squirrel0311

I know I'm late to the party but this post interested me because I've always been a fan of Arma 3's take on the future of warfare, even the CSAT bug helmets/suits. While I agree that most of the of the stuff the OP mentioned does already exist in some capacity in the real world and implementation of it in the storyline would certainly be interesting to see... When it comes to actually making it a workable part of an actual game, that's something totally different and in my opinion, asking a lot from an engine that can't even simulate walking around in a moving vehicle. Furthermore, we're talking about a game that released in 2013 and was probably being worked on for a while before that, therefore it's not really too surprising to see how conservative their outlook was by todays standards. On top of all of that, they had the huge backlash they got for going for the future theme in the first place. Does anyone remember the storm that came about after the images of the railgun tank? Heck, I remember how much flak I got for saying we needed heavy lift tilt wing and heavy lift quad-rotor aircraft, or for suggesting that they should've added thermal integration to the nightvision since so many people were complain it was "too clear" even though it's set in the future and more than likely wouldn't be Gen3. I love the future setting and gear, to me, the cold war-era and time before have been done enough in Arma.... On the other hand, I know that everything needs to come in moderation and with balance. Warfare technology advances for one main purpose and that is to be more effective and therefore devastating. Real war isn't fun, at all. So when you start implementing weapons like orbital strike capabilities or smart missiles and bullets, generally speaking the gameplay becomes much less fun unless the mission makers spend a lot of time thinking up ways to balance it all. (Just look at Warlords where the Rhino is allowed.) At that point, you have to ask, is it worth spending the time and money to add those kind of assets to a game where you can't even jump over a fence, consolidate your ammo, or bump into another vehicle without exploding? Everyone wants a game/situation where all the latest and most devastating weapons are at their fingertips but when those weapons are pointed at them it suddenly becomes much less fun... Just ask the Armenians.

I was going to suggest something basically similar to what joostsidy said... You can set Freelook or Temporary Freelook to any key of your liking. For example.... My Mouse has three side buttons The Forward button is set as [Temporary Zoom] The middle button is [Temporary Freelook] And the rear button is [Push To Talk] That way when I'm running or flying, (both of which I only do in 1st Person View), I can simply hold my middle mouse button and look around me; when I let go, my view snaps back to center. Slightly unrelated: I have been wondering if there is a way to enable 3rd Person View and disable Freelook for only certain vehicle drivers. e.g. For my multiplayer game I've been working on, I'd like to make it 1st person only, except for drivers of armored vehicles. Since being stuck to the interior view of a tank or APC can get boring after a while, I'd like to give only the driver the ability to go 3rd person but disable their ability to use freelook. (That way they can't park behind a wall and peek over to give call outs and what not.)

My friend just started having similar sound issues after the last Windows 10 update; it seems that whenever she gets into a vehicle there is a really loud static noise that nearly drowns out any other sound. There's something more to it than just that though because her game crashes after a few minutes of running when she gets into a vehicle.

Well I'd say it mostly depends on how much work you want to do. I started a KOTH/CTI style game mode over 4 years ago but have pretty much given up since my computer was stolen and all my work was lost. 8/ King of the Hill is by far my most favorite multiplayer gamemode, I just think it gives what a lot of the others fail to provide; and that is quick, basic, military styled, dynamic action combat. The main strengths of KotH in my opinion are: No Mods required: King of the Hill allows a vanilla player to join a server and get right into the fight without needing to search for different required mods in most cases. Only one Area of Operation: There's not 15 different objectives being fought for at one time, which allows your entire team to focus their efforts on one area. Since most Arma multiplayer servers can only run with about 90 to 100 people max; when you've only got 30 people against 60, manpower counts. Various Methods of Transportation: Fly, drive, or parachute in. If the enemy has one way of travel locked down, you have other options available. Fast paced Dynamic Combat: This is mainly due to playing against real people instead of boring and predictable AI, but it also has to do with the ability to simply spawn in and go without needing to gather your gear every time. Different types of King of the Hill: Personally I'm a HardCore Infantry Only player, which means 1st person Only, No Crosshair, and No Armed vehicles. If that isn't your style though there's are plenty of populated servers with tanks, apcs, jets, and attack helicopters and even 3rd person... Weaknesses of King of the Hill and ways to improve them: Balanced Teams- 3 teams often takes away much needed manpower when the server population is low. King of the Hill already has this solved for the most part although it could be further dealt with by only having 2 factions involved. If you're on one faction, for example, Bluefor, what does it matter if you're fighting Csat or Altis forces as seperate factions? The route I took for my multiplayer gamemode was to display the alliances. Nato(US/UK) Csat(Iran/Altis) so you can play as a member of either uniformed force depending on your faction. Balanced gear- This is one that feels like a lot of people really don't look at when it comes to making multiplayer gamemodes for Arma. You have to remember that military technology in general is built to give the person using it an advantage over their enemy, therefore it's extremely important for the mission maker to look at the capability of each weapon and vehicle and try to think of all the ways a player can use them and decide what effective means the opposite side has to counter it. Individual gear needs to be considered as well. Sure it's fun to play Gary Gear Queer dress up time and pretend to be super secret special dark shadow space seals; but often what that boils down to in multiplayer shooters is someone getting the most devistating gun with a silencer and usually a ghillie suit then camping a road or hiding in a bush. If thats the kind of combat you wish to encourage then that's fine but it probably wont be very popular. It's slow, tedious, and not fun for the people who don't have the capability or dont' want to play that way. One thing I don't like about King of the Hill is that certain DLC loadouts provide a lot more protection than what a newbie or vanilla player can get. (EOD kit) While many like that arcade-shooter aspect of earning money and ranking up to buy new gear, when you're a new player who's limited to 5.56mm only, having to put 8 - 10 rounds into someone to kill them is extremely frustrating when they can shoot you once with a Navid and drop you. A lot of people love the look of KotH and Arma3 in general but when having to deal with starting at the bottom as well as learn the game in general it becomes more tedious than fun and they usually just quit because other games can give them the same thing at a much easier learning curve. (I'm not saying everything needs to be given up front, just that certain things can be balanced better.) For my multiplayer gamemode, I had set fireteams and set classes within each fireteam that a player had to choose before spawning in. Choosing a certain class determined what kind of weapon you could carry but all weapons for both factions were restricted to 6.5mm and below. (TeamLeader-MXGL/KatibaGL, MGGuner-MK200, Medic-MX/Katiba, ATGunner-MX,MAWS Mod0/Katiba,Almut, AsstAT/Repairspec- MX/Katiba) Everyone was equipped with a .45 caliber pistol and either 2 11rd mags or 4cylinders depending on which faction. They also had Plate carriers and Enhanced Combat Helmet / Raven vest and Assassin helmets for CSAT, CarryAll backpacks, 2RGO grenades, 5 Green Smoke grenades, 4IFAKs, GPS, NVGs, Binos, map, radio, compass,(Range finders for TL) Everyone had the standard uniform for their faction. No ghillie suits, no civilian clothes, no thermal hiding cammies, or anything else that made it hard to identify what side you were on. Also there were no suppressors. Anyone could pick up a weapon off a dead body but spawning in with pretty much everything you needed kind of cuts down the time it takes for Tactical Timmy to stop playing dress up or asking in voice chat which weapon he should buy. Balanced vehicles and avaliability- This pretty much follows the same principles as above. Careful consideration should be taken to determine the full effectiveness of a vehichle and how it will most probably be employed, not just how it's supposed to be. For example: King of the Hill when Bluefore had the Armed Blackfish or the armed Ghost hawk... Everyone flocked to Bluefor because it just wasn't fun getting sprayed from 400 meters above. Or in the case of warlords and the Rhino, setting up as far as you can get from the action and effectively halting any chance the enemy team has at possibly winning. Again, all of this depends on the type of gameplay you want to encourage so if that's your thing then so be it, but as for myself and many others I play with, it's not. Server rules can midigate some of it too but if there's no admin on, you might be losing players. The way I handled this was that only a certain number of tanks and apc's could be spawned at once and then there was a cool down period... (I never got all that working right though. It may not be possible) Point system that rewards camping- This ties into the above... If you allow people to gain XP and Money by simply killing enemy anywhere they wish, then envitably you'll have those who forego the purpose of the game and simply camp a spawn or a road from spawn because seeing their score or money go up is more rewarding than fighting someone who has a chance to fight back. Server rules can stop this too but with my gamemode, I made it so that kills only count when both parties are inside the AO, the AO's were bigger though. Voteban feature- This is something that every multiplayer game needs in my opinion. I hate having to stop playing so I can track down an admin because someone is griefing or hacking... Plenty of times I've watched a game screech to a halt because no admins were present. A feature that would take a 2/3s vote and ban a username or steamID for 3 hours would be great. There's a lot more I could talk about but you've likely stopped reading by this point. haha P.S. Endgame wounded system- This would be neat too but instead of just being able to revive wounded teammates, I had wanted to be able to "Capture"(revive) enemy players as well. Doing so would send them back to spawn and count for double points. (Never got this working either)

Nothing new. The U.S. Army has been toying with the idea of new round for quite a long time. One of the first alternatives to 5.56mm that I remember was the 6.5mm MPC (Multi-Purpose Cartridge.) I'd speculate that the 6.5mm MPC is where BI got the idea for the caliber change in game. In real-life I think they found that the 6.5mm MPC had less performance and capability than the 6.5mm Grendel, which they then decided if you're going to pay to upgrade to Grendel then you might as well go 6.8mm. But with 300Blk now on the market, I'm not too sure they'll be willing to switch to 6.8mm either.

I see. That looks pretty sweet! I take it they're generated server side right? So everyone playing would be able to see the same civilian and the same color clothes/vehicle? If you had a small number of AI civilians, could you make it so that whenever one was killed it would detract points from a players score? For my game mode, I'd like to have around 10-15 civilians running or driving around the AO. Players would have to take care and ensure they get positive ID on enemy targets before engaging; killing civilians would detract from their XP.

Yeah I know they have Votekick but unless they changed it recently it just kicks you from the server and lets you back in after a very short amount of time. It's been a couple of months at least since I've played Warlords but I remember on several occasions my team votekicking a player only to have him return several minutes later under the same name. And if he kills you in spawn then you have to deal with trying to open the map and votekick him again before he shoots and kills you.

Unfortunately I feel like there are a lot of things warlords still needs to fix, but the hackers is definitely one of the major ones. This may not have actually been a thing but I can't help but recall playing on a server that had a VOTE BAN feature way back in 2014. I'm not sure if it ever worked but is this not something that is possible? When a hacker or griefer is present, the rest of the team can vote to ban his profile or Steam ID for a period of 3 hours or so. Another problem with this is that in warlords I think you have to be alive in order to access the vote options. 8/

Wasteland isn't my thing and I barely even have time to check the forums so unfortunately I can't help you there. I like what you've done though. I'm curious to know how many people can be playing on your sever with the ambiance mod running before it starts to lag too much or drop frames. I've been wanting to do something similar for my game mode but at 96 players max I think it might be too much.

For the span of about 3.5 to 4 years I've been working on a combined arms multiplayer game, unfortunately, this project took a serious set back when my computer was stolen and all my progress was lost. While I have started over with the easy stuff like vehicles, loadouts, bases, AOs and things of that nature, I've been struggling to find the motivation to do the more complicated and tedious stuff which is of course, making it all work together. Being that I work 12-14hrs a day with anywhere from 10-14hrs off, my time to work on this game is limited. My knowledge in coding and scripting is limited as well, forcing me to ask and learn as I go. With all that being said, I've been contemplating finding and commissioning someone to help me with coding the game to actually make it work.... I know it would be best if I could find someone with a high level of coding and scripting knowledge who also has the same amount of interest in my game mode as myself but what else should I look for and consider? I'm really just looking for a good starting point as well as anything I should keep in mind when choosing and making an agreement before I post on the Editing forum. It's going to be a pretty big job, something on par with Warlords I'd say, although a lot of the Warlords tools may be able to be used...

END GAME: As anxious as I am to see what these new MP game modes are, I'm sad to say that I have to really focus on not getting my hopes up based on what has already been put out. As Quicksilver said, despite the hard work that went into creating them, the current game modes seem to be only moderately thought out and hastily thrown together. I've played quite a bit of End Game and unless something has changed over the last 5 months I've been without a computer, one of the biggest problems that I remember about playing on official servers was the lack of an effective [Vote Ban] function. (One that doesn't let you come right back in.) I've had several game night events nearly completely ruined because people found out I had invited a large group of friends in to play and decided to troll us by team killing and driving off into the water with the vehicles and even the schematics! Compare this with the fact that even still, a large number of players don't even know what End Game is, let alone understand clearly how to play, and it's easy to see why there are so few playing. Why struggle to learn something with a mediocre explanation of the rules while enduring almost constant trolling when you can just stick to a game you already understand and know is policed by admins? Unfortunately I've only had even worse experiences playing Zeus MP. CORE OF ARMA: I have to halfway disagree with the statement that PvP isn't the Core of ArmA. I know plenty of veteran players, myself included, whom almost exclusively desire to play PvP ArmA. AI is neat and all but it can't match the skill and cunning of a real person working as part of a team. And with the way ArmAs controls handle...You've pretty much got to use a certain level of tactics to survive. Hahaha As bad as it sounds to a lot of ArmA players, I wish it was more arcade gamey in a couple of ways... That doesn't mean everyone should have to play that way, but it would be nice to have the options to make those kinds of game modes a bit easier. I will be the first to point out my distaste for game modes like Life and even Wasteland, and Battle Royale, but I can't deny how popular they are and the recognition as well as numbers of new players they've brought to ArmA. MY FAVORITE: Personally my most favorite Game mode is King of the Hill (Hardcore[1st person only] Infantry Only) despite the fact that many call it "Too Arcade!" I also agree with that assessment but no matter what, it has proven time and time again to be the one game mode that meets the most of my desires. My time at home is short, so when I do get free time I don't want to have to spend 15 minutes waiting on my team to gear up, another 15min waiting for them to make a plan, and another 15min waiting for them to explain it to everyone before we can get started. I also don't want to be tied to a fire team of idiots who Iike to drive straight into the enemy defense and get shot up over and over then punish me cause I refuse to go with them. It's for these simple reasons that I enjoy King of the Hill... I can play lone wolf or work together with my team/group, I can fly, drive, or shoot whenever I want without an obligation to do much else. Sadly though, even King of the Hill (Hardcore) has begun to disappear for the (IMO) more gamey/easy mode 3rd person version. 8\ WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE: I have what I consider to be a pretty well laid out idea for an MP game mode that combines elements of King of the Hill with CTI, PlanetSide 2, and even some more arcade like games such as Battlefield. Rather than explain it now though, I'll wait till I get back to my computer so I can add some pictures. I'm curious to know though, if it would be possible to find some coders whom would be willing to try and make it happen for money. Across the board, I'd like to see a Vote Ban feature for all Official servers if one doesn't already exist. Say something like... 3hrs? Something else I'd like to see is a MP lobby where me and my friends can link up and then all join a server at once as a group to keep from being split up. (I know that would require the server/game mode to recognize that feature though.)

Ah I see! Yeah I saw your post from earlier, thanks. I just wasn't sure the server would track what players were doing off the map. I wonder if that's more taxing on it.

You're right, I just forgot to add that it was already (in Game) next to the description. It was a late night post and I had to get to sleep. Haha I couldn't remember the names since I havent been able to play for sevreal months because my computer was stolen. I'd like to also add that I do in fact like the wipeout. Since we have a bit of artistic freedom, I wonder what a stealthier-ish-looking SU-25 frogfoot would have been like... Or maybe The plane that was actually supposed to be more of a Russian CAS aircraft like the A-10, The IL-102. I get that coin type aircraft could feel a bit redundant but I also think that would mainly come down to mission makers ability to keep it fun and challenging. Forgot to mention that the L-15B might be just a knockoff version of another aircraft too. I haven't been able to do much research on it. Does Arma let you fly and dogfight with other players online in the black parts of the map? I cant remember.

I agree that the maps are too small at least for the Jets dlc. I wish they would have focused on something more like COIN aircraft. NATO:Textron Scorpion - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion AltFor: Buzzard CSAT / CSAT E: TO-199 Neophron (Since China/Yak worked together to build almost the same plane.) CSAT/E Heavy Ground Attack aircraft: Stealthier/ modern / sleeker version of the SU-25 frogfoot Or The IL-102 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-102 Anyone: EMB -314 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano And or Machete Concept attack aircraft - https://www.funker530.com/machete-attack-plane/ Depending on the flight models and capabilities implemented, you could still have fun and challenging air battles along with an arguably more fitting aircraft for CAS missions. Something like the Super Tuscano or Machete would have been great for Tanoa, I think.

As others have already said, I have to agree that the main reason behind people disliking thermals is simply a result of POOR MISSION MAKING. In fact, I'd say that a lot of hate towards the future setting in general is a result of the same. It's odd to me how some people will completely lose their minds when you talk about balanced game play but then complain and call for the removal of an item, or weapon, and see it as something different than balancing. Mission makers have to decide on the type of gameplay they want to encourage and then really pay attention to the assets they implement as well as the terrain, boundaries, and rules. King of the Hill is a great example of this... In the beginning, it was basically a free for all fight over one small town with practically everything available for those who played enough to buy the vehicles and weapons they wanted to use. While it was fun for a breif moment, there quickly became a noticeable gap between veteran players and new players that resulted in a lack of fun for newcomers or anyone who enjoys infantry combat (myself included).... When the whole point of the game is to occupy the limits of a single town, it becomes less fun to play when someone in a tank can sit 5km outside the AO and blast anyone or any building they're hiding in, into dust. Even worse was the players in attack helicopters who would (and still do on some servers) hover beyond visual range and kill anything leaving spawn with guided missiles... This is what led to the creation of infantry only servers, spawn limits, and weapons perks which fixed some things but still have their problems. Some might argue that tanks and helicopters can still be countered which is true but, with the poor team structure in KotH (3 teams) and the fact that most players flocked to the CSAT team resulting in a gross lack of man power for one or both of the other teams, it made it near impossible to win without joining the biggest team. These lessons can and should be applied by all mission makers or at least taken into account depending on what their goals are. Just look at how Shacktac does it's missions. Yes they use iron or red dot sights only in most missions because it adds more of a challenge. They also don't give their attack helicopters free reign to hunt and kill anything they see, instead, they may have specific targets or only attack on request. As for the future setting, I'd just have to say that I love it! I don't want to go too far though! (PLEASE NO force fields, lasers, or cloaking devices. Haha) But in response to thermals being "Too good" I simply look at it as an advancement in technology. As time passes, images get clearer and thermals get more sensitive. With all that being said, I admit there are a lot of things I would have liked to have seen done differently. I can only imagine the storm of complaints that might have come about if Thermal Night Vision was implemented for NATO forces the way I wanted it.... For anyone curious to know, there is actually prototype tech being developed that pairs a night vision image with a thermal image overlay, resulting in a night vision picture where hot objects are either highlighted or outlined... https://www.wired.com/2011/09/night-vision/