MBot

I once dragged a wounded soldier to cover which left a pretty big blood-trail on the ground.

I would like to kindly request the OV-10A Bronco. This would in my oppinion be the most significant aircraft (class) that could be added to Arma 2. The jets are fun and a valuable support when playing on the ground. But as player controlled units they do not work that well. They are so fast they cross Chernarus in moments, the viewdistance on avarage PCs is too low to use them efficiently and their weapon systems are too complex for this game (and are therefore represented very arcady; Tab-Shoot-Kill). The simple, low and slow aircraft fit much better into the Arma 2 game-world. The OV-10 would therefore be the perfect aircraft for Arma 2. Equiped with no sensors but the pilots eyes, the OV-10 features simple aim-and-shoot armament of MGs, miniguns and rockets. It is rather slow but very maneuverable, features excellent cockpit visibility and tends to operate close to the ground. It has good STOL capabilities and can operate from small airstrips (and even take-off from the LHD). A shame the Marines got rid of their broncos in the 90s, otherwise it would have most likely made it into the stock game. Btw, recently there were discussions about re-opening production of the OV-10 for the current needs of the US armed forces.

No through bushes, but through the ground vegetation.

Can anyone tell me where I can set shooting skill and intelligence separately? In the game options there is only a general skill slider per side and the skill setting is missing in the arma2.cfg.

You will only flatten the grass where you are, you still have it directly in front of you. Ground vegetation got denser and higher in Arma 2, unless you are firing from a down-slope or up a hill, it is extremely hard to fight from a prone position. I almost always have to get on me knees to see anything at all (which is of course en invitation to shoot me). The AI on the other hand will fight happily from the prone position/shoot you when your prone because for them there is no grass. Combine that with almost invisible gun flashes past some meters and no tracers for most guns and you are in for some nice frustration. To locate the enemy position by sound is next to impossible in Arma 2. I am ok with all those limitations, but since they do not apply to AI, it gets really hard. With the advance of graphics the complexity of the scenes got so big that spotting the enemy has become a major challenge. I have been shot repeatetly by an enemy lying 5 meters in front of me in the grass without me being able to spot him. I finally got him by shooting blindly in the ground! This complexity of the scenes and the effectiveness of camouflage is great, but it is obvious that the AI works in a less complex world. I bet changing all the graphic options to minimum makes the game a lot easier, because it brings your senses closer to parity with the AI.

Where is that cfg? I remember it from ArmA, but can't find anything like that for Arma 2. I would love to adjust "intelligence" and shooting skills separately. Also does the skill slider in the difficulty options only take effect after reloading a mission? I have set it to 1.00 for friendlies and 0.0 for enemies mid mission, and still my guys were mowed down by ironsighted weapons at large range with the first rounds.

I think this is a good example how the movement has improved with Arma 2. It is still not perfect, some animantion transitions are still a bit rough, movement close to objects is a bit fiddly, vertical/horizontal leaning and physical interraction with objects/cover can be improved etc. But overal Arma 2 features very responsive controls that offer a lot of movement options. For me the new movements are a joy to play. Now if this ducking-trick could be implemented into the AI, they would have better options to fight from behind cover. They could get into safety quickly when suppressed and rising from cover to return fire without having to stand up slowly from the prone position.

What are peoples thoughts about the squad command interface including the new quick command system? Frankly I am a bit disapointed. The new quick command system is useful for the basic commands but the overal command interface is still quite unwieldy and unintuitive. -The squads still come without designated fire teams. The game expects the user to create appropriate sub-groups at the start of every new mission. For a military game this seems to be a very strange design to me. The ability to rearrange your teams during the mission is appreciated but I think that commanding your squad through fire teams should be the default setup for a game like this. -Sub-groups still do not seem to act as one unit, rather it seems that groups are just a way to select a number of individual units. Need to get some more in-game time to further verify this but until now it does not look like it. -The selection process of a group is very unwieldy. Pressing Shift + F-(one unit of the group) or going through the complex command interface to select one of your teams is no efficient way to manage your squad. -Having a seperate quick command interface on your left from the complex command interface on your right is often rather confusing, it makes the whole system look very un-unified. Selecting a unit then open the quick command window, then open the complex interface (because the intended command was not under quick command) will reset your unit selection. Generaly I often can’t remember if I should first select units, then open the interface or vica-versa. This means I often end up trying it multiple times, wasting time to fight with the interface instead of the enemy. A very unintuitive system. -Overal the game makes a very bad job of explaining the various options of the command interface. The training mission is very basic and the majority of commands are not documented in the game nor the manual. The user is expected to find out on his own what for example “Engage at will†or “Danger†will do exactly. In my opinion the series was in need for a complete re-design of the command interface since OFP. Unfortunately this did not happen with Arma 2. It carries on an old and unintuitive system which got quick commands dropped on top. The quick commands help to speed up some every-day tasks like boarding vehicles or sending your (whole) squad somewhere. But it can’t cure the basic problems of the command interface. What is needed in my oppinion is a complete re-design that is quick and intuitive, has a more graphical/structural approach (instead of pages with lists of stuff), works with teams first and individuals second and retains or even improves the tactical options. For a game like Arma 2 this is a very central gameplay element and should in my opinion by a very high priority.

I always thought that the Falklands war would make a good scenario for this series. It was mostly an infantry war (which Arma is good at) with only a few heavy(ier) weapons. Fire support is mostly by mortars and small arti which also suits the game better. There were plenty of helicopters on both sides and only few aircraft in direct ground support. Terrain is hilly and very rugged, providing lots of cover for infantry operations. Sound like the ideal scenario for the elements that Arma does best. British and Argentinian forces would be a nice change and it is very plausible because it actually happend :)

Very good post!

What I liked better in OFP and ArmA was: 1. Reports with precise clock position and distance. 2. That little clock at the bottom that would indicate the orientation reference of the reporting unit. I agree that the old system was a bit sterile and somehow "unhuman" and the effort to improve that is appreciated. But unless the the system is able to give "intelligent" reports like "man about 20m left of that single tree ahead" or "man between those two bushes on our right", the old numbers-approach is better in my oppinion. Especially in a computer game, where you have a very limited perception of your environment, it is important to have those precise calls. Another problem is that we do not have the option to ask quick questions to the AI like "where do you mean, left of that house?" and similar that we so often use in Teamspeak when playing with other humans. I think playtesting Arma 2 shows that the "humanised" calls are bad for gameplay, though they do sound better.

Just a quick commend after 5 days of intensive playing. If you are interestied in the campaign and the single player scenarios, you will most likely be disappointed by the current state of Arma 2. I came to the conclusion that the campaign is in a almost unplayable state. Non-triggered mission scripts, mission critic units that get destroyed (for example your extraction helo), units that get stuck, AI that is often overwhelmed by the scenario (especially in urban terrain) and plenty of crashes (about every 2 hours of gaming, especially when auto-saving). There are plenty of show-stoppers in the campaign and I ended up replaying the mission "Manhatten" over and over again, unable to go on. I tried about 1/3 of the offered single missions but could not complete a single one yet, mostly because your team is unable to handle the tasked mission (gets whiped out or does not procede). If you are interested in setting up your own scenarios in the editor or play MP, I guess you will have a better and smoother expierience.

Perhaps, but then the code to determine squad direction is not realy up to the task. I had enemy reported as behind when they were front, left when right etc. even when our direction of advance was very clear (following a road for 5 minutes). I have the impression though that the reference system is always of the reporting unit.

Here is the current lineup of the GameStar review special: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Preliminary Conclusion Tech Check GameStar TV They continue to test the 1.01beta Version and will publish their final score in the next days. They are also going to check out multiplayer. Pretty extensive coverage, I think no one can say they didn't check it out in depth.

I am playing without such cues, expecting that the game is designed to work well also when you play without such aides. Same assumption was done by GameStar.

As it is now they are pretty useless. Some example: "Two, target that officer." - What officer, where are I am supposed to look for it? You can't say "What officer? Give me some directions". "Two, enemy man, to the right, far" - What is the orientation of the "right"? I had people saying "behind" but it would have been ahead, just because they were looking in a different direction at that time. How far is "far" supposed to be? That little clock from OFP/ArmA that can be used as a reference of the clock-position has been removed, which makes any position report useless at it is in Arma 2. Either you see them on your own or you don't, but the AI position reports could be anywhere depending on their own orientation. "Two, go to that house" - I am in a citty, where is that supposed to be? "Two, go to that tree" - I am in a forest, where am I supposed to go? Etc. Situation awareness is terrible. A pretty serious issue in a game where you are supposed to fight as part of a team or even are supposed to fulfill orders of your AI leader. That is one of the criticism of the GameStar review.

True, you can't even turn those off! I hope we quickly get the option to turn the following very annoying effects off: 1. Blur when running/breathing/turning around. I'm ok with the effect if you would be very exhausted after sprinting for 5 minutes, but to have it after some steps? It practically means I am looking at blurry textures most of the time. If I want that, I will play OPF: DR :) 2. Depth of Field effect. How would the game know which part of the screen I am concentrating at? Silly effect in my opinion that does in no way reflect reality. Look out of the window, everything you are looking at is sharp. 3. HDR. This thing is big time overdone in my opinion with lot's of stuff glowing.

You have to give credit to GameStar for having a very in depth look at the game. If you understand German and actually read what they have to say (and they write a lot about it) you will see, that they have a very good idea what Arma is about and how huge and complex it is. And if you watch their GameStar TV video you can clearly see that they so much would like to like it (obviously they are fans) and how fustrated and angry they are about the state of the game. They give very harsh criticism that is not only about bugs that will eventually be fixed, but also about game mechanics that simply don't work for the game (team communication for example). Their overall criticism, that the game can not handle it's own complexity, I can sadly only agree with after having played it for two days.

telejunky posted this screenshot in another topic, which illustrates one of the problems with post processing nicely. Who wants to play with the game looking like the right side of the screenshot when moving?

1+ Please add the option to turn off postprocessing completely. When running it blurs textures and basically makes the graphics look like on the lowest setting (=like crap).

Yep, "vertical leaning" would have been great. The ability to adjust the height up or down in each stance would have allowed to use a lot more objects and terrain features as cover, respectively shoot over cover. Perhaps this can still be added later.

Excellent video, best footage I have seen from Arma 2 so far. Perhaps you could produce some more high quality footage of fire and movement or firefights before the release of Arma 2? That sort of videos gives the best impression of the gamplay and is highly appreciated.

I am still waiting to finally see the micro-AI in action. The only thing we saw yet about micro-AI was that 2 years old Tiscali video, nothing since then. Pretty odd considering that this is supposed to be a major feature of Arma II ('the' major feature for me). They are either still working to get it to a presentable state (which would be worrisome) or are about to drop a big PR bomb on us. Let's hope it is the latter.

AIM-9 and R-73 are IR weapons like Stingers and Iglas, they do not trigger a launch warning on a RWR. Those weapons are usually cued to a target by radar (radar tells IR seeker where to look) but that is not necessary to actually use them. Also as you can see in LOMAC, your RWR will only tell you you have been locked up. It can not detect an IR missile launch. So having no launch warnings from all the anti-air missiles in Arma II is actually pretty realistic.

BM-21 Grad in ChDKZ camo. From the facebook page.