160thSOAR

I was in a helicopter the other day, and the pilot had found some way to stream music through the vehicle comms channel. Is there some way to do this that's easy to turn on and off? It would certainly make chopper rides a lot less boring for the passengers. I was thinking about looping a song through Windows Media Player, but the important thing is to be able to turn it on and off fast so I can hear the in game comms. TS3 will automatically lower the volume from other programs when someone is talking so that's not an issue. It's the in game stuff I'm worried about. And I don't know how to stream music through the comms channel anyways.

I tend to play Domination, and when the elements attacking the AO start to get spread out and lose cohesion (too often), you have to make sure you know what you're shooting at. First off, get a magnified optic if it's possible. I like the ACOG scope personally. If you don't want a magnified scope, use binoculars. It's probably an enemy unit if.... 1. It's carrying an AK variant. Except for the AK's carried by the Russian military, all enemy units carrying AK's have wood on their guns. If it's carrying an AK variant, it's probably enemy. Remember to check with friendlies and make sure none of them are carrying AK's. The FN FAL is also a common Takistani weapon, so people carrying it tend to be OPFOR. 2. Takistani units tend to wear long robes or solid green BDU's. Friendly units tend to wear variable pattern camoflauge. 3. If it's wearing a shemagh, it's almost certainly enemy. There are a very few friendly units that wear shemaghs, but it is *rarely* a problem. 4. USE THE MAP! If there's no friendly unit on the map where your gun is pointing, shoot.

I'm assuming you're new to ArmA 2? I've never actually played Reinforcements myself, so I don't really know the situation, but the way to get in and out of vehicles in ArmA 2 is to use the scroll wheel menu. Scroll up or down on the scroll wheel and a sidebar menu should appear. One of the options while in a vehicle is always "EJECT". Normally, you do not want to press this button. More often than not, you end up giving the ground below you some nice red paint. When the helicopter (or any other vehicle) is completely safe to leave, the "GET OUT" option will appear. If you can see this option, you can press either "EJECT" or "GET OUT" and you will still be fine either way. One note. If you are driving the vehicle, pressing "GET OUT" will turn off the engine. Pressing "EJECT" will leave the engine on. ArmA 2 does have a steep learning curve. Before you do anything, I suggest you do the Single Player Bootcamp missions. For flying choppers, I think that remapping the keys Battlefield-style makes things *much* easier. Some MP tips. Don't go into MP without knowing the basics. Don't fly aerial vehicles without knowing what to do with them, because people will get mad at you if you crash the AH-64 into a mountainside. Crashes are inevitable, but we want to make the number of them as few as possible. People in Multiplayer are usually happy to help you out if you have a question about the game though, so feel free to ask around. This game has a great community to learn from. :)

Whenever I land on a repair pad in a chopper, or drive over one in any other vehicle, for some reason I lose all of my fuel. Why's this? The type of repair pads I'm talking about are the ones in the TAW and 7th Cavalry Domination servers.

Using the wii controller to play ArmA 2? You're not serious? You'd need like a TV screen or something I guess. And the regular Wii controller doesn't feel at all like a gun. You'd need like the Wii crossbow or something. But whatevs. I don't own anything Wii-related. The Wii is "Wii-tarded" in my opinion. I'm also an airsofter myself. I'm rather casual about it, and I normally just play with the people around my neighborhood. (We do observe the rules. The neighbors don't have to worry about people with "guns" hopping over their backyard fence or anything like that. We've gotten permission from quite a few people to play on their land so long as we don't shoot the house, and since there aren't any fences, we have about 8-9 acres to play on.) The nearest Airsoft field is hours from my house. I go there about once every 2 months or so for a half day on weekends. Long drive, but it's worth it.

I prefer the 7th Cav server as there tend to be more experienced pilots in the choppers and there are almost always clan members around to kick team killers and the like. The TAW servers can be a real mess sometimes when admins aren't around.

Please refrain from posting things like the two above. This is a thread for me trying to improve my skills. One thing I've always had trouble with and still am terrible at is finding enemies with iron-sighted and low-magnification weapons. I do fine with higher-power optics like ACOGs, but with reflex, holo, and iron sights I'm virtually useless. Any advice on finding targets with these sorts of optics? I also lag in multiplayer, well I don't lag clientside, but other people tend to move jumpily. Do most people have this problem? I have a DSL internet connection. I'm no computer whiz; is DSL any good? Finally, what's a good way to know if it's the proper time to leave a helicopter? As a rule, I always say "everybody out" when I land the chopper successfully, but I have yet to encounter any other pilot that does this. A helicopter hovering slightly above the ground and a helicopter actually on the ground can be difficult to tell apart when you're inside.

Well, I've returned from the dead. A huge video I had to make for school forced me to delete ArmA 2 and school has only just ended. So I can finally delete the huge video and start playing ArmA 2 again. I may be starting from scratch here... we'll see. All of my FPS gaming has been limited to Battlefield Heroes. I couldn't fit anything else onto my computer anyways. And BFH is rather fun.

If you are running 1.59, you might not be seeing too much because a whole lot of servers still have 1.57. At the moment I've got 1.57. There are plenty of public servers around even at 3:35 in the morning if you know where to look. I would suggest filtering for TAW and 7thCav. They're Domination servers, and the 7th Cavalry server requires you to join their TS3 channel if you want to fly helicopters for Air Traffic Control purposes. The ArmA2 server browser doesn't always work all that great for me, so I just go to servers that I know are usually well populated. Public servers do have problems with Team Killing and other such things. Without an Admin in the server, childish people who ram helicopters with MTVR's and things like that can ruin a whole lot of gamers' experiences. Also, coordination can be a problem. The 7th Cavalry server tends to have a reasonable level of coordination and there is usually a clan member who has Admin powers around to kick the TK'ers. A final work of advice. Do not fly helicopters until you've learned how. Compared to Battlefield, which is my background, the helicopters are considerably more difficult to fly. I remapped the keys to a Battlefield type of style instead of ArmA2's controls and practiced quite a bit in SP before moving into Multiplayer. I still made a couple of embarrassing crashes. Practicing with choppers in a populated server will make you no friends, so make sure you have an idea of what to do before you hop in one. How did you get 1.59 though? Steam hasn't updated automatically for me.

Nope. I've been making sure to make sure nothing's running that could interfere with it. I think I'll just do a re-install and see what happens. What's your Steam ID? UPDATE: ACE2 has been installed successfully. Windows 7 has this handy "repair" button in the Uninstall menu, so I didn't even lose the files I'd already downloaded. :D ACE2 is awesome, I love the weapons. I don't see why so many people think it's more difficult to fly helicopters though, they seem to handle about the same.

Okay. I'm having troubles with Addon Sync. It's downloaded quite a few of the files, but there were some it didn't download the first go-around. I figured this could be fixed if I just tried again because Addon Sync recognizes which files you have already downloaded. Unfortunately, it now freezes every few files it's downloaded. I have to log out and log back in Windows 7 to get it to work again, and it will download a few more files before working again. I am running it as Admin. Any idea what's happening? I used an L85 ACOG with a fair amount of success today. I still can't see much without higher-power optics. I also wish there weren't friendly units that wore shemaghs.... I've shot 2 friendles by mistake because of that.

A very nice person on TS3 helped me and I know what to do now. He had to tell me three times before I finally understood. I'm really thick about computers.... Good thing is I know what to do now. I flew a Blackhawk around a bit and did a few gun runs with an AH6 today. For some reason, the AH6 stopped working and lost everything but hull integrity when it started to rain. I crashed into the ground before I could figure out what was happening. :( I'm lucky no one else was in there. I managed my first insertion of a fully loaded Blackhawk. It was cool. :D I don't like to use the Hawk much though. It's too big for my terrain-following tactics and doesn't leave much room for error. I like the Lynx, Ka-60, and Little Bird variants more. Is there an add friend option in game? I haven't bothered to look, actually, and I can't launch ArmA2 on the crappy computer I'm typing this from.

I have some good news, in that I am accepted to the 97thRR. I also have some bad news. I suck with computers. I suck with them. Luckily, I don't have to mess around with the add-on coding. I have something called Addon Sync. The bad thing is that I have trouble with anything that there's no easy "download and install" button for. Messing with 7Zip and all that.... :( Chopper flying has taken a downturn. Being sick with a stomachache, I stopped paying attention to what I was doing a few times while I was nap-of-the-earth flying. This resulted in two unfortunate encounters with telephone poles. I also got shot down by a friendly Apache's Hellfire strike. He must have accidentally locked me or something. I'll go download ACE now, and mess around with it on TS3 Saturday. Thanks again for all the help! If you want to find me on ArmA 2, I am usually on one of the TAW servers if they are at all full. If not, I'm on one of the more crowded servers. I am never on Zargabad Life. EDIT: It's time to play the "Computer Idiot Music"! I have 7Zip downloaded, but Windows says I still need WinZip, BitZipper, or some other thing to download it because the files need to be expanded. Unfortunately, these all have to be paid for. Should I be hitting the "Save" option instead of the "Find" option on the dialogue box? Sorry I'm such a fool.

I wouldn't like rolling wheels on helicopters. It's too much hassle for what you get. For one thing, you would have problems landing on a sloped surface, and it would make the type of high-speed approaches that I like to do much more difficult. Also, it would make crash-landing without a tail rotor even more of a mess than it already is. I don't want to think about my helicopter still doing a death spiral around the airstrip even after I've landed it. Too little bang for your buck, in my opinion.

Well the Lynx's fixed cannon is great for fly-bys of soft targets. The laser missiles are rather hard to use though in my opinion. Still I love the Lynx, it's great for clearing out a hot LZ. Much better than the Ka-60's pathetic 12 FFARs. I was playing Coop, so the Tunguska's weren't player-controlled. They didn't use any sort of fancy tactics, and they've only ever shot like 2 missiles at me. They rely almost exclusively on cannon. But knowing how a Tunguska player thinks and how to use flares is quite good! I fly almost exclusively in third-person, and I never use any sort of zoom function unless I do a pop-up attack. But since I only used the laser-guided missiles in conjunction with my FAC, there wasn't any need to zoom in. Is there a way to communicate with an FAC without cluttering up the VON for the entire BLUFOR? I was wondering if my insertion/extraction approach to a hot LZ is any good. Generally, I try to insert the troop just beyond the rise of a hill that's close to the objective so the Tunguskas can't see me and the troops have time to get out. More often than not, though, I don't consider the LZ situation that closely, especially when green tracers are flying all over the place, and just try to get the chopper down on the nearest piece of available ground that has some tree cover from the Tungs. Getting out from insertions is something I'd like to think I'm rather good at. I operate on the "speed is life" principle, and when flying out of an LZ try to fly less than 20 meters off the ground and with my nose tilted almost vertically. I can't keep it up for very long as I'll inevitably crash into the ground, but it normally gets me out of the OPFORs range in a few seconds, no matter which direction I fly in. I play ArmA 2 in the early hours of the morning usually. Around 3:40 AM to 7:00 AM. If you're up at 2:00, maybe I could find you in-game? Unless you're running ACE. That reminds me, how do I install ACE (I'm applying for the 97th RR, and I will probably need ACE and something called ACRE), and is it possible to turn ACE on and off without uninstalling it? Thanks, you're very helpful! :)

I know what you mean by the accidental teamkill, when you mess up in FFID and accidentally shoot a friendly. Accidental teamkills are, well, accidental, and they don't bother me. This guy, however, was purposefully killing teammates. He ran around the base killing a ton of people for fun. It ruined the game for all of us. On the other hand, I had a very fun experience flying a Lynx around in OA on the TAC server. It does seem that my flying work has payed off, because I managed successful insertions/extractions from hot LZ's, although I accidentally overflew an unseen Tunguska as I was getting out of the third insertion. It shot off my tail rotor, messed up my sensor package, and caused very bad fuel leaks. I managed to fly all the way back to the base though and still land it without killing myself or anyone nearby. It was really hard to do. After that success story :), I have a few problems. For one thing, what is the best attack to use against an enemy Tunguska in Takistan? I thought that pop-up wasn't really an option because there weren't really any trees around, and when I tried a break-off attack, I managed to destroy an enemy vehicle but had to go back to base thanks to fuel leakage problems. Fly-bys were a total failure. I tried it on two AA vehicles, my engine got shot out and I slammed into the cold, hard ground. :P Does the Lynx have a laser designation function? Its missiles are laser-guided, and I think its armament menu thing said something about a laser. I wasn't sure how to use it though so I just tried to cooperate with a guy on the ground who had a designator. It would have been easier if I had my own designator though.

I'm pretty sure I have one of those lying around the house, and if need be I can always disconnect the one on the mainframe and plug it into the laptop that I play on. I had my first encounter with a teamkiller yesterday, and that wasn't fun. But I got to play with an awesome Blackhawk pilot, and he gave me a few tips. I'm getting better at flying. :)

I've never been the type to be yanking the stick around in an aircraft; it will be hard for me to adjust. I know some of your infantry tips, but some of them were quite helpful and I'll be sure to implement them. I generally spend most games wandering around with about 4 or so AI Humvees. I try to put myself in an up-armored M240 Humvee and give the AI a Mk-19 Humvee and 2 M2 Humvees. It works pretty well and I capture a whole lot of stuff doing it. Due to the way I tend to fight, which usually results in being in city streets a ton, most of my engagements I can usually see the enemy fairly well. One thing that's gotten me killed a lot is not leaning. I tend to go prone and use rolling if I can, but in confined alleyways and the like it's more convenient to use crouching. Because I play on a laptop, I can't use the Numpad keys. This prevents me from using a whole lot of the functions they want me to use for the ArmA 2: OA tutorial. Is there a way to circumvent this? Does anyone have any keybindings for me?

I have ArmA 2:CO on Steam, just OA and the original ArmA 2. ArmA 2 is running fine and I've been playing it for a few days. I downloaded OA today. When I try to start it, I get this message: "Data file too short 'expansions\addons\characters_e.pbo'. Expected 672070011 B, got 534118400 B." I'm confused. What's happening and how do I fix it? I've already tried running as admin.

I played my first two games of multiplayer last night. I didn't do too badly the first game. I spent most of my time flying around in an Mi-8 Medevac and healing wounded soldiers. My teammates thanked me a whole lot and I got a respectable amount of points. I only killed two soldiers though, when my helicopter crash-landed in a clearing after being disabled by a Tunguska. Still, I did all right. The second game, however, was on a different server. I absolutely sucked! For one thing, my ping had climbed over a hundred and I was lagging somewhat. The main problem was that my respawn point was out in the middle of nowhere and the helicopter approaches were covered by a pair of Tunguskas. The AH-1Z that extracted me was shot down on the way out of the LZ. I kept respawning miles away from the action, for some reason unable to change my respawn point to where my teammates were, and got so busy legging it around the map that I got shot a ton. I contributed little to my team except spotting a pair of Tunguskas and left after the game ended. The good thing is that the people on both servers were just like the people on these forums. Quite helpful and I didn't get called a "noob" or something of that sort once, even when I asked really stupid questions and accidentally wasted an AIM-9 Sidewinder.

I'll leave the zoom button as is and remap the Hold Breath button to a different mouse key. I didn't know that the Hold Breath and Zoom keys were different!

Well, I'm slowly getting better at Helicopter flying. Attack Helicopters are amazingly easy to fly in this game since it's possible to do third person. I'm going to be doing a whole lot of mission editing once I get better at attack flying. For right now I'm mainly messing around in the Armory using the AH-1Z. On to another question. Any tips for spotting enemy soldiers? Often, when I'm in the Armory doing a Survival or Point Defense mission, I get shot before I even see the guy. This happens a ton while I'm sitting in the turret of an M2 Humvee. Finally, how do I switch characters around in the Campaign? I've reached the mission where you have to take out a sniper in 5 minutes and I'd like to switch over to Sykes and use his DMR to try to find the guy. If I suck at that, which I probably will, which grid is the sniper located in so I can go get up close?

The FreeFire guide was quite useful. Thank you very much! Are the turn keys useful? I don't have them bound to anything at the moment. I think I'll put them on the Q and E keys and try them out. I've bound the 1st/3rd person view to a mouse button. It works quite well. I can barely control helicopters at higher speeds, but at speeds below 100kph, I'm starting to be able to fly them adequately. My shooting skills have improved slightly after being in the Armory and the Shooting Range a whole lot. What's the best "learner" helicopter? Is there a general consensus or is it personal preference. So far all I've really flown in is the Civilian Mi-8. I've also been in a V-22, which was very easy to control in both the hover and airplane modes, but also extroardinarily slow at responding to control surfaces while hovering. I tried the Knighthawk, but it was a fiasco involving a sharp turn and some pointy trees.

Thank you for all the input! @Gunter Severloh: Thanks for the link! It was very helpful, although it had quite a few typos/grammar errors lol. I know there's a wireless keyboard lying around the house somewhere that has numpad keys on it. I think I'll go find it at some point. @Flatterrman & Baraka: Thank you too! I'll do some messing around in the editor to see just where 300 meters is. About your comment about joysticks, I've never used a joystick to fly. Keyboard and mouse is enough for people to hackusate my Blackhawk flying in BFBC2. Lolz. I'm not very good at heli flying in this game though. Practice makes perfect I guess! I've managed to remap the helicopter flight keys to be like Battlefield. I don't have the left turn or right turn commands bound to any key, as I prefer to turn the aircraft manually with rudder pedals and banking. Maybe I'm just a dork about helicopter physics, but something seems strange about them in ArmA 2. When I go faster, the rudder becomes virtually useless unless I bank sharply while using it. Even then, I can't get the helicopter to turn very fast. This might have something to do with the fact that I didn't have anywhere to put my mouse and was using the trackpad. Idk. The other problem I had was that slowing down seemed impossible. I would flare up and drop engine power and nothing much seemed to happen. I can land, but I need a gigantic space to slow down and correct in. I overshot the airstrip once in the Helicopter Tutorial while trying to land. P.S. The community here is very helpful. :bounce3: Much better than most other games.

Well, I've been messing around in the Armory a bit and I've discovered that I'm not too bad at operating crew-served weapons. @Birtuma: I have a laptop so there's no Numpad. :( I'm looking for an alternate key, because I do use that function quite a bit. At the moment I'm using "P", but I discovered that doesn't work very well in multiplayer.