akiba

Hey! First of all, your scenario is awesome. One thing that would be awesome to get adjusted though would be movement speed of the moving pop up targets to match the speed of a walking/running/sprinting AI/Player. That is extremely important to make training improvements possible. Also the Bullet track looks kinda wierd.

The problem is actually not the quantity of vehicles. It is the distribution. There are respawn locations where you can hardly find any vehicles because they are pretty far off. Maybe reduce the spawn locations and concentrate the vehicles to those areas to fix the second most annoying problem (right after the FPS issues) there is atm with altis.

There is a rumor that it will be released this week

Basically you have to the Forum http://forums.arma.su/ and post your case there, but since it's down it might be that you have to wait a little.

Is the Forum offline for anyone else, too?

Again, go to the new Forum and post there!. - 3rd person is disabled on hardcore servers. - probably not any time soon because sa-matra is really busy working on altis - No. - No. - Work in progress.

You have to go to the new Forum and post in Ban appeals: http://wasteland.arma-3.co.uk/forums/ sincerely, Akiba

I fully agree. We need more admins on the servers, especially the EU ones. I often joined the teamspeak to talk to an admin too and stayed there for hours with no one joining. Russian admins were there though. Back to the Thermal topic. Inch, as you mentioned you can switch it back on, will you do it?.

Hi, First of all i wanted to say that i really enjoyed your post. Good discussion! Well they would benefit from it of course but cover is scarce in Stratis and you only have 2 smokescreens (do they even work against AT?) at max :(. I strongly disagree to reduce the damage of the Titan weapons!. It would be just another Battlefield aspect then. It is just not realistic anymore when a Tank survives 4-5 RPG's. AT Weapons should destroy vehicles pretty easy and armed vehicles should kill infantry pretty easy..that's how it goes. Yes sometime it's frustrating but you won't fix this issue by nerfing weapons. Starcraft for example balances by having multiple "overpowered" units. Yes they are very strong itself but the other op units are as well and it is a lot of fun. Of course we are talking about an FPS sim game and not about an RTS one but i hope you know what i mean. I would like to restrict Thermal to higher class vehicles, so the Hunter/Ifrit/strider vehicles won't have it. And there are!. Thermal won't safe you in close areas like a Town. Enemy's will still get into your blind spot where you can't shoot them with the main weapon and destroy your wheels or plant explosives. Thermal doesn't provide 360° view!. It boils down to who has the first shot basically, yes. And that is tense!. The vehicle crew has to be on their toes to spot for enemy's and this isn't as easy as you think even with thermal. It is exhausting. I like it this way. The reconnaissance problem isn't really big. Remember, the commander seat still has thermal but the use as a reconnaissance is pretty rare even though i would like to see it more often, because it is strong but it requires a lot of Teamwork!. Most of the times people will just get confused when you tell them where the enemy is. It is not very easy so it should be rewarding for a team with good teamwork. I also don't like the word "dominate" here. I don't think it fits because even when the enemy position is kinda revealed (most of the time you can only tell your teammates roughly where they are) there is still a good possibility that he will kill your teammates. sincerely, Akiba

You are trying to provoke, or at least many people will feel provoked by your writing but whatever... You didn't counter my argument (not plural). Basically you are saying that you don't need to pick up better (caliber, range, accuracy) weapons because you can kill everyone with your pistol?. That's not it. Of course you can and should be able to win a fight with a weapon that is inferior to the weapon of your opponent, but the one with the better weapon has an advantage. I mean he should have otherwise everybody would just run around with the pistol and not searching for supply to increase their chance to survive. sincerely, Akiba

Simply put: Yes it is very powerful. Basically there should be no balance in ArmA 3 considering weapons. Please take your time and read the previous pages where you can see my arguments considering at weapons. Yes Fuel should be used up quicker in vehicles and big helos. I will simply ignore your bad behavior. Please consider your language towards others. We have a good, respectful discussion running here, please don't ruin it. You shouldn't always win an encounter just because you have the "bigger" weapon. But it should definitely give you an advantage. War isn't always about skill. Good luck killing a tank with your pistol ;). I'm glad that you are such a good player that you can kill everyone with a pistol though.

Why should Thermal provide a disadvantage? where is the disadvantage of having and ARCO scope? you basically have the disadvantage, that you can't see the terrain as good as without optics. I don't like this Idea. A equipment that masks the thermal signature of an player seems too futuristic to me. I also have to strongly disagree against the Batterie idea. Armored vehicles already need constant ammunition resupply which is, as mentioned before, pretty tough to get. You also still need food and water even when you are in an armored vehicle. In your theory a player with an armored vehicle needs: -Batteries -Food -Water -(Fuel)* -Ammunition -and let's face it, repair kits. *You rarely need it, except for the single time when you capture it Seems more like a burden than an actual upgrade. I know that you can still run the vehicle without batteries but i think that you need thermal as mentioned in several posts before. sincerely, Akiba

Hey again ;) Just wanted to ask how the chances are to get an "official" response on the whole Thermal optics topic from an Admin or even Samatra himself. Thank you very much in advance. sincerely, Akiba Edit: There is now a locking warning sound in the dev branch.

So you want only a indie team where players can form their own groups? I would like to see more details about your idea, as you mentioned, you are just writing down ideas ;). A group score is definitly a cool idea, it would form stronger bonds between the group members i think. So when the squad gets the same gear (with variations) as the group leader, the whole group will get an bonus? can't think about a bonus that will actually work. I think you have to consider the survival aspect of the mission. There should be a wide variety on patched up gear. You are grabbing what you can that will help you survive. Good idea but i think you will always have..lets call them "not-so-friendly-players" in your team. And who even likes the Opfor uniform? ;D. The only reason i see myself playing Opfor is, that it is not so overrun with people like Blufor. sincerely, Akiba

Hi, First of all i want to thank you or your time to comment on this topic. I hope everybody understands that i don't hate on sa-matras work. Like i said before, i think it is the best mission around at the moment. If it was just another map, i wouldn't go through the trouble of listing up my thaughts and concerns to hopefully contribute to a even better mission. Therefore i am trying to be constructive. You can't activate NV without Thermal as mentioned by sa-matra The disabeling of Thermalvision is not a BI issue AFAIK. I have seen it on different servers still enabled. Sa-matra can enable it again. Theoretically it should be possible to dodge an AA-missile with flares when you see the warning on the radar. The problem is, the missile is so fast that you can't react in time. Even the AI helicopter gets shot down when it uses flares. It's just not in time. A warning sound on lock on would be awesome and should fix this problem but there is still the problem for Armored Vehicles... I think the Titan compact should be able to easily destroy an enemy armored vehicle...the weapon itself is fine. The only problem is that you can't do anything against it as a vehicle driver. Even at daytime you cant really watch out for infantry at a long distance. Armored Vehicles should be able to defend themselves better against it and the only way it is possible is thermal. You can't watch through cover with thermal and the Titan compact only needs 3-4 seconds to lock on. Ergo you only have to be 4-5 seconds out of cover to land an almost certain hit and that is fine. AT weapons are the counter to vehicles. The chance should be better for the AT but there should be still a possibility that the "Tank" wins the encounter. So basically my solution for this topic is to enable Thermal and Nightvision again and to implement a warning signal for helicopters on lock on*. *I know that is probably hard to make such a thing actually work Edit: A very interesting video about flares: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fd0vPWDZwk&feature=player_embedded sincerely, Akiba

I have to admit that i am fairly disappointed with this statement. You only responded to to the AT Argument. And lets face it, when you encounter an enemy squad you face certain death in your vehicle. I strongly disagree that missions should be balanced because of users crying/raging. I also disagree that you need only one thermal weapon (GMG) to dominate a server. Like i said several times before, the GMG is not very effective at somewhat far distances. A Thermal APC should be able to dominate a server, considering how rare you get one. A good squad of players should be able to dominate servers. I will go ahead and list some arguments again: -Nighttime makes every armed vehicle useless -Every player has the same chances to get one theoretically -Every armred vehicle has only 1/4 of ammunition when you get it under your control - you have to rearm it for 1000$ (or even 2-3000 until it actually works) which is only available at a gunstore, the most dangerous zones on the map!. -APC's should be able to dominate considering how rare you get one. -GMG armed vehicles would only get a little buff considering the inaccuracy of the weapon and that you need a 100% hit to actually kill someone with 1 shot. The travel speed of the projectile is very slow which makes it very hard to kill a target at a range ~500m+ -Don't you think players in a helicopter or armored vehicle who get killed by a titan locked missile can do anything about it? actually most of the times it comes out of the blue and you are dead. Armored vehicles are pretty loud but you can't hear an infantry men aiming at you from 1000m away*. -Players should die to enemys with better equipment otherwise the whole game mode of searching and fighting for better gear is absurd. Changing the balance* without considering different aspects of the game (Titan compact/MPLR) is half-assed and hurts the game even more. *There is nothing more frustrating for a squad *I still do believe that ArmA isn't about balance like BF and CoD....it is a war simulation. When people don't like this aspect of the game, they can return playing CoD or BF or any other similar game... sincerely, Akiba

Actually you are ready to fight when you find a car, which is almost only 1-3 min away, and pick the weapon out of its inventory. Then you are ready to go. Basically you don't need a backpack, a vest and what not..you only need a weapon with 2 mags and a first aid kid. So the duration to equip yourself is very quickly done. Even if there isnt a vehicle around, you can still respawn somewhere else. Also you don't have to run "around hald and hour seeing no one". When you know how the game flows with its missions you can be within combat in 10 minutes. Yes this is still a pretty long time compared to Call of Duty and Battlefield, but we don't need to discuss why its ok the way it is. You also have the option to avoid Combat to try to sneak into Houses to find equipment or to get to your buddys. That's the beauty about this game style. You also don't need a safe funktion (and there won't be one anyway so actually no point in discuss it any further). Long term players, like me and many others, are already attracted to these servers. Finding your gear is part of the fun. I don't even like servers anymore where you spawn on wasteland with a backpack,vest and helmet. The Base Idea of yours works against the Idea of being a survival mode. The Players have to build a Base! also a huge part of the Fun for most of them. No offense to you, i really like that you put some thaughts into the mission, but maybe you are better of at a different kind of wasteland mission :). APC's are extremly rare to get and also pretty strong. That's why i didn't mentioned them, because they should be powerfull. Don't forget that you have only a limited amount of amunition for any armored vehicle and that you have to rearm it (which is pretty buggy btw.) for 1000$ which you can only get at a gunstore, a very dangerous area like everyone knows. So for the GMG armored vehicles: They can never kill an entire squad at a distance above ~+500m. Of course you aren't completly useless either, but the danger is pretty manageable. A single enemy with a, for example, Titan compact can easily instead, kills an armored vehicle (even APCs) with a single guided missile. Very easy to use - no chance for the vehicle crew. If someone is goign on about that the disabling of Thermal is because of balance, they should nerf the Titan weapon system too. But nerfing is the wrong way!. I again refer to my post at page 22. Armored vehicles should be able to fight a squad. They should be able to obliterate an engaging squad without anti tank weapons and they should die against anti tank weapons! - but not without standing a chance! (At nighttimes you don't even have to fear them at close range cause they can't see anything anyway) they are too rare to get and the hardships to keep the vehicle running with ammunition is pretty tough. We get to the point where armored vehicles are more like deathtraps (i know im exaggerating in this sentence a bit ;)). I appreciate every feedback to my comments and i would really like to discuss this Topic with everyone who still consideres Thermal overpowered. sincerely, Akiba

The duration to prepare for a fight is actually really short: Run to a vehicle and pick up the weapon from its inventory - done!. Also you won't ever run around half an hour without seeing anyone when you know the flow of the game with its missions. You can move to an objective like a geo cache and you will find enemy contact for sure. Also you don't have to attract long term players...there are already plenty of them, including me. For them its part of the fun to gather equipment and run around..you can actually decide wether or not you have enemy contact to a certain point. APC's are really rare so they should be powerfull. And no, it can not eliminate a squad (btw a GMG hit needs to be a direct hit to actually kill someone with 1 shot) - except when they are stupid and engage a armored vehicle without anti tank weapons or when they don't understand to keep a distance to your fellow squad member!. And consider the following, a single player can kill a armored vehicle with 1 guided AP/AT missile from an Titan compact. It should go both ways. At the moment there is a very limited risk to attack an armored vehicle from a distance with RPG's...especially at night times. sincerely, Akiba

Hi, A save option won't be in the sa-matra games. I read a post of him about this topic somewhere. @Yashamalu: I really appreciate the effort you put into this, but i think you are trying to make a totally different mission than what was intended by sa-matra. It is a survival mission. To build a Base is one of the tasks of the players. I also recommend my post about Thermal and Nightvision at page 22 of this thread. It is true that you can spot enemys with Thermal very easy at a huge distance. But to kill someone with a GMG at 500m+ is really difficult. The GMG is pretty inaccurately, you can't really kill a moving target at a distance above 500m without shooting aout 10-20 rounds and even this takes a while because you have to zero in again etc. The enemy has enough time to get away. @Inch: The Uk servers are the best servers around at the moment, at least for the EU Players. The EU servers need admin support and a fixed restart timer like the UK servers. @Sa-matra and Inch: I would really like to get your opinion on the whole Thermal+Nightvision topic, because i think it hurts the mission really bad atm (see my post at page 22 of this thread). Also i would like to know your thaught process behind the whole Idea of disableing it. sincerely, Akiba

Hey, I don't understand what you were trying to say here. Another point that bugs me. The AH-99 and the Kaiman are very rare to get so they should be very powerful. I played a lot of sa-matra since Alpha and in teams where we get nearly every capture vehicle and downed helicopter and still we only had like 2 AH-99 and 4-5 Kaimans in my whole Arma 3 life. Atm the missles of the Kaiman feel more like shooting with a Katjuscha then a weapon system of today or even the future. I don't understand in general why the missile lock is disabled. Considering the rare occurance of the attack helicopters and, even more the fact that a Titan MPRL destroys a Helicopter without any escape chance for the Pilot. Because there is no warning signal for incoming aa-missiles the flares are pretty useless. I still never heard someone complaining about balance even tho there should be a warning sound in the future. In general I think Arma isn't about balance like counterstrike or battlefield. Arma claims to be a War simulation and i think that we all agree that War isn't balanced at all ;). I totally agree with you on that topic. Even tho the quality of the servers differ quite a bit (for example the EU and UK servers). sincerely, Akiba

Hello Sa-Matra and Community First of all i want to apologize for my bad English. Then i want to add that i played countless of Hours the sa-matra map because in my eyes its simply the best map atm. The Problem i encountered is that the weapons of vehicles become nearly useless when its getting pitch black night because of the disabled night vision and thermal. I know it is not possible to enable NV only and that some people consider Thermal overpowered. Honestly i don't consider Thermal overpowered anymore. At first when people where new to the game and didn't know how to really handle enemy vehicles, it was truly a very strong thing to have an armored vehicle like the Ifrit GMG, Hunter GMG and the Strider GMG but nowadays they resemble more like a death trap. 1 RPG blows those things to pieces and to get hands on one isn't really difficult anymore because most players are experienced. On top of that comes the inventory bug which leads to a lot of more money in the game than there should be and with that of course more RPG's. Thermal vision gives you the advantage to see hostiles really easy. But it is still not such a big deal as you might think, because the GMG is inaccurate at higher distances. In close ranges the slow turret turn speed is a huge disadvantage that can be easily taken advantage of. It's not a rare occurrence that an enemy comes close to the Vehicle and destroys all wheels. That will still happen. TV does not provide 360° vision. Therefore i would like to see Thermal and NV re-enabled in Vehicles again, at least on some servers. sincerely, Akiba