Opinion/Breakthru on Bugged AI Crackpot shooters

[Opinion/Breakthru on Bugged AI Crackpot shooters]

I can confirm like many other posters here that AI manned tank secondary and machinegun spots do fire through most if not all objects. Typically this wouldn't be such an issue, depending on caliber and object of course, but the shots will not only travel through the thickest of trees or the top angles of hills but also most buildings and objects. I've had T-90's lay down fire and kill me through a MH-60 while I was on the other side (watched the round go through the side of the helicopter) and didn't blow up the helicopter. I've had a commander of a T-72 fire his gun through a house out of frustration at my M1A1 and watch as the bullets passed through the corner of the house and hit the armor on the tank. Additionally, I've also seen the badass crewmember shoot at me from well over 100m with a pistol and hit me too. Aside from crew members (primarily armor crews) I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary minus the super sensitive sight that AI who are set to Veteran or Expert posses and the Tunguska set to recruit being able to lock on to your plane at 4.1k out yet you can't get a lock on them. (Again, I know real life yada yada but in game is always represented differently.)

In retrospect, if the vanilla AI in Arma 2 are anything like Arma than few things hold constant:

1. SU and KA pilot AI are top-notched marksmen with an AKS at 500+m being able to 1 shot a player. These AI are to be hunted and taken out with extreme prejudice.
   
2. Firing any designated sniper rifle (M24/M107/SVD [marksman rifle]/KSVK) default to Arma in and immediately around an AO gained the operator of said weapon instant hate by the AI within the AO and usually didn't lose focus of AI attention until the player's death. Rifles such as the Mk12, Vintorez, add-on long range rifles do not generate such disgust by the AI as they will generally ignore the operator of said weapon until you've hit them in the foot or ass whichever happens first.
   
3. AI pilots, while sneaky and relentless, can be brought down by simply firing upon their craft (be it plane or helicopter) as they attempt to find you and kill you. You typically cannot kill them with small arms fire; however, it's the AI's lack of proper discipline that causes him to go into a literal blind rage and fly into trees, buildings, hillsides or even friendlies in an attempt to shoot at you with his machinegun(s).
   
4. Tires are rather expensive for the forces native to Sahrani so when one has been deflated either due to multiple projectile penetration or a simple removal of the valve steam needle the crew will abandon their craft and stand at around while waiting for their AAA service provider to show up. In Sahrani there is no such saying as "go down with the ship".
   
5. The saying "the hat makes the man" is true to APC or lightly armored vehicles in Arma that are manned by AI. When the turret is gone so goes the crew as they decide it's easier to stand around and wait for the AAA guy to show up. Fortunate is the engineer who knows that 30 - 50 well placed 5.56 or 7.62x39 rounds placed into the turret will cause this phenomena to happen thus allowing said engineer to carjack the AI crew Sahrani style.
   
6. Tired of running from house to house only to find that no AI are around? Can’t find the one AI who’s lost and/or missing in a city that you know is cleared by hasn’t? Setup a MASH and just watch the number of customers who’ll stop by for a quick hit of morphine and bandages. Who says AI are dumb and especially the disabled AI as you can always find them healing up at a player’s MASH if it’s setup in the AO. Some would say this borders on collaborating with the enemy other say whatever it takes to seal the deal (or clear the AO).
   
7. It’s said you do yourself and your enemy honor when you face them in combat; however, that doesn’t hold true to AI in mounted locations. AI on land based machineguns, grenade and AA pods as well as AT positions always take more than the one shot to the head to toss them off the position and this is even at point-blank range. Knife them I would but that is not in game so shoot them from a safe distance or open up at point blank on full auto or as quick as you can click the mouse.
   

As for Arma 2 I can say that #3 works well, #4 and #5 not so well as the Russians, CDF, and others can afford new tires and it takes many more than 45 rounds to the turret to disable as you typically just piss off the crew. Number 2 doesn’t seem to apply thankfully but I do know that it takes about 5 minutes after combat for the AI crew of any armor to get ballsy and turn out giving you a second, third or whatever attempt you’re on to put the crew down. 7 is still in effect and I haven’t played enough as medic to know whether or not #6 still works. It’s always fun catching the AI healing at your MASH like it’s theirs.

[ArmA 2 - Server Ban List - ?]

Exactly

regards to the global ban list.... wont work,, and as for posting peeps id's on this forum, thats out of order, if some hacker came on hre and started posting legit players id's (like mine) and got me banned from servers...i wouldnt be too happy..QUOTE]

While it would be nice to use a shared banned list (ala BF2142/BF2) it will not work be effective simply due to the fact that there is no real tie-in with player names and their ID's. Unlike other games where your player name is tied to your player ID you can randomly change your player name to whatever you want even if it's already in use. When a person joins a server and has the same player name as a current player on the server it automatically truncates the same (i.e. Player, Player(1), Player(2)) even though both are named Player under their profile. While innocent enough and seemingly handled by BIS unfortunately somebody can hijack your name and use it maliciously. Additionally, there's a bug (at least in Arma) where if you're not using the default squad xml for your clan tag a person who steals your player ID will prevent you from having server admin rights if they're logged into the server before you.

For example, last October there were a couple of clowns on a server (1st Cav) who decided that it was more important to teamkill, hack up the server and replicate items only because one of the two were asked, at first, politely to quit playing sound clips of "Allah Akbar". At the time most of us brushed it off then it became annoying that the time we'd put into clearing out several of the previous towns (we were on Obregan by time they started their shenanigans) and due to one of the two blowing up the MHQ and the other locking down players as they spawned in at the base that the rest of the server vote kicked the problem players (to which they kept coming back) and eventually locked them down inside the base. Finally both players had left and about 20 minutes later I logged for the night.

Shortly after I left the server somebody (presumably one of the two who were causing problems on the server) connected to the server running my player name. My teammate was still on the server and had thought it was odd that I'd come back to play after leaving the server so late at night (it was after 2:00 am CST and I work 8-5 during the week) so he tried talking with the person but got no response. In addition to the no response he'd noticed that imposter didn't have a clan tag nor patch to which in Arma 1 we'd both ran our signature tag and arm patch. Right after being confronted by my buddy the imposter started blowing up the base, doing the 100s of water towers on the base and whatever else he could. The next day my buddy told me about what happened and we'd brushed it off until the next time we connected to the server (1st Cav).

Upon entering the server I was instantly banned to which my buddy asked why I was banned. He spoke with one of the clan members who ran the server (Pvt. Johnson I think) and was told that they'd let me back on the server to hear my side of the story. We told them what had happened the person even commented that the ID numbers didn't match and apologized for the banning. About 5 minutes later I get banned again with my buddy again asking why I was banned and the same person (Johnson) rambled about destroying stuff from the night before when my player name was hijacked. My teammate again explained and even pointed out that the admin had said the player ID's didn't match and he too was banned right after that. With that done we'd figured to hell with this server and the individual who had a personal issue with us as there were many other servers to play on; however, that was only the beginning of our troubles.

Any server we were on and this Pvt Johnson from 1st Cav was on he'd falsely accuse me and my buddy as being "hackers" and crashing servers. On one occasion we were on one of =SEALZ= servers and he flatly accused us of downing the server (the server had desynchronized and only voice communications were working) and the admin at the time banned both of us. My buddy got on =SEALZ= TS server and explained that this Johnson guy has been doing this even when he and his clan (1st Cav) knew we weren't responsible for their server woes and the ones who were had already been banned. Eventually the admin of the =SEALZ= server removed the bans. After that and a few other uphill battles of clearing our name I basically shelved Arma and have been reluctant at running the clan tag for Arma 2 out of concerns of having to go through the same process of clearing our name every time we join a server.

[ammo crate bug]

You might have to land the helicopter first before attempting to unload the ammo crate. I know you can load/unload ammo crates with the LAV MHQ and assume it would work with the BTR-90 MHQ as well. Personally I've loaded up ammo crates in the helicopter but never tried to drop them off.

(Beagle under one of the last updates to Domination for Arma there was an option load/unload ammo creates and has unfortunately made its way into the domination map for Arma 2.)

[Profile name change]

Create the new **cool name** profile then copy your old profile's settings to the new profile name folder. Typically you can find your old profile under C:\Documents and Settings\<current profile>\My Documents\Arma 2 Other Profiles\<lamename>\<lamename>.Arma2Profile where the <current profile> and <lamename> are placeholders for whatever your profile name is for your computer and Arma 2 profile. Once you've copied the <lamename>.Arma2Profile over to the new cool name folder then rename the <lamename>.Arma2Profile to <coolname>.Arma2Profile.

This is how it worked in Arma and looks like it works the same for Arma 2. The above explanation might be a little hard to follow but if you have questions please feel free to ask.

[Trying to join MP games turns my ISP OFF]

I had a weird experience as well with Arma 2 in that when I’d play the co-op campaign at some point during game play my link from my router to cable modem would go dead during the mission. I tried resetting both the router and modem but nothing worked and I could go directly from my computer to the router and be fine; however, after about 5 minutes or so it would reestablish the link between the router and modem. I had this happen 3 different times on 3 different days and usually within the first 20 minutes of co-op play but after the 5 minutes of lost connection passed it wouldn’t happen until the next day.

On the third day it happened (where I lost connection between the cable modem and router) I couldn’t get the link to reestablish itself. I reset both the router and modem several times leaving both off for 5 minutes in an attempt to completely reset the cable modem (with my ISP after 5 minutes of the modem being off it’ll reregister the device). Still I could not get the link between my router and cable modem so out of curiosity, and some suspicion, I changed out my cable from the modem to the router and haven’t had a problem since.

Interestingly enough this is the first game I’ve ever come across where this situation happened where all of a sudden I’ve lost my link between the cable modem and router and it not be related to a hardware issue. I’d like to say that it was related to me recently moving to a new house and that the network equipment took some damage due to excessive dust and paint mist; however, every other game and application since I’ve moved in (May of this year) has worked fine without any issue.

This might help and it might not as it does sound somewhat related and if not let us know.