sEveron

1st thing: I play with ACE only, as without it Vanilla Arma isn't really worth playing anymore. All data are gathered from my ACE Domination games. 1200m is the effective range of common infantry man and you probably wont be able to hit or otherwise affect anything further than 1200m away, so for common infantry it makes no difference, you can stay at 1200m. If you are sniping with M107/M109 or KSVK you are able to hit targets at 1200m and further, so it would be nice to be able to see them, in that case viewdistance of 2000m is probably sufficient. Now the real application of larger viewdistance comes to live where you are manning vehicles. With BMP/Bradley cannon you can engage targets at 2000m, with tank cannon (T72/T90 as the Abrams even in ACE doesn't have proper optics and aiming at anything further than 1.5km is a wild guess bussiness) you can actually hit stationary targets up to 5km, so range should be set accordingly. With choppers, it seems that 2-2.5km engagement range is most comfortable, as it is just out of range of strela/stinger missile, therefore in serious gunning it is a must that pilot and gunner have viewdistance at 3km+ so they can see enemy vehicles on the radar BEFORE they get in their effective firing range. In my personal experience, flying any kind of jets with viewdistance lower than 5km makes no sense. A10, beeing relatively slow can be flown pretty well at 5km viewdistance, but if you fly Su27 with speeds exceeding 600units it can become too short, and I sometimes find myself flying jets with viewdistance set to 10km for better orientation. The further you see, the more time you have between spotting the target on the radar and being to close to it to properly engage, so larger viewdistance is often better. Flying a jet with 1200m viewdistance results in crashes quite often, because you have very little time between spotting a mountain and hitting it, same with ground/water etc.

I think you underestimate the amount of coordination power and communication and organizational skills such an operation would require. Seriously. The idea is not bad, but from my own perspective, it is an idea executable by tight and well organized group of contributors, and such group, if it already exists, can make their own procedures for big mission making, if it doesn't I doubt you can create a group around this one. Cheers and stay creative : )

Xeno, I long waited for the moment when I would be able to publicly Thank You for this mission. I play the ACE East version on rostov arma server for few months now, and I tottally love it. This mission connected with ACE make the best ArmA experience I've ever had. We used to play ranked version, but personally I like unranked more, as it allows people who just joined the server to use the weapon they would like to use without being forced to 'work' for it, but thats all changeable in mission options, and the whole idea of the mission is great, far greater than bis Warfare as there is no point in soldiers buying their weapons nor the field tank factory (have you ever seen a tank factory, BIS? Its fricking huge ;). Domination is The Ultimate Mission for Arma, when you have this, you don't need anything else. Thank You, Xeno.

The Better one? From the gamer point of view... Playing Operation Flashpoint as your first full scaled military simulator is something that you will never forget. It marks your psyche forever. Any pseudo-realistic military simulation that comes across after you've played ofp is briefly commented as "not as good". Ofp was the first game of it's class, and among the all games involving shooting people it was The Best One. The amount of emotions you got from playing Operation Flashpoint is just unmatchable. I think that if you played Operation Flashpoint before playing ArmA, the question which one is better doesn't really have much sense. ArmA is nothing more than few fixes put on the previous engine. Positive changes (kinda): + Join in progress + Build with 'openness' for moding in mind, (involving three letters sqf) (but does it really have more mods than OFP?) + TrackIR. + Looking around while in ironsight mode (love it). + Look-thru model ironsights. + Leaning. + Binds for things like 'eject' and new binds options in general. + Swimming (but you loose your gear, so why would you swim anyway). + Grass (Ok, it adds immersion, lowers fps, and obstructs vision while prone, but it's all for realism, so its a plus). But there are also some changes which are more of a step-back than progress. - Arcade style action icons (c'mon, what were you thinking guys?) - New balance (tanks dying from 1 at shot, non-bulletproof hummvies) - New vehicles? Not really. Mi24 and AH64 was taken away. Some replacements, in general I'm dissapointed with default ArmA vehicles set compared to OFP. Since the actual quality of your experience depends on the time you invest in finding mods. We can only compare those two games in their vanilla officially patched state. In that state, although ArmA is looking better, it isn't working that much better, it doesn't offer much more than operation flashpoint did in terms of actual gameplay. The feeling of a game comes from how all the bits work together, how do you feel playing the campaign, what types of missions are available for fast singleplayer actions, how is the whole thing put together and what level of enjoyment it gives you. Now, sit down and ask yourself, does ArmA give me more than Operation Flashpoint? ArmA is a successor for OFP, but we can't exactly say that playing ArmA is an experience more worthwhile than playing Operation Flashpoint. The very core of the joy you experience while playing one of those comes from the things they share. The freedom, the immersion, the scale. The things that differ them make going from OFP to Arma a tradeoff, not a gain. You get something new, which is nice, but you give something up. All in all, ArmA is maybe a better engine, but it sure as hell is not a better Game than Operation Flashpoint. I've spoken.

I agree with the traffic nightmare and the impact current mechanics have on the MHQ placement. It's clear we now can't exactly hide the MHQ between some buildings in some tight spot where it would fit, cause the supply thing wouldn't work. Should we really be able to do it? It's already mobile, so You can like drive it around the map, and stop once in a while to build some production facilities. Should we be able to build many bases and supply hub, then go mando-hitch the thing (or swim with it, it's amphibious for a reason) to some island and bury it in some hangar/garage/shed/whatever? I think the question is not about the supply mechanics, but about the nature of MHQ and the concept of the 'prize' objective as a whole. What is MHQ now: 1. Projects the building zone. 2. Spawns supply trucks and works as supply hub. 3. It's destruction ends the game. What would it be without the supply hub? 1. It allows building facilities, but there is no real reason it should stay in any particular place (Well, game ends when MHQ and all production facilities within some radius are destroyed, so it could be usefull to build lot of buildings to delay the end). 2. It's destruction ends the game, so let's hide it somewhere inaccessible and uncommon for the enemy to visit. It's not like like I'm negative for the idea. The concept of 3+ 5t Trucks driving with something from many cities to single M113 with a tent is a strange one.

The aspect I love the most in ArmA is warfare mission. There wasn't anything like it for OFP, at least not I'm aware of, and ArmA itself before warfare wasn't really that much fun. (There is something wrong about 'destroy the convoy' in Evolution if said convoy doesn't use the road, that pretty much scared me away from Evo). But in warfare, every game is different, and there is plenty room for epicness, even if I play just with one friend. So there was my first 'Battle for Dolores'. We started near Corazol, we took over Ortego without much of a problem thanks to the excelent sniping position in the city, and then we moved for the City of Three Bridges. Since we had "Fast Time" option enabled, the dusk came down on us as we aproached the east-most camp. There was much of enemy fire coming from the city, but since we had the higher ground, we set some sandbags and Mk19's to wreak havoc on them. After initial grenade bombardment we moved in with nightvision to clear the remains in CQB on the streets and proceed to take the main bunker. Some time passed as we stood our ground against incoming RACS forces who were trying to retake the main bunker from us. Bridges were helpful, since most of the RACS were coming from west and it wasn't really hard to shoot them on the west bridge, which by that time was pretty well iluminated with moonlight. We haven't yet started to think about direction of our next move, when our ears catched the sound of tracks somewhere in the city. After quick scouting of the surroundings we realized that T72 is rolling through the southern bridge with some infantry on its side. They were SLA forces and they ment bussiness. We lost many men there, trying to take out that tank, shooting it from the west bridge and west side of the city with M163. We were climbing buildings and attacking it from the top, finally we got it down... just to find out that the next one is coming. We called in ATGM Strikers, hoping that they can function as Anti Tank Bridge Denial System. We lost two of them before we learned that their reload time connected with inability to take T72 with one shot makes them unfit for the challenge. Determined to hold that city at all cost, we rolled in a tank of our own. In time it took to drive M1A1 from our base just outside Corazol, the SLA put some heavy pressure on us with BMP's, BRDM's and some more T72's rolling in through the southern bridge. We used Dragons, we used M136, and we tried to use Javelins (Javelins weren't really cutting the deal for us, we don't know if it was some problem with our ACE version, or our inability to understand the art of aiming the thing, enough to say that what seemed like direct-top-hit from javelin wasn't taking out even the BMP's). The city was blocked with wrecks, both burned carcasses, and vehicles damaged enough to be unusable by AI, but not yet good enough for a salvager. We held probably only because of the fact that their tanks weren't able to drive through because of the wrecks. When our tank finally arrived, we drived it into the city center and eliminated enemy armor with coordinated "drive into shooting position, take a shot, drive back behind a building" sequences. We rolled to the northern end of the southern bridge hoping that maybe we could push forward, but enemy armor was still coming from the south, and the tank got hit once or twice, so we pulled back to the main crossroad in the city, where we could overlook the street and shoot the SLA tanks as soon as they leave the bridge and pass this little street turn. We called in for the repair track and a M113 Ambulance. The moments when we were defending that crossroad, standing our ground with one damaged Abrams against what looked like neverending wave of T72's, were the most epic moments of the battle. There was real pressure on us, and we were starting to loose hope that we could stop the SLA from taking Dolores and progressing further into our territory. During the whole battle the night-day cycle changed few times. We got tired and morale got low. [That is probably the most emotion-generating aspect of the game. You can be in a really FUBAR situation, and there isn't much you can do about it, so it feels like real.] We tried to get in some close air support, but enemy had the airspace over the city under AA fire, so it was quite hot for the birds. After few attempts and birds lost, we managed to fly in with a Cobra and hovering few meters over the water level we shot that southern bridge with FFAR's till we destroyed it, effectively denying the SLA access to the city center. That was end of a session, since real life 6am in the morning came, and with all the addons the game tends to drop in fps a lot. Also we don't really play to "win" the map, just to "play" it : ) It came out that SLA had their main base just north of Parato, not more than 2 km south from Dolores, hence their ability to flood us with fast coming tanks. What's great in warfare is the fact, that similar battle never happened again, there were some other epic moments, or funny moments, or "WTF, where they're shooting from" moments, but the First Battle for Dolores will never happen again. It's unique'ness improves our memories about it : )