The_Captain

My three first military games were bundled together in a Microprose pack for the Amiga, that I got when I was ~10 years old: 688 Attack Sub (quality sub sim, slow paced, and tense), Team Yankee (An armored company combat game that roughly followed the book, which I had never read until recently. Hard to get the hang of, but sufficiently violent and semi-realistic), and F-15 Strike Eagle II (a somewhat arcadey flight sim on the easiest settings, while still feeling pretty realistic, with dynamically generated missions that formed a pilot career). Later, I quite enjoyed Seal Team and Rainbow 6 (primarily because both games rewarded slow, well thought out play while punishing brainless arcade reflexes), before I stumbled upon OFP...

Hi, Please change my name to The_Captain (merging with The_Captain2), my old handle on the BIS forums. I lost the domain name and the email attached to that account is inaccessible. Thanks.

The only way I've found around this problem is to put vehicles at the 'end' slots in a group. I think units try to keep their formation position no matter whether other units are in formation or not. I assume it makes for less shuffling when other units do return to formation.

In OFP and Arma you can save object status in MP to the campaign save file. If you name the objects appropriately and use the health field, you can store integers up to about 1,000,000. This makes simple variable setting possible, if you write a mission which to read them in. EG, you could write a branching campaign which read in the current 'next mission' variable from the campaign file every time you loaded the map. That said, it woud be much nicer to have the capability to save regular variables to a server to make multiplayer campaigns/etc easier. Since BIS is including a cooperative version of the regular campaign, they've probably enabled this functionality. Here's hoping.

From what I saw from earlier videos, there's a side dropdown in the editor, and a faction dropdown. USMC and CDF are the factions under blufor, and CHDkZ and Russia are the factions for OPFOR. Civilian and Resistance just have the Civilian and NAPA factions, respectively. I'm glad they're sticking with the four sides. Now all my if (_side == west) || (_side == east) code will still work. Edit: Russia =! Ussr.

Re: Number of kills: That's most likely over multiple lives. Encountering AI one-ten at a time, a player could get a few dozen kills per life, especially with AI that like to sit in one spot and be sniped one by one. If you're shooting what are effectively turkeys, and don't really have much regard for your own life, a dozen or two kills shouldn't be that difficult to get. Re: Battalion size unit density: As I mentioned previously, one of the issues I personally have with warfare (and to an extent, the old MFCTI which I did enjoy quite a bit), is that players spend much of their time 'harvesting' money/supplies, saving up for units, traveling to/from factories and cities, waiting for squads to be built, and not enough time on actual combat. In my experience, players don't want to wait for other players to gear up/catch up with them, whether it's a fast paced shooter like Red Orchestra or a slower game like warfare, so players often move out to engage the enemy in onesies and twosies. (This is actually optimal behavior if you can respawn quickly and the game is lethal: your chances of survival don't go up immensely if you team up with one or two other people, and your time is better spent trying to fight rather than wait for another player to build/buy something or travel to you.). In the old MFCTI, and to an extent warfare as well, my average time to save up for and equip a proper squad (perhaps fighting in the meantime) was about 30 minutes. Once equipped, travel time would be about 10-15 minutes and combat time quite a bit lower than that. If you imagine each of the players within these time constraints, it seems like it would be difficult to get most of the players combat ready at the same time, and in the same general area to fight a battle as outlined in the above diagrams. Thus, the 20 'squads' per battalion would not all be at full strength and ready to maneuver or fight as they might in a combat ready battalion. This means that the effective unit density in terms of units ready for combat would be *much* lower. Cutting down the non combat time and focusing the objectives might make the effective-combat-unit density higher. Clearly we have an engine which can support a battle of this size, but a mode like warfare does not encourage players to form up and fight a battle at that scale. As I mentioned previously, a mode with a similar scale to warfare, but simpler objectives and a focus entirely on combat and maneuver could probably organize players to fight a battle such as the one General Barron outlined. The flip side to this, is that if you DO have a mode where players are spending a lot of time doing things other than combat (traveling, building), or if the combat is over very quickly (eg, players encountering each other one by one in Berzerk or warfare), you'll need a smaller combat area to get a high combat intensity, and more players simultaneously involved in combat. More players participating in each individual battle or enagagement, I think, is what is needed for interesting battles and proper teamwork.

Gustaffa: Afaik, with the 'old'-old Ammo bug, once an overfill started, the vehicle/crate started spawning one instance of the item per player over very frequent intervals (or at least anytime someone picked up an item out of the crate), and the massive pile of stuff would eventually crash the server. One item overfilling and popping out, I think, is a feature rather than a bug.

My two cents: On the campaign description PDF in the press kit, it states that at the beginning of the campaign, the ChDKZ conquers most of south zagoria and pushes the CDF back, and they install a puppet government. Given NAPA is probably the "resistance" slot faction, it would make sense that they're nationalist partisans, still fighting for their homes even though the government forces have left them. When the USMC shows up, I'd assume you'd make contact with them as you wait for the big guns and the CDF to move back into the area.

(Re: scripting: You can use the boundingbox command to see if a point is within the bounding box of another object (which itself is slightly outside the actual boundaries). This way you can prevent spawning inside something else.) A "safe" option could be useful however.

I would like to see AFV's take advantage of terrain, even in a limited fashion. I don't think anyone's a big fan of the infantry, armored, or helicopter suicide rushes the AI currently performs. As a human commander, I've found managing a mechanized infantry squad to be one of the more difficult jobs in the game: managing the foot element and the vehicle itself. As walker mentioned one of the more important things is to have the vehicle stay a bit separated from the squad. I've had fairly good luck in more open areas giving my vehicle a "stay back" command so it simply follows 1 or 150 m behind the squad body, engaging targets spotted by the infantry element. Perhaps AI squad commanders could be made smart enough to also give simple commands to vehicles in their squads (such as staying back), instead of simply running alongside and waiting to get cooked off by the inevitable fuel explosion. The vehicles wouldn't even have to take advantage of the terrain to any great degree; just staying separated from the squad and giving fire support would be a huge step forward in AI.

RE: lack of rivers. According to Mr. g-c's post here, and judging by the google earth image, the coast in the Arma 2 island is actually the Elbe river in the actual terrain. The east bank was simply changed into an ocean and the west changed to include beaches. http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=77348 http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4494/arma2areaeq3.jpg So, the only real river in the general area was turned into the coastline, somewhat explaining the lack of rivers in the rest of the terrain.

The Close Combat series (WWII real time tactical, overhead 2d, circa 1998+) had a good feeling unit density. You had about a company (8-15 squads or vehicles) on each side in maps that were about 500m square, fighting to control about 4-6 victory locations or annihilate the enemy force. This unit density seems roughly realistic and created battles that 'felt' intense. With suppression and a proper morale model in place (as well as units that all deployed at the start of a mission, with no mid-mission reinforcements), you had games that lasted 15-30 minutes and were suitably intense. Arma missions, especially in multiplayer, don't usually come close to a similar density, and I think the game suffers for it. Whether you have ~6-10 squads per side spread out over 16^2 km of south sarahni (warfare), or 30 players spread out over a 2-3km chunk in a berzerk style mission, player density is usually low enough so that players tend not to be in the same "fight" as others: players encounter each other in ones and twos and fight individual engagements, which is not in the spirit of a larger battle game. Lethality is also fairly high, so that once a player is engaged in a fight, because the battles are low density, it's hard for another player to help him out before the fight is won or lost (or the player in need of assistance simply dies). Combat power of vehicles is magnified due to the usual dearth of infantry, but at the same time because density is so low, vehicles can be ambushed from anywhere by man carried anti-vehicle weapons. The battle becomes a series of small, brutal skirmishes instead of a longer engagement. I think missions would feel more realistic in multiplayer if there were more soldiers (AI or human) in a smaller area, such that they can focus on the same objectives and support each other in the assault or defense. One or two square km is not unreasonable for an infantry centric battle with somewhere between a platoon and a company on each side. The old soviet style doctrine for a mechanized infantry company in the attack called for a frontage of about 800m. Personally, I think Warfare focuses too much on higher level aspects of gameplay (base building, resources, city control, supply, unit production) and not enough on lower level, small unit tactical gameplay. I would like to see a style of mission that focused all the participating players on solving tactical problems and fighting each other, instead of focusing many of the participating players on travel/exploration/construction/capruting/harvesting/production. I think Warfare has the right idea in giving each player a squad, but spends too much time forcing players to save up money, build their squad, and get it to the fight, and not enough time on actual combat. I would like a mission that gave me a small unit (vehicle crew or squad), asked me to complete some limited objectives with a few other players, and let me respawn into my squaddies when I died (so I could stay within the same general battle). I wouldn't really care about exploring a huge island if the tactical situation in the immediate area were interesting and engaging. Part of this would simply come from having a realistic density of enemies and friendlies and limited, but achievable tactical objectives. The Armed Assault features page has had this blurb listed as a multiplayer feature since the game was released: "Large scale multiplayer: battles where tanks supported by infantry and helicopters take control of an enemy city can be played with 100+ living opponents in a role of both friendly and enemy forces." That's the type of mission I'd like to play, done properly. Maybe we'll see that out of the box in Arma 2, but I'm not holding my breath. My random two cents.

I would like to see a proper penetration/damage system in arma/arma2 that takes into account angle of shot, penetration power, penetration type, armor and relative thicknes, etc, and works for both heat-type missiles and kinetic rounds. However, I don't take too much offense to the simplified way Arma & arma 2 have chosen to model damage. It works equally well for all types of entities (planes, helicopters, etc), and prevents problems in the simulation treating damage differently. Do we take armor thickness into account for tanks, but not planes? How about jeeps, or helicopters? The approach BIS uses is consistent, if not particularly detailed. If armored vehicles got an improved damage system, all aspects of the simulation would need a damage system with a similar level of detail and accuracy (as well as "similar to real life" results). I'm not saying that's not possible, but I understand why BIS took the approach they did. As well, modern anti armor weapons are extremely lethal: if a dedicated anti armor weapon hits an AFV, it's probably going to die, if not necessarily catastrophically, almost every time. Now, improvements to an armor system would most likely affect combat cases 'at the margin': RPG rounds hitting the frontal armor of an M1, sabot rounds nicking the corner of a T72's tread, direct engine hits on an M1A1 with a powerful ATGM. Most combat occurrences, where AI or human gunners hit a relatively weak target with a powerful anti tank weapon directly in the center of mass, would probably result in a catastrophic kill in either the existing or an improved system. Arma 1 & 2 have very short engage ranges (and are poor at supporting armored comat beyond "battlesight" range anyway), which tends to decrease gunner reaction times and increase weapon lethality. At knife-fight ranges, I would argue that in most combat cases, both the current damage system and an improved one would result in the same "if you can see it, you can kill it" environment that we have now. I think in a WW2 game, where weapons didn't generally outclass armor across the board, a proper penetration system would be much more important than in the modern combat we have. My two cents.

re: run while moving: I use this anim set, which helps. Certainly better than default (your gun now points forward instead of diagonally when jogging) http://www.armedassault.info/index.php?cat=news&id=805

You can go into UI.pbo and find the mp players screen.. I'd have to do digging to find the specific one. If this is an addon you run clientside, integrating into the shell means missionmakers don't have to integrate it into the mission, or you don't have to use a key handler to detect when someone wants to view the screen. For the players' screen, you can add a button to the dialog in UI.pbo and have it hide existing components & show yours, or possibly open a new dialog (I'm not sure). I know it's possible as I heard of someone adding a 'mp missions search' to the server missions scanner (it would filter missions based on a text string you entered). Heck, done properly you could probably edit the game's actual in game server browser with a friends' list, but one step at a time... I can look up how to do this exactly and try to post something this weekend, potentially...

This would be VERY useful! Heck, one of the things I don't think you can do in arma is check the name of the server you're *currently* on.. another thing that makes telling friends to join your server difficult. Could this be added as a dialog that opens if you press the appropriate button on the 'players' screen? If you need to add an addon to use this, it could make it quite convenient to use in game as an addition to the current interface.

Nice T72! I remember reading in a soviet order of battle that Category C russian units were equipped with T-55's (front line had T-80/T-64). And T-72's were mostly for export? So not sure if it would be worth it, but perhaps T-55 could show up in soviet colors for Category C units? Not sure if that was accurate, but that was what i remember seeing...

Hey spooner, Is it okay if I use portions of SPON_LOS (fully credited to you) in an armored vehicle combat script I'm working on? I ran into exactly the same problems with intersect that you did (on ofpec forums), and having poked through spon_recognize, noticed you ended up having to use bounding boxes for vehicles. It's a pretty clever way to figure out if a vector intersects a bounding box, and what the distance is. I'm using it to check if rounds are about to impact tanks so I can do armor/penetration/angle checks. Thanks.

I like the mod's features so far. On my xp3000+ 64 bit/1gb ram/x800 I noticed quite a bit of CPU lag with a 15v15 squad/armored battle (~5FPS), on lowest resolution/graphics settings. After the battle cooled down, the cpu load dropped dramatically though. I'm not quite sure which components were causing it (perhaps cqb AI?), but I don't know if I can keep using FFN for large missions. :-/

I use Gen Barron's functions for my needs too. What I would do is get the pitch/bank of the vehicle, set the new direction with setdir, and just set the pitch/bank to the saved value.

There are a lot of specific details in the Games Convention threads already on this forum: Arma 2 GC Coverage OFP 2 Information and GC Coverage

To those who want an AI replacement: Tony said on page 16 that TR_FFN_REPLACEMENT.pbo adds the features to default BIS classes. Edit: I haven't tried it, but in the readme apparently he has directions on how to enable it for other units.

this may prove to be very useful, thanks!

This is why I prefer steam as my game 'platform'. I just bought the original X-Com for $5, and now I can play it hassle free on my laptop or either of my desktops. Heck, I can even install it on a friend's machine, sign in as myself, show them the game, and then encourage them to buy it and it'll already be installed. It's convenient and it doesn't unduly hassle me.

I fully agree, Celery. My comment was more of a dig at why I think players *aren't* getting enough combat, not just me whining. Just being able to keep playing after you get slapped around by other players is enough to help people improve fast. One of my favorite maps for some simple Armor/Air PvP is a simple deathmatch on Ramahdi... forget which, but it's just a variant of gunship deathmatch where you get either an armored vehicle with an AI driver (so you're actually able to fight by yourself), or a helicopter with only rockets/cannon. I've had my best armored online battles in that map, and for crying out loud it was a teamless deathmatch! Put a dozen players in about 1 square kilometer with access to high powered weapons and it's going to be fun, like that map is. All we need is a solid PvP map with a good player/combat density and a good waiting/fighting ratio... They're fun! I think sometimes when people design their map/game mode for a high level concept (realism, high level strategy, an economy, role playing elements), they sometimes forget about the low level fun of the players, which is the most important thing â„¢. Nothing wrong with a good high level concept, but if it's not fun to play on a minute to minute basis, you're going to miss out on a lot of potential players.