAL PARKED A DISTANCE AWAY FROM THE FINAL OBJECTIVE IN A MISSION! Also, when I captured the capital, I should be able to aquire at least the most valuable items left behind (do not need firearms, can use antitank-rockets and explosives) after the battle. I am not  going to abandon the capital to the soviets agaign, and I am not in such a rush to reach the next town that my men cannot pick up the spoils of war after the battle! The current collection system simply does not work in a realistic or even sensible manner (except to artifically limit one's abilities in-game), though this is merely annoying, it is not a fatal flaw.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (GRaptor @ July 16 2002,20:52)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><span id='postcolor'> </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> I don't think Flashpoint makes it look like the East was evil. I think it makes it look like Guba was evil. I don't consider myself fighting the real Soviet Union in the game, I consider myself fighting Guba's forces. Now, in Resistance it looks like Guba was taking orders so I may be wrong. However in the original game and Red Hammer Guba was doing that all by himself. As for the soldiers under his command, they didn't know about Guba not taking orders, they didn't think they could resistance they're own comrades, or they agreed in what Guba ordered which would most likely go for the officers. Dimitri Lukin goes under the first, because he didn't know. He was skilled enough and brave enough to fight him though. I think the leaders of the Soviet Union didn't like Guba too much. <span id='postcolor'> These are good points. Even so, I find it arresting that the soviets are never shown to even hesitate in carrying out vicious and senseless order, such as the convoy ambush in Red Hammer (Regarding RH: it seems inconsistent that in the first couple of missions you will fail if you shoot too many unarmed civilians (Here these renegade soviets give at  least some regard to the conventions designed to protect civilians in war.) but in the aforementioned ambush mission you are told that the order to destroy the convoy comes direct from Guba himself.). It is also curious in the 1985 campaign that the officers close to Guba who must realise how dangerous his plans are, what with nuclear warheads and all that, still obey him. Are they too stupid or too scared to do otherwise. Regarding your advice on tank warfare: I am quite aware of the technique you are describing. It is only a small improvement, given that the AI driving is as atrocious as ever and the considerable difficulty involved in tracking moving targets. I did have some success with parking ones tank in a high spot and shooting at enemy tanks far below in the original campign though. You are probably correct in pointing out that I am "reading too much into" a not very detailed and quite inconsistent gameworld. But it amuses me to do so, so I shall keep at it .

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (USSoldier11B @ July 16 2002,02:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><span id='postcolor'> </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Ahhh! Then wouldn't by this definition, the former Soviet Union be imperialists as well? (Not now, back during the cold war)<span id='postcolor'> Normally I would start to wonder if I was being far too obtuse in my writing. But given that Slasher Doggo seemed to have understood what I was trying to express well, I am forced to assume that some people either are to lazy to read my entire posts before replying, or that they are too dense to comprehend what I am writing. By the definition and examples I gave it should be quite obvious that both the USA and the USSR engaged in "imperial adventures" during the cold war. But this is quite a digression from my original post.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tor @ July 15 2002,15:40)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><span id='postcolor'> </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> I missed the tank missions and took every opportunity to steal tanks, either an abandonned one or by killing the tank crew if possible.<span id='postcolor'> That is nice. My problem with the tanks are that the AI can't maneuver or shoot in a sensible manner. It can't drive straight or it will often shoot when it cannot hit the intended target, and they do not obey my simple movement order in a timely fashion. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I particularly missed the chopper missions. If you are having a hard time controlling them, you can use the original single mission "Ground attack" for practice<span id='postcolor'> I can control them well enough. What annoys me is that one is often shot down by unseen and untargetable AAA (though this is primarily in custom missions), that there are no proper countermeasures against missiles and that guided missiles consistently overshoots (many others have reported this problem). These are not a problem in dedicated helicopter games I have played, so I attribute this to poor game mechanics. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I find version 1.75 to be a vast improvement over version 1.00 to 1.46. The fact that the weapons you collect in one mission are carried on to the next was a feature that I missed a lot in the elder versions. Also I enjoyed the added features to drop weapons or to put them in vehicles. I really can't see any reason for complaints in this respect.<span id='postcolor'> Perhaps I was being unclear: I am quite happy with the fact that one has to collect one's weapons; this add realism. What I DO object to is that weapons left lying on the ground right next to the objective you have just captured are lost forever and not automatically collected after the end of the mission. Do you really think that real world resistance fighters lacking weapons and ammunition would ignore weapons left over from a recent victory unless circumstances forced them to? </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Did you run out of ammo? Better practice your aim then. No seriously this is supposed to be a small group of people that gathers to fight the invaders. Think of it as your own hometown being invaded. Do you have 1000s of clips hidden in you living room or perhaps in the garage?<span id='postcolor'> I certainly did not run out of ammo. Again you seem to misunderstand what I wrote. I was referring specifically to the weapons delivered by the americans: there are curiously few of them, though with the exception of the stingers and perhaps satchel charges they are not really needed. I would have expected these americans to at least give me enough rifles of one type to equip a whole squad. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">One of your men has the launcher. If you want it remove it from him and add it to your own inventory.<span id='postcolor'> Very well. I did not notice this. I shall examine it later. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">He is ironical when he claims he is there in private business. I.e. it's undercover and he can't say anything else. Just like if you have seen Air America with Mel Gibson. The US is not in Laos, yet they have personel and lots of aircrafts there. Confused? <span id='postcolor'> My point is that by wearing such a uniform he needlessly "blows his cover". Most of the time he is seen wearing civilian clothing or unmarked black ops uniforms. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">They travel to Moscow to try to find a political solution to the conflict - it is stated in the game - perhaps it was in one of the parts you skipped?<span id='postcolor'> In the first mission (where you travel to your office) Troska listened to the radio in the fuel station. We hear that communist party politicians have resigned from the coalition government due to disputes over economic reforms and that they travelled to Moskva on undisclosed business. Soon after the soviets invade from Kolgujev. I certainly got the impression that the invasion happened because the nogovan communists convinced the soviets to go ahead. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Actually, in the very first real mission, you can tell the Russians where your friend is hiding. I think that pretty corrupt. Also later on you when you attack the capital, you are instructed that "no one is to leave here a live". I think that is against the Geneva convention. <span id='postcolor'> That is only slightly corrupt, given that they are threatening you with execution. The other point you make is fair, I did not notice that either. But then again in this game enemies always fight to the death unless they have been scripted not to do so. The bit about murdering real or imagined collaborators is something I would like to see because it often happens in occupied countries. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Anything else? Ohh yes - do you know what an "imperialist" really is? Because you seem to use that word at random.<span id='postcolor'> I was attempting to parody popular soviet terminology. Perhaps I was not over-obvious enough. According to my dictionaries, "imperialism" is any sort of policy run by a state/ government which is intended to increase its influence beyond its own borders. A common type of imperialism is to invade foreign countries with overwhelming military force and install puppet governments there. Another, somewhat more subtle form is to provide funding, training, protection or other kinds of support to corrupt and oppressive regimes in so-called "banana republics" and other places in order to protect one's own military and commerical interests. In soviet rhetoric, the United States of America (should perhaps be "Imperial States"?) and its allies was commonly referred to as "imperialist", which they of course were and are, by the definition above. Obviously, the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics ("The Socialist Despotate" perhaps?) were also imperalist, what with their warmongering and vassalisation of foreign countries, though they of course never referred to themselves as such. During the cold war each "imperium" tended to refer to the other as "Evil (insert ideology name here) Imperialists". Given that I have no stomach for authoritarianism or tyranny, whether physical or ideological, I easily give in to the temptation to mock such rhetoric, whoever espouses it. I shall continue to do this regardless of how eccentric or foolish people might think I am.

I would like to add something to my original statements: It would help immersion quite a bit if the island natives actually spoke their native language (probably intended to be czech, given the signs posted around Nogova) with subtitles in whatever language is appropriate for the given version of the game, instead of speaking english with affected accents (Why does Troska sound like he is english if he is supposed to be a native of Nogova?). But this sentiment is just a silly little hobby-horse I like to ride. "Evil tongues" would have it that it is too challenging for most anglophones to listen to foreign languages being spoken and then only translated in text. But this is perhaps just untruthful and petty imperial-bashing?

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (edc @ July 15 2002,03:34)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">You mentioned you skipped a few of the missions after a few tries. Â How did you do that?<span id='postcolor'> By pressing minus on the keypad while holding the left shift button and typing the letters "endmission" without the quotes. It is an in-built cheat code. Regarding Tor's post: Did you even read everything I wrote? Or were you simply being sarcastic?