anthropoid

Mark you know I love your mission; it is just about the only thing I ever play. But I just gotta tell ya, there is one thing that is just pure annoyance: The way the local area patrols run around like chickens with their heads cut off. I mean, ffs! The mission is hard enough already. Is it necessary for local area patrols to essentially NEVER stop moving too? If I ever crack open the .pbo and made some 'self-edits' to your mission, that would be the one thing I'd change: make the AI stay stationary more often, as in for at least minutes at a time, sometimes hours at a time. IMO it is unrealistic and it only makes a mission that is already quite difficult unnecessary even more difficult. My reason for saying this: I like to play a sniper. I finally found a town with lots of enemy local patrols, and excellent open area for sniping. With the way the walk, then dart, then stop for 3 seconds then turn, then backup, then walk again, then stop but walk backwards (moonwalking evidently), around, and around in endless circles . . . I felt like I was watching a bunch of ballet boys rehearsing swan lake or something. We all know soldiers do not behave like that. If the war was over, cause "they won" they would for the most part be lounging around passing the time, not moving around as if they were in danger of imminent attack. The irony is, when I shoot one of them: they all stop in their tracks! I don't know if the way they behave is readily changeable by one flip in the code or if it would somehow involve going in and changing myriad things or on myriad entries, not to mention you have sort of moved on to new stuff. But

John Cleese saying "Ghillie suits are for pooftahs."

Is that a fix to the "unresponsive to Reform" commands I've noticed from all the Team Switching I've done? Right atm the new link to the 5.4 DL in first post in thread seems to have a 404 error.

#1. Will try that. However, the problem was this: I was piloting an APC full of troops. I had one squad mate piloting a CRRC, another one piloting a fishing boat, all full of troops. We were ferrying away from the unsafe south regions of Chernarus to an abandoned area in north (Lost mission) to get organized and set up our 'geurilla hideout.' When the CRRC driver arrived at the beach way on the north coast, I took control of him (something I am not longer going to do with this mod as it seems to progressively lead to AI getting "locked up" and becoming unresponsive to Regroup and Return to Formation commands, but I digress . . .) and had him disembark himsef and his passengers. Somehow some guys appeared of their own accord to be running back to my main character, evidently trying to reform (20km away). The former CRRC pilot seeing this (while I was controling him) hit All - Stop, and this caused the soldiers on the fishing boat to disembark. Luckily I realized it, and managed to get all of them back on board before they got left behind. Will try that "stealth" and see if that fixes the problem with AI turning on the lights (even when they are wearing NVG) everytime I get out of the vehicle and they shift over to driver's seat. For the number three idea, it could be something very formulaic that would not require much micromanaging. At present, an order to FIRE or ENGAGE seems to evoke eschewing the benefits of cover and moving into the open to get good shots. The end result being -> any particular AI teammate will get a kill or two, but often gets killed himself if there are 3 or more opponents. What I have in mind here is a simple command that would evoke a cyclic series fo behaviors. Obviously there is an inherent 'attack if enemy is in sight - else maneuver to get enemy in sight' script that engages when they are in fire at will mode and have acquire targets at wil left on. That is fine, but it would be nice to intersperse that behavior with - after each burst/shot - go back to the safest immediately accessible posture/position, whether that is going prone, going prone behind soft cover, or getting behind hard cover. This command could be something as simple as "Engage Safely" or "Engage as Safely as Possible" or "Engage Cautiously."

Sorry if there is an AI behavior suggestions thread. 1. The command to "Stop" seems to cause AI who are in boats to disembark. This can be deadly and it shouldn't work that way. I presume it is this way in vanilla but it could be a mod I am using. 2. AI Group mates who are assigned to pilot a boat, by default seem to want to motor off the coast 50 or 100m or more and then sit there with engine idling. This too can be deadly and it shouldn't work that way. More broadly, it seems fairly common that AI assigned to a vehicle immediately want to go driving off even without any command to do so. 3. A command to: (a) Open Fire briefly, then go back to taking cover and/or (b) Open Fire briefly then run left/right/forward/back and then take cover/go prone. 4. A way to tell AI squad mates who are in a vehicle to turn off your lights, or better yet, to leave the lights off by default. Will add more as I think of them.

Just curious but, what would th 'ideal' system look ike anyway? And what is "Iron Front?" a mod?

Yeah the AI in the game are badasses there is no doubt about it: 1. they are generally alert 2. they see far (maybe too far as you note) 3. they fire in directions/at positions and often tend to get hits even at high ranges for the weapons involved 4. they shoot through obstructions at targets that are barely visible (to be fair, I bet you COULD see them without the binoculars; it is just that it would be like 3 pixels at a time that would flash in between two blades of grass and a leaf a couple times) 5. they react quickly (generally) 6. they are courageous (generally) 7. they are tenacious and aggressive (generally) 8. they don't waver and they swing into a coordinated response to a contact almost immediately, including flanking or going stealthy or taking cover. 9. they sometimes ignore suppressive fire None of the above is totally 'unrealistic' per se, certainly a spec ops or very solidary group of experienced soldiers could exhibit all those behaviors. Indeed, something like that set of behaviors is probably what makes the differnece between squads/platoons that win with few casualties and those that get pawned in real life . . . The one thing that I do agree is somewhat 'questionable' is the resolution of their sighting. I too have noted that even if I'm prone and focused on an area where there is suspected AI, I find it very hard to distinguish which blob of pixels is the enemy moving around behind that mess of obstructions, a perceptual limitation that does not seem to hamper either my own AI teammates, nor the enemy AI. Having never been in a fire fight I'll just assume that this is 'realistic' and that soldiers often have to fire on targets that are scarcely visible or even to just observer where their mates are firing and just take lucky shots in the same direction? For a while there I really did think the AI had "X-ray Vision" but I have subsequently observed that: when I or one of my AI do an Auto-report of a contact, if I am sufficiently quick to scan the area with a scope or bino I can in fact catch glimpses of the contact flitting into and out of view between the trees. I think the way to make sense of the contact reports is: glimpse that the viewer is 75% confident about . . . but then they don't always report these contacts as positive contacts of enemies (annoyingly they often report our own troops as 'unknowns') . . . Clearly the current system can be mastered as I've seen videos of humans vs. AI players doing amazing things. In part I think playing as if you really are out there in the field and you don't want to die might be part of that. It can seem like gaming the system, but as someone pointed out, we are dealing with a lot of limitations: 2d presentation without well integrated peripheral sound/vision input being the main one, but a foe that is ultimately nothing but a bunch of behavior algorithms executed in that fake 3d game world being the other. I think that mastring ArmA2, even just mastering PVE, takes a lot of play.

Great work Yogdogz! You did a great job creating a fine campaign. Personally, I'm just not much into scripted 'campaign' style scenarios (never even finished any of the vanilla campaigns in in ArmA or OA) so I don't think I'll be playing past the first couple chapters. But this is a quality product, clearly a labor of love, and I'm sure there are a ton of guys in the community who will be enjoying the heck out of your campaign. Congratulations on a well-done project :)

Problem: Unable to run game after initial installation of Arma - Gold, downloaded from Gamersgate. I would suppose this is the final patch for the game. Specs: AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series, 8.850.0.0 (driver version), Display Memory: 754 MB; Dedicated Memory: 1010 MB Digital Audio Interface (SB Audigy) 5.12.0001.2020 (English) 8192MB RAM ArmA - Gold English (purchased from Gamersgate yesterday so presumably final patch) DirectX 11 Actions Taken So Far I have fixed the "d3dx9_30.dll was not found" by installing the latest DirectX at the link in the FAQ and rebooted. I have updated all my drivers (CPU, Video, Sounds, Network). I have the game installed outside of the secure folders that tend to be a problem with Windows 7 C:\SKN Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA Description of Problem When I attempt to run the game as an Administrator, I see a small window with 7 or 10 tick boxes. All but the last two are ticked. Few seconds later, screen transitions and goes black for a few seconds. A progress icon spins for a few seconds with a black background screen. App then crashes back to desktop and a Windows alert window pops up to say: There is a delay while the progress icon spins, and then the Windows alert window is appended with the following: When I right-click my ArmA launcher desktop shortcut and run "Test Compability" the result it renders is that "ArmA is an incompatible application" I suspect that all these errors and tests are generating logs that can provide more info but I'm not sure where they live. Will be happy to find them and post them if given some direction. Thanks in advance for any help.

Dang.

Is there a way to tell the AI to "Throw Smoke Grenades." I'm using ASR AI, and I know that they will use them with that mod, but I'm curious if it is possible to get them to use it when I say?

Hey DomZ, just a bump to say I'm still having issues with the Regroup and Return to Formation commands when playing the Lost mission. Here is the post where I describe the issues in detail. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?132721-SP-Lost-v-4-0-Like-a-mash-up-of-Dogs-of-War-and-Manhattan-(without-the-bugs)!&p=2175105&viewfull=1#post2175105 Appreciate any suggestions for how to 'reset' my soldiers when this happens. At present I cannot figure out how to make them responsive to commands to follow me in formation and about the only solution I can consider at this point is to restart and just avoid using the switch other team members all together. ADDIT: Found a solution that works 'sometimes' After trying to use the 0 - 8 -6 -1 on each and every unit, it didn't help. So I split all of them into different groups. We navigated around a bit, searching some civilian houses and then setting up to for a dawn ambush of Khelm (too foggy when we arrived and not enough NVG in the group). I used this as an opportunity to learn a bit more about how groups behave, and probably gave each of the four HC groups that my ~32 soldier were divided up into a good 10 or 15 waypoint commands as well as quite a few formation change, posture change, etc., commands and they were all very responsive. After probably an hour or more of game play like this, I decided I wanted to take more direct control over every solider (and see if they would be responsive again), so I merged all four HC groups back into my own group. Voila they were no longer stuck! though they were a bit slowish to follow orders. So, if after lots of unit switching units become unresponsive and the 'reset' command does not work (0 - 8 - 6 - 2 or whichever one it is), one solution is just to regroup them into a few HC group and give enough orders/wait enough time and they seem to reset. Having done this before and had it not work (Create New Groups -> Wait a bit -> add units back into your own group -> still unresponsive) the solution does not seem to be simply to (a) send units that are stuck to join a new HC Group, but rather, (b) do step (a) then give enough sequential orders (waypoints and or other orders) and/or wait long enough that it effectively 'clears' any lingering commands in each soldiers queue? or something like that? It would seem the trick is to to "delete the waypoints" that are causing the unresponsive behavior by each soldier that I think Markb50K or you mentioned. I realize the 0 - 8 - 6 - 2 command "Unit not moving, try this" is probably supposed to achieve that, but for whatever reason, when the user engages in a long string of sequential switching to control all the AI toons in a squad, that command does not seem to suffice. If you set soldiers in your group to a new group and don't wait long enough time, or engage them in enough behavior to 'clear' their waypoints then when you have them rejoin your group it seems they are still somehow 'stuck.' In sum, it is a bit unpredictable how long you need to operate with them as separate HC Groups and/or how many commands (or which commands) you need to give them before they are "reset" and can be made to rejoin your own group and will once more be responsive to regroup commands.

Once I figured out what info needed to be in the "Server File" line and hit launch I was prompted to "Save as default?" and said yes. My security app asked me about three times if I wanted to allow the app to act as a server. Then I got an error window saying: Does this mean I need to close the server console before closing TA2DST to save the profile? When I closed everything and restarted my info had been saved. All I'm trying to do is play Warfare Benny Edition, and I understand that it needs to run through a dedicated server to perform properly. So yeah, figured out that: if I launch ArmA2OA while TA2DST and the server console are both running, I have my dedicated 1 player server showing up in my list of available servers in my MP window. Did manage to launch Warfare Benny and start playing. Everything worked. But the game was more laggy than I have ever seen it lag. Is this normal? All an innocent noob like me wants to know really is: Why oh WHY is it necessary to run a mission through a damn 'server' when all I'm doing is playing against the AI on my own damn machine!?

Thanks for all the info guys! This has turned in to an excellent "tips & tactics" thread :) I do love the idea of the M-107 sniper though I'm not very good at it. I tend to mostly play the Lost mission and almost always play with that soldier as my main character. The other day I had a startup near a fairly large inland town; Krasnostav or somesuch. There were literally swarms of AI roaming around down in the town. I managed to pick off a couple of them and then scoot to a new location :) Damn! that big sniper rifle has a kick to it when fired from kneeling position! The first one was not a confirmed kill as the kick was so big I didn't manage to recon the position I fired on before I moved to a new position. But the second one was from prone and I managed to catch a glimpse of the corpse before I rolled out and moved away. That second time they were definitely after me and popped off a couple shots but I got away. Definitely a very fun and challenging game. BTW: apart from its incredible range, is an M-107 really that useful in the game? Obviously if you hit a man he is likely to be dead, but can you actually destroy vehicles or are there ever 'materiel' items in the game that the M-107 would come in handy for? I have fired it at an airborne heli a few times and not sure if I damaged it or one of my AI teammates did, but it did eventually crash. If I'm gonna try to use an M-107 to disable a heli or UAZ or other lightly armored vehicle, I suppose I want to aim at the engine compartment, which is obvious on most four-wheeled land vehicles, but what about the heli? Right below the rotor?

Thanks Markb50K, that issue with the waypoints does sound like the issue. When I have had this issue before, I have somehow, by some weird combination of command sequences, managed to break their gridlock and get them to follow me again. But I cannot seem to replicate that now.

Ah okay, so not just another 'warfare' mission with a twist. Gotcha ;) Guess I won't start as a "Commander" then. Sniper is sounding like a good job for me.

This looks great. Have installed it and fired it up. First time, I left it as default soldier type for player startup. The scripted air drop kinda threw me for a loop. But then I realized, I had no squad? Hitting SPACE key nor CTRL-L + SPACE did nothing? So I restarted with myself as a USMC "Commander" and only USMC troops on my side. Still nothing from SPACE or CTRL-L + SPACE. Got my initial Cache set up and went into Manage AI Groups and nothing listed in my list of HC Groups or Own Group. Just me on my lonesome. I must be missing something right?

Simple Question Apart from 0-8-6-1 "Unit won't move, Try this" Is there any other way to "reset" my soldiers so that they are responsive to Regroup and/or "Return to Formation" commands? I have tried, creating a new group with them, and having them rejoin my group, etc. and cannot get my soldiers to behave properly. BackgroundI'm having a good replay up to day two, except for a problem with my squad mate AI not responding to Reform or Return to Formation commands. Lucky start up where I managed to clear search Olsha and a few other houses nearby and have my total force count up to about 32 soldiers. Once I get all my starting groups assembled in one area that is remote from towns and I set up my cache, I like to scan through all my soldiers skills and reorg them based on their skills, ranks, and job roles. In order to do this, adding them all to my Group is easiest. Usually what I will do is sort them so highest accuracy is top to bottom, then shift them around based on rank/job so that I have something like: #2 Medic #3 AT specialist #4 Rifleman (backpack) #5 Machinegunner #6 Grenadier , etc. If I'm gonna run a larger squad where I have red team on left and green team on right I'll do: #2 Medic #3 Medic #4 AT specialist #5 AT specialist #6 Rifleman (backpack) #7 Rifleman (backpack) #8 Machinegunner #9 Machinegunner #10 Grenadier #11 Grenadier Then it is easy to send one team to flank left, and one team to flank right. After I have _ALL_ of my toons added to my group, I usually take away all their gear then divide it up so that everyone has their radio and watch; the best shooters have the better weapons; and either group leader AI toons and/or soldiers who will be in my own group have the limited numbers of NVGs, compasses, maps, GPS, etc. Once I've taken away their weapons and given them all back weapons and ammo, they don't seem to realize they have ammo and I usually switch to play each one of them individually to make sure they reload; it could be that if they were in combat they would reload themselves, but haven't tested it yet. Oh yeah, one more thing, I usually tend to click ALL of my soldiers to be "Playable" whatever that means . . . In sum, I fiddle a LOT with moving units into and out of New HC groups, merging HC groups, and making HC groups rejoin my group and experimenting with different organizations in my group. I find this all to be one of the funner aspects of the mission . . . Based on Markb50k's suggestion to NEVER Team Switch, I now avoid using that function. Though as I say, I do switch to control specific soldiers in my own Group (not sure if that should be avoided too?) Problem in Detail Following a fairly long session of the above reorganizing have a squad of about 22 soldiers. I have done 0-8-3-1 to "make player Group leader" I have also used 0-8-6- They are all clearly responsive to various commands (Hide, Go Prone) but whenever I send "Regroup" (whenever it is an option, which it strangely is not always) or 1 - 1 Return to Formation they do not respond. It is almost like they don't know who to reform on. A couple of the soldiers will move a bit (e.g., #2) but mostly they just stay where they are.

Hmmm, that is one of the ones I considered to be no problem. Actually, I reduced my CoWarMod setup to an absolute barebones that includes JTD and I've now seen no problems with lag: FasterHandGrenadeThrowAnimation_Gameplay_C_PvPscene FasterStepOverAnimation_Gameplay_C_PvPscene gdtmod_satchel.pbo jtd_fireandsmoke.pbo mechinftac.pbo S_NVG.pbo @MartanCJ: I would call myself a beginner at ArmA. Love this mod though I suck at it, and I remain frustrated with glitches in the High Command and Group features. So far I have only played on Chernarus map. To learn the mission (I imagine you'll be restarting a lot as I have) I used the default numbers. The one thing about this is, you'll find quite a few 'abandoned' areas where there is no enemy presence. If you up the vehicle and Airgroup counts one notch I don't notice much difference at all (on Chernarus, on smaller maps it may make a difference). Upping the Para groups one notch, I have to say I HAVE seen more Para activity, but that could have just been the luck of where I started (all five groups near Elektrosovodsk). What I like to do is, basically leave everything default, but up the Infantry by two or even three notches. What this will achieve is: you will encounter more enemy foot patrols, hanging out around villages/towns and also just roaming the countryside. On Chernarus, I have found that the default number of Infantry groups leads to long periods of roaming with no action, although the Search House can still unpredictably lead to engagements.

Reducing the glare and over contrast to me is the whole point. Guess it don't exist yet then.

Yeah, that is what I figured on the delays :( I just timed the actual lag on a Search House and it was like 2 minutes in game time (set to 4x speed of course). I guess I need to figure out which mod is causing it to lag in the gear interactions area and nix it. Shame though, cause my current play through is going so well and epic :) Out of 29 friendies surviving at start, mostly all along the southeast coast, and including one UAZ and one BMP, I managed to get 25 of them safely extracted way up to the northeast coast to safely reorganize and set up a temporary base near Olsha. Three of them got capped when one group got ambushed, but somehow two survived and the enemy never did come back to get them again; they waited their all night till I could pick them up in my CRRC. One was wounded and in the midst of all the complex grouping-ungrouping commands (I used a fishing boat with an AI piloting it to make fewer trips to ferry to the north). An unintentional "Stop" Command to everyone caused him to disembark and then by the time I took command of the boat and got back near him he had drowned. As for the house that had the problem (maybe, assuming it was mod / lag related) was on Chernarus map grid: 096018. It is the barn near the dam. In answer to one of my earlier queries that you never really commented on: it does seem that at least some of the enemy AI groups do not patrol incessantly. I had a group of 7 infantry who clearly were staying in the general vicinity of Olsha. I had been frustrated previously when it seemed like all the AI ever did was move around, but I guess I just need to explore more. I do think that, if you ever make any additional changes to Lost, adding in a certain semi-random quantity of the enemy groups who tend to stay put more often would be cool.

Most games don't have opponent AI who are sufficiently sophisticated for this kind of tactic to work; but I was already suspecting that you can pull some fairly sophisticated bait and lure tactics in this game. I will try what you are suggesting *mwahwhah* Couple questions though: When you say "fire from hard cover:" you mean like from behind a corner or behind a stone wall or something like that? When you say "pre-set field of fire" I take it you mean: use one or more soldiers to scout the enemy locations so that they are all visible to the team/squad? Or do you mean something more specific that has to do with commands. Related to this and your comment about using one sudden burst of fire: I have tried to assign specific targets based on which ones seem best for each friendly AI, but by the time I get all four of them assigned, flip back to the main screen, get a bead on one myself, adn get ready to unleash one big surprise attack, the damn AI has moved! I don't know if it is the Lost mission scripts, or just the AI in general, but I find the enemy AI do a lot of fidgeting and moving around . . . ah well, sauce for the goose I guess . . . really makes it hard for a sniper though, when they NEVER seem to just settle down and loiter, take a whiz, smoke a cigarette, chit-chat and exchange pics of their AI wives and such . . . Well, you are about the third person I've had tell me this now, all of whom seemed to have been playing the game for a long time, so I guess I'll stop whining and just learn how to play the game properly ;) This has got to be one of the hardest games there is. Mostly I've played massive, complex turn-based strategy games where you control an entire theatre or battlefield (War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition; The Operational Art of War). Those games can be quite challenging because of the sheer complexity and quanity of information one must integrate. But obviously reaction time and rapid information processing are not a part of it at all. Indeed, in many shooter games, there are a lot of 'hand-rails' and the player tends to be fairly teflon coated. I used to think Fallout 3 was fairly challenging, but this game makes that look like a game of checkers. And lastly I'm trying to imagine how to 'alarm' them without giving away my position . . . at night any gun shot will have a muzzle flash, though I suppose if it is behind a bush and pointed into the ground it won't be as noticeable. Obviously in real life you could just pick up a tin can or something and toss it, or turn your head and cup your hands toward the valley to your left and make a yelping noise/blow a whistle . . . but how do you go about alarming the AI without giving away your position in ArmAverse? I'm also assuming that it is a good idea to have your squad positioned in a slightly different position to yourself, so that when the enemy takes notice of your presence and moves toward it, they are flanked by the squad that fires on them?

Okay, I'll fire up the game and check the houses that I can remember for certain. However, it happened with a couple different houses and then when I rebooted the game, the problem seemed to have been gone. It could have been what you are saying. Based on the way it behaved, I thought maybe it was a faulty initialization or something like that. The other thing it could be is: now fighting with the mods I have installed (CoWarMod, although with a bunch of stuff turned off). This happened immediately after I installed CoWarMod. A possibly related issue that I've been noticing now: delayed response on Search House; Drag item; and list population in the Manage AI Groups via the cache. Search House used to be VERY quick, Drag Item only slightly delayed, and population of the lists in manager screen just slightly more delayed. Now, Search House can take literally a minute in game time; Drag items is about two to three times as long (maybe 2 or 3 seconds); and the Manager screen is also noticeably slower (sometimes 5 or 7 seconds on the first loadup. Again, could be the mods I now have running. If you want I can list exactly what mods are running, esp. listing the sub-items in CoWarMod that I have running. ---------- Post added at 11:50 ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 ---------- Actually Mark, I had a couple suggestions for your mod. If they are possible to implement they would sure enhanced the gameplay. 1. (as has already been said) The ability to direct AI in your group to "You: Search that House," or even more general "You: Search Houses in the area." 2. Similarly: ability to direct AI in your group to "You: Load loot into the truck. It just doesn't make sense that the commander of the geurilla 'army' is out there doing this grunt work ;)

ADDIT: and yes, I was aware about the adjustment time for switching off NVGs and back to natural vision. I always allow several minutes to account for that when I check ambient light levels. That would account for the issues I've observed. Problem is, it is virtually impossible to tell your AI squad mates to fire briefly, then scramble/roll to another location . . . Sure the human can do that, but the AI seems to like to unload on a position. I suppose if you did: (assuming they have reported targets are acquired) All - Go Prone / All - Stay Crouched / All - Fire at Will / All - Take Cover . . . but I have enough trouble controlling myself much less keeping myself from getting shot AND handholding my team. I dunno, I just find that a lot of this game engine is apparently: (1) better tuned for PVP, and in part as a consequence; (2) Enemy AI are superior in the behavioral scripts they exhibit (except when it comes to vehicles! Catch some poor schmucks without an AT weapon in the somewhat open and you can literally mow 'em down in an APC without ever having to fire a shot!) After probably 8 restarts with my night assault on Olsha with a four man NVG equpped squad: Finally killed an enemy squad of 7 killed (Officer; Machinegunner; AK-74; 3 Riflemen; AT soldier). Actually, I killed them cause I went back and got my BMP and 'lured' them out into the open by approaching Olsha from the southeast at the radio tower. I stupidly told two of my crew to get out, hoping to ambush the enemy, but by then the enemy squad was already out of Olsha, up the hill and causing mayhem on top of the hill. My machinegunner got killed, but I finally took out the whole enemy crew. As I say, I restarted trying to take out this crew at least 8 times. I observed their behavior, and unlike a lot of settlements in the game, they seemed to be assigned to patrol right in the midst of Olsha. Mostly they went back and forth east-west in the opening just to the north of Olsha but with some variations on that movement pattern. Each time I engaged them I had my squad hiding up on the hills (~200m away), me with a NV M110 laying prone. When an opportune shot came, I'd take out one or two. In one case I took out like 3 or 4 of them. But either I forgot to roll, or it didn't matter. They capped me. In some cases they very quickly capped my squad mates once they opened fire. Anyway, EIGHT retries for a four man NVG equipped crew (M240; G636; M16/MAAW; me with NV M110) hiding in the treeline at an elevated position at night (it was initially quite overcast but it did get a bit more light as I progressed to the point where I kept trying and failing to ambush them). The final victory = use of an APC. How many Night Vision devices in the loot from the squad that repeatedly capped me? = ZERO. Now, don't get me wrong. I have no illusion that I am great at this game. I'm pretty damn crappy in fact. But I play on Recruit setting (albeit with ASR_AI) and I AM a pretty accomplished gamer at some other shooter type games . . . I have a lot to learn with ArmA and partly my lack of success can be attributed to that. Nonetheless, it just seems cockamammie that a squad of 7 guys would be so effective given those circumstances. Now that I know about how the muzzle flash thing works, I'll see if I can use that to my advantage. I am pretty sure I have the latest of all patches as I only bought the game off Gamersgate a couple weeks ago. ADDIT: it seems to me that the game could use a few more squad commands. I don't know the term they use for brief fire then ducking for cover, but a command for AI to do that would be golden.

Most recently my team of four all wearing NV goggles vs. a team of 7 Chedaki in the Lost scenario. We snuck up on them and engaged them from a wooded uphill position all in prone posture taking out 3 immediately. Instead of hunkering down to figure out what was going on, some of them flanked ourposition and managed to wound 2 and kill one before we killed all of them. Not a NVG in ANY of their gear, and like I said, this is so dark that when I take off my NVG I literally cannot see a soldier or ammo crate right in front of my face, even out in the open where the little bit of starlight lights things up. This was the third time I have had a costly nighttime engagement like this with this mission. Similar experiences with AA Team mission, and Freedom Fighters for that matter. In sum, I have observed that dead AI with no NVGs nonetheless put up one helluva nighttime fight prior to being killed. If the AI was as completely blind as I am when I take off my NVG, there is no way it would charge to flank based on a muzzle burst and hope to get a lucky shot. When it is pitch dark, that is a lot of guesswork. The only thing I can guess is that, it is not 'pitch dark' to the AI. Unless the AI in the video are scripted to be 'careless' or some other similar setting, it does suggest that perhaps it is possible to turn down AI night time sensitivity. My guess though is scripted. It would seem i am not alone in finding AI spotting at night to be excessive. A quote from Robalo's ASR_AI mod: Which I actually have installed if I recall correctly. But if you have ever been out in the woods on a truly dark night, "half" spotting distance is not even close to how obscure the world sometimes is. When you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face and can only get a slight glimps of some light where some stars peek through a gap in the clouds . . . If it is possible to code it: AI spotting and aiming in the dark (without night vision equipment or thermal equipment) should range from virtually zero to perhaps 45% of daytime at most: Truly dark night spotting/aiming ability ~1 to 2% of normal; fully moon, clear skies and bright stars ~45 to 50%