ThudBlunderQ8

Just thought I'd add a public "thankyou" for letting me wander in and display my ignorance last night. Having never tried any form of multiplayer before, it took my teenage son to persuade me to have a go. I very much appreciate the patience shown by Jinef and all the others for putting up with my noob comms (and other) snags. Must learn not to get TK'd 3 mins into a 30-minute non-respawn operation, though... Once I've bought him his own copy of ArmA, I hope you'll allow my lad to join in too! Again, many thanks from a k*ackered old f*rt. Just don't make me fly any helis, OK?!

Trials. If you mod an aircraft with something new - even if it's been used on other aircraft already in the inventory - there needs to be a trial programme to ensure there aren't any unforeseen gotchas (eg stops not adequate to prevent rounds hitting parts of the a/c). Trials cost time and money. However, if there is already in existence a proven piece of kit (in this case, the US M60 mount) that doesn't require trialling then it's a shoe-in. Don't start me on budgets; the trials budget was probably all spent for that year, whereas a small purchase of surplus US kit plus spares and training for the armourers may well have come out of a different budget. Creative accountancy/ Financial Engineering, it's sometimes called. Anecdotally, we did notice that the M60 made an easy MG to adapt to air-ground firing. The GPMG often needed a great deal of "tuning" before it would reliably maintain full automatic in flight. Probably something to do with variations in airflow around the gas regulator; we would start it all the way up on "12" then fiddle between stoppages 'til multi-round bursts could be achieved. Didn't seem to have the same prob with the M60 - wonder if the Italians ever fitted the MG3 to their CH47s? No gas regulator, so I would imagine fewer stoppages.

The M60s were bought before the Mag58/GPMG/M240 had entered widespread US ground-forces service. Â The RAF needed a door/ramp MG pronto, the US Chinook fleet had standard fittings for M60s so it made sense - at the time - to buy a small batch of Ds along with the a/c fit. During GW1 the purchase of the M134 was conducted on an even more, er, interesting basis. Â A batch of very-tired weapons was acquired from an independent "dealer" and sent out to us in Saudi with a bemused-looking engineer from GE. Â He, our armourers and a couple of our crewmen who'd (usefully) been armourers before going aircrew worked wonders to get the kit serviceable before the second week of the war had finished.

Hi again Lee, We have a new desktop at home, so I thought I'd try PB again on ArmA to see how it all works on a half-decent graphics card. This has prompted me to return to this thread (surprise, surprise...) and on re-reading I realise I never answered a question you posed previously. Re the PKM at the final base: I made my way to the top of one of the "added features" at the airbase just to the south of the main entrance and used it from there. Now, the reason I'm back here asking questions is this: I've taken the downed US aircrew to the ERV (he doesn't get in the heli, as was mentioned by a previous reporter) and moved over to the crates. I get a list of instructions for the mortar and a reminder to use this heavy weight I'm now lugging around the battlefield. However (and this will probably expose my extreme numpty-dom to all seasoned ArmA observers) I can't see how to find/deploy/use the mortar! I re-checked the OFPEC page and the only req'd d'loads are the SLA/ SLX people - should I have downloaded the mortar separately? I have - so far - not found any menu items that make any mention of Mandoble's fiendish device; could you please give me a clue? Prob won't reply for a week 'cos I'm off overseas to somewhere with no internet, but I look forward to being put out of my misery one way or another. PS - thanks again for this, the only mission I've bothered returning to since installing ArmA anew.

Lee, Thankyou for the reply. Managed to complete it today; was surprised/delighted by what you had done with the "venue" for the endgame. Having been to that location many times in other missions/campaigns, it was jaw-dropping to see what faced my straggly band as we moved into visual range! Having decided to hang onto the US aircrewman (I needed the extra manpower for my convoy! ) I never did get around to arranging his extraction/US supply drop. Is that where the mortar would have come in to play? No worries - the mission was capable of being completed without the new toy. Amazing how accurate a captured PKM on single-tap can be when you're up in a lofty perch! Much appreciated - a good advert for ArmA and its possibilities as a medium for talented editors. Must give it another go to try out some ideas I picked up first time around...

Back to the top... I've a few days off work while my leg sorts itself out, so I thought I'd finally get around to giving this a try. The day has just flown by - this mission is very immersive to someone with my low skills; thoroughly enjoyable. Had a real surprise when scouting around to see M113s operating alongside a ZSU23-4 - couldn't work that one out at all to begin with! I found it immensely annoying during the 15 minutes as Carla to hear my alter-ego issuing all sorts of ridiculous orders to the group, some of which were tantamount to suicide. Not knowing ArmA all that well, is there some clever way (constantly team- switching doesn't work) to shut him up while I'm having my out-of-body experience?! Am now complete on all but one of the sub-missions (grammar? that doesn't sound right...) and setting up for the final move on Pita. Tell me - the cluster of enemy in the village north of Pedro's group: did they have a task of their own? I encountered them during my scouting-around, destroyed the 3 armoured vehicles and killed the 3 Especas in/near the pub. The civvies all just stood around and watched; is there any way they could be co-opted into the guerilla group? Despite suffering no casualties I'm getting quite low on manpower, as in addition to the combat-stress sufferer mentioned above I have one character who resolutely refuses to respond to any orders (including "get in" - ) - any way I can get back up to more than 10 men? Anyway, many thanks for your excellent work and here's to some more lost hours tomorrow as I complete the task!

Did a double-take when I saw the name of this map; were you already aware that Al Jouf (that's how it was spelt on our maps) was the UK SF base during GW1? I operated Chinooks out of there from 14 Jan 91 through to the first week of March. The airfield, which as you say was well outside the town, was a standard Saudi "cookie cutter" design, identical to the other municipal airports in the area. It'd be fascinating to see the terminal converted to Casualty Reception Centre status, as it was in early 91...

Busy downloading right now. Brilliant! D'you think this could mean that Chimurenga/Rhodesia is just around the corner with all this model-making talent hard at work? Must go and blow the dust off Contact and Contact 2 in the bottom of the bookcase...

OkitaMakato, don't worry - if you use the radio to call up the "enter code" screen, any rank/city codes you've already gained are shown on the left side. At least, they are in mine!

I'm thoroughly enjoying this beta version. One observation which is new to me (having read through as much of the thread as I can): having just taken a town (Somato) and been promoted to Major, I walked up to the officer waiting to become a PoW. On selecting "capture", my score dropped by 2000 and I reverted to Captain! Same thing happened when I, or a member of my team, "accidentally" happened to kill the officer. I've reverted to a previous savegame and have left him on his lonesome in the town now...

Having a great time with this; cleared the final city and am now ready to start on the side missions (although I wish I'd started with some of the simple ones when I was just a Cpl). CharlieBox, FWIW when I had a similar problem with AI stopping/not moving I found that by changing their awareness state a couple of times it seemed to drop them the hint. I was getting seriously frustrated with M1s in need of repair all over NE Sahrani at the time; fortunately I now have a fleet of servicing-trucks on the move thanks to my re-motivated troops! Manzanilla, stick with it - I'm a computer-numpty but by carefully reading Kronzky's hints that he's posted here (especially the bit about clearing out your addon folder - put the extras into a separate folder while you're playing SP Evolution) you'll be up-and-running like new. It's worth it, honest! I don't think he's giving you a hard time; if he spelled it out in even more basic terms he'd be accused of patronising us

Kronzky, thanks for your reply to my previous post; I thought I'd read the pages here exhaustively but obviously missed the bit on page 10 about captives. Incidentally, putting your squad onto "hold fire" doesn't work - probably because of the perceived threat to your team AI owing to the close proximity of the "enemy" vehicle. Have just downloaded v0.14.1 and will give it a go once my household chores are all done. That'll be sometime around September, then... Before I restart, I must just get to Colonel first though - I've not managed to write down a single one of the codes for any rank after Sgt

Further to my last, after a few hours of this I've now reached Captain whilst simultaneously adding to my already-excessive collection of grey hairs. By way of feedback, with 0.13 I've had the following occurrences: - While clearing one town to the south, I sent an AI team back to the airfield to replen. On the way they clipped the grey zone around Paraiso, and shortly afterward I was sent the congratulatory message telling me Paraiso was clear and giving me the code. - On visiting Paraiso subsequently (to blow up the comms mast, and to capture the officer) I encountered several squad leaders who continuously respawned (after intervals of a few minutes) and allowed themselves to be picked off. I also noticed many BMP, BRDM and even a T72 lying on their sides, still showing as active on the radar. - When returning aforementioned captives to the PoW camp, as soon as they de-planed from the helicopter they were shot by the guards (one of whom seemed to have already been wounded). - Whilst driving another PoW in a Coyota pickup truck, I was fired upon by my own team members. I did notice shortly before this that my icon on the map was red... Still, all-in-all this mission is great fun and a stunning way to lose a few hours between air-ambulance call-outs (my day job).

Redface, I'm pretty new to this myself, but I think you'll find the shuttle is only there to extract you back to base once you've finished the mission. You still have to get yourself out to the task using the transport available to a player of your rank.

Ah, thanks for the feedback. Yes, the other squad had emplaned AND their aircraft was in the high hover to the northeast. Which, by the way, is where it stayed throughout the whole mission. My squad and I had been sat in the back of the second aircraft for some time (I used the 4x speed-up to see if it made any difference) before I went ahead with the procedure outlined above. I didn't start out with the intention of hijacking the Blackhawk; it seemed that the only way we were going to see the other island was to fly there ourselves. Any idea what the wacky M4s-turned-into-girders thing might be?

Just replayed the mission where you have to insert by heli to attack a village on the mainland. After a few seconds re-arming one of the team at the crates, we moved to the empty Blackhawk and boarded as passengers. Nothing happened. After a while I disembarked 2,3 and myself and re-boarded as crew with a view to self-flying. At that point the aircrew who'd been hanging around nonchalantly decided to board. As they did, their M4s changed to what can only be described as steely-grey, infinitely-long girders which extended from the aircraft in all directions. Wish I'd thought to take a screenshot! Anyway, I flew to the other island, disembarked all except my gunners and carried on over the village. Engaged the SLA and killed them all from the air, landed and disembarked with this weird "spiky" UH60 (original aircrew stayed on board) just pointing its "girders" randomly skyward. I suppose that's one way to finish the job...

Further to my last, I'd like to add that - although very much enjoying the campaign - I can only finish the "2 Shilkas" mission by using the "endmission" cheat.

Vilas, thanks for the reply - I did indeed re-check the readme to make sure I hadn't missed something obvious. I also re-checked my addons folder to see if there was anything there that was not BIS original. Sure enough - there was the culprit. The RC_Alouette addon is what was causing all the problems; once that's removed the Vilas stuff works fine. So I just have to work out which one I can live without! Again, many thanks.

I apologise for displaying my ignorance here, but I have a problem which I'm sure someone will know how to clear up in a flash. Having read all 20 pages so far, I've put all of Vila's addons AND configs (the hard ones only, leaving the easy ones uninstalled) into the ArmA addons directory. This seemed strange to me as I thought configs normally went elsewhere, but that's what I read here so I did as I'm told like a good boy! No extra mod folders, no new dta or bin files, just straight into the ordinary ArmA addons folder Anyway, whenever I try using a Vila unit in the editor I get the usual error message about: No entry 'bin\config.bin/cfgModels.default' This happens whether I have no other addons, or just the Finmod sound mod and the new BTR80 installed (I don't have any others at the moment). So please someone, at the risk of making an old git look stupid, could you tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks for that tip re team-mates dropping dead, Snake Man - I've had that on a couple of occasions early on in the campaign. I've never used teamswitch - typical conservative ex-OFPer who likes his changes slow and gradual! I fully agree with all the other complimentary replies - this campaign and Fedain have helped 2 long night shifts to pass very pleasantly (can't fly in RL when the cloud's down on the deck). I'm very grateful to you and all the other folk who're able to put ArmA to good use.

Many thanks for "Fedain" (Fedayeen?) - it made a pleasant change from the BIS attempts. Managed to complete them all without too many dramas - although I was trying to work out why in the Supply Truck mission the enemy all came up with friendly tags. It was reflected in the final score too - minus 17200 for that round. No worries - I don't play for the score anyway. Re the task where you need to take a Dragunov, post-1.05 you now also have the option to grab a 12.7mm rifle. Much more useful! Managed to shoot down 5 enemy helis, but wasn't credited for any of them! Probably a BIS-game-engine issue...

Fully agree. In RL I was only shot at 3 times that I know of: In N Ireland, the crewman noticed bits flying off a wall near where we'd landed. While I was having a look for myself, the much more experienced pilot in the other side took control and pulled in an armful of collective while putting out an initial contact report on the tac radio. We never heard anything other than normal helicopter sounds In Oman, I was called off a daytime task near the Yemen border because the ground units told me I was under fire from a Shpagin (their generic term for any Russian-designed 12.7mm MG). Again, never heard or saw anything. In GW1, saw 12.7mm tracer passing overhead at night - purely speculative on the part of the gunner, and very easy to avoid. During training we taught students that the first signs of coming under effective enemy fire are usually: - a "ticking" noise as rounds pass through the aircraft - unexpected daylight appearing in normally-opaque parts of the aircraft - people in the back slumping over when everyone around them is hyper-active Unless using TI in a dedicated AH, aircrew are unlikely to detect enemy fire and very unlikely to know it's source - unless as in Iraq the numpty gunner is using 1B1T.

Many thanks for these - I've just spent several hours playing/re-playing Paraiso and Somato. Very nicely done; I think they do a good job of showing what ArmA can do, better in some respects than BI's own missions. Good work!

Thanks Evil K - shame, 'cos although they might not be necessary they'd make ops with the larger helis (I'm sure someone, if not BI, has Chinooks and Halos in the pipeline..) a lot easier. When you say aircraft weight, or mass, isn't modelled, do you mean as a variable according to fuel and payload? I'm sure there must be some mass in there to achieve the physics, wacky though they might be at the moment. I don't really miss autorotation or any of the other factors you mention (plus inflow roll, flapping to equality, overpitching and definitely NOT vortex ring...) as they don't really form a valid part of a battlefield sim, in my opinion. It makes me smile to see people eject from a non-Kamov heli, but I can live with it!

Plaintiff: That one's easy: remember there's nothing to stop the blades from travelling upwards, just the droop-stops (and I suppose the swashplate-connected control rods) to stop them moving downwards. As the head turns, putting the max uplift in the 90 degree position means that's where the blades are sent upwards at max rate. They're still travelling up as they pass that point. They then reach their highest point in the 6 o'clock position - exactly where you want them to be to achieve an overall forward tilt of the disc. Not precession, just acceleration. Whisper: No, I didn't 'cos I don't know how! However, I suspect that the game engine has this collective-lever limitation built-in as other correspondents on the OFP threads (far more computer savvy than me...) also reported this "feature". Many thanks for the suggestion though. Still haven't got around to trying those running landings - ironing's not finished and the dog does need his walk(s) every day too. Real life - ain't it a bind?