CO 60 - Operation Mongoose

O P E R A T I O N    M O N G O O S E - Release version: 1.31 - Current version: 1.32

Download link: Operation Mongoose v1.32 via MediaFire.com

    Hello, this is a mission I have been working on along with another lurker here named Macolik for the past couple months. It has been in development mostly within Shack Tactical, but we've now decided to try releasing it to the public. You should expect to find the mission extremely challenging; being stealthy is extremely important. Firing flares may be a good way to regroup, but it will draw enemies to your position without mercy. Enemies who are engaged with you will call in help from any nearby squads - if you are detected, relocate ASAP. The mission has variable difficulty settings to be slightly easier on smaller player groups (i.e. less than 15 people), but is best enjoyed with 20-40 players. Very large playercounts will require a powerful server CPU, due to the large scope of the mission.

    Important: The mission was designed to be played on a dedicated server. Some aspects may not work correctly on a local server.

    Any comments, criticisms and bug reports will be gladly received. We hope people can enjoy the mission!

Storyline:

    To prepare for an assault on the enemy-held island of Avignon, several squads of airborne troops are being dropped at night in an attempt to find and destroy four hidden AA/artillery sites, and locate intelligence info. Set in a fictional late-1900's scenario, players have no NVGs and limited communications abilities.

Mission execution overview:

    Players start at an offshore base, where they can plan the mission and obtain any special gear (smoke signals, flares, explosives) they wish to bring. When ready, players will be loaded into their drop planes. They will then soon be dropped in their assigned zone. Players will be in controllable freefall from 4000m ASL, and may deploy their parachute once they are below 1000m ASL. The rest of the mission is up to squad leaders' planning. When done to the best of their ability, players must find some hidden boats (marked on map) to leave the island with.

Rules and features:

• After the paradrop is initiated, players will be disbanded from their groups and must only use Direct Chat to communicate; use of globalchat, sidechat, teamspeak etc. must be prohibited. This is important, and must be enforced by an admin. It is key to fully enjoy this mission. Using a microphone and VON is highly recommended for all players.

• Once the paradrop begins, the ArmA map is disabled for all players. However, all players have a paper copy of the map to look at via their action menu. Squad leaders are given the ACE "Map Object"; this is used to represent a GPS device. Any holder of the Map Object can see their GPS coord on the paper map.

• All players can send flashlight signals in a variety of colors. Typically, different squads could be assigned different colors, or different colors could be agreed upon to mean different things. Players should examine the flashlight system at base, before the paradrop begins.

• The extraction boats are hidden in some bushes inshore. You'll need to drag them to the shore. If a dragged boat hits you it may injure you, due to ArmA's physics engine. Don't get close to someone dragging a boat.

• Upon successful extraction, players are set to "dead" so that they can be moved into the global spectator channel to watch remaining players and chat freely with other dead/spectating players.

• It is recommended that new players read the in-game briefing in its entirety for all necessary details.

Addons Required:

• ACE mod

• ACE Islands pack

Credits:

• DAC 2.0 by MapFact (Silola)

• DirToObj by toadlife

• Mando_GetPosture by Mandoble (modified by Homer Johnston)

• A big thanks to many members from Shack Tactical and Tactical Gamer for giving help testing, and providing valuable feedback.

Changelog:

1.32

• Fixed issues with radio-tower objective

• Added delay before enemy troops begin spreading out and searching drop-zone areas.

1.31

Initial public release

Some pictures from a test-run (in-game shots taken by Dslyecxi):

Paper map and area of operation:

Flashlight signals dialog:

HALO freefalling:

Parachute deployed! Other parachutists visible in the distance:

Alpha squad - hot landing zone! Engaging enemy who are moving into the drop zone:

Members of Charlie squad have spotted us, and are signalling to get our attention so we may group up with them:

----------------------------------------------------------------

It's really cool to see this released to the public. Homer and Maco put a lot of love into the mission, and it shows in the details - the flashlight signaling and map are awesome from an immersion standpoint, and the parachute controls are simply slick.

In testing and playing this mission, we (ShackTac) have had some truly epic encounters unfold. It's great stuff. Hopefully there are a few groups and communities out there that will have as much fun as we have had in it.

To Maco and Homer - great work. Definitely a mission to be proud of.

Props to you gents. Mongoose is a nail biting roller coaster ride from start to finish.

If you have any doubts think Band of Brothers with modern equipment. Gotta use direct VON only to really get the immersion factor.

This mission definitely gets 2 thumbs up.

This is a great mission, Homer! Props to both you and Macolik for making such a fantastic mission.

The flashlight script is one of the coolest things I've seen done with ArmA so far. Very nice job.

Damn this looks like a bad ass mission. Only if it was SP. Let's hope it works.

Flashlight signals, paper maps, halo drops, and drag-able boats are all incredibly awesome features of this mission.

I would love to see more missions incorporate these features.  

Thanks to Homer and Mac for the great job with this map. This truly is a great addition to the ArmA community. As an early tester I feel this is what ArmA is all about and the way it was ment to be played. Thank you for you contribution, and everyone serious about ArmA should at least try this map once.

Duc/Shane you're the best! Thank you!!!

P.S. I never touched a flaregun ever since :P

Thanks to all of you guys

I think all the guys that were involved in the early testing of this mission at the TacticalGamer community enjoyed helping shape this mission in it's infancy, which was then tweaked when they joined ST and some of their talented mission guys became involved.

HJ and Macolik came up with an interesting concept that I am sure we will see many variations of.

Wow sounds very awesome....we will surely try this.

Any advice on the minimum number of player needed to enjoy it more-or-less "fully" ?

Thanks for releasing this mission! I've been waiting for this for a long time, GOL is definitely going to try this out.

@mr.g-c

The mission has various difficulty settings which set the enemy density and how far they can see at night...

So on easy you could play with about 15 to 20 people, while normal should be suitable for a 20-40 and hard for a 40+ playercount.

Added a few words to the root post's "credits" thanking TG (and ST) members for helping us out.

Quote[/b] ]Any advice on the minimum number of player needed to enjoy it more-or-less "fully" ?

The mission actually just plays out differently with very low player counts; you tend to be able to escape and evade easier, and focus more on running away from encounters. With larger playercounts, you tend to dig in and defend an area more than attempt escape. We've played the mission with as few as 4-6 players... though you usually end up surrounded and stuck in a barn, or something. You'll never win, but it can be exciting nonetheless I think once you get ~12-15 players, it starts to feel more aggressive. Since the mission is set up that each drop zone has up to 20 players, it can be a bit annoying if you have 21 or 22 players, but it is possible for squads to try and link up by flying their parachutes towards each other...

[EDIT]: Mission has been updated to v1.32... Root post updated.

This mission is definitely awesome. The feeling that you might drop in alone, far from your rendezvous point, behind enemy lines, and then you see a far off light blinking on and off... it's extremely atmospheric. Highly recommended.

Gaaah!

I saw the after action report on Dslyecxi's site way back and lusted after this mission.

So much so that in the end I bit the bullet and fired up the mission editor in anger for the first time and started making a mission along those lines...

Only to find this thread whilst looking for similar missions to pillage for script answers. There goes a couple week's worth of hair pulling.

On the other hand -- found the seriously cool mission!

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

I'm going to have to carry on with my vastly inferior Bodgit & Run project -- if only because it's there now.

So thanks a million for the mission :bounce3:, and frankly shame on you for making me read all that disparate, confusing and complex documentation; learn sqf; take apart the ACE mod to find out what muzzle the zu-23 should be; and look for all those &%$#%@ missing semicolons and brackets. :banghead:

Honestly forcing people into the mission editor with this sort of sexy mission... shouldn't be allowed... mutter.. mutter. ;)

Hmm I gotta find some players to play with then. I'm really looking forward to playing this but don't have 15 people I can call up :(

Gaaah!

I saw the after action report on Dslyecxi's site way back and lusted after this mission.

To be clear - this is not the same mission as the one in my AAR. That was "Paradrop!" by kevb0. This is similar to it, but it's different in several ways, and is by Homer Johnston and Macolik. It's a lot of fun, though, so if you liked the idea of Paradrop, you'll like this, too. Similar, but different, and a good mission as well.

Are there any planned large scale get togethers for this? Would love to get in on some of this but finding a 40 player server doing it will be somewhat hard ^.^

we played this on zeus last night, and for the few that managed to survive the initial drop, it was great fun. We adhered to the mission maker's rules on communications, and it worked great except for some who have problem with VOIP which cant really be helped.

We only had about 12-14 people mind you, and it turned into a 'hit, salvage & run" mission for us. Classic "hollywood" moments for me included things like

-being attacked by a bmp, pooing myself, only for it to be taken out by a previously unknown friendly,

-friendlies appearing out of the dark every now and then which was a great source of happiness :P

-successfull ambushes of infantry squads and eliminating them within 5 seconds or so.

Our best bet of playing this with full amount of players is probably Tactical Gamer server.

To be clear - this is not the same mission as the one in my AAR. That was "Paradrop!" by kevb0. This is similar to it, but it's different in several ways, and is by Homer Johnston and Macolik. It's a lot of fun, though, so if you liked the idea of Paradrop, you'll like this, too. Similar, but different, and a good mission as well.

As I have found out in scripting:

if (isPlayer -dead-) then {

Knowledge=false;

};

Thanks for the correction. I figured it was paradrop, several versions older and wiser and renamed. Still at least I know who's the right person to blame now. ;)

Somehow it crashes the server when we restart it by going back to missions list.

Server crashes at the start when you get dropped from the plane.

If it does not crash it plays fine..

Tt is unclear what the cause is atm..it may be due to misson, ace or the island ...

We'll post more as soon as we find out more info.

cheers..

Thanks for this great mission! This brings back the atmosphere from OFP!!! Missions like this must be released to the public ;)

We're glad to see people are enjoying it :)

Crawler, did you ever figure out what was causing your crashes?

Very nice mission guys.

Seems like the loadout of those AT gunner assistants are a bit messed out though, at least the assisstants in delta and echo teams spawn without any spare rockets for the M3.

Thanks for bringing that to our attention HulkingUnicorn - I'm a bit slow to reply as I've just moved across Canada! The issue is probably a change in ACE updates or something.

I plan to make a small update to the mission sometime this week, or next weekend at latest.

[edit] due to close proximity of A2 release, I'm probably going to forfeit this update and move on to other projects.