ACE_Co_05 Patrol City - dense urban combat, no respawn, requires ACE only

In this mission you are to seize a sector in a city on the airfield at the north-west side of Chernarus. The city is spawned via a script and thus no addons are needed for it, and it provides intense urban combat, with buildings placed very close to eachother, creating some narrow alleys as well as big streets. Enemies will take full advantage of the buildings - going on stairwells, at windows and on rooftops. The objective location and AI patrol patterns are totally random to provide high replayability.

There are no respawns available, but if you have less than 5 players you can switch to any of the AI at will using team switch (default key 'T').

The engine has some difficulty with large numbers of AI in this city, so the host needs to have at least a decent CPU (or just run it on a decent dedicated server). The city itself is also rather heavy on the graphics card, but it's not all that bad - if you can play Arma 2 now, you will at most need to tone done settings 1 notch to play this smoothly.

If many people like it, I may release the city itself as a mission template, though you can already use what you see here to make additional missions in the city. Just be careful with how many active AI you place in it or the server's FPS will drop too low.

File Factory (v1.02):

http://www.filefactory.com/file/b1gg886/n/ace_co_05_patrol_city_v1-02.Chernarus.pbo

Armaholic (v1.02):

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9026

Good luck! You'll need it... ;)

wow can you post a better dl link? that one is shadey as he11.

I'm with him on that one. Looks very interesting, though.

Thanks Galzohar..

Added an easy-share link:

http://www.easy-share.com/1908901772/ACE_Co_05_patrol_city_v1-00.Chernarus.pbo

Hopefully Armaholic or another mirror will pick up on this soon enough.

Is there a possibility of making a version where you can choose your equipment from an ACE crate, with respawns?

And what about the above, but with just two teams of humans battling in the city?

Would love to see a city template, or how-to. Brilliant.

Wouldnt it be a much better idea to position this on Utes? Should yeild better fps even if you double the amount of houses :)

Utes airfield is way too narrow. Maybe if someone makes a totally flat island I'll make a transition there.

I did my best to make the mission both realistic, challenging and yet possible, that's why there are no respawns and no weapon selection.

Feel free to de-pbo the mission and add whatever you want:

To add respawns, you need a marker named "respawn_west" and change respawn from SIDE to BASE in the description.ext file.

To change the weapon loadouts, you can modify the assigngear.sqf script or just add a crate in the editor.

As for PvP missions, stuff are in the works, but not fully tested yet.

How would I extract the building layout? I would really love to try this for tomorrow night's clan night. Would very much appreciate a template or a how-to.

Until a template is released, you can just delete all the units but don't delete any markers named "bldX" or "mrkX". In the init.sqf file you should easily see which parts belong to spawning the city.

The problem with making quick missions in the city is that AI will tend to not go into buildings unless they are specifically ordered to do so - that's what the randomcitypatrol.sqf script is for.

I would like to know which systems are too weak for running this city so I can specify minimum requirements, so if you couldn't get decent FPS here no matter what settings please specify your CPU and graphics card. For now the weakest card that had been reported to run this smoothly is 8800GT, but I don't really have any data (good or bad) for weaker cards, so I need some people with weaker PCs to tell me their success/failure in running this.

As for PvP, unfortunately I don't know of anyone that would be willing to play it on their server that actually can get enough people on to play it, so I can't really get anything tested properly and thus will probably not release anything of that sort (at least nothing that has a good chance of working well). If anyone is interested in any size of A&D missions let me know when and where you'd be willing to test them and how many players you can arrange.

Any ideas for other types of missions (that are realistic and can be randomized for replayability) would be seriously considered.

Is this a co-op ??

Yes, this specific mission is coop.

I was talking about possibilities for future missions in the city.

I can't seem to get respawns to work.

Got marker "respawn_west", added "respawn=BASE;" under the "respawn=5;" line in description.ext.

Edit: Actually, don't worry. I managed to get respawns to work, and added ACE ammo crates. Is it alright to edit and use this mission, if credit is given?

Sure, edit it as you wish, just make sure to re-name ;)

---------- Post added at 11:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 PM ----------

Added armaholic link:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9026

Just noticed that the mission description says "6-man patrol..." when the mission is actually a 5-player mission, so if I get this thing updated I'll fix that as well. Mission name is correct, though.

Kinda fun, kind of a reminder as to why CQB sucks in ARMAland. :) Thanks though.

Yeah, it reminds you the issues of Arma 2 CQB, but then again the open plains of Chernarus (and other user-made islands) are just as bad (because that's pretty much what it is, aside from the trees and buildings, terrain is almost completely flat with no real cover anywhere, unlike RL).

I just keep getting wall hacked. Fun nonetheless, but on the wide open it's not as nerve wracking.

Since they can't shoot through walls, bots wall hacking is not that big of a deal - in fact it makes it easier since they give away their position. Besides, they wall-hack in the open as well (shoot through bushes) just as well as they do through walls, except they actually can shoot through bushes.

Oh they can do more than shoot through walls.

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would love for CQB in Arma/OFP to be as smooth as call of duty, or rainbow six. If you think CoD is too arcade-like, just remember that CQB was still tight in the classic rainbow six titles. That's like the missing piece from the series.

Oh they can do more than shoot through walls.

Guess we need another BattleEye for AI ;)

Thank god I'm not the only one. So players are unable to do this?

That has something to do with a workaround BIS uses for AI path finding. AI can walk through just about any object when they're not in combat (and the definition of "combat" to seems to not be very clear). This problem reaches extreme levels in this specific building as they have a hard time moving around the narrow catwalks, and is not nearly as bad in other buildings. In any case, blame BIS! :)

That has something to do with a workaround BIS uses for AI path finding. AI can walk through just about any object when they're not in combat (and the definition of "combat" to seems to not be very clear). This problem reaches extreme levels in this specific building as they have a hard time moving around the narrow catwalks, and is not nearly as bad in other buildings. In any case, blame BIS! :)

I was blaming them ;) I love your mission.