Hanzu

If I would start to try to keep as high moral as in real life, I would not play games like this at all. So when playing this game I play as it is required to get the best possible victory, if that requires low moral stuff, the blame is on the mission designer to not to punish for such behaviour instead of rewarding it. No me' date=' but my character decided to kill Prizrak to achieve Flawless Victory status and War That Never Was ending. ;) It is not possible to form alliance in Dogs Of War if it is not formed in the beginning due to Badlands Prizrak elimination. Even if you have alliance, there is a bug that, at least in multiplayer side, will break the alliance like it did for me the first time I loaded savegame "The alliance between Guerrillas and BLUEFOR has ended". Same message repeated every time after that I loaded any savegame during the mission. Guerrillas here means NAPA and BLUEFOR is CDF and USMC since I started at CDF HQ. And I this already happened before CDF and NAPA were even close to each other and there was lots of Chedaki territory between. So there was absolutely no chance that it would be because AI started to kill each other. So there is absolutely no guarantee that alliance will last. In the end I got tired about NAPA re-capturing towns from CDF so I just went and destroyed NAPA HQ. Still I got Flawless Victory status and War That Never Was ending, making it look like CDF and NAPA were friends till the end. My best advice is to play on CDF side which has better equipment and not on NAPA. Most of people choose NAPA because they think it is easier to go to their lines in Bitter Chill. If you want to start Dogs Of War in CDF HQ, it is best to conquer towns in Badlands in east to west order or maybe even a requirement to start on CDF side in Dogs Of War. And what comes to russians you are only required to fight few rebellious Speznaz soldiers in Skalisky and in Lopotev give away location. The real Russian army in north will not attack you if you will not go too near it.

Exactly what I think about those missions. It truely was painful experience with all the crashed, bugs and messed up savegames. I'm not going back there as long as there is any official mission that I have not yet completed. :) You can always add feature request in CIT and see if it gets votes and added some day. That helicopter is sligtly different version called Mi-17 (Civilian). You can buy Mi-17 and Mi-23. I bought four of those Mi-23 simultaneously and they appeared there to fill the surroundings, so if there is a limit it is not based on unit type but on their total number. Thanks. Might read it fully some day. I wish they would use real exact model names and not terms like "main battle tank". Based on what I already know on real Warfare2 gamemode I would call Badlands and Dogs Of War to be Warfare2 (Lite), since they do not have all same features than real Warfare2 missions.

I have never seen that "Can't reinforce. Gro" message, but now that KiloVenom with 1.08 and you (OMAC) with 1.57 both have had it. My best quess is that that message appears when you have maximum friendly units in the map (assuming there is such a limit). After one or more units gets destroyed, you are again under the limit beeing able to buy units. This would explain why I have not seen that message, since I only buy few units to minimize possibility of old and new bugs appearing. Why choosing that kind of words for that message makes no sense to me, but the place where that message appears has unfinished design and there is no room for full lenght message text which could be something like this: "Can't reinforce. Ground units maximum limit exceeded."... again just a guess. Why I assume there would be such a limit in this game? There is this old strategy game from year 1999 called Total Annihilation where you construct units to do warfare and it had a limit of 500 units, because game engine and multiplayer protocol could not just handle more than that. With 3rd party modifications players removed that limit and the result was players build too many units and the game slowed down to a slideshow and the whole game ran with unplayable slow speed. If somebody knows for sure there are no such limits in Arma2 Bandlands and Dogs Of War missions, just tell and I have to assume another theory. It would be so much easier if the official mission developers would have time to read these messages immediately telling us right answers, but that only happens rarely and so we have to bare with assumptions from people like me. ;) As far as I know all new units that are bought, will join your team and there is no way making them available in high command. I've seen this beeing asked several times, but so far no-one has proven me to be wrong about it beeing impossible. However there are some new key combination functions added in beta patches that might be helpful: [78153] New: Ctrl+F1..Ctrl+F5 assigns unit to team red/green/blue/yellow/white. [78150] Changed: Shift-F1..Shift-F5 select corresponding color team (red/green/blue/yellow/white) I have never used fast travel and I'm not sure if it is even available in multiplayer where I play campaigns, but without fast travel those bought units will do their best to follow you everywhere. I have seen infantry men running kilometers to stay with me and my vehicles and reaching them when vehicles have been stopped long enough. But maybe only units that are inside your vehicle will fast travel with you. If you do some tests for this, please let me know also how they behave, with high possibility they are just left behind to another the place where you started fast travel or at least the units that follow you must be able to advance with same maximum speed you have.

I wrote so long answer that I was automatically logged off during writing and when I finished I was thrown to forum login screen and even though I tried to go back after that, I lost everything I wrote. So I just re-write 5% of that stuff now and maybe edit and fill up more if I still have motivation. Yes it is cheating and I never use it myself since I only play campaign on MP side where using suspend save function replaces the need for multiple saves. BTW in start of this thread you were on A2 1.08 and now you say you are CO 1.57, so if you copied capaign.sqc and you do not consider that cheating as well? ;) 1) you only have a lame, unarmored uaz jeep I had T-72, Shilka and BRDM-2 when playing on CDF side. So you must have played on NAPA side since they have those UAZ. 2) you cannot enter friendly APCs as they are already staffed Yes you can atleast USMC ones. I did that. Go to their rear, choose Ride In The back, switch to Commander seat order origial crew out and Razor Team in. Swim to Skalsky with that thing and use it for clearing island. 3) Metis guided anti tank launcher not available to buy CDF and NAPA use russian gear and Metis is US gear. 4) None of your units has anti-tank capability T-72 is pretty antitank to me. Infantry RPG men can be bought too. 5) you have one APC with cannon (you can't get in it), but it gets decimated every time by enemy apc with same cannon. All other friendly apcs have lame machine gun only. Not sure what APC models you mean here, but remember every APC has usually 2 types of ammo available. 6) no air support available before Chernogorsk is captured - I haven't built airplane factory yet, whatever that does In CDF side that aircraft plant was there in the start. AI commander does not use it, but I bought some Mi-17 helicopters from there. 7) no artillery support CDF and NAPA don't have such big things and USMC didn't want to bring it to Chernarus, since they are already looking foward on homecoming. ;) 8) un-guided rocket launcher available for purchase will not destroy enemy apcs, it just makes a bang and scratches it a little, and is quite hard to aim - haven't tried RPG yet, but I'll bet it's just as lame Shoot their rear where armor is less thick. 9) only apparent way to kill armor is to construct defense at captured stronghold, buy howitzer, and hope that you can get to it in time before you are ripped in half by enemy apc with 20mm rapid fire cannon or big guns of other armor. However, this violates the HOLY LAW of never to attack the subsidiary outposts of stronghold, but only the main stronghold base itself. If an outpost is isolated, capturing it is ok, but if another outpost can see the one you're attacking, they can rain hell down you, and they are completely unseen and too far away to attack. I agree that sucked. 10) after Chernagorsk, MEU choppers appear, but seem to either run into the sides of mountains or are otherwise shot down by unseen forces, or by anti-air armor along coast. Nearly useless so far. I agree. Those 3 helicoters crashed into each other, to a high mountain northeast or were easily shot down. Finally I ordered them to the sea betwneen Chernarus and Skalisky island. They were shot down there too or just ran out of fuel and fell down. Never saw them defend themselves. Very lame. Terrible bugs: 1) constant autosaves seem good (I'm playing on veteran with only one manual save), but often catch you either in construction (causing bug this thread is about, making you restart entire mission), or when you are in the middle of a firefight, making resuming nearly impossible if you are at all pinned down. Man, I wish I was playing on regular, then I'd save every 15 seconds. Never happened to me, but I didn't spend much time in constuction menu since I hated those functions. 2) sometimes enemy doesn't appear, and I got through Chernagorsk once with only seeing two enemy men and no armor up until that point. Same here. I think there were 2 enemy infantry in north part outpost and nothing else. 3) When I'm driving a car carrying my squad, and I get injured, my squad will not heal me even though they are sitting right next to me, and I die. One reason why I play campaigns cooperatively with humans. AI teammate is still just stupid like a robot in special situations. I'll post more bugs and reasons why I think it is stacked against you if I find any. The lethality of this damn enemy apc is just phenomenal. Even through foliage it can target me from hundreds of meters away. Even if just the top of my head is sticking up above a wall. The way it moves quickly to flank me. I can't peek out to fire at it for even a second with my lame unguided rocket: I'm dead. Better chances with 1.57.78183 because of this: [78113] Fixed: AI no longer sees through fog better than player. (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/12178) Fixed: weather changes done in the vehicle init line considered when checking AI visibility on the mission start. Improved: Init scripts time limit increased from 3 ms to 100 ms. Optimized: setViewDistance is no longer slow when used to reduce view distance.

Go to Windows and first copy your these folders to somewhere and keep them as a backup just in case something goes wrong: Windows 7 and Vista C:\Users\YourWindowsUserAccount\Documents\ArmA 2 C:\Users\YourWindowsUserAccount\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserAccount\My Documents\Arma 2 C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserAccount\My Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles If you have already used your one and only manual save for this mission and it it not too close too far away from the situation where that autosave bug happened to you, you can locate and delete autosave file in Windows and then launch game to continue mission and it should load your one and only manual save instead of that autosave. If there is no solution for you and you need to restart the mission, remember even in Veteran and Expert difficulty you can save more than once if you just delete your only manual save file after you have newer autosave, then manual save is not greyed out anymore and you can use it again. You can also move those manual saves somewhere as a backup to guarantee you do not need to go all the way to the start ever again. Since you have Arma2 only install and I have Arma 2 Combined Operations install I cannot tell what are the exact folder and filenames names for you but you will find them by looking filedates. I assume your filenames could be something like this autosave.ArmA2Save + autosave.roles.ArmA2Save(contains your newest Automatic save) save.ArmA2Save + save.roles.ArmA2Save (contains your newest manual save) continue.ArmA2Save + continue.roles.ArmA2Save (contains your newest Suspend save) And I assume they are located here Saved\ca\missions\campaign Just experiment by deleting those two files one by one. If results are not what you want. Move files back there from your backup. Whatever you do - do not delete file called campaign.sqc since it contains on what mission you are now and what missions are unlocked before that. --- For those who play on Combined Operations or Operation Arrowhead all those save filenames end with ".ArmA2OASave" For those who play campaign on multiplayer all those save filenames start with "mp". Like this: mpautosave.ArmA2OASave mpsave.ArmA2OASave mpcontinue.ArmA2OASave Not sure if SP and MP savegames are located in same folder or in separate folders since I play only on MP side and currently have no time for SP campaign playing. --- If savegame tricks are not helping you, it might be possible to complete Dogs Of War without endmission cheat even though you are hovering there, but only if you have already delivered Lopotev to Russians. In that case you would need to command players 2, 3 and 4 and all available allied troops to attack enemy HQ and destroy it. Dogs Of War should end if Loptev is delivered an enemy HQ is destroyed no matter how many enemies are left alive or towns uncaptured. --- If this is not helping either, take a silent moment and remember why I always recommended here getting Operation Arrowhead, installing it to Arma2 folder and playing game in Combined Operations with patch 1.57 or newer to have less chance running into gamestopper bugs. ;) ---------- Post added at 02:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:01 AM ---------- missions_e folder contains Operation Arrowhead campaign stuff and missions folder contains Harvest Red campaign stuff, so search in there instead it probably is not .ArmA2OASave but .ArmA2Save Again please correct me if I'm wrong. :)

Yes I forgot that important point - was just too obvious to my gamestyle where I want to collect everything and complete every secondary objective there is. :) Remember evidence collecting starts already in the first action mission of the campaign called Into the Storm. After that missions that have evidence sources are Razor Two, Manhattan, Bitter Chill and Badlands. So to get enough evidence you need to restart at least from the start of Badlands (and eliminate Prizrak too) or to make sure to get them all you need to restart all the way from Into the Storm. Also note that not all of the evidence are required for best ending. I missed 2 of the evidence in Razor Two (Bardak and Map) mission but I got everything else and still had the best known ending called War That Never Was. Correct me if you are sure I am wrong but evidence and the choices you make in the game are one good reason to not to use endmission cheats. Using endmission does not mean that you will automatically have all objectives completed and all evidence in that mission collected - not at all. It will just end mission with the current situation and it does not care if you will run into problems after that by taking a shortcut in the game. So if this is true ironically endmission cheat which was added as a workaround for gamestopper bugs and/or tired players, could create even more anomalities in the game after it is used.

I do not recommend endmission cheat. There are better things to handle this. If you really have both Arma 2 and OA standalones, why not install them together to same folder to create Arma 2 Combined Operationans install where you can play Arma 2 content like Harvest Red campaign Dogs of War mission by launching the game from Arma 2 Combined Operations shortcut (ofcourse you may need to restart since your savegame history is not compatible with that, but you might be able to copy your campaig progress (unlocked missions) by copying campaign.sqc file located in your subfolders at My Documents (XP) or in Users (Vista/7) folder. I'm pretty sure 1.08 has still more bugs that affect whole Harvest Red campaign. So playing Dogs Of War with patch 1.57 (or with 1.58 that looks like to be released soon) is highly recommended by me. I just completed Dogs Of War with 1.57.77819 beta patch and did not run into any gamestopping bugs. The first thing I did in that mission was to build 2 tanks and drive to Chernogorsk. After "Capture Chernogorsk" they soon told in radio about Skalisky island where Loptev is. If CDF and NAPA are not allied in your game or even if they are, make sure the other faction will not capture Chernogorsk before your faction or it might not to trigger for you even though you re-capture it from them. But if it is never triggered you will get same information by completing objective "Transfer important POW" that is given to you when you capture town in the middle of the map (Vyshnoye if I remember correctly). I did them both so radiomessage told me same information twice about Skalisky island and Lopotev. I used one manual save and a lot of suspend saves saves and not only Automatic saves and it didn't mess the scripts. If you want to be sure you can add -showscripterrors to your game shortcuts Target line, I use it all the time. Savegame fuction works better with 1.57 than 1.08. I noticed some significant improvement in using savegames somewhere after 1.54.

Yes you are right it is UAV in real life, but now we are talking about a game where it is named ULB for purpose to tell player that it is very different in behaviour than UAV which is also used in this game. The main difference between UAV and ULB is that in official missions UAV is always a plane, so it cannot hover at all and must move all the time to stay in air, so because of this it often wanders to enemy territory and is shot down. I must apologize for correcting a thing that may seem irrelevant, so consider me stopping now and beeing done for this thread.

If it is mission Open Season like thread title says. The correct term is ULB and yes it is remote controlled helicopter like you said. I just played that mission yesterday and when you as a helicopter pilot scroll mouse wheel for action menu name ULB shows up.

Ignore me

Ok good to know. When I got to the extraction I was not asked anything mission was just completed, but this was because I used Satchel to destroy same target. Actully I left laser to helicopter in the start and noticed that was a good thing, since Satchel gives better feedback from HQ and laser is not with you in following missions anyway even if you take it to this mission.

If it makes a difference it is ULB not UAV in this mission. Atleast since UAV is more like a plane and ULB more like helicopter. I would assume ULB is better on hovering and does not need all that circling to stay in air. I can only think of 2 possible reasons: 1) Maybe ULB is damaged (is that even possible) 2) Try changing ULB altitude radically

I decided to not to Direct the Airstike and used Satchel that target instead. Radiomessage said later it was good idea since the airstrike would have caused lot more damage and would make civilians to hate Razor Team or something like that. There are lot of objectives and tasks in this one and one you did not mention was extract "Go to the exfiltration point" which is the last one you need to do to end the mission. The place is located far away in the forest behind and near the electricity lines, if you cannot find it I may have a screenshot of the place somewhere. This is what you shoud see in the end Into the Storm Debriefing Objectives (part 1) Into the Storm Debriefing Objectives (part 2)

Yes I really need that Debriefing. :) 1)To verify that the mission is still fully working all the way to the end with current patch version (which will be indicated in screenshot link name). 2)To be really sure if mission was completed to victory or failure (if missions end like this, how can we tell) 3)To see all given tasks/objectives were completed. 4)To see total time of the mission. 5)To put screenshots of Debriefing screen online as a memory of fun session and proof of completion. 6)To help other people by showing them what objectives/tasks should/could be completed. 7)To serve as an indication to players who are AFK when mission ends. Otherwise they will ask "did we complete it or not?", if there is no Debfriefing screen when they return to their computer. I have never been satisfied by the way they have made the Debriefing screen anyway, because it will only show statistics for one player and not for all of them. Many other games like Rainbow Six series, original Ghost Recon series, IL-2 Sturmovik series, Hidden & Dangerous series, SWAT4 series they all have some kind of Debriefing screen which will show statistics for all players and not just for you. So if I can barely accept Debriefing beeing so poor, I cannot accept it showing up at all. :( I have so much ideas what Debriefing screen should show like the used difficulty level, but I'm afraid it is too late to have any improvements to it from the developers. I doubt it is scripting conflict since I have -showscripterrors on and it shows nothing in those situations.

Born in 1972.

Thank you everyone so far. I DePBOed and checked below mission folders for description.ext file and none of them contained scriptparameters debriefing = 0; or debriefing = 1; All of those folders also contained briefing.html file (which is weird because it is 1KB and containing just 1-4 vertical HTML bars) MPE1_HikeInTheHills.Takistan MPE1_LaserShow.Takistan MPE1_OneShotOneKill.Takistan MPE_SteelPanthers.Takistan mp_heat.takistan mp_morningdew.takistan mp_scudbusters.desert_e mp_tankbusters.zargabad mp_wildcatsupport.takistan The only mission where I found description.ext containing debriefing = 0; was MPE_SectorControl.Zargabad which says it is gameType = SCont; what ever that is, but not COOP mission I'm talking here, but atleast a proof that I was trying to find that parameter inside the right files. So as a conclusion something else must be causing Debriefing screens not to work even though those COOP missions are properly completed. Any ideas why Debriefing for those missions comes randomly or not at all?

Thanks I will try to open them with this http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/BI_Tools_2 and search for that command.

Opening PBO files is not part of my expertice. I tried to forum search for information how to do it. What tools to use for example or are functions for already in Arma2. Any chance of saving my time for excess browsing and directing me to a tutorial or a thread how to do that?

Judging from his reaction, he still noticed it. If it is done right, then enemy should never appear to a place you have already cleared (unless it is a Vietname war where they come from underground hatches). I hate spawning too, but games where AI enemies will not spawn after game start are really few, but I can mention some like Rainbow Six from Rainbow Six 3 Athena Sword, in that game there were always maximum of 40 enemies and when game started they were there and no more were added. As VanhA-ICON said respawn is commonly used to save mission resources. It depends on the game and I don't know how Arma2 handles it, but in some old games 5 AI enemies consumed as much bandwith as one human player, because you had to send data about their movement and behaviour or even places where their dead body is. This is why many games use spawning. Often more AI enemies also consume more hardware power. If you go for full realism. There should be no respawn and instead less enemies that are so well positioned, armed, armored and scripted that no more enemies need to spawn. In original GR firefight missions enemy did not spawn but in GR mods like Harntrox, I just hated when enemies spawned next to me or to area where what was considered cleared. As original GR fan and as someone who has cooped through all GR Island Thunder missions with no-respawn and hardest difficulty settings, I'm eager to test this mod some day when I've had it with official missions.

Thank you Jezuro! I'm so happy that after CIT-reporting 11 bugs, atleast one gets confirmation about beeing fixed. Also thanks for Paul-Hewson for originally posting about this. :bounce3:

When playing Operation Arrowhead campaign missions cooperatively you have about 50% chance that game will not end when one of the main characters dies. You will just respawn, respawn and respawn no matter how hard you try to die to end the mission. Even if you CTRL+ALT+DEL and End Task Arma2 from TaskManager the game will do some kind of emergency save by creating or overwriting your continuesave. Please solve this by: 1) Adding option to disable respawn function in any situation or 2) Adding option to disable emergency savegame function. (so that game would not do continuesave when you want Alt+F4 or CTRL+ALT+DEL+End Task. or 3) Add function that will abort mission without making any saves but still keeping the latest savegames you have. Ok, now somebody asks why I don't just press ESC->Revert and load savegame where everything was still ok. I say because we use ESC->Suspend continue saves to workaround Expert difficulty savelimits and continue saves are not visible on Revert savegamelist (only manual and automatic saves are there). (Sorry if you didn't understand anything what I wrote here, better get some rest now and try to explain better later).

I hated Badlands and Dogs Of War so much because of Warfare-gamemode implementation, that I'm not going there any time soon to test this properly, but I can tell there are still so many bugs in those functions that I don't have the time or energy to report them all to CIT (at least not in the current situation where 10 bugs I have reported are still not fixed) OMAC, please excuse me but I don't see why you need to re-ammo that Holo-weapon, since most of the shooting in that mission is better done with vehicle weaponry. But if you really have used all Holo-ammo, then I would put that weapon to Gear storage of some vehicle and then go and experiment with Buy Weapons. Here are some weapon related bugs I ran into in Badlands: If you enter Buy Weapons menu and decide to cancel and buy nothing, then your original weapons will just disappear. Its a bug for sure. If Sykes takes position in BRDM-2 and you save game his original sniper rifle will disappear and will be replaced with AK-47. This bug happened to us twice in multiplayer so it could be multiplayer only bug. I would say savegame data it missing slots for some weapons or some vehicle sitting positions and this is why it defaults to AK-47. I'm pretty sure there are no such instructions anywhere (but feel free to surprise me if they exist). I have read both Arma2 manuals from cover to cover and I noticed there are so many thing missing. The biggest mistake they made was to write like 20 pages about modding the game. Modding is something that is changing contantly and that information is mostly old already and not all players want to mod. I am one of those people who read gamemanuals always from cover to cover and believe me I have read many during my lifetime and I have to say Arma2 manuals are not best manuals at all and when manuals are one of those things why we buy this stuff, I have to say: BIS, we demand better manuals next time! :mad:

Thanks for reporting. I made a CIT ticket for this issue with Subject: "Into the Storm & Ambhibious Assault all in Razor Team have M9 SD with M9 Magazines, so they cannot use pistols at all" Go and vote to get better chance to get it fixed: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/17620

Any chance of making it possible to get automatic email by some sort of email list when new beta patch or full patch is released. Looks like beta patches and this subforum are pretty popular and there must be a lot of people who spend some time checking beta-patch directory or this forum for if there is a new beta out. So why not save us users from the trouble of checking. The developers would also get faster feedback from beta testers without hours or days of delays before users notice that there is a new beta. Anyone else checking daily or sometimes multiple times per day if there is new beta? By stopping that might save also some bandwith from the server this forum is running on. Anyone see any disadvantages on having email function for that? (Beta downloads slowing down, because of everyone downloading simultaneously or something like that).

I agree, but also add tanks and other vehicles with all that huge torgue and indesigned offroad capabilities should not slow down that much when driving up hill or moving from road to offroad. you can see modern tank driving practically full speed in all kinds of terrain (if you don't want to watch the whole video, watch the at least from 1min30s to 2mins).Correct me if I am wrong but I have heard this unrealistic armor driving performance has been in the series since Operation Flashpoint. If so it is about time to tweak and tune those vehicle engines to be more realistic in performance.