nyles

I disagree. There is absolutely zero reason to restrict usage that way. It is fine, if people want to use it as a "nice limited fighting place", but others don't. Worst case mission makers will either go and search for that flat ground on the peripheral and get something working, or even build an artificial strip by planting the stilted tarmac modules from Apex, but trust me, those airfields will pop up, if they are needed for a scenario. It would just be so much more convenient and user friendly to have them prepared in a proper way (again, with very limited effort!) and provided to that part of the community that would love to use the terrain for bigger PVP large-scale engagements like CTI, KoTH or EUTW.

And I hope people realize nothing like new buildings, bridges (although the ones currently there suck for boats passing under!), or airports or mountaints or whatever are needed. Only thing we would really love to see is that parts of the terrain outside of the populated area is flattened. It's a modification to the heightmap, not rocket science, not manual placement of whatever. It doesn't require much more, just an area large enough to land planes on. Think salt lake on Altis.

And who said something about objects exactly? Flatten the area, allow players to land planes. Assets can be placed by mission makers. If it’s possible, give the ground at that area a runway texture for better identification, if not, also fine. We just need areas where planes can safely land and take off.

For the upcoming Contact DLC weapon content, can you please include colored reload-tracer variants for all factions, please? This should be rather simple to do, but would allow mission makers to repurpose some of the new weapons also for different factions. In general, it would be great, if all magazines in the game would by default come with reload-tracer variants in green, red and yellow. Alternatively, please provide blank variants without any-reload tracers.

The HUD marking for airstrips would be a bonus anyways... the really really really important part would be to get additional flat areas to safely land planes on, which mission makers can use in addition to the single airstrip on the actual play area. Ideally, these are positioned on the empty peripheral parts of the terrain and marked somewhere.

Would it be possible to add at least two more airfields to this map to support competitive play involving aircraft on both sides? They could be located outside of the actual play area in the unpopulated peripheral area of the heighmap. It's just important that there two large, flat areas that planes could land on - ideally marked as airfields so they show up on the heads-up display of jets when approaching. There is no need for any objects or assets, but of course having a proper tarmac with even ground and runway textures would be much appreciated! Thanks!

It appears that the hellcat cannot lock-on with any guided missiles you equip on the pylons. Out of the light helis, it is the one that can actually carry the largest amount of scalpels, but they are useless as you cannot lock any target with them. It works fine when equipping DAGRs and Scalpels on the Pawnee and Orca however. I would assume the hellcat works as well. Is this because of missing sensors on the hellcat or an intentional design choice?

For variety, an unarmed version of the Xi'an would be much appreciated. This allows using it for low intensity missions where the default weapons are simply overkill without having to script the guns away while they are still visible on the model. Ideally, the weapon pylons are removed on either side and the nose-mounted cannon is replaced by a thermal 360° camera, like on the UAV helicopter for the copilot/gunner to use.

I do agree with the indicator to show that the weapon is rested. In addition, such an indicator could help solve another issue: Whether you are actually aiming at the wall or not. The dynamic crosshair is helping with this right now, but with crosshairs disabled there is no real way of knowing whether the barrel is pointing out into the world or, if it's actually pointing at the corner of the window frame. An indicator that shows you whether your weapon is rested or not could be used to solve this by making sure that the check for weapon resting includes the check whether you weapon barrel has a clear view or not. So even without a crosshair, players would see if they are positioned correctly or not. Maybe it would also be enough to just have the dynamic crosshair still show even when crosshairs are normally disabled as long as the raycast detects and obstacle immediately. This is a bit of a separate issue from the resting indicator, but if we can find a way to combine them into one hud element, even better.

Might have been mentioned somewhere before, but it would be really awesome, if server admins could force the advanced flight model (just like disabling 3rd person) on their servers.

One thing that I always found irritating in OFP was the way you give orders and talk with each other. Selecting your squad individually and assigning orders is not a bad thing, but if OFP2 will indeed be with Marines, the F1 - F12 keys might seem a little few sometimes, especially during Nam and earlier. Recently I played that Vietcong game and I was really surprised how they implemented the way to give commands. It's all very intuitive there. Okay, you only have 5 guys or so with you, but even with larger squads like in OFP something like this would out. Basically, you yell the name of one of those team-mates and then he comes to you and does whatever is needed. You can really concentrate on playing the game, while the rest of your squad adapts to your movement. The other thing I really liked was the fact, that unlike in OFP, you communicate with your squad not via radio but with normal talking. However, you have that radio operator with you, which hands you the radio if there are any orders from command, or when you have to report in. I really really liked this, as it gives the whole atmosphere a great increase in terms of realism and accuracy. Sure, you can't simply adopt that very same system to OFP2, but you could create one by yourself that includes a lot of these features. I had some ideas about this, so I started to work the whole thing out a little more in detail: At first you have to see what's needed. In OFP2 there will most likely be many different branches present, like airborne units, armour and infantry. In some way or another they have to be able to talk to each other. So, at the beginning, we have to define channels. Like in OFP, communication should be possible on different levels. But unlike the unit-based structure (vehicle -> squad -> side -> ...), I'd prefer a system that allows for a more dynamic communication. In OFP for example, you can't talk to a nearby squad, without radio in on the side-> frequency. Sure, there is that nice direct talk option, but it's only useful for scripted sequences and thus doesn't offer much options to interact with the AI, and even in multiplayer it is almost never used. I would base the OFP2 way to communicate more closely on distances than group affiliations. That way, within the squad level and between nearby troops, you would mainly just talk and yell orders, while you would have to use the radio to reach tanks, aircraft and more far away units. Of course to work such a system out in detail would really cost some time, therefore I just want to show the direction. The basic structure in the game would be that if you want to talk to someone, be it AI or human, you have to come to a certain range and then aim at that person until a mouth-icon apears, which let's you initiate the talk when pressing a key. The icon could be colored to show in which radio channel you then would talk to the person. (We will come back to those channels later on, but they basically are similar to the different colored channels like the yellow vehicle chat in OFP) The range for that could be let's say max 50m, where commands are yelled and so even the enemy can hear them when in range and react to it, down to normal speaking (~10m) or even whispering. Whisper should only be possible when very close and requires a unit to be on something like a stealth mode. Otherwise, even at that close distance, people should normally talk to each other. A nice effect would also be that your voice signal is kinda pointed at the direction you are looking. This means that the sonic waves are sent so that people in front of you (meaning where you look at) can hear you up to 50 metres, while people behind you could maybe hear you only from a distance up to 25 metres. Outside of this talking range, you would have to use the radio (if you have one ;-) hihi) for communication. You could make it so that there are different types of radios in the game. a small walkie talkie style radio, a standard radio like there is in most infantry squads, a vehicle based radio, tank/aircraft radio with internal channel, and a stationary radio. The walkie talkie would be used for very close ranges only, and should only be accessible by special forces or some civilians. The idea is NOT, that every soldier carries one of these, like it seems to be the case in OFP. The standard radio should be present in almost every infantry squad and thus makes it possible to communicate with other units, including command&control. The vehicle radio should be included in most vehicles (except most civilian ones and some smaller cars like jeeps or even some trucks). The vehicle radio could be heared from - and used by - any person within the vehicle. If the vehicle is open, a nearby person should also be able to hear the radio up to a small distance (5-10m) The tank/aircraft radio with internal channel basically is a vehicle radio, but differs by the fact that every crewmember can only talk via that radio to each other, while in other cars, people should be able to talk to each other the normal way. It's just so that in closed vehicles, the talk should not be heared from the outside if someone stands beside the vehicle. Lastly, the stationary radio should work exactly like the vehicle radio in an open vehicle, meaning that up to a certain distance, you can hear and interact with it. Such a complex radio architecture of course needs a coresponding hierarchy, so you know who you can order around, and who not. This is very important for controling AI. In the editor a mission maker should be able to define such a rank overlay, similar to the one currently in use. Within a unit, the rank of the solider decides the hierarchy, but in addition it should be possible to define the hierarchy between different independent units. So, for example, you could define that unit A is in command of unit B, C, and D. Now this allows the leader in charge of unit A to access a wider range of commands/orders when talking or radioing to one of these units. Such orders of course have to be predefined for each unit in the editor. The idea is that they somehow replace the current "0-6 actions" and the "0-0 radio". For example, when you talk to your radio operator that way, a SMALL list with default commands should appear, like 'use radio', 'movement', 'behaviour', etc.. Just not that monster construct of a command menue we have in OFP right now. The 'movement' menue for example could simply consist of entries like 'return to formation/spread out' or 'halt/move'. Personally, I think that being able to assign formations is overkill. Instead, the soldiers should automatically use a formation based on the unit size, terrain and behaviour. For example a fire-team sized unit (~4 soldiers) would automatically use the wedge formation, while a standard rifle squad (~9 soldiers) would prefer a staggered column. The more AI does things on their own, the more increase in atmosphere you will achieve. Together with those basic commands, mappers should be able to define custom, mission-specific commands for units. So for example you could order unit B to "seize the town center and get the documents" instead of simply using a general order like "behaviour/engage enemy". It should also be possible to draw a recticle on the screen and thus select all units within it, and which are in range. That way, you can move more than one soldier/unit simultaneously. There would be space to include tons of nice little (but realistic) features in such a system. For example: You are squad leader of an infantry squad, with a friendly tank close to your unit. Now if you want to talk to the tank, you could simply call your radio operator to you, select the tanks frequency from the list that pops up when you 'use' the radio, or simply target the tank while using the radio (mouth icon appears), and then talk through your microphone (if the tank is human, only) or choose from available orders (general ones and custom ones for that specific tank). Another option would be to walk directly to the tank to let's say a range of roughly 10 metres and aim at the tank, until the mouth icon shows up. An AI commander would then automatically open the hatch and turn out, so he could talk to you. Yet another choice could be that on some tanks there are external 'telephones' which allow infantry to talk to the crew. If you aim at that telephone, the mouth icon would appear in the color of the tank/aircraft radio channel, showing that you are considered part of the crew and also receive radio transmissions directed at the tank, while you 'use' that telephone thingie. Once the tank speeds away, the connections automatically get's cut, and you would have to move in range again. One major advantage of this system would also be that units would no longer have to be limited to 12 soldiers. In theory, you should be able to make units with a size of 50+ soldiers, which however would almost never be used. Instead the forming of 2-3 smaller, squad-sized (9-15 soldiers) units under the command of a hq-section with the player being leader would be the more common thing. With such an organisation, it would be easy to order individual squads around, making it possible in theory that a single player could coordinate a whole company with ease, as he would only directly command the leaders of the lower group. For example: An infantry platoon, consiting of 3 riflesquads and one weapons squad, all under the command of the platoon-hq, would have the following command structure: The platoon leader, as being the leader of the platoon-hq, would be able to command every soldier in all four squads under his command by directly talking to them (if in range). However if he radios on of the squads, he will only be able to talk to the squad leader via radio and thus can command the squad as a whole. Of course he could also do so by directly speaking (mouth icon) to the squad leader when in range. The squad leaders themselves, are in control of their squads. The squads again could be divided into fireteams or machinegun crews, or whatever else, which the squad leader could either command as a unit by giving an order to the team leaders or by talking to the other soldiers directly and assigning orders, individually. There is one obvious problem here, though: When you select a leader of any kind, the people he commands will follow him wherever he goes. Only soldiers that do not control anyone else can be individually send to positions etc. So in the case of a simple soldier, both the team leader and the higher squad, and even the again highter platoon leader are able to command him. This can lead to confusing situations where people are send somewhere, only to be called back by another person on half the way. A solution would be that a higher rank can terminate an order (call the grunt back even though the order is not fulfilled), while a lower rank must wait for the order to be fulfilled, like that specific soldier having reached a certain location, etc..). If you want to select multiple units under your command by drawing that recticle on the screen with all units you want being within it, it should work so that if one of the selected soldiers is a leader of any kind, the men under his control are automatically selected as well, even if they are not within the recticle. For vehicles the whole system has to be slightly modified. Here, a tank platoon leader would be able to command all tanks seperatly, while the tank commander would be something like a squad leader, who has his crew under his command. The tank platoon leader would not be able to talk to the gunner of one of these tanks for example, while they in the tank and not turned out. A funny option would even be that the platoon leader would be able to move beside on this platoon's tanks and talk to the commander (or any other crew) of that tank directly, while they have their heads turned out. To make things even more complex (hihihi), you could even make it so that together with giving orders like return to formation, the player automatically gives hand signals. In case stealth mode is active he could even use hand signals only when there is visual contact between the player and the soldier/unit and they are too far away too whisper. There are lots and lots of things such an easy voice system would offer, while being more efficient, more flexible and more realistic at the same time. Of course when you first read through the above text, you most likely will get confused a little bit, but trust me, it's all very logically and intuitively structured, and so once you would be using such a system in-game, you will understand how it works in no-time. It's just how you would communicate in real-life, therefore players will get used to it, pretty fast. What do you think?

fair point. ^^

The issue is not disorientation regarding your surroundings when you look around, it's more about disorientation because of control loss with the user interface. This is not normal and should work less intrusive. Looking back a couple of pages and seeing the various responses to how the current up/down look implementation can have negative effects on driving in (primarily) 1st person view, it's seems pretty obvious that there is still need to improve this otherwise great future a bit further. I am sure the next beta will give us a more refined implementation - be it via deadzone tweaking, a 1p/3p filter or by allowing to remove it altogether.

I am personally not very happy with this. I think this worked better without in yesterday's build. If I want to look around I toggle freelook and steer with keyboard. I found myself accidently looking up or down quite a lot while steering with mouse. Maybe capping the max look angles a lot or reducing look speed could help to make it less annoying?

There are often moments in the armaverse when our linear slowdown by press and holding "S" isn't quite enough and having more responsive breaks would surely help a lot in taking the much improved driving precision with the new controls to an even higher level of control for the user. I can drive slow, normal and fast, why can't I then at least break normal or hard? :) And the super-accelerating downhill racing of ArmA tanks is an entirely different topic in regard to laws of physics not mattering, hehe. :rolleyes:

Let me just say the following: "PANZER HALT!"

Love the driving improvements. :cool: Just one request: Could we please get a handbreak button? Some vehicles take ages to come to a halt. :rolleyes:

Marked the faulty damage drop over distance off as well, now that this got addressed in the last beta. Turned out to be a code issue afterall and not related to assets and config setup, so let's keep that in mind for the future... ;) Any chance to get some more issues from that list looked into before 1.60 ships? :)

Carl, the last few hours I played have been extremely fun with the latest changes in my opinion. I would consider myself an average player and I had good fun with my AK74 with PSO. It still took some extra hits here and there to take enemies down so it was definitely not fire and forget. Overall it felt a lot more satisfying however with less WTF moments, where enemies would be hit again and again without dying only to kill you in one shot in return. This is fantastic and a great improvement. Out of a sudden, you really consider buying an assault rifle over a battle rifle or sniper in Warfare games, because they are much more effective on average combat distances than before. Previously, the advantage in ammo capacity was totally negated by the lousy damage. This is no longer the case.

Combat feels great! Finally, 5.56mm and equivalent rifles actually matter on mid-range. Thanks for fixing this Suma!

This is what Suma wrote in CIT: "I think I have found the underlying cause and fixed it in 85440 (the speed factor incorrectly influenced the hipoint computation twice, once for hit value, second time for distance), and the damage values seem now correct when debugging, however I am not sure the observed behaviour is what you expect. SVD still most often requires 2 hits at 500 m distance, while M107 kills with one hit. Once available, please, test and comment on the result."

+1 :)

Takistan militia doesn't look very armored to me. Setup wise, some military infantry (mostly US?) have better protection in the game already, which is absolutely fine. But if civilians or generic arab militia are having problems like the one we talk about here, something feels wrong. In my opinion ArmA should be about making it very challenging to hit a target (taking into account bullet drop, breathing sway, recoil and leading over distance), but once you made that and actually scored a hit, it should be really rewarding most of the time. Compare the M24 and the L115 sniper rifles in-game and tell me which one feels "right" at the moment.

Lethality should be put in context. Of course not every round kills, but most take you effectively out of the fight. I interpret death in ArmA to include incapacitation and severe wounds that prevent you from fighting. The issue we are having in the game is the lack of feedback and gameplay consequence for AI actors. Very often there is no acknowledgement by AI that it got hit: They remain standing upright, scan the horizon or otherwise look static and careless. Maybe if there would be proper pain animations, AI going prone or some other feedback that at least gives the player some notification that the hit he just scored matters, the whole issue would be less in your face. Now since we lack such feedback (and I am not suggesting we add it at this stage), can we get around this by making rounds more deadly? I personally believe this would be the right approach, but of course we also don't want every weapon to become a super sniper rifle. Still, engaging an enemy with a 5.56mm round at 200m should result in a kill most of the time. Right now it very often does not. So, looking forward to the next build with Suma's potential fix for damage calculation over distance. This might already fix the issue entirely. :)

I will post feedback on this once we have the new test version with Suma's mentioned change. Very nice to see progress on this! :)