instagoat

Thanks. I didn´t think this trough, so it´s pretty shabby. I´m currently doing some research on the 7th ID and its lore. As a german, it´s kinda difficult to access things over in the US, so I´ll have to rely on the scraps I´m gathering around the net. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7th_ID Pretty interesting. It apparently has been inactive, but has been reactivated, as of october this year. Their mascot is the black widow spider, and their motto is "Light, Silent and Deadly" Most of their battle honours are korean war streamers. Currently trying to figure out if these guys were Marines at chosin basin type material. They were praised highly for their tenacity in combat during the korean war, it seems. It´s all pretty interesting stuff. Maybe I´ll do something exploring a bit of that heritage, and the effect of recent events on the soldiers serving in the mediterranean in 2035.

Wrote a little story. Don´t know if its good, but I know for sure the location I picked was bad. IRL, the OP is in the most nonsensical place ever. Anyways, here goes: The wind kicked up swirls of dust from the rocky ground, just beyond the boundary of OP Batman. All around, the shadows of the clouds racing overhead passed over the greenish-brown shrubbery growing on the flanks of the jagged mountains of the far south on the border of what had once been the provinces of Rhodope and Xanthi, and now the demilitarized zone inbetween occupied eastern Greece and the sovereign western parts of it. The sun bore down from the sky, stark shadows cast where it broke inbetween the clouds. Barbedwire glinted all around the former mountain Farm, but not a single movement betrayed its occupants. All in all, there were fifty soldiers here, half and half greek and american. Specialist Harry Borman removed his helmet, untangling a knot in the chinstrap. A mumbled curse escaped him as he undid the latches, trying to fiddle them into the correct places again: somehow, they had gotten entangled on the march, when the Helmet had been attached to his backpack. Now, inside the OP, the CO had demanded everybody wore them. Next to him sat corporal Randolph Manx, a stout, short man, who had been Harry´s friend ever since he had arrived in the platoon. He idly chewed on his gum as he watched his friend wrestle with the straps of his helmet, the camouflage netting dangling from his own almost covering his eyes. Above them, the OP´s commander, Lieutenant Adam Steinfeldt surveyed the mountains across the border with his binoculars. To his right waited the radio operator, a thin, scar-faced greek soldier, who was called Arcenio something-or-other. Harry could never remember these weird greek names, nevermind pronouncing them. In fact, by now he wasn´t even sure he could actually -talk- to his greek brothers in arms. On the march, and now, the americans and the greeks hadn´t really conversed with each other bar single words and court gestures. He perked up when the lieutenant spoke up above him, shifting against the hesco bastion he used as cover. „Alright, seargant, note this down. Point yankee: the usual two vehicles. Also the usual big recce kit on one of them, looking right at us.“ Point yankee was just down the valley beyond the OP, on the first ridge on the other side of the nominal border between occupied and free greece. There, the Iranians had cut down the shrubbery, emplaced a temporary dugout and a road just on the other side of the ridge, out of sight. Every day, three times a day, a wheeled patrol reached this point, took a peek at OP Batman and left again. „Next... Point Romeo.“ the lieutenant continued. „Enemy automated observation post seems to be still intact. Camera´s in place, but they have improved camouflage over night... wouldn´t surprise me if they... hey, what the fuck is that?“ Harry and Randy froze, perking their ears. Romeo was south of Yankee, on the face of the ridge. Above them, their commander strained as he leant out over the barricade, trying to get a better view out of the viewport. After a couple of seconds, he dropped the binoculars, and looked back down at the foxhole behind him, gesturing at Harry. „Borman, get off your butt and fetch me Wilson. Bring the CLU, cool... and put that Helmet on.“ „Yes, sir!“ Harry replied, put the Helmet on, grabbed his MX and leapt out of the hole. All the time, he kept his head down to prevent the enemy from observing him as he moved towards the buildings where the heavy weapons team was placed. A heavy machinegun in a second-storey window, and the AT team with its Javelin launcher. Harry reached the building, opening the shabby door. Inside, the air was dusty and the light sparse: all windows had been boarded up, and sandbags placed to reinforce the barriers. A few soldiers sat around a table, busy with maintaining their weapons. Specialist Uriah Ole Wilson laid on the floor at the back of the main room, helmet covering his face, hands folded over his chestrig. Harry stepped up next to him, bumping his leg with his boot. „Oldface.“ He said, causing the man on the floor to stir, pushing the helmet aside, revealing his freckled face, and fiery red hair. Uriah blinked, before sitting up. „Eh, Harry... the fuck are you doing here, aren´t you supposed to be outside?“ „CO sent me.“ Harry replied, hefting his rifle as he nodded towards the door. „Told me to bring you and your CLU. Spotted something, seemed kinda urgent. I guess he wants a good look at it.“ „Damn, and here I thought I could get a little rest.“ Uriah grinned, getting up. He disappeared trough a doorway, returning with the CLU in hand. He grabbed his rifle, and followed Harry outside. When they reached the commander, their comrades had already placed the makeshift bipod. Quickly, they mounted the humming CLU on it, swinging it around to point it at Romeo. Harry disappeared back into his foxhole, though keeping an eye of the men working over him and his buddy. Once the unit had cooled down to operating temperature, the lieutenant peered trough the optics, carefully scanning the area where he had spotted whatever had aroused his suspicion. It only took a moment for him to find what he was searching for. „Huh... what is that contraption supposed to be?“ Harry listened to the rustling of fabric, and the faint clicks of buttons being pressed. „Kind of... looks like a metal storm. -Damn- well camouflaged too. Okay... take note: enemy seems to have emplaced a multi-launcher on the ridge across from our position, directed at us, presumeably. Escaped our observation last night, just like the camo job on the camera.“ That was a bit unsettling. Harry had seen metal storm autonomous grenade launchers in use as area denial weapons and defensive emplacements, and from the stories he´d heard from people who had fought in the Turkish campaign, you didn´t want to end up on the business end of those. However, as long as it was only one... „I suspect there´s more than one too.“ ...well so much for that. „One wouldn´t be enough to turn us off in one go. So where are the others?“ the lieutenants voice faded to a whisper, as he peered trough the CLU´s high magnification optics. „Shit.“

Thanks, I´ll try that. Another problem is that, just like with the default high command, in big battles over time, the system becomes more and more unresponsive. After about two hours of playing with 200 ish units and 30 vehicles on each side, clicking on a unit doesn´t select them anymore. The only way to avert that seems to be to quit, and continue the mission with a reload. I imagine this is an engine flaw. At any rate, thank you for this mod, it´s really nifty to get all these extra options.

Probably deliberate misconfig on the devs part to better show the stuff off. That, or damage of the hyper-ultra-mega-cavitating darts really dissipates with range and he just got a lot of bruises.

Insurgent/Resistance code graffiti/markers. I would imagine the greek resistance would have over time evolved some sort of graffiti code to communicate with their members, without actually ever meeting them. Sort of like a pictorial dead man´s drop. An example from Afghanistan: http://i602.photobucket.com/albums/tt104/vor033/US - Army - 4/cbc77d3d.jpg <- These may not be actual Taliban markers, but you get the Idea. basically, any means to communicate without actually having members meet would greatly benefit the resistance. Also adds a riddle level to the campaign: just put these spraypaintings out there marking weapons caches or good ambush positions or stuff like that, but DONT EXPLAIN IT TO THE PLAYER. Let them figure it out. At best, provide minimal help trough meeting actual resistance members. These details would be rad to see. Just a little inspiration.

I have no clue why people keep complaining about the mod. It´s seriously disappointing to see such bad blood in the community. I don´t recall anyone getting this upset over the lego mod or the vampire missions in OFP. DayZ is good for the game because people may consider taking up Arma proper. People come into the thing with preconceived notions about the players that pick up the mod (Cod Kiddies, etc), and the people who come into the game notice many of the old community sitting on their porch like a bunch of grumpy old men and complain about how "Durr, dey don´t appreciates our realisms" Stop trying to force your view of "how the game should be played" down everyones throat. Arma isn´t just about the milsim aspect, it´s also about the open, moddable engine. Everything is fair game. Any mod is great. DayZ is too. My two cents.

Just found this, really awesome looking. I will be very much keeping an eye on this.

Chances are I´ll be at gamescom this year. It´s about 50/50 chance. If I am there, and BI is in the public area, and if I can man up and get over my social anxiety, I´ll talk to them about the game and try to get some hands on too. That´d be rad. I´ll be there with my friend, who represents a small-time games site in germany, who used to feature battlefield only, but who are expanding. Maybe I can put up what I might learn here and there for everyone´s benefit. No promises yet though 8I

You know, no offense, and I think this could be a general request: can we cut back on the flamebaiting? Getting emotional is okay, but passive aggressive posts aren´t helping anybody :P Just putting this out there.

And this upsets you so much why exactly? The realism comes from the game mechanics, not from the tools simulated. As long as these vehicles use reasonable configurations, their type, origin and real world specs (which are top secret anyway in most cases) are pretty much irrelevant. What is relevant is that in the armaverse, they decided to dig up the black eagle design and turn it into a proper production run tank. Because it was such a mysterious prototype, not much is known about it, and because people know it and because it looks badass, it´s a reasonable choice for the game. As long as the ingame explanation doesn´t involve handwaves, magic or aliens, I don´t care. What I worry about is the core mechanics, gameplay, UI, AI, useabillity and access to mod tools questions. You´re bashing the artwork. That´s like bashing the paintjob of a car: it doesn´t adress any important issues at all, and as such, nobody benefits from it.

Hello! I am currently trying this, and learning how to use it. I have come across a problem with loading/unloading troops. When using the menu commands, the debug window always says 0/X squads loading. Only assigning a waypoint and using the waypoint load/unload/getout commands, I can load troops. Loading troops into vehicles not assigned to the squad is impossible completely. I am also running ASR AI. May there be a conflict? I am also unsure how to properly run this mod. I am using the init.sqs provided with your demo missions, is it possible I have some variables wrong in there? I am not keen on touching anything inside of that for fear of breaking something. Any help would be greatly appreciated. (I also searched the thread, and couldn´t come up with anything like this. I am sorry if there was something already and I missed it.) Cheers Insta

This is pretty rad. Do you know a game where you can manipulate -every- part of a gun individually as part of the gameplay mechanics? Slide release, slide lock, hammer, safety, mag release, do actions such as press checks, manual roundcounting, manual reloading both gun (likely the game is even able to do malfunctions such as manually set up doublefeeds thusly) and magazine? Here it is. It is a very interesting concept. A game that, like the DayZ mod, isn´t catered to mainstream appeal. Instead it just takes an Idea, and runs with it. It doesn´t even have savepoints or revives. I might get this, check it out. What´re your thoughts, community?

Is it just me or does Crowe sound really really exhausted there. Nice animation show, I especially like the little peek at what we can expect of the alpha.

There is a conflict of interest here. For example, if I would discover that the campaign sucked, I would get a refund. I do not play online, I don´t have the time or the drive to join a clan (which all seem to have really prohibitive rules, attendance schedules and things like that.), and neither competetive nor RPG online play would draw me. None of the online material supplied with the game does cross into my realm of interest, and unless some big magic happens, never will. I accept though that I am in the absolute minority here. Still, getting an empty game engine, with a handful of hollow, cobbled together demo missions waiting for the community to fill is not what I am in for. In the end, to me and the small amount of people that care about offline as much as online, or don´t care about online at all, the campaign and the basic SP content matter. I care about the Armaverse. Unfortunately, so far, it´s been a bit lackluster. I feel Arma 3 has the potential to really draw one in. It could challenge a -ton- of questions, cultural, social, economical and ethical, in a variety of ways. Online content is for fun, Offline content is for art: to make a statement, and tell a story. So, I hope A3 will not be a cod-ish pro-western propaganda fest. I hope it will realistically portray both sides, with each character having a backstory, a motive and an emotional curve troughout the campaign. I want to get the feel that I am dealing with people again. That the campaign is divided into three acts is basic storytelling 101. OFP was divided into three acts. (Training, Arrival on Malden, Invasion of Everon up to After Montignac (Act 1), Meeting the resistance, fleeing to Malden and joining up with the US, fighting trough Malden and Everon. (Act 2) and finally, invasion of Kolgujev and capture of Guba (Act 3).

Good player made missions are of course important. But, coming from a regular gaming background, and being in the game for the scope, tactics and combat and not strictly military accuracy, most of the hyper-realistic stuff offered didn´t really sway me. No stuff like abandoned armies or the fantastic horror/vampire hunting/dark magic cult type of missions. OFP was -excellent- for horror. Nobody picked up on that for Arma. In fact, none of the more outlandish aspects of the modding of OFP returned in any of the arma games, maybe outside of the two or three mecha addons and the macross valkyrie. Arma has come down to being about maximum realism, and not creative emergent gameplay, as far as the community goes. MIND, though, I have not paid attention to a lot of what´s been going on mission wise, the last I installed was the delta force campaign by the guy who did the seal team six camps (none of which I finished, yes, I suck that much.). Back then, everything was a little lackluster in terms of the stuff I was looking for. OFP was also good because it was -new-, it was -fresh-, and when it hit the market nobody shot anybody down because the stuff they wanted to do was turning the game into "CoD", or was "unrealistic", or was "Not good looking enough". I remember one modder who made a crude XM177 from the sample models when Arma 2 was released. Instead of praising his valiant first efforts, many immediately jumped him and told him how wrong his model was, and how the scope mount didn´t work and whatnot. That kind of response isn´t exactly encouraging. On the other hand, modders who practice enormous attention to detail when it comes to irl equipment they put into the game get praise almost exclusively. I would wish that this exclusivity would stop with Arma 3, and -any- mod will be welcomed again, or at least not shunned simply because some people are scared of mainstream games. My ramble on that point, for what it´s worth.

The CWC vibe is: A well written campaign. With memorable missions. (Doesn´t mean humongously complicated). And enough missions to give the campaign actually a feeling of length and depth. Arrowhead has about 10 missions too few. Ditto for Harvest Red. Everything moves too fast, there is no sense of progression, only jumping. Again. Well. written. campaign. Many. Missions. Memorable. Missions. No half-assed, kit-bashed, jury-rigged, barely working features. No undocumented or wrongly documented ingame features or mission components. For example, in the final mission of harvest red, you could get a journal entry for a mission that was removed during development. The entry was left in. It annoyed me so much I stopped playing the campaign then. Show that BI can deliver AAA titles, not just wah wah wah massive sandbox kits the community can repair. My two worthless cents on the topic :V Edit: Also, a fantastic soundtrack. Arma 2s soundtrack was just eh. The only track I remember is the chernarussian anthem. While the OFP theme still comes to me in my dreams, figuratively speaking. Music is -extremely- important. Also Voice Actors (!). The ones in CWC were, at the time, expensive and rather high-profile types. The ones in the arma series, sadly, have been performing poorly. Not to bash their valiant attempts, but everything was overacted (Especially in Arrowhead), awkward, and the voices didn´t fit the characters (black persons speaking with the voices of middle aged white men? Even as a central european, I found that grating.) Serious money will need to be invested to fix this. I hope BI has the spare change to adress this.

If combat turns out fair, you did it wrong. Balance is something for boardgames and competition, E-Sport type titles. This is a milsim. Combat is unfair. Deal with it. Or as they teach the people in the military: Assess, Adapt, Overcome.

Remove everything that cannot be feasibly implemented in a well working, non-kitbash or non-workaround manner. Less is more. Also make the campaign at least 20 hours + of playtime. 40 hours should be okay.

Well, they´re correct. I play flashpoint a couple of times every month, and it -does- suck. It even sucked back then. But it still has so many things that make it worth playing, I keep coming back. The resistance campaign -is- still one, if not THE best campaign of any Arma series game. The thing is the harshness of OFP, the challenge, the -difficulty- were important parts of why it stuck to my memory so intensely. It was a game that made you -work- to earn your spurs. And it didn´t tell you when you earned them, because you -knew-. You knew once you managed to play the convoy ambush mission in R without loosing a man. You knew once you blew up the Shilkas without firing a shot in CWC. Perks, Achievements, Balanced armories, none of that was necessary. DayZ goes the same route: you know you cocked up because you died (or almost died.). Similarily, you know you did well, because you have an immediate reward, even if it is just a positive experience! No major game today, outside of a few, rarely played exceptions, will actually reward you with a memorable experience. One that lasts longer than a day. Instead, they rely on cheats and trinkets.

Hopefully that won´t happen this time. The cynical me thinks it´ll be something like this, though. But if recent releases are anything to go by, Arma 3 will be stable and playable when its out.

I just noticed something, this may have been a fluke, or it may have been improved CQB AI. <- at 5:42, Ivan reloads and the AI, previously having moved towards the gate in the wall for cover notices this, and immediately -reverses direction- to keep his gun on him, and kills him.Not something usual, to be owned like this by AI in an Arma game, at such a short distance too no less. I hope this is an actual indication of AI improvements, rather than an accident.

I´m trying to remember what I did when I first got OFP. I´ll probably do the same... Oh I know! Play the campaign. Hopefully not be disappointed, and play until the game makes me stop. Or my body.

It now works properly, thanks a lot.

Thanks for the quick reply. As for the RHQ array, I have no clue how to do that. I have currently put one of the configs into the init line of the commander, because I derived from the manual that this works too? I am only using OA stock units, which are part of the aforementioned config. The only AI addon I am using is the most recent ASR AI package. Other mods that mess with the engine itself are Blastcore and JSRS, but I don´t know if those affect anything in regards to the AI. Should I try to run the game completely vanilla, only using Hetman + ASR to see if that changes anything? For the speed thing, that is okay, I´ll just have to cope with it.

I have a question: I have constructed a mission where the opposing force doesn´t use a high commander, but instead uses triggers and waypoints to simulate a completely uncoordinated enemy without radio support. Does the High Command AI of Hetman still recognize enemy forces despite no enemy commander being present? Because in the testmission I made, they always seem to swarm the objectives, and not do anything against enemies coming from unexpected directions. Only ran one test so far, so I may be wrong. I already love this addon: it´s a fantastic thing. I´ve always dreamed of having a dynamic force commander AI where I could be subordinate. Thanks a lot for this :) Edit: I may have overlooked this somewhere in this thread, but is it also possible to make your commander issue move orders with any other speed than "low"?