Freedom Fighters - questions

Hello,

Playing arma 2 1.08 within CO using 1.58.78413 beta patch.

This scenario is brutal enough as it is, but I just captured a grenade launcher jeep, and it vanished into thin air after about 5 minutes of use. 4 seconds later, standing in the street alone in astonishment like an idiot, I got wasted by some soldiers. I also saw vanishing vehicles in Badlands. What gives? Total crap.

Also, I raced down to Electrozavodsk ASAP after starting to try and destroy the base, as doing anything else is apparently pointless due to infinitely respawning enemy tanks and apcs. After doing some damage to the base and blowing up the offices, I noticed red "x"s for the objectives 1) destroy the base, 2) destroy checkpoints, and 3) liberate villages. These three objectives constitute nearly the entire purpose of the scenario. It is now just past dawn, and I assume that the X's mean that it is too late to accomplish those objectives? WTF? What do the x's mean? Is there any point in continuing, or should I restart from scratch for the 5th time?

Will the base itself respawn when the X's are present? :mad:

I should also note that when you are injured, a medic on your squad will NOT heal you when you yell "injured." Nice. More total crap. Why bother buying medics if they don't heal you? They will heal other injured squadmates if you command them to do so. One major weakpoint of Arma 2 is that squadmates won't do much unless you tell them to. Aren't they trained soldiers? Why won't medics automatically heal injured squadmates? Argh!

Thank you in advance...

I just captured a grenade launcher jeep, and it vanished into thin air after about 5 minutes of use. 4 seconds later, standing in the street alone in astonishment like an idiot, I got wasted by some soldiers. I also saw vanishing vehicles in Badlands. What gives? Total crap.

I think I saw lot of similar stuff in Dogs Of War. If you find abandoned vehicles friendly or enemy, move them and abandon them again, then you will soon notice them explode after awhile. I once moved 4 trucks in HQ and put them in line. Soon they were all selfdestructed (we were kilometers away from nearest enemies and behind some heavy defence line). I think this selfdestruct is made to keep game running smoother and allowing to buy/build new units, since all unused vehicles around will consume some hardware power. If you are using captured vehicle which is damaged even slightly, I think it will keep degrading and eventually be destroyded. But well I have seen bought vehicles disappear after loading savegame leaving you standing near or even kilometers away. Unfortunately these issues are hard to reproduce for CIT, so I have no high hopes if they will ever be fixed. Although I have seen vanishing vehicles only in Badlands and Dogs Of War, which makes me think it is related to missions that have Warfare2 elements in them.

I'm not familiar with Freedom Fighters, so hope someone else has ideas on those.

The only time Medic has healed me was on Operation Arrowhead campaign Good Morning T-stan mission. I was really surprised to get help. So stupid those Medics are.

Empty vehicles will dissappear in all warfare missions, There is the garbage removal module for this. Captured vehicles will even get removed when you're in, so capturing is no way to get a safe vehicle.

For keeping a unboradd vehuicle you need to have a A.I. in it on a passager seat so it wotn dissapear after a while.

This goes for user made warfare mission too when they use the same modules. Otherwise the map would be crouded with empty vehicles in no time and game is unplayable soon.

Just team switch into the medic and heal your former self. Then switch back. But yes, why they do not do so by themselves is annoying as hell

Thank you all. Past threads about Freedom Fighters had a max of TWO-THREE people who "said" they finished the mission. I tried what one of them wrote, and it didn't really work:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1574157&postcount=25

Team switching to the medic is a great idea, but I didn't try that as I thought that that function was disabled for Warfare 2 (Blech) missions. I'll try it though - thanks. I used to use that all the time in the campaign.

It makes perfect sense what you all say about vanishing vehicles. Normally this is not a problem, but in desperate missions, like this one, when you cannot buy vehicles everywhere, you need every vehicle you can get. The idea of having a mate in the passenger seat is a great one. I'd try it, but my mates have already been killed, so I am all alone against most of the enemy base, with no METIS rockets left, just the weak-ass silenced Kobra which is like a pellet gun, or a water pistol. I'm pinned down in the main Elektro strongpoint, waiting forever for the capture timer to wind down. I killed the occupants of the grenade jeep, and rushed over to it and roared away, only to have it vanish a few minutes later, leaving me very much in the lurch.

Unfortunately, none of you answered the question that is my biggest problem, the dreaded red X's. Still no ideas? I guess none of you, wisely, have played this BRUTALLY UNFORGIVING scenario. Maybe you guys know better.

I don't think you can win without destroying the base and capturing all the villages. And there's no way those objectives can be failed. Ignore that glitchy ass tasks bar, for your sanity.

Some tasks, like destroying the HQ, are designed for the nighttime.

I beat this mission without destroying the HQ and without the checkpoint task every registering as completed. Red X's typically mean n/a rather than failed. They may mean that someone else has done it for you, or they may just be inexplicably stupid.

Bottom line: destroy all the buildings, take all the towns, profit.

And use the Spacebar-6 menu to have medic heal you.

Warfare sucks.

Excellent, thank you. Spacebar 6??? :confused: I'll try it.

I just drove another grenade jeep (awesome weapon if it won't vanish) onto the base itself, and destroyed everything, but I saw the HQ respawn in front of me. Nothing like that to ruin my morale.

I find it impossible to capture the towns, as tanks are everywhere, and all I've got is the metis. Maybe if I equip all squadmates with them? Getting the base before dawn proved impossible - the red X's came, and then the base seems to respawn????? :mad::mad::mad:

Congratualtions for completing this scenario. You must be an Arma god. :cool:

Well, spacebar just bring up the command screen and highlights your squad.

Then you have menus 1 through 0.

Most people on the forums will express the Go Prone command as 7-8, for example.

Menu 6 is the miscellaneous menu by which AI units use their action menu. It's a piece of shit and the game will choose one unit for the medic to heal. Heal Rifleman or some such will then show up as an entry.

Also, if you highlight just the medic and shout Injured! he will come to you.

Congratualtions for completing this scenario. You must be an Arma god. :cool:

More like I found the trick on the forums after many failures. You just have to wait for the Russian base to be deserted as they fast travel north, and then blow it up with RPGs or a ZU-23.

I was only able to beat it because I run ACE, and the BTR I hit with a rocket was undamaged but the whole crew died. Thus I was able to use it for the remainder of the mission.

One time I also stole a Tunguska but by that time the tanks were swarming and resistance was hopeless.

But yes, I am an Arma God for beating with the 6-12 fps I must have been getting.

Once I found an empty T-90 sitting by the road near Tusca, and was very happy. But it didn't do me any good, as you found with the Tunguska, as it was too late and Chernarus was swarming with other tanks.

You never got any red X's? They worry me, as I wonder if I am just wasting my time going on with the scenario, as the base will respawn.

I think I have damaged the base enough that no tanks are respawning, but APCs are: possibly the heavy factory has been destroyed, but not the light factory which makes apcs? I'm trying to capture the towns now using only the crappy little btrs I can buy, and I find that ALL kinds of enemy vehicles (other than tanks) are respawning all over the place. It is very difficult.

Unless one can capture a tank or a heavy apc with a good cannon, the mission is just ridiculously hard. Did you station purchased troops at captured towns to hold them while you go on to capture other towns? I haven't tried that yet.

I didn't know that if you point at the medic and yell "injured" that he will heal you. Awesome tip. Thanks!

I think if you capture Elektrazavodsk, they won't be able to rebuild, although the riflemen who lead each warfare squad will respawn endlessly. (How unfair that they can and you can't.) Also, they can't rebuild if they have no money, which they get from killing NAPA and also simply holding towns.

I rushed for the base while the AI held the line up north and even took a town or two. Then I went for the towns when there was no resistance. You have to hit every factory and destroy them all.

One option is to capture a Russian checkpoint, load all the rockets into a car (they have gear just like dead bodies) and sneak into town to attack the base with RPGs. You just have to time it so the area is mostly empty.

I just captured Kamishovo and the nearby checkpoint, but couldn't find any rockets. Elektozavodsk looked empty on the map, but when I went there, a tank and an apc spawned to give me hell. I think I have to get in there and capture the main Elektro strongpoint before destroying the base completely, although I thought I had destroyed most of it before using and rapid-fire SVG defense weapon at the mini-strongpoint to the north on the hill slope. I guess I didn't do good enough a job at that.

Edit:

I now know about the gear boxes at the checkpoints that contain the rockets. But the spawning tanks that appear in Elektro are still killing me. I worry that I don't yet know the "trick" to the mission that must involve destroying the enemy base before dawn that will prevent the respawning and the occurrence of the red X's. It is very, very possible that I am wasting my time trying to capture Elektro and destroying the base during the daytime with the red X's present in the objective screen. Other than capturing the Elektro strongpoint on the hill to the north of the city and shooting at the base with a purchasable defensive weapon, which I have already tried to no avail, I don't know any way to kill the base before dawn. Before dawn, you have no money to buy units, so I am lost.

Why does my icon appear red at screen bottom, but "injured" does not appear when I hit spacebar?

You don't need to make money to destroy the base if you are lucky and quick. An SPG-9 UAZ should be enough. It is a good idea to help fend off the initial attack on your base by building SPG-9 launchers, and this will get you cash once they destroy the valuable BTR-90s that spawn. This should only take fifteen minutes tops. Then hightail it south and blow up the Russian factories with anything you have.

If you're playing Arma 2 rather than CO, redness can mean that you're out of ammo. Complain to your men that you are injured or out of ammo, and the game will realize that you are lying and remove the redness.

Thanks, maturin. At your base, when you get messages that you've received money from a vehicle being salvaged, is there any way you can GET those salvaged vehicles? I had thought not.

The key thing is to capture enemy vehicles. Is there a repeatable way to do that? But don't they always vanish after 5 minutes, as mentioned in the first thread post? If you are lucky you can get an abandoned vehicle that won't vanish, but that hardly ever happens.

Also, when you buy a defense weapon at your main base, it is not automatically manned, right? You have to buy a soldier to staff it?

At captured strongpoints elsewhere, if you buy a defensive weapon (SPG, etc), it appears with a man staffing it.

I never bothered with buying defensive weapons for my main base, as it may get attacked, but always seems to survive, and I need the money for other desperate things. Is the advantage of buying such weapons only that you get more money from destroying unrealistically spawned vehicles? But you also have to spend money to re-buy gunners who get killed. Maybe it is a wash?

It appears again that, although the scenario appears to be sandbox, there are actually very few ways to complete the level successfully. A more or less linear sequence of events that must be completed in the correct order, like Doom. The trick is to get into the twisted mind of the BI level designer and figure that out.

Yeah, I meant that you should construct static SPG-9 launchers to defend the strongpoints of whatever town is nearest your base. If you get that easternmost base location, it becomes easy for your AI minions to pick off BTRs as they roll up in the dark.

Those times I captured BTRs and Tunguskas was mostly down to luck and perhaps ACE 2. I agree that this mission really is torture and should have been much better. I would have preferred guerrilla warfare, not zerging with NAPA.

Torture is an understatement. I don't use ACE. I get the feeling the developers are chuckling at this thread, thinking what fools we are to even toy with this preposterous nightmare.

After restarting again, I captured Mysta and erected 5 SPG and 2 MG nests at the strongpoint right next to main base. Within 2 minutes, 5 heavy BTRs and several dual machine gun vehicles arrived. We destroyed several of them, but more kept coming, and unless I remained there and helped defending, Mysta would be re-captured by the Russians in a few minutes. If I remained there, continuous, absolutely DESPERATE battles are required to retain the base, with multiple BTRs fully targeting me. They can target you with deadly accuracy even through vegetation - they can see you but you can't see them. The BTRs will apparently respawn endlessly until the base is captured. Meanwhile, the gunners manning the spgs will NOT respawn after they are mowed down by the enemy vehicles.

So, spending $$$ to buy defenses at a captured village will NOT hold off the enemy for long. There must be a way to stop the respawning of the enemy forces.

I once destroyed the main enemy base before dawn, but that did NOT stop the respawning, as more T-90s appeared later when I was capturing villages.

Huh, the AI could hold the line as Msta in my game, even if things looked desperate. Maybe it's because all those HEAT weapons would burn out the BTRs in one hit with the ACE armor system.

I think it's game over once the T-90 shows up.

Only a handful of Russian infantry actually respawn. The rest have to be purchased with money from dead NAPA forces. You probably have to guard the destroyed enemy base to prevent rebuilding until the Russians are out of both money and forces.

Oh, man. More bad news. I think you are correct. But guard it with what? The limited NAPA troops I can buy I need to capture towns and fend of the respawning armor.

Also, capturing the Elektro strongpoint is unbelievable hard. Every possible vehicle and also troops will respawn in the town and come to clean your clock.

My long-held opinion is that any game or level that includes spawning enemy is total, and I mean total, crap. It just means bad game design, as it is so unbelievable unrealistic. For a simulator like A2 where realism is the main focus, respawning enemy is just laughably pathetic in that it suggests very weak imagination in level design. I guess Freedom Fighters is meant to be an end-member of game difficulty - one that cannot be beat even by very determined and skilled players.

I still think there must be a trick to this that I haven't found. No one else has found it either, although several, including yourself, have beaten it through various means, most of which involve the lucky finding of a non-vanishing tank or BTR.

But the fact that the main base will regenerate even after you have worked so hard to destroy it before dawn makes the scenario just about unplayable for most. I'm very near to giving up on it.