b0x0x

Cool thanks. I was wondering if you could tell us how the paradrop locations are set? I've had a few in the game I'm playing now (everon) where it seems almost like, immediately upon taking a camp, a helo or plane is sortied to drop troops almost immediately on top of the camp they just lost. Perhaps it was meant to go there before they lost it and we just took it faster than it thought we could. It doesn't tend to end that well because they're dropping into a point where we now have quite a lot of captured hardware. So I'm just wondering if that's a response to that section being under threat, if it just randomly picks a camp it owns already, etc.

Aliabad Hazarkot Namalsk Cicada ? (ed) I have another question - when 'air transport' shows up in the reinforcement queue - what exactly does that mean is spawning? Also, is it possible to reduce a side's "air" component to 0? Attempts to make a resistance force seem a bit weird when they can have the odd Su-25 spawning in from .. somewhere. Is there any way that options to make sides more asymmetrical somehow, either in their available vehicles, soldier skills, ai behaviours (eg. don't cap camps, if camp is lost, reinforce other held camps stronger), spawn positions (one side FOBS, one side only from cities, one side only at airfields/heliports, one side only from ships, one side only helos, one side only airplane parachutes) etc, could be added to the setup menu?

Oh excellent :) Thanks for the 75% strength option! I played a game on zargabad and it seemed a lot faster in general than before. Also noticed what seemed like a lot more static defences (including camps with 2 .50's, grenade launchers, tow launchers etc?) though maybe I just didn't notice them before. I think I finally actually understand what's happening with high command groups and splitting/reassigning/pulling troops into your own group. Nice. Would love to try it on some new maps :)

Possibly. I found Panthera and Zargabad to be about the best case for size-and-interestingness of map vs performance with the mod. You might try running Cherno with 25% master force strength just as a test to see if it's the number of troops + map causing larger issues.

I found ASR AI caused pretty unbearable lag and eventual failure of Arma2 to run at all with Apocalypse and Lost, so if that's one of the AI mods you're using, yeah you might have problems. I'm running it with the CBA set and JSRS and performance is pretty good. The mod already alters AI skill levels somewhat but I don't believe there are any other fundamental changes to movement/rearming/etc as you might find in dedicated AI mods.

Just some thoughts about the mission after a lot of playing. I have no idea about doing a mod as deep as this for Arma 2 so if I've just mentioned something unfixable/stupid then just bear with me. I just want to point out first that I do really love playing it :) 1. It would be neat if there was more emphasis put on holding controlled territory somehow. At the moment it feels a little like capping camps is the only goal for the AI - and this means that at times you end up with this kind of revolving disconnected groups chasing each others tails, capping camps rather than fighting each other. I know you don't really like the Warfare model, but I think there might be a place for some kind of spawning of the odd defender or defensive mounts placed around camps. 2. It might be nice if there was some greater communication between groups and the reinforcement queue. To give one example - it seems like any good anti-infantry vehicle (eg. 256, tanks) can roll around the map pretty much slaughtering everything unhindered and anti-armour (helos, other tanks) are never really sent in to deal with it in a coordinated way. If there was some kind of casualty tracking (eg. "we just lost 39 troops to a vehicle in class:armour" / "we just lost 3 vehicles in class:jet from class:manpad") that could then boost the priority of a CAS/armour sortie to the largest recent concentration of red ! marks on the map, it might feel a lot more like there was a coordinated war happening. 3. Similar to this it can feel a little strange not knowing exactly what the friendly AI brain wants to do. I see the blue X marks move around the map ... in aid of what, I'm not always sure. Is there some way to set up a marker (like a box/circle marker as we see in the editor) to prioritise AI movement to a certain zone for a certain limited time period? 4. It might also be nice to see the enemy AI try something sneaky once in a while, like dropping troops away from it's main spawn and onto a new, random, unclaimed military camp. Again anything to break up this kind of tail-chase behaviour would be nice and it might allow some kind of impromptu pincer-like manoeuvring. It feels like it might be something that's ideally a separate spawn mechanic from the main one - could they HALO drop in ? Could it be 4 SF guys in a UH-1 disembarking on the ground or a roof of a building? 5. Civilians feel a little un-fleshed out at the moment and I'm not really sure why they're there other than for eye candy. I'm not sure what could be done - could they plant IEDs if you piss them off? Could they be enlisted if they're happy with you, or press ganged if they're not? Could you win them over and set up a new cache in their town? 6. Is there anything that could be done to make the overall strategic goal more obviously influenced by the player other than territory control? Could you delay re-inforcements by taking out transports? Could you enable new "support" support requests like, I dunno, ECCM to protect friendly aircraft and prevent missile locks on them, radio jamming to prevent enemy groups radioing each other, ship/air artillery strikes to wipe a location off the map (which would have the downside of really pissing off civilians), aerial drop minefields, etc? Having all of the action on territory control and troop deaths makes it kind of feel like a WW1 style meat grinder rather than a more modern war. Anyhow just some ideas, I have no idea how practical any of this is and I doubt I would be much actual use at implementing any of it! Thanks so much for the mission all the same :)

Yeah, I found ASR AI would eventually result in "too many virtual memory objects", sudden CTDs, sudden exit/reverts of the mission, etc, if you ran the mission for long enough in both Apocalypse and Lost. That was actually what was causing the earlier problem of losing middle mouse actions with ASR running - they did work ... they would just execute the script in about 5 minutes from when you clicked the button! And it would just get progressively slower and slower and eventually crash. So I just gave up on making ASR work with these missions entirely. Both seem to work fine on their own though.

I've run it on a few now. It's a great mission! Some small issues I encountered with a couple of maps were * Panthera - I found enemy helicopters would do their drop run in, then on completion, seemingly hover forever just at the north edge of the north airfield, in range of Stinger missiles. * Nicosia - many (4) midair collisions of friendly transport planes on the first run in, plus many injuries to troops from being blown into trees on the way down. I believe all of the collisions were from 130Js. Couple other things to do with the mission - Is it possible to set say a "75% strength" option? I find 50% is very fast but a bit empty, and 100% is a bit crowded and a bit slow. Is it possible to also mention how many active squads those percentages will result in? At the moment, are those percentages scaled to map size, number of military camps on the island, or anything? Is it possible to request supply drops of static objects, such as AA launchers, artillery, etc? I've been using Kron's support module for this but it requires a lot of discipline not to cheat with it :)

I've found air/vehicles are still spawned even if the shares for "side - vehicles" are set to 0, so they still get pulled from somewhere (IME it will pull the side - vehicles for the selected infantry side). The shares I thought were auto-divided if possible - so you if you set 12 friendly groups and split them 50/50 between usmc and us army in any combination (1:1, 5739503:5739503, etc) then 6 will be of one and 6 the other. I have a couple of other questions about the (fantastic :)) mod - 1) is there somewhere in the Zero or Lost thread a more detailed explanation of the group/equipment editor? I figured out the basics of controlling high command groups but I'm a bit stuck when it comes to more complicated things like team switching between them and pulling group compositions around. Is there some way to pull a high command group into your own personal squad I've missed? There is a bit of frustration factor in being right next to a blue friendly medic while injured and have him sit there dumbly while I also sit there dumbly. 2) I was wondering if it's possible to perhaps make the arrival of enemy partisans from searched houses a bit more fluid. I've run into a few groups that have literally spawned in the middle of the road, in sight, metres from my player/group and done significant damage before I even realise what's up. Is it possible to announce that they have arrived somehow, or spawn them somewhere that isn't in line-of-sight to the player? Have them emerge from inside a building? Make them disembark from a vehicle or something? I don't mind being wiped out by partisans - it's a really nice touch - but I think perhaps the way they're introduced could be a bit better than materialising suddenly.

Ha, I just went to try and isolate the issue and at some point after removing and re-enabling the set of mods/restarting the mission I can't get it to fail to take intel/etc anymore :)

Could you share what you've customised with this set? I've installed @ASR_AI and the @CBA/@CBA_A2/@CBA_OA dependencies, running after all bis packs and before Lost. The mod functions seem to work OK in terms of changes to AI/rearming etc, but the main drawback is that now the functions to take gear and intel from enemies no longer work at all (briefly disappear and reappear with no result). Is there something I should change to make this work?

When it's happened it's been dark from the start and I've just assumed that it's meant to be dark .. and then it stays dark. I thought it was just something I had done wrong installing the mod so I didn't really take too much notice of it happening beyond restarting the game. I did test advancing time through the command menu and while this changed the lens flare/nvg lighting angles it still kept the game pitch dark for eyeball mark 1 view. The issue persisted from loaded saves for me when it happened, but again I would hestate to say so for sure since it's usually been notice problem > start new game when it's happened. If I run into it again I'll let you know if I can be more specific. 94364 is just the latest OA build I grabbed on the assumption that newer was better (ha :)).

I'd like to report the same thing. It definitely seems like something going on with the weather module somehow. When it's occurred for me, I get lens flare drawing from the correct sun position if I'm using the NVG, but when I take them off, it disappears and it's pitch black everywhere again. NVG/IR scopes function and will actually draw trees/etc as brighter from the correct sun angle, just not 'lit' lit without a scope. I've got a completely clean Arma/OA install and I've never set my map to load 'none' at startup on this install. I never saw this when I was using OA Build 90242 but it started from the first new game I started on 94364. It seems intermittent though so perhaps this is a coincidence. I've seen it happen on Chernarus 3 times now, but test games on Utes haven't exhibited the problem (yet). Lost is installed as an expansion in OA and there are no other non-bis mods ticked and no pbos other than the lost one and the lost missions.

Hi, Liking the game for such an early beta! Runs well, looks great, love the aesthetic of the game generally. Good stuff! :) That said - there are a few functions that I think would be immensely handy - some of which you probably have in mind already, but I just thought I'd make sure: 1) Function/keybind to both set Turret Heading to Vehicle Heading, and set Vehicle Heading to Turret heading (carrier/walrus) 2) Auto-hover/maintain altitude function/keybind for Manta 3) Time acceleration up/down function/keybind - not "timewarp", just "regular map/3d view only faster/slower". 4) Request that the existing multi-select function for units re-worked so that CTRL-LMB cannot designate a waypoint while CTRL is being held (eg at present a missed ctrl-click on a fast moving manta will start setting up waypoints for all ctrl-selected units) - is there any reason anyone can think of why you would hold this down when setting a waypoint/program to execute rather than trying to click a unit? Also - documentation request - doesn't actually seem like this specific option (ctrl-lmb for individual unit selection) is a listed control option in the map/command controls yet. More generally, it might possibly be useful to switch the paradigm so that overall, LMB=Select, RMB=Action as is conventional in many titles. Interested to hear if there are any other requests or ideas for keybinds other people might have. Hopefully these above do not fall under full blown "new feature" requests, just allowing existing features to work differently :)

Just wondering if anyone has run into anything like the following (twice in a row for me now) Scenario 1 - Assault on enemy carrier comes to a close when the enemy carrier steams forward and runs over all walruses, killing them instantly and quicker than it would if it shot them Scenario 2 - You finally work out how to successfully transport an out-of-gas walrus on the hook, drop it down next to your carrier, only to find that it has dropped "into" the carrier collision model and now can't move. You attempt to move the carrier instead, and it kills the walrus instantly. Could the collision system be reworked so that collisions "slide" or "push" other objects away from them rather than deal collision damage until they are destroyed? Obviously it would be silly if the carrier ran into a walrus and came to a complete standstill, but surely there is some middle ground here that is more sensible :)

Do you see that on the map yet? If not you might not have search the whole island yet. I agree this could be handled better somehow - maybe a "detection" audio notification, or some kind of zooming circle pointing it out. At the moment other than being solid white (which every other building on the map will occasionally flash to anyhow) there's not much distinguishing it from your regular waypoints in 3d mode / other map objects. Additionally - look at how the little fuel / radar icons there blend into the green background when it's not being illuminated by the sensor sweep! Could possibly use some work on how those icons are presented generally.

I agree. At the moment - correct me if I am wrong - but it seems like the zoom is handled in an "absolute" fashion - so mwheelup = 1 zoom level up, mwheeldown = 1 zoom level down. I think it might be better if this was a "relative" sort of affair where there was a weighted average component to zooming with no fixed zoom states. So zooming in/out would depend more on how quickly the interval of zoom in/zoom out was pressed over time - 1 mwheel in 1 sec = slow zoom, 3 mwheel in 1 sec = fast zoom.

Hi, General arma editing question I suppose, but I was wondering how you go about making the AI teams larger in a warfare game. Adding more player slots is one thing, and I seem to be able to control 'player' AI team size easily enough, but I can't seem to get the AI to make itself more troops. I know this is going to be something ridiculous like here_is_where_you_do_that_thing.sqs, but I just can't find it. Also, how is RACS handled for team sizes? I can see a few things governing what it builds and where to spawn it, but I would like to experiment with making them soak up the first 30-60 minutes of fighting and make the choice of taking a large vs small town more important. Can I give them a 'patrol' waypoint somehow to make them interdict rather than trying to do stand up fights?

Also interested in how exactly we would go about doing that! I am guessing there is some way to store/retreive the editor placed waypoints and triggers on spawn as there is for eg. position/weapons/skill/rank but damn if I know the exact command to feed it to do that or the syntax.

Safe/Aware/Combat/Stealth command state (and related commands like 'advance' or 'danger') will radically change how the AI responds to commands. There are of course bugs, but a good number of weird issues seen in the ai (demolition derby driving, lagging far behind, trying to form up at the wrong time etc) seem to be the AI just following the command it has been given according to its behaviour state in a very literal way. So: 1) assign everyone in the same vehicle to the same team - this stops 'get back in formation' weirdness and helps the AI deal with dispersed groups a lot better. 2) when moving, command the driver / commander of the vehicle, not the whole group or whole crew. pay attention to who is in 'safe' mode and who is set to scan/engage targets. Hold fire, safe mode (select 3-2, select 7-4) will make drivers drive less aggressively, hold the road better and give you a chance to give orders when it comes under fire rather than going beserk. 3) AI seems to treat objects/markers/map items etc as nodes, and if there are lots of reference points, or very few reference points, it can have trouble navigating, especially if it's set to look for and use cover ('combat' or 'stealth' modes). the occasional 'aware' (7-3) and 'stand up' (7-6) command do wonders to get them out of a sulk or a corner. 4) if your AIs seem to hate getting in vehicles, try using the command mode list (select unit, 4, vehicle) rather than the context menu + middle click. If the driver slot is free when you give the order to board, the AI will assume you want one of them to be the driver and freak out when you board and take the slot they wanted - either specifically tell them to get in back via the '4' menu, or get in as the position you want first, then tell them to board.