Callaghan

Although a great idea and an improvement over the current unit editor, I believe having the camo/skin seperate to the unit model is fundamentally flawed. The camoflage type often affects the entire model, i.e. desert troops from a certain era would have certain webbing layouts/clothes arranged loosely etc so being able to change the textures for each model would make addon making much harder and the results would be less accurate. The weapon loadout is a great idea, saves making scripts for each soldier, but it is totally unneccesary to choose between woodland/des/snow for each model, as each addon may have totally different camo models. I suggest a simplified version - 1. Side - Blue (Friendly) Red (Hostile) Green (Resistance) Yellow (Civ) ...I dont see the need in haveing resistance and neutral (UN) myself. 2. Nation - NATO Russia China etc 3. Unit - '03 MFR Rifleman (DES) '03 MFR Rifleman (ACU) 4. Rank - (more ranks through to General) 5. Loadout - Using slots AND weight, RL values for ease of addon making. Slots allow clear visual representation and stop ridiculous selections wheras the weight simply negates from an optimum speed/stamina. 6. Unit insignia - not too important but saves using scripts all the time, could have a markings folder which allows for user made unit patches. This would also allow for markings on planes and armour via the same drop down menu. 7. Race - to represent foreigners in uniform and to keep forces consistent. If bis make skins for arabs, caucasian, black, chinese, eastern europe - this would save a lot of time for addon makers, and mean that all addons are of a higher quality and consistency. 8. Mentality - as i mentioned in a recent post in the AI topic, different AI classes would greatly improve gameplay. A drop down box would allow choice of - Leader, Default (Config defined), Sniper, SF, MG, Support (Medic, Engineer) and Heavy (AA/AT). ...and all the usual - skill, azimut etc etc. What do you think?

anyone?

1. Different and distict AI classes - Air - automatically find place to refual and rearm in friendly localle to increase mission legnth and realism. central flight control for airports - disabled when control tower destroyed. this should allow multiple ungrouped units to land take off and taxi without crashing into each other. it should allow them to automatically refuel and rearm and return to last objective, of course units should only choose to rtb when either objective is complete or when fuel/armour is below 25% or when ammo is below 10%. For helicopters the AI config should make it so that they fly NOE and follow certain terrain patterns i.e. valleys etc, when a target appears on radar they should pop and engage before returning to cover, as in RL. Armour - AI should have 'vision' triangle, rather than 360 detection. Should be less accurate when targeting infantry and soft targets with HE to add atmosphere and realism - always looks better when shells hit ground and explode rather than hitting people! Ground vehicles in general should be adjusted so that convoys operate more effectively, I find it near impossible to make a large convoy follow a road when in one group and using only waypoints in a column formation. Sniper - default prone and slow movement, stealth, higher camouflage rating and increased visibility/detection distance, able to engage at long ranges and not likely to move unless spotted. Ability to decrease morale when firing undetected and increase chances of fleeing. Automatically target units in ranked order. MG - will lay down suppressive fire on last know enemy location or when firing on a group will fire at an average distance between units rather than picking specific targets. AT - not waste AT rounds on inf/soft targets and will not rush forward with other riflemen when on egage at will. grenadier - similar to mg in that it should target area of enemy rather than individuals. Medic - preference to stay back/near squad leader and will automatically approach injured squad members to heal. Engineer - ability to construct simple structures; sandbags/barbed wire. All infantry esp. S.F. - more advanced formation handling, when in column formation automatically adjust inter-unit distance to suit environment, when in open terrain use large distance and when in urban env. auto adjust so that they are not only close, but also so that they will fall in on squad leader and occupy wall that he is on rather than trail behind indefinitely (so when alongside a building they will close in to ooccupy the legnth of the wall). not only this but should be made so that units will cover certain directions automatically, i.e. last man in column covers rear, flanks on wedge formation cover sides and rear etc. S.F - default preference for stealth and should be given a higher stamina for sprinting than other units as well as better recoil handling (disabled for human players). 2. Urban A.I, maybe switch to entirely new config or modfied one for urban situations. when 'safe', move in column along pavement or road but when situation arises, stick to wall and use close column. If outnumbered/outgunned, automatically occupy nearby building/take cover and choose window/door positions facing enemy, preference for upstairs. 3. Distinct AI for situation - maybe have seperate configs for offence and defensive modes - selected by an assesment of several variables; friend/enemy ratio; leader skill; weapon loadout; current waypoint; unit stregnth (% start units). 4. Increased detection range but with reduced accuracy: TrueRangeAI went some way to achieving this, however in increasing AI detection and engagement range the stealth element was removed. should be made so that at maximum skill units can be detected at 800m in daytime when running and no fog, maybe above 1km with binocs. enemy will engage at up to 800m with rifles and mg but NOT with same aiming accuracy (by this I dont mean even greater bullet dispertion than there already is, i simply mean that the units ability to track the target and select an aimpoint is reduced. The current AI seems to always choose the correct point and a hit/miss is determined by dispersion. Changing this would greatly add to feel and atmosphere of AI combat). AI should automatically choose fire mode to suit situation, this should be located in weapon config not unit AI to avoid limiting things for mod teams. note - the ECP and FFUR/slx mods had near perfect examples of advanced scripted AI, when replaying the OFP campaign with these I came across fantastic moments of realism due to some small changes. AI will assess situation and either attack, hold, or retreat and regroup/disband according to circumstance. This, I would say, is essential and if an unpaid mod team can manage it years ago, dont release arma2 without it! The mod teams actually reffered to Sun Tzus 'Art of War' and US army doctrine to adjust the AI, the results where stunning, never before have i seen so much variety when replaying the same mission. 5. Introduction of new infantry class - Radio operator. Many addon makers have released radio operators with new radio models. BIS should release a universal one with a universal dialogue for the map - as it the case for gps and current radio - that allows for advanced dialogue functions, this will allow greater compatability for addons and mean less addons are necesary. Dialogue should be empty template so addon makers can add as many different types of data field as they like inc. drop down menus, multiple pages etc to allow for artillery/airstrikes. Regardless of addons, the radio operator, when alive, would convey data to other units with radios, so AI will become aware of distant enemies, maybe make them appear on map with larger marker for group not individual units (less precise). This would work well in combination with a new waypoint type - 'rapid response/combat support', it would work in a similar way to the current guard waypoint but instead of attacking enemies in a guarded trigger they would also attack enemies spotted by units with a radio operator. 6. Civilian AI, at the moment civi AI is very basic in that, there is none. its silly that when scared they will drop and look like they are holding a rife, please add new animations for units that are fleeing and not holding a gun. It would be good if when in a battle, civis run and hide, some panic and run with arms in air and other drop prone. 7. Ability to use cover and rooftops, should automatically adjust stance to hide and raise to shoot over sandbags etc, hiding to reload and when under heavy fire. Ai should also use lean function. 8. AI voices, as in XAM and ECP mods AI should communicate with voice not just radio, this is easy to acheive and adds a great ammount to immersion. Thats the end of that essay, im sure a lot of it has been mentioned before but i cant be bothered to trawl through pages of txt.

Just before the 505 1.4 version came out. I finished making a very large multiplayer mission. When I tried playing it (LAN) it gave other players the message "You cannot play/edit this mission as it contains downloadable content that has been deleted". After speaking to a few people it turns out that missions from 1.2 are not compatible with 1.4, so, I remade it, from scratch, on 1.4. Even after many hours work it still comes up with the same error for other players. I cannot work out what is wrong, I didnt copy + paste anything from the other mission I made the entire thing from scratch. Could there be something wrong with my installation as i had the German 1.2 before the UK 1.4? Someone please help it is very frustrating as this is a good mission and i want to release it to the community.

ok i kinda got the mission working MP by editing the sqm and adding every possible addon manually but only 50% of the people that try connecting can actually play and they all still get the error message. im presuming patch .5 will fix this and im not going to make missions till it comes out. Get on the ball BIS you're getting far too complacent after ofp, the novelty is no longer there and you cannot get away with leaving any aspect unpolished.

think the .50 cals are zeroed at ~350m, level till ~500 and drop thereafter. Someone please make an adjustable sight addon, sniping in arma will be rubbish until then

Dont know why people post complaints about people complaining about the game, thats what this thread is for. nothing is gained by saying how pretty it looks people need to know where it lacks. Especialy BIS, I really really hope the lead programmer reads over all of these posts because there really are some important observations. I also really hope they dont just look at magazine and online reviews when deciding what to patch because those people never really know what they are talking about and probably only play each game for a couple of hours. Maybe someone should post a load of keywords in the hope that a BIS programmer will be lead to this thread. Why did they even bother including planes and helicopters if the AI cant use them? No matter what waypoints/scripts I use with say, an AH-1z, its as if the pilot is only just learning how to fly and the gunner has just had a frontal lobotomy. Try playing as the gunner and still no improvement, the pilot AI is non-existent, he should line up the gunner to fire salvos of FFARs and Hellfires, at the moment he just tells you what to target and then flys so fast its impossible to hit anything. The UH-60 is actually more effective as an attack helicopter in arma simply because it is slower. BIS programmers take note, pilots, drivers, gunners and crew need completely seperate AI code to infantry, with variables for target aquisition priority and the ability to fly/drive differently according to the weapon being used. If this is fixed then maybe we can start making missions that use something other than infantry and the odd BMP

Right most people clearly dont know anything so here is an (imo) accurate roundup of gameplay and visual bugs, I stress bugs, because too many people talk about things which they personally dont like about the game, these are not neccessarily bugs, it just might not suit your style of gameplay. BIS isnt a giant company like EA or anything so be grateful that a military sim of that quality exists at all. The 'grass bug' isnt a bug as such, a soldier would never use mid-height grass as cover anyway so dont expect it to provide you with a good firing position, at most it provides good concealment as you crawl into position, go to a kneeling position if you must return fire from grass. If its really so bad turn shading detail down to minimum, this will reduce the visual density of foilage and the distance at which it is drawn whilst increasing your frame rate. There also is the option of turning floating aim off so dont complain about it. Ground vehicle controls are in no way worse but the physics do need to be patched, at the moment tanks feel very light at a certain speed and its possible to drift them round corners like a rally car, this is ridiculous for a simulator and must be changed. AI LOS (line of sight) needs to be improved as they are able to detect you through tall grass and dense foilage and when it comes to tanks it is clear that their LOS has not been modified to suit the limited viewing angle. Some might say nitpicking, i say if you are going to call a game a simulator, you should have something to back it, at the moment it is just a very detailed and in depth game, it has a way to go before it is anything else. In terms of graphics, the texture management system is ridden with bugs; when you respawn in MP, the game seems to be overwhelmed with trying to load the textures onto the wireframes, if it has been correctly coded this shouldnt happen, also destroyed vehicles often flicker between the 'normal' and 'wreck' textures, not only making it look very silly and unrealistic but also making it difficult to choose targets during combat (at least they got rid of that stupid blackened texture from ofp). Tracers are much improved from last time but i have yet to see the improved ricochet physics working, bullets should not deflect off sand ffs, no matter what the angle of impact. I dont know what this scope/sight lag is that people speak of, buy a good laser mouse and turn your sensitivity down a little. WHen it comes to sound, the EAX needs to be improved as even if you float-aim your gun to the side a little it sounds like it is being shot in the distance and the helicopters only have about 3 volume levels making flyovers sound lame. Vehicle A.I. needs the most change out of everything, tanks shoot down helicopters effortlessly and the shilka (zsu-23-4) is unable to shoot down the AV8 (harrier), although this is fairly true to reality the shilka cannot even target it properly (try making a basic shilka vs harrier mission and play as the driver). On top of this A.I is unable to use the laser guided bombs and the planes just fly around making a worse sound than the one in OFP, the designator works but the soldier carrying it seems unable to decide whether he wants to use a laser or an m-16, even if there are no infantry targets. also miniguns in general are buggy, M163, Shilka and UH60 guns seem to fire continuously from the first click and can only be stopped by changing views and firing again. As for impact detection and balistics, either BIS has been naughty and simply made it so there is a random chance of a one shot kill (M1A1 vs T72) or it simply needs a lot of work. Dont get me wrong i really like this game it simply is not yet close to being a simulator, the flight model needs to be drastically changed, its not realistic just because its difficult, even bf2's silky smooth flight controls are FAR more realistic in terms of movement and BIS should realise that sometimes its worth sacrificing some detail if it means saving gameplay. For ultra-modern killing machines, the aircraft in OFP and AA handle terribly (every tried having a dogfight?) and should be completely redone from scratch. Bugs aside, arma IS a very enjoyable game, a diamond in the rough with even more potential than OFP thanks to basic engine improvements (multiple gunner positions, increased squad sizes, ingame unit change). So dont let these bugs put you off, get the english copy when it comes out, support the MOD community with whatever you can and this game will become a legend like its father, Operation Flashpoint

Hey guys I downloaded the online version of the game and when i patch it it runs the cd checker, any way around this? tis quite annoying