Earion

After having read most of the thread (but not everything, sorry if this is nothing new), my 2 cents in 2 points : The french army has developed a remote-aiming system as part of the FELIN package. Check out this video. Speech is in french, but even I can't get what the guy is saying and it doesn't matter. I doubt they are the only one, or even the first, to come up with that idea. I don't know how usable that system is in real-life. But if it is, or if improvement can make it usable, you can bet these are gonna be quite common, or at least generally available, by 2035. And it could work nicely with blindfire animations, or even Picture-in-picture if using some PDA on the wrist or chest. Why the French armed forces decided to invest money in this stuff, instead of buying better weapons, basic tactical gear, transport choppers or even reliable drones is beyond me, but it's another story - let's call it another instance of french "cultural exception" I've read some posts about jumping... Saying how jumping is useless IRL to get on top of stuff. Might be true, but IRL I don't jump for that, I jump to get over any kind of gaps, such as a ditch... Long jumps, not high jumps. High jump if I want to scale a wall of course. Last thing : I think Arma is still very far from a cover-based rail-shooter, aren't we ? It's not because you do not like those games that every single thing they made is bad. Indeed, I get quite angry with all this "l337" talk about how we, the chosen ones, the true hardcore ArmA armchair vets, are so much better than that bunch of "CoD kiddies" scum... Making it a holy crusade to just crap on every single aspect of those games... And saying "Ahem, no talking about this and that, thank you", while laughing like uptight dandies considering how ridiculous and lame those suggestions were. This is actually childish.

@tremanarch, how did you do that ?

In Cold War Rearmed, I played the "After Montignac Mission" with COSLX and plenty of AI mods which just overhauled the enemy ability to engage you in CQC. I had the AI skills set on a really, really high level. Everytime I tried to escape the way I did in original OFP - run and return fire if you get spotted and a ruski is too close, I got tore to pieces by hand grenades and concentrated full auto AK fire. This was actually the same exciting and scary experience as in the original game, only with an incredible overhaul in authenticity and difficulty to fool the AI soldiers. I decided not to downgrade the difficulty, and keep on trying to survive. I was able to hid in the pine trees and wait for soldiers to go past me. Every time, at least one soldier would get too close ; using COSLX knife, I was able to stab him with one or two thrusts without him returning fire, and my chances of getting out unscathed from the woods of Everon went way, way up. I think I was using a mix of ASR, Zeus AI and SLX + TPW mods and other stuff - actually it was a customized version of COWarMod. I don't remember exactly but in my mix, the AI was supposed to react to noise, dead bodies, etc ; AI soldiers would talk (slx_shout and rug_dsai). It was a very, very satisfying experience ! This mission has always been about "authentic ramboing" anyway, so sticking some ruskies in the bushes was just a very welcome addition. Of course, SLX melee mechanics are a bit clunky, and I would love to see an overhaul in the core engine ! Also, I never played CWR2 missions featuring our dear James Gastowsky, but hell, AFAICR, some melee kills would have been a more than welcome addition to those as well ! In OFP, the MP5SD6 was ridiculously silent, no guard would even notice me shooting ; I don't know how loud it really is IRL but it can't be as silent as a knife kill : frankly I bet the hardest part in stabbing some sentry from behind is sneaking upon him without giving him any chance, then actually sticking a knife into another human being neck, cutting through the spine, without moving and eyebrow while blood is pouring in your hands and on your fatigues... on a purely technical side however, sneaking on some dozy guy from behind at nightime isn't that hard, and I believe the fragile human neck isn't any match to a sharp and hard enough blade... Sure is messy though. But that loud, as loud as a suppressed SMG ? Sorry, can't believe it. As a side note, during a basic training wargame, one of my mate (French Army) was sneaked upon by an officer ; he only realized it when he felt the metal blade on his throat. He told me he had the hand of the officer on his mouth and nose, but that anyway he was too scared and surprised to say anything. He's been out of the army for some time now, but I won't hesitate to ask me if he believes, that, in a real situation, the kill wouldn't have been quite silent >:} Frankly the real question is the other way around... Could the officer had the balls to do that in an actual war situation ? Anyway... ... We're talking about a game...

Read the whole thread as I was busy waiting for huge loading time on the dreadful "Dogs of War" SP Campaign end mission, which is warfare at its worst. So here are my own conception of those "failures", In hope they won't be reproduced in ArmA 3 (has Warfare been confirmed in A3 ?). Now, Idk if those flaws have been fixed in various custom warfare mode as I've never tried any so please do tell me if they were. "Big deal" : - Spawning and fast travel, silly and terribly frustrating when a unit just "pops there" - Economics and money (same thoughts as OP) - Construction : Building placement is a mess, and "building" or "buying" Hinds from an helipad, M1A1 from a "Supply point" is quite silly... And they pop in, again (and never at the right place) "Minor" aspects : - Could I radio in reinforcement when I'm in enemy territory, pleaase ? having to be at HQ to "order" units is quite silly in the era of satellite phone... - Enemies that respawn in your back, mounted at static guns next to empty strongpoints... - Static guns disappearing after some time (I know it's "performance reasons") - Big maps, but feeling of emptiness (big SP fail, you expect an epic battle retaking chernogorsk but enter a ghost town with a couple of pickups, 1 gunner at each strongpoint and maybe a t72 if you are lucky... - AI, but I feel it is still the most acceptable part of the game - the worst part is the driving AI and some lack of control over other squads in vanilla. The thing is, warfare could be real good. I think I can sum up my gameplay nightmares here in three part : Spawning, Buying and Constructing. This are things I dislike the most about so-called "Realistic" RTS (i.e, StarCraft doesn't pretend to be realistic so it's all good) - No spawning : nothing should "pop in". Breaks the immersion too much. So no fast travel, and no magic unit construction. - No buying : if there is some kind of resource, it shouldn't be money. Scope is too short term to have such thing as economic growth. - No construction : fortifications are ok IMHO the rest should go away. Actually there is one RTS that totally complies with all these rules and could be considered as the high command cousin to Arma, which is "Wargame : European Escalation". Wargame pretty much got the above things right by virtually avoiding them all along, and still provide a very good interesting and strategic gaming experience : - No Spawning : there is no fast travel, no unit building, you have to seize a sector at the edge of the map and deploy a command unit there. You can then call reinforcements (they will smoothly travel inland from the edge) - No Buying : you have a limited number of command point. Command point allows you to deploy an initial set of unit and then call in reinforcement. Each unit costs you command point. You can't spend command points beyond the initial budget. Now, with an high enough initial allowance, the battle could still go for days. - No Construction: no buildings at all (not even fortifications), no magically buying Apaches or M1A1. You have a customizable "deck" of units you choose at mission start. You can deploy some straight away and call in some reinforcement after having secured some key locations. Now I would love to play an arma warfare mode like straight like this... But maybe it does exist already ? It could be refined with some additional mechanics : - having "command" sectors inland (and not only on the edges) is quite mandatory, but only for infantry (player character respawning) and light vehicles. "Spawning" could occur by transport helicopters, HALO/paradrops, dropships or other sensible methods I can't think of right now (and are not totally safe) - "spawning" armor should be restricted to the edges of the map (landing craft or just "crossing the border") or require you to control an airport inland (transport by C5 or C17) - the more "difficult" a spawning method is, the more command points it costs - building fortifications is quite mandatory but should take more time than currently (configurable) and require you to assign some AI units to it (can be interrupted and resumed in case of contact) - various types of command units (so you don't have just a "Single Point of Failure HQ"), but they cost a great deal of command points. - basic scavenging of fuel and materials from destroyed vehicles and cities, towing damaged vehicles for repairs, militia recruitment and training...) - game mode fine tuning such as invasion/defence... If something like this doesn't already exist, I would love to see it in A2/A3.

I am french, obviously I can speak french and know most of the french military vocabulary (so I can do a english -> french translation of some lines if needed) I can speak english pretty good and can overplay a french accent a bit if necessary I can also speak understandable mandarin chinese and german - with a foreign accent of course, can be french accent but could be american/english - if you give me the lines, as my vocabulary and grammar in these languages is very limited (I can still "read" 汉字 - simplified - if needed)

After automatic update on steam, I notice the AI gets stuck in strange locations. Mission: Dogs of War. Played this mission about a 100 times, never happened so far (never finished it, as before some beta patch I had the 'AI hopelessly-roaming-around-the-map-after-fast-travel-bug'). Strange location includes : - sandbagged positions at "small warfare camps" (not the "buildings"). They get inside (i.e, behind the sandbags, under the camo netting, not clipping inside objects or anything), the exits are about 2 meters wide but they simply can't get out - west of the big square in Chernogorsk (street just leading to the tank statue) : they get stuck to the left side about some building, keeping 1 meter away from the wall without clipping into anything (but the 2 AI that got stuck were definitly clipping into each other) When they get to that locations, they simply can't get out. Given a MOVE order, they reply (not so quickly) with a NEGATIVE/NO CAN DO etc. Inside the entrenched area, the move fine inside the sandbagged perimeter, but even given an order to move 1/2/3 meters away from their current position, but outside they just stare at the location, and reply a NEGATIVE a variable amount of seconds later. Repro hint : try getting close to sandbagged perimeters or walls in FILE or DIAMOND formations. First experienced with ASR AI and CO SLX wounds (so slx_findcover.pbo is activated). Never happened before with those mods, and seems to happen without mods as well. but I'll have to test further and give repro hints and videos, so this post is just a heads up before a more formal bug report, just in case it triggers a "oh sh** we forgot that" moment ;) PS: Is it me or AI CQB reflexes are just nerfed after this patch (map chernarus, still) ? They engage perfectly at long range but will stare at me for ages without doing anything when I'm standing 2 meters in front of them. Happens a lot when PC/AI is close to a wall. Again I'll have to try with vanilla, but it's pretty weird, it's as if there were some invisible geometry preventing them from moving/viewing anything close to objects, as if every object was 1 more meter bigger on each side than its visible size...

Awesome !!! Besides the fun, some fine tuning would definitely open some huuuge gameplay perspectives ! About the weight issue, I assume you are using setVelocity on the object being pushed, so velocity is constant no matter the object weight ? Maybe using a constant weight invisible object (for instance the weight of the PC), giving it a direction vector same as player LoS, applying setVelocity so that it collide with the object being pushed, would do the trick without too much headache ? I honestly don't know if that's possible, I'm no modder (just a random dev) but maybe that's worth looking into ? Actually I guess that if such a method or something alike actually works, that would open up nice things for mods such as sledgehammers, battering rams to breach doors, and so on... I would love being able to push players to the floor in semi-ragdoll mode as well, that would be quite fun (with a sledgehammer :D) Upvoting the tracker issue now, hope I won't give too much headaches to the BIS team now ("oh noooo they did it...")... But I guess they had it coming ! Using a brand new physics engine and no push ? Here, you fixed that for them ;)

From my personnal experience, when a human player is in a vehicle with AI, he is the de facto commander (even if he is sitting in the driver seat). For some reason the gunner won't shoot unless explicitly told so, you need to give him a target (TARGET THAT BMP-2, use right click on target or TAB or target menu (2)) and tell him to fire when he is on target (OPEN FIRE, radio shortcut 3-1) You do not need to select a particular unit when issuing orders (in fact do not select anyone) Now, this behavior can be frustrating and it might be quite bugged, so guys in the community made some mod so that vehicle personnel will automatically engage targets, both infantry and vehicles without the commander having to order them so. These patches can be found in the COWarMod mod compilation for instance - which brings a lot of more or less good stuff along. If you want I can try and pinpoint the exact mod that changes that behavior ---------- Post added at 02:05 ---------- Previous post was at 00:10 ---------- You could try zGuba's Gameplay Mod's Old, but AFAIK it works. ---------- Post added at 02:27 ---------- Previous post was at 02:05 ---------- Or... aigunnertouseallweapons_ai_c_pvpscene Remember to use the latest beta patch.

@PastorJoe you do have combined operations as you bought the complete collection, CO refers to the bundle of Arma 2 + Operation arrowhead. I think Ace messes up with the vanilla singleplayer campaign so I'd suggest you don't use it if you want to play SP How did you download the mods ? Six updater ? How do you launch the game ? Can you provide your complete modline (it's the parameter given to the program in the game shortcut or steam additional parameters, such as "Arma2OA.exe [...] -mod=ACE;CBA_CO;[...]"

Hmmm, are you just missing CBA ? (Community Base Addons) Either use this, extract @CBA_CO in your Arma 2: OA folder and add @CBA_CO in you modline, or use ACE preset from six updater (which uses old @CBA, @CBA_A2 and @CBA_OA folders btw) and possibly modline from six launcher As I'm even aware if ace can start without CBA, maybe the problem is you just tweaked your mod/ace config a bit too much ?

DLC notes: Private Military Company brings you higher res textures for basic survivor skins British Armed Forces is also best if you want to get high res skins for the survivor camo skin (and maybe some vehicles ?) Army of the Czech Republic might not be needed, but as I've seen Czech weapons have been added in the last DayZ patches, maybe this DLC will bring you higher res textures for those weapons as well Anyway Arma 2 Complete Collection is not that expensive and it's a great game :)

I doubt Arma 2 will be patched with something as big as an AI change, but that's up to BIS so who knows ? That doesn't answer the question, but if your are looking for a smoother AI driving experience maybe you should check those mods : - Saku AI driver fix - COSLX SLX_AI_Steering.pbo I've been using those mods for quite sometime, and I doesn't end up in situations where AI stupidly crashes or get stuck while making a u-turn in an avenue :) Now I don't know if both fixes messes with each other or possibly with improvements made in the latest Arma 2 beta I'm always using :) That's the price for using mods without looking what's inside :)

Hmm, the link and URL just leads to a website written in japanese with a picture of a cup of coffee... I guess I'm on the wrong site ! Should it be not related to my setup (I strongly doubt it is but I can post a traceroute result and whois information !) I guess one should change the link or unstick this thread !

Hi, I've been trying to control these beasts for a long time now. Before that, I was actually a very poor pilot and permanently tried and dodge helicopter missions during the campaigns. But the PMC campaign got me and I had to fly a Ka60 to bring that darned convoy to safety, on Expert difficulty as always. And even if that mission could be a lot better (I personally think it's the worse mission in any campaign since OFP) I actually began to enjoy flying (up to the point I'm looking at how to get a RL licence ) For now I'm stuck with the keyboard till I get my joystick (+ whole set, track IR and a few chosen sims ). I only use the mouse for aiming FFAR and maybe extreme sharp turns. And no auto-hover - except in some case to have a look at the map. But I think what input type I use is not that relevant, what relevant is what instrument should you check, how much pressure you should put on controls to get the effect you want. First and foremost : yes I've searched. These forums, Dslyecxi MH-6 training missions, some other game advice, RL and RC heli flying tips, etc. Now, I still have some quite precise questions ! Fast sideslipping I'm quite stuck with this in the MH-9 training. I can follow the AI pilot till I get around 60 km/h, at about 80 km/h my littlebird flips to forward flight no matter what I do. However the AI is capable of reaching speeds around 100 km/h. Note that the reported airspeed is the one on Dslyecxi speed meter, not the stock one. Dslyecxi counter report raw speed no matter the direction, the OA one can vary between minus 30 and 30 km/h I suppose. That's the trade-off of having different means of showing both negative and positive speeds for backward/forward flight I guess, "sideways" speed reports can't really be accurate - I actually wonder what MH-6 instruments would show IRL. Anyway here is what I do : Start from hover, 0 airspeed, MROT parallel to the ground Cyclic left (A) to roll left about 10 to 20 degrees to bring the chopper in a left side-slip Before reaching 50 km/h, I start applying some pressure on the anti-torque (right pedal or C), without yawing right Then, at about 70 km/h, I kind of loose control. I tried constant pressure on the right pedal, tilting backward a bit with the collective, a bit or a lot of both, to no or very little effect : I can't keep a steady side-slipping without great airspeed trade-offs. All along I use the collective a bit to maintain altitude, but I feel it's rarely needed... I am missing something ? I guess that, as choppers have a tail, the combination of inertia and aerodynamics inevitably tends to convert the momentum to forward flight at a certain speed, no matter what (true ?) There must be a "breaking point" however, sideslipping must be achievable up to some speed limit (IRL, without breaking some stuff ?). I guess usable speeds and amount of pressure on the controls highly depend on the helo model, so I'd just like some information about what the proper variables values are for the littlebirds. Also, some tips about how to rapidly invert the side-slip direction would be greatly appreciated ! [*]Circle strafing around a target The target might be a bush, a foot-mobile or a BMP, whatever. I seriously tried to learn how to side-slip hoping to achieve smoother circle strafing. For the moment, I can do it, but it's a bit messy, depends on my mood, the RL weather, finger soreness status... Nothing too predictable ! Anyway, here is what I do : get in a left side-slip from hover put the nose down to get on target quickly start applying some right © rudder to remain on target apply some cyclic "back" (S) and rudder some quick alternate pressures between back cyclic and right rudder do the trick to keep in a circle. some collective might me needed, but not that much. It might not be a perfect circle but I can keep on target with the nose tilted between 25 and 45 degrees down, the airspeed showing something between -25 and -15. , which is a bit puzzling - I did not expect to have the nose down that much, and that much negative speed ! Variables are for the AH-6. Yeah, I actually use the AH to shoot the target with MGs, just to see if the recoil might induce some effect on chopper control (does it IRL/in Arma ?) Anyway this is pretty satisfying, but the two remainng problems are : How to predictablyget in a circle strafe in the first place ? The above method and "messy" variations may work 1 time out of 10, there must be something totally wrong with it. How to rapidly switch direction ? [*]Funelling Funelling, aka circle strafing with the tail down, is not really useful in combat operations I guess ! But you never know :) - plus I guess it's possible and a good thing to understand how to master the beast ! Has anybody achieved that ? Closing words/Before you ask : No, I'm not a big fan of arcade shooter heli flying. I did play some BF3, never in choppers though. BF3 might be quite enjoyable and accessible, but is just boring after some time. And I won't even talk about authenticity in flying models or tactics, I'm no specialist about both but I guess it wasn't made to be realistic, but accessible - and, well, boring in the long run :) Yes, I did train in the editor or custom missions. A lot ! And I'll continue No, I'm not interested in comments complaining about how Arma 2 flying model is :shhh::shhh:ed up... As long as they do not give an answer to my questions of course :). Actually I tried both maneuvers in the Ka60 in Arma 2 AND 3, and suffice to say Take On Helicopters and its rotorlibs clearly made their way into the new game and it's noticeable : the mentioned maneuvers are just far easier. No, English is not my native language, so sorry for the style and grammar mistakes I'm not even be aware of ! Thanks and cheers !