Capture The Base - PvP Class Based mission - Alpha/Beta releases

Hello,

Updated March 29th, 2010

Latest version of CTB has been released.

You can find the files here.

Several missions are released :

* CTB Utes CounterAttack : The base development mission based on Utes, low scale, presenting most of the features

* CTB Krasnostav : US attacking Krasnostav area from eastern coast. Medium sized, 12-32 players. Includes choppers, armor and AAA vehicle, you'll have to use the assets at your disposal. MHQ placement may be key to winning

* CTB Airport : Latest of CTB missions, large scale, few objectives. Ideally 18-32 players. Russians are attacking Airport from south position. This is a 2 stages CTB, where attackers first need to capture the town of Vybor from their forward base in Pustoshka, before proceeding northward to the Airfield. US main base is located in Grishino north of airfield. 2 bases are located around the Airfield which will permit infantry respawn, but Facility cannot be built there. Both sides have their Safe Area far in the back, at north airfield of Krasnostav for the US, and south airfield of Balota for Russians. Do not spawn there unless you want to pilot the aircrafts available. US also have access to A10 at central airfield. Map geared toward using most of the features of the missions : MHQ, Engineer built Facilities (and their counter, Spec Ops), ground and air assets, etc...

* CTB Sbrodj : Large scale CTB over excellent island Sbrodj, quickly set-up in the central area around the Castle. Heavy usage of air transport needed.

* CTB Quesh-Kibrul - Carbon Tax : Low scale, infantry based CTB in south-western part of Quesh-Kibrul, amongst Oil Refineries buildings.

Latest development changes :

* Engineers can deploy facilities for players to take vehicles from backspawn to the facility

* Spec Ops can use their timed Satchel charge to destroy Engineer built facilities

* Map markers indicators

* Class based task system. Upon respawning, a task corresponding to your class will be created and assigned to you. Additional class-tasks will be created, as well as the general tasks of attacking/defending zones

Next targets :

* Making bases capturable by anyone, to be discussed

* Communication center deployable by engineers

* more maps

* more documentation to ease everyone making their own CTB map

What is Capture The Base?

This is a project of mine maturing since now half a year

Capture The Base is a PvP mission, mixing stuff from various origin, derived mainly from 2 game modes :

* Advance And Secure, the Joint Op adaptation on ArmA

* Ennemy Territory concepts

In essence, it is an Attack/Defense mission, with zones capture done in a Capture & Hold fashion

I) The Game

One team of attackers must seize a serie of zones defended by a team of defenders.

The goal of the attackers is to capture the last of the defender's zone.

The attackers have a time limit to acheive their goal

Zones are linked together and attackers must take them in order before reaching the defender's final zone. There may be several different path of linked zones to reach the defender's last zone

II) The Game Play

CTB has some very specific designs that differ from other ArmA2 missions. These designs were not done with realism in mind, it is not the goal of this mission. CTB is more about gameplay.

A) Classes

Coming from Ennemy Territory is the concept of classes in CTB

The unit class you chose at spawn time will give you some abilities, and prevent you from doing everything. Your class will usually dictate your actions in game.

Each class is divided in several Roles with specific abilities within the class.

The classes are :

* Soldiers

* Medic

* Engineer

* Scout

* Spec Ops

* Crewman

B) The Vehicles

Vehicles in CTB are available in limited quantity.

Each side as a set of available vehicles, in the safe area owned by each side at the back of fight zone. Vehicle can be driven from there to the front. They will respawn there if destroyed or left empty long enough

To ease the deployement, Facilities can be used. Facility may exist (or be deployed by Engineers) in friendly zone areas. From the Facility, a player can call a vehicle from the safe zone directly to the Facility, if he is of the correct class to drive the vehicle. He will be placed in the driver seat directly.

Some vehicles from the safe zone cannot be called through Facilities, usually air vehicles. The player who wants to use these vehicles should spawn at the safe zone (called "BackSpawn")

For classes without vehicle access, the main bunker in friendly zones can be used to create a car for transportation. Car creation is limited in time to avoid too much creation.

III) Mission makers area

CTB is made to ease the making of mission from a template.

The step to make a new mission from the template should ultimately be :

* place the different zones (move existing ones, and copy/paste to create new ones) on the map, and change the init field to make them initialized properly (starting ownership, linked zones, associated marker)

* place the vehicles in the Safe Zone, and change the init field for correct initialization

* change some triggers, mainly end game detection

* add or remove players spots by creating or deleting playable units

* change parameters in the common\initCTB.sqf file to setup things like spawn timers, zone capture size, classes list, roles list, vehicle permissions settings, etc...

There is still work to do to acheive this goal

IV) News and infos

A player guide can be found at PvP scene Wiki here

A technical and mission making description, as well as all source code, is located on Dev-Heaven here.

Current version and dev files can be found here :

http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/whis-maas

check the Files and Repository

Current version is Beta06, ready for public playing

Whis'

Thanks a lot to Dev-Heaven crew & members for all their help, Kju, Sickboy, Squelch, Xeno, W0rldeater, Loki, and I forget some :)

Thanks to TAW clan - The Art of Warfare for all test sessions done, suggestions and bug report done so far, this has been invaluable help

Due to beta state and mission being updated often, I removed static links to older versions (inc. ArmAholic hosting). See new download link above.

Nice to see this finally coming out. How many players are needed at minimum to properly give this a test run? Anyway, I uploaded it to the Israeli server.

I'd say 5vs5 for proper testing.

I'm concerned about base placement on this test run, it's really not ideal (notably 2 places too close together).

+ tons of little things not working properly (see bugs in DH page ;) ), but certainly should be playable enough to verify the concept is good and fun

This sounds exactly what is (IMHO) required for good PvP and what I hoped to create myself in time, good job.

Beta 03 released :

http://dev-heaven.net/projects/list_files/whis-maas

2 missions, with Berezino being a low scale one fitting for discovering the mecanisms.

Neeeeeedddd an organized date to get enough ppl to make a real play (test) session. :)

Hello. An update on the project, we're in beta 06 so far, going nicely, the updated versions can be found here : http://dev-heaven.net/projects/list_files/whis-maas

TAW is going to run a public playtest next Thursday.

For anyone interested, look for: [TAW.net] CTB test

The server is locate in Europe if you want to be part of the test join around 20:45 Thursday 22nd of October.

Thanks a lot to TAW for setting up the play sessions

That's the same time as Zeus gaming night :(

I didn't set up the base, TAW trainings are Thursday and Sunday. They chose Thursday :)

Hop in, just to taste the thing! :)

Everybody is welcome to join our training session its open for public.

Would be even better to get on our teamspeak server as well for an even better gameplay.

Teamspeak

address: tawts.com:8767

password: patton

gameserver

[TAW.net] CTB test

Just a reminder for those who may be interested, public playtest soon today :)

Our small scale tests of older versions have been great fun, looking forward to what I hope will be a much bigger test! :jump_clap:

I would like to help you finding a good location for the next CTB mission.

As it still looks the smaller CTB berezino is much more popular then the bigger Windy Moutain. Maybe for the next some urban fighting and forest in one mission.

Next CTB mission would be a bit larger scale to take advantage of the upcoming vehicle/engineer features (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/5027). Nothing large, but zones being a lil bit further apart.

Are you really going in to the "warfare style" kind of play? I was hoping for a more realistic kind of play (aka no structures popping out of nowhere nor vehicles getting repaired in 2 seconds by an "lol-engineer-with-a-shotgun").

Realism? There are mobile HQ allready in.... Factories teleport vehicles located in the back area...

In fact, there is respawn, so there goes your realism ;)

FYI you can only repair with a repair truck, and repair truck is limited to engineer, that's why engies do repair ;)

The idea behind the factory thing is a gameplay thing to give a side objective to several classes, supporting the main objective (by shortening vehicle drive time to battlefront), but not at the main objective.

I've gone gameplay over realism, here. No need to tackle it with "lol-engineer" comment ...

Next CTB mission would be a bit larger scale to take advantage of the upcoming vehicle/engineer features (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/5027). Nothing large, but zones being a lil bit further apart.

We should have a look at locations if you like that. Ohh and the team has chosen to use the new CTB mission for the next clanwar.

I've updated the thread to reflect the big amount of changes done on the map since it was first posted.

Latest Beta06 RC11 released, which will be the last of Beta06.

Several mission are included, see first post. Watch for more :)