_William

Thanks for letting us know! William

Sadly, you cannot do this, as the Iron Front game doesn't accept add-ons by design. Otherwise I would have added support for Iron Front a long time ago. William

I've just uploaded version 1.0.0 of FolCams, which now includes support for Iron Front: Liberation 1944 (as Arma2 mod). Also added data so the P85 DDR vehicles (by Vilas, and also Marseille's re-textures) and the CWR2 FV101/FV107 are supported out of the box. You'll find the download here: https://dev.withsix.com/attachments/download/21718/folcams_1_0_0.7z Left to right: IF44 PaK40, IF44 Panther, IF44 StuG IIIg, P85 re-text DDR BMP1, P85 re-text SPW-40P2. In IF44, camo definitions are provided for all large Wehrmacht vehicles, the Pak40, and the Red Army ZiS-3 field gun. William

When you're defending (Hold objective), the AI will fire into pre-designated zones just in front of the defensive sectors. These zones are implemented as triggers; you might be able to recognize them in the map editor. IIRC, as a player you can call in artillery fire as well, using the radio.

Great questions. And it sounds you had some good fun as well. Yes you can. Each team's units are placed on top of each other in the editor (try selecting and move away the top one). A 9 man team consists of 9 units. You can add extra men. Just be aware than the plan has been made with 9 man units, so if you add units and the assigned transport doesn't have extra capacity, some of your extras may have to walk (and slow down the mission). DAPMAN first-aid and CWR2 are fully supported. AI mods in general are not, but if it works for you, great. (AI mods may interfere with the scripts triggered to make the groups execute part of the plan). You can adjust this on the Briefing tab while creating the mission. It doesn't. Hetman's AI commander generates somewhat random orders on the fly, depending on the situation, whereas PlannedAssault uses a static, tightly coordinated plan. The two don't go together. For some types of missions, Hetman will be a better fit. However, for tightly coordinated activities such as paradrops, mechanized assault, heli insertions, CAS, occupying defensive sectors I expect PlannedAssault to do a better job. Don't know. Artillery needs to be between minimum range and maximum range from the objective where it offers support. The unit icon and error messages tell you the range, but typically mortars have a 100m-3.7km range, 105mm howitzers a 2.4-5.8km range and large guns need to be even more distant from the objective. In general, put your mortars close to the objective to defend / attack, and put your howitzers far away. Pre-planned firing schedule for attacks (coordinated with close-air support, so shells aren't flying when helicopters / fixed wing move forward). Triggered firing for defense, based on spotting hostiles. Spotting is implicit, with a delay. William

Off-topic: which map is this? Is this one of IceBreaker's maps?

The number of units involved has the biggest impact on the time necessary to create a plan (generate a mission). For example, if I have a defensive position consisting of 6 sectors, and I have to assign 8 defender units to occupy these sectors, I need to pick a good combination out of 0.19 million combinations. For 10 units, the number of combinations goes up to 16.4 million. For more than 10 units, the situation gets even more challenging. In addition, the UI doesn't have much space to add more units. In short, the limit won't change soon. If you want to have large numbers of men and vehicles in your mission, I recommend choosing large units. That's what I did for the "100+ men paradrop" mission here, picking "double squads" and really large aircraft. William

Yes, I can. Cannot give a deadline - I have some other things to wrap up first. If you're in a hurry, the .pdf document included in the download explains how to tackle "missing" vehicles. IIRC, the Wehrmacht tanks all have memory points on their turrets (for track links and skirts (PzIV)), which enables foliage on the turret sides. You'd need to dig into the config file and damage script. William

Fantastic! Because I noticed custom tank names on the cannon's barrel: will you also include/support tank vehicle numbers on the hull? As in: or (recommended site): http://military-database.de/2002-cannonball-run-teil-1/ Thanks, William

Hi Marseille. Cool to see these 1950's German armies come alive in Arma2. Do you happen to have good sources describing the organization of small units (Zug, Gruppe, Truppe)? I'm able to read German language material. If the NVA was organized similar to the Soviet army, that would suffice for the NVA. William

One cool advantage of automatic mission generation is that it allows you easily try "large" missions and approach the limits of what Arma can do. Here is what I found out and improved when trying to generate some interesting para-drops for movie recording. The PlannedAssault UI had space for 7 air cargo units, so I upped the amount of cargo groups per aircraft groups to 7. That allowed me to load 108 (7 x 12) men into a group of two Il-76 Candids, for a single para-drop with close air support from two groups of 2 Su-25 Frogfoots (so there's something to watch while descending by parachute). In large paradrops, it is annoying to be spread out as a group, so I change the jump order to be per group. Finally, I've figured out a key parameter in making the aircraft flying (almost) straight across a hostile drop-zone: the pilot's skill needs to be as high as possible (1.0) otherwise, he is more likely to avoid threats. With a few newly released tactical shooter games being proud about 64-player multi-player games, it is nice to see our Arma2 happily giving us 100+ men para-drops in a single-player mission that involves 190 NPC and myself in total... William

Increasing spread isn't a good idea from a game design perspective, since (even if it were realistic) it increases the probability of the AI accidentally killing the player. Just witness this discussion thread to see how sensitive people are to being killed by the AI without being spotted by the AI, and without receiving warning shots (near misses) first. There is plenty of know-how published on how to do plausible suppression fire (for example, GDC 2005: Killzone's AI ...(slides 26-34)), where being killed is more acceptable. Keep in mind that (perceived) AI behavior is like food/wine: there is no accounting for taste. William

I expect this mod to use the Arma2 artillery module, not the Arma2OA artillery computer (which is really troublesome to use by AI groups). The SCUD, AFAIK, has no ballistics data for the Arma2 artillery module. Recent releases of Vilas' P85 howitzers come with ballistics data for the Arma2 artillery module and should work fine.

Mechanized Attacks: In terms of how missions play, this is one of the bigger changes this year at PlannedAssault! Attacking teams now prefer to keep their infantry mounted during the advance, if they have sufficient armor (APCs, IFVs) to carry all infantry. The infantry is dismounted (ideally) at the objective, or (more spectacularly) earlier when close threats are observed. If the infantry is dismounted early, this is done behind a smoke screen, either from the APCs or from smoke grenades. When dismounted, infantry attempts to move ahead of the armor, to screen it from infantry ATGMs. The nett effect is a faster attack (with APCs moving quicker towards the objective), and a more confusing fight due to the smoke. The increased speed makes it harder to defend against; however, a first kill on the APCs/IFVs still loaded with infantry will dent the attack significantly. It probably better resembles real world tactics. See the pictures below, or generate a mission yourself (right-most screen shot is from Arma3): I've got mechanized attacks working in Arma2*, Iron Front and Arma3, with Arma3 still being hampered by vehicles getting stuck. Next on the list is a new "how-to" Youtube video, showcasing many of the tactical things (paradrops, fast ropes, air assaults, mechanized assaults, defense deployments, crew served weapons, camouflaging, bridge attacks behind a smoke screen) PlannedAssault can put in a mission for you. Practically, this has as a side-effect lots of tweaks, since I'll record and review lots of game footage, and want to fix / tune anything I don't like. William

If you haven't tried the BWMod fix add-on, give it a try. I don't know whether it will solve your problem, but it is an easy thing to try (and will get you some benefits with other units). See: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?133548-BWMod-Fix William