instagoat

I've had some fun playing this mission, however there seem to be some problems. Imgur Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/eG1v11l Cheers, Insta

Maybe fake a submarine, or a ship. There's the aircraft carrier. There's SDV's, and helicopters to move people into place. Maybe have them hide out by teams in ruins and abandoned buildings. Or, maybe, have some hackerman break into the drone streams and make the base disappear. This is the future, posibillities are endless.

Assumes that the Aliens need ships. Maybe the ships -are- the Aliens. We're predisposed to think that they'll be similar to us (thus, roswell grey little men), but considering how vastly different most life on earth is to us, that's a bad assumption. Plus, flesh bodies are bad for space travel, so it is likely that whatever intelligence reaches us through space will have moved beyond easily destroyed, evolved bodies. Maybe the Ships aren't even an entire Alien, but just tiny particles of the entire creature, sort of like our antibodies are part of us. We just don't know. Though I'd be really interested in an Arma based sci-fi Universe (like a better Mass Effect), if these Aliens are well thought out, maybe it could work. CSATs device for example can only feasibly work through alien technology that knows something about the universe that we don't. So, Aliens seem to be the logical step forward from the device.

As for why they would come, whatever the reason will be, it certainly won't be our water. Or Helium. Or any other resources. There is nothing to be found on earth that cannot be found elsewhere. And space is vast. People completely underestimate how blimmin vast space is. Currently, the estimate is that the average star has one planet (conservatively), which means a hundred billion planets, low ballpark. Leading to the second question, currently human life can be found (by radio sources) inside a bubble about 114 ly in radius (first radio broadcast in 1906), so any Aliens would need to be inside that bubble to find us in the first place. The inverse of that figure is, that as of now we have not found any similar radio sources in the sky that would indicate a technologically advanced civilization. Of course, maybe they invented lasers before radio, so possibly they are using that to communicate, or maybe they haven't discovered wireless at all (So how do their spaceships communicate?). Lasers would at least be very obvious if they flash you, at vast distances. Another thing is that we have not seen any indicators of spaceships around nearby stars. For example, with current off the shelf sensors, you could easily see a rocket launch on earth out to jupiter. With a large enough sensor, you could figure out the type and size of a rocket lightyears away. Say, a large telescope with an IR camera. Also important to remember that there is no stealth in space. Zilch, nada. If you are outside of a planetary atmosphere, you cannot hide, unless your temperature is 3° centigrade (background temperature of space). Which is impossible without cooling, which produces massive amounts of waste heat. The interesting part about that is that we, as a civilization, have completely foregone hiding the fact that we are here. So if there -are- any aliens around, they certainly could feel motivated to do something about us: any sufficiently advanced civilization nearby has the potential to become life threatening to an entire planet. For example, they could use orbital lasers to drive relativistic projectiles across interplanetary distances to hit you with. Which also means that, as far as space warfare economy goes, an invasion force is probably the least effective way to go about killing something on another planet. Just take a large piece of space trash and accelerate it using lasers, and nuke the site from your own orbit. Hard scifi reasons for space invasions are really really tough to come by. There probably are none. There is nothing here worth taking, they know we are here by default because of the radio waves and recent changes in the heat output across the planet (from a large scale industrial base, as well as rocket launches.), and if they wanted to hurt us, it is more economical to not be here in person and send a bunch of high speed rocks instead. Depressing 😞

Did I understand correctly that only new buyers will get early access to the new DLC content, but not supporter edition buyers? I am asking because the DLC already appears in my list, but no content is downloaded.

I hope the Aliens have a good reason to be on earth. Maybe the CSAT device turns out to be some sort of Alien technology that they have clandestinely seeded into the human information sphere, to provide a some sort of jump beacon. As in A for Andromeda, where the Aliens sent plans for a supercomputer supposedly designed to help humans grow, but is in fact a device to take over the planet. That Aliens in fact -are- hostile towards humans is quite possible. For example, if the Aliens have the capability to travel interstellar distances, their tech level also allows for extremely destructive weapons. Such as relativistic kill missiles. Thus they know that any species of their own tech level is capable to potentially destroy their own planets. They also know that communicating with other species is nigh impossible (which we know because there are human languages that cannot be translated anymore, and that's the same species). So a good life insurance policy is to destroy any intelligent life emitting radio waves within a certain radius around your location, kind of the same way we destroy ant colonies when they pop up inside our homes. Except the ants do not have the potential to nuke us if we leave them alone, 500 years down the line.

Considering that A3 was supposed to be scifi before it was rolled back to its current near future setting, maybe the story is a little more involved. That they spoiler the twist in the trailer is the disappointment, if anything. The Units seem to be kitbashes from existing meshes, but the vests look at least partially new. Making new buildings from scratch is probably out of scope for what appears to be a side operation when compared to the main studios in CzRep. So is completely new vehicles, etc, thus the sidegrades for existing ones. Such as the hardtop for the pickup, and the new textures. The russian units do not use the TCU of the persian and chinese CSAT units, apparently. The Uniforms look more like Gorkas. The Helmets are reskins though... I hope they read some good books (or a helpful site such as atomic rockets) before writing this. If the Aliens are there to steal our water, I am going to scream.

The reaction to the aliens has been less violent than I initially expected, nice! After playing XCOM again, I'm completely down for them. The Campaign/Missions are a bonus, and most community groups do not seem to use vanilla assets anyway. Fighting Aliens (if they even are actual enemies and not just atmospheric props and post processing filters.) with modern warfighting technology is interesting, at least after almost 20 years of shooting people wearing green suits in forest/desert/mountains. Hopefully it is not going to be magic invulnerable Aliens, but more like the Aliens in The Underhandler, who completely underestimate the degree of violence humans are capable of, as well as how well they are armed and successively get curbstombed back into orbit. A nice change of pace, and a good complement to the GW DLC. One for the milsimmers, and one for the milsimmers who like space.

After playing XCOM again, I'd be down with some Aliens. I'm gonna put a notification on my calendar and buy some popcorn. Really looking forward to this...!

Has anybody ever experienced blacklist markers not working? I have OPFOR Units spawning inside BLUFOR TAORs that I have added as blacklisted to OPFOR. I also have a problem with units of a faction that is not selected spawning. (OPF_F, while all Modules should select OPF_T_F). Is there an easy way to troubleshoot this kind of thing? I can't tell which module the debugger needs to be on for so I can see why this is happening. Thanks in advance for any help. Cheers Insta Edit: Also getting error messages such as this: https://imgur.com/a/iULUqbv Mission file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JAfKldPGuHuZTcFu2DocVUUTVG0jFoCY/view?usp=sharing I was attempting to make a kind of SF insurgency, with USSF and CTRG operating on a CSAT occupied Island. Maybe I've not quite understood how the modules work?

Maybe this helps: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-99/fm3-99_2015.pdf US Army field manual for airborne and air assault operations.

Which is why I said explode, not burn out. For example, an ammunition explosion (such as a HE shell detonating when struck by a AP fragment or a HEAT jet) in a T-type tank is sufficiently strong to rip out one side of the hull and throw the turret dozens of meters aside. It should only happen if a shell explodes, not when the propellant burns, but being in the way of a blast like that will do hell to the equipment on the outside of your tank if it happens right next to you. A slight distance should already greatly diminish the damage. However, I just saw a chain-reaction with a couple of nyxes standing next to each other. One got hit, blew up, and then one popped after the other. This shouldn't really happen. The vehicle fire simulation in Arma is flawed, though, it is very simplicistic. Maybe screwing down the damage is a good fix.

An explosion sufficiently large should also damage the tank, not just the crew, especially vulnerable auxilary parts. Blow off slat armor and ERA fixtures, destroy gun turrets and tracks. Is there any real world data suggesting how large an explosion needs to be before the crew inside feel it? A tank blowing up is a pretty huge explosion, typically.

Thanks for the quick answer Kju, much appreciated!

I have a question. I found that AI unit weapons dispersion is way off the charts for me, and when I came back from my hiatus to check out tanks, the problem was exacerbated as it seems. I have made a thread here: Is anybody else affected by this? It only hits AI units for me. All mods are turned off. Player weapons accuracy is completely fine, which is making me think this is a game issue.