I greatly enjoyed the campaign last night. XOCentric makes a very good milsim DM and threw some pretty great scenarios at us on the fly. The obviously researched radio chatter between @Ra's Al Pearce and @XOCentric brought a smile to my face. I also loved the firefight that occurred to the southeast of us while we were exfilling from the downed helicopter and how it added to the immersion. The civillians on the battlefield greatly added to the confusion of the situation and need to positively identify targets.
As far as improvements: we should establish preassigned callsigns for future sessions to make it easier for us to communicate with Zeus. Also more time in general spent on planning out our movement to the objective, among other planning considerations, would probably help things start more smoothly. As before, additional extra gear at the FOB would be nice so we wouldn't have to grab our gear off our corpses. If that's doable.
What sort of assets and atmospheric adjustments are available to Zeus through Arma3? Is the ambient illumination at night adjustable so that NODs wouldn't be as useful? Can the weather be changed? Fog would be pretty cool, especially if it hampers thermals (as long as the AI can't see through it). Can we lase JDAMs on a target?
0
Options
mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
Done and done! Hopefully this brings more people on board for our shenanigans.
Xo you should also put free weekend
and can you run a game / be available to coop say sunday afternoon? we should do that with moochers.
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
0
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Maaaan... I really wish this was something I could get into. Got ARMA II for DayZ and never played it outside of DayZ or a (decidedly very interesting) singleplayer thing, however brief.
But the Zeus thing looks super-rad. Have you guys started to work on leveraging that? Because player-controlled instanced missions just gets me in a weird, warm, fuzzy place.
Guess this free period will answer my questions!
0
Options
mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
Yes. Wednesdays nights. its been pretty cool thus far.
Its like DandD but instead of a dungeon master telling stories- you request mortar support from him.
its amazing.
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
+2
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
For fucks sake, don't tell me things like that, geez.
0
Options
CapsaicinI asked my 2 y/o son to draw a pic of my German mom, and thats what we got.Registered Userregular
Purchased!
+3
Options
mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
For fucks sake, don't tell me things like that, geez.
Seriously its the bees knees.
We were bringing intel into a town... but upon arriving tracers lit up the sky. The town was under siege. The dm diverted us to a new point.
We were holed up in an abandoned fob.... 2 fireteams and 2 armored vhicles with thier own squads surrounded us. 15 mins till evac and a flat bed as our only 'armor'. So much death... precision artillery and alot of respawns later..... we flew out.
So fun. All dynamically controlled by xo.
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
0
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Stop it stop it stop it.
Anyway, got some time into this and yeah, the visuals and overall performance and visuals seem much improved. It's pretty amazing what qualifies for "standard" quality for this game. Interface all seems much improved, with a lot less clunkiness in general. In particular, it seems like they've dealt with ARMA II's issue of items getting putting on the ground at bizarre or unreachable points and you never find them again.
There is a campaign game scheduled for: Saturday 17 may @ 2pm EDT.
I will have the map updated with your guys progress by then. Happy to see the word getting out. I honestly would rather mission plan and Zeus than play at this point; I'm having tons of fun building gameplay for you guys.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
Whelp, trying Zeus mode was definitely the death-knell of self-restraint. If it's at all possible, I'll totally be there Saturday. I looked at the mode for all of ten minutes before seeing aaaaawesome possibility there with player-made content. All it took was "TANK PLATOON! ENEMY TANK PLATOON! HELICOPTERS! JETS! AIRSTRIKES! LIGHTNING BOLTS!"
The jet actually had a hilarious accident due to use of trying to change it's orientation mid-bank, but I'm chalking that up as "fantastic" since it crashed and tumbled through a little tree grove, knocking them over while exploding.
I'll be able to play the Saturday game, and it'll be a normal time in GMT too (7PM I think) so I Can see it through to the end. Will try not to destroy any of our assets this time. Unless it's for science.
0
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
Science cannot advance without heaps!
Of what I would assume would be shattered hardware.
So poking around with Zeus, it looks like you can take pretty much any scenario and throw in some Zeus action? Because that's a pretty rad thing to have; one "stock" map would let anybody do loads of stuff.
Worst possible time for this to go on sale. I'm frothing at the mouth to get in on the PA Campaign like a meth addict. I will find a way to get this while its cheap.
UPDATE: Said fuck it and pulled the trigger on this one. I'm going to poke around some once its done installing and see if I can't get up to speed to join any multiplayer/PA Campaign stuff.
Konphujun on
Everything: Konphujun(#1458)
+1
Options
mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
Im out on saturday but its an important day so the freebies get in.
ill be firing all manner of real gun at that time :]
Xo- consider upping the stakes in this way- we get respawns - but maybe we have to protect an item that doesn't. the 'computer jeep'. can be made dynamic ala this.... if we get computer jeep from say A -> B we get a drone on the next objective... or if we fail we lose artillery and the drone on the next objective.
Say we save some rebels - we get a dinky 50 cal truck for the next deal... if they die we dont get a 50 cal truck.
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
0
Options
KlykaDO you have anySPARE BATTERIES?Registered Userregular
That sounds great, how can i get in on this?
SC2 EU ID Klyka.110
0
Options
mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
We are running wednesday games most of wednesday night. You can drop in. there is also one saturday for free weekend folks.
Starts kinda early so euros can play a lil. but we run long!
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
I'd love to get in on the action on Saturday as well. 2 PM EDT puts it at 1 PM CST for me so I will be free and clear and ready to go. If ya'll still have room, I mean. I am terribly new to Arma III though, so bear that in mind!
Right now it's open to all, altho the mission caps out at 16 players + 1x Zeus and 1x Moderator. The server has a hard limit of 30 players, unless I up my rental agreement. I would prefer to keep the 16 player cap, as it makes the sessions more intimate and less of a 'horde mode'. We aren't near that number of people yet, so we are in the clear.
All of the suggestions are great, and I appreciate the feedback. I will be leaning more towards milsim than call-of-duty unlocks, but the principles are sound. Also, if we get enough for multiple squads, I'm going to suggest that each squad pick a leader for purposes of talking to Zeus, otherwise it's going to be a mad scramble and the net will get tied up with chatter.
I recommend reading the back story I created on the updated OP, as I mentioned in previous posts, it will give you an idea of "why". The missions will focus around the developing campaign story.
Oh I remember a gripe I had with vanilla. The light machine guns. I was so bummed that I couldn't set up a bipod for them. Or have they added that in the last 5? months? I like dispensing high rpm death as a base of fire for the others to move up with.
There's a mod that lets you rest guns against the ground/walls. It's the next best thing. LMGs get a more reasonable recoil with it. It's standard issue when I play.
0
Options
Ra's Al Pearce"When im in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" - Zap BranniganRegistered Userregular
I am kinda curious why BIS hasn't put some form of bi-pod into the game honestly. It seems like it's fairly easy to implement (judging by all the mods for it) and feels like it'd be an obvious feature to put in.
Just did a co-op mission with randomers and it was glorious. Around 32 players on the server at any given time and people were sorting themselves into squads and fireteams, pilots were ferrying troops from the base to various landing zones, squads were communicating and organising supplies with each other and objectives were getting done. So much drama like squads getting pinned down and others coming to provide backup or overwatch. Our squad was tasked with taking down a radio tower and after we found out firing AT rockets at it wasn't enough we had a heli who was dropping off troops go pick up some satchel charges and more at rounds for us by loading them into a quad. It dropped off the quad in an area we'd cleared and two of us went back to pick it up, swung by the radio tower to plant the charges, then as the other guy drove the quad and I was on the back, I fired them off while we were riding into the sunset, it was glorious.
This game is janky as hell at times but when it all comes together there's nothing else like it. Even the AI gives the appearance of being decent when you're playing on large co-op servers. We found an APC moving slowly along a treeline and after I hit it with AT (while being covered from a nearby ruin) it swung around into a ditch and appeared to get stuck, the AI troops got out and took up defensive positions around it trying to hold us off, we could have been playing against other players at that point and I can't imagine it would have gone any different.
I am kinda curious why BIS hasn't put some form of bi-pod into the game honestly. It seems like it's fairly easy to implement (judging by all the mods for it) and feels like it'd be an obvious feature to put in.
Weren't there working bipods in Arma2? It does seem like an odd development decision for a milsim regardless.
With ace system, there was a bipod key. It was swag.
you could prop on rocks, fences, the side of a building and in a pinch, use another player by having them kneel and look down, then you set up on their shoulder or back.
I cleared out an opium field on the UO servers using a fire team member that way.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
Soooo... what's the reasoning for grenades being totally shit-awful? They're just completely pointless; I can put one ten feet away from a guy and they don't even flinch when the thing goes off.
EDIT: This campaign mission is pretty shit. Throws your whole team in a valley with no support, then when you engage, you're at a 2:1 disadvantage against troops that are auto-firing across the valley with better accuracy than my single shots. What the fuck? Maybe it's built around grenades, well, killing things instead of just making noise and smoke?
EDIT EDIT: Getting killed something like 6 times now in this one spot. Finally managed to kill a guy with a grenade, but it pretty much had to hit him in the face. And his buddy laying on the ground two feet away? Completely unharmed. Maybe not move through the valley floor coming at an enemy position, Team Fuckwit? There's a reason I keep being the last man standing up on the hillside with cover while you are all corpses on the valley floor five seconds after the ridgeline enemies start shooting.
EDIT EDIT EDIT: Got it figured out. The key was to ignore the game's fuckawful advice for a firing position for grenades with seven zillion trees between you and your targets with Xray vision; if you go way up the right side instead of the left, the whole thing is a cakewalk because you neutralize the cover of all the enemies that show up while having your own excellent cover and height advantage.
Alright, so maybe it's just a terrible tactical situation.
I mean, I figured something was up when enemies could hit me easily from long range with an MG when I couldn't even hit them.
Yeah it seems like 90% of ArmA is trying to get into a superior position, 9% is getting information on what you're up against and where they are, 1% is being able to shoot them.
Posts
Done and done! Hopefully this brings more people on board for our shenanigans.
As far as improvements: we should establish preassigned callsigns for future sessions to make it easier for us to communicate with Zeus. Also more time in general spent on planning out our movement to the objective, among other planning considerations, would probably help things start more smoothly. As before, additional extra gear at the FOB would be nice so we wouldn't have to grab our gear off our corpses. If that's doable.
What sort of assets and atmospheric adjustments are available to Zeus through Arma3? Is the ambient illumination at night adjustable so that NODs wouldn't be as useful? Can the weather be changed? Fog would be pretty cool, especially if it hampers thermals (as long as the AI can't see through it). Can we lase JDAMs on a target?
Xo you should also put free weekend
and can you run a game / be available to coop say sunday afternoon? we should do that with moochers.
But the Zeus thing looks super-rad. Have you guys started to work on leveraging that? Because player-controlled instanced missions just gets me in a weird, warm, fuzzy place.
Guess this free period will answer my questions!
Its like DandD but instead of a dungeon master telling stories- you request mortar support from him.
its amazing.
Seriously its the bees knees.
We were bringing intel into a town... but upon arriving tracers lit up the sky. The town was under siege. The dm diverted us to a new point.
We were holed up in an abandoned fob.... 2 fireteams and 2 armored vhicles with thier own squads surrounded us. 15 mins till evac and a flat bed as our only 'armor'. So much death... precision artillery and alot of respawns later..... we flew out.
So fun. All dynamically controlled by xo.
Anyway, got some time into this and yeah, the visuals and overall performance and visuals seem much improved. It's pretty amazing what qualifies for "standard" quality for this game. Interface all seems much improved, with a lot less clunkiness in general. In particular, it seems like they've dealt with ARMA II's issue of items getting putting on the ground at bizarre or unreachable points and you never find them again.
I will have the map updated with your guys progress by then. Happy to see the word getting out. I honestly would rather mission plan and Zeus than play at this point; I'm having tons of fun building gameplay for you guys.
It will be good to group up with a serious fun group again, and not worry about derps mucking things up like in United Operations.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
The jet actually had a hilarious accident due to use of trying to change it's orientation mid-bank, but I'm chalking that up as "fantastic" since it crashed and tumbled through a little tree grove, knocking them over while exploding.
Of what I would assume would be shattered hardware.
So poking around with Zeus, it looks like you can take pretty much any scenario and throw in some Zeus action? Because that's a pretty rad thing to have; one "stock" map would let anybody do loads of stuff.
UPDATE: Said fuck it and pulled the trigger on this one. I'm going to poke around some once its done installing and see if I can't get up to speed to join any multiplayer/PA Campaign stuff.
ill be firing all manner of real gun at that time :]
Xo- consider upping the stakes in this way- we get respawns - but maybe we have to protect an item that doesn't. the 'computer jeep'. can be made dynamic ala this.... if we get computer jeep from say A -> B we get a drone on the next objective... or if we fail we lose artillery and the drone on the next objective.
Say we save some rebels - we get a dinky 50 cal truck for the next deal... if they die we dont get a 50 cal truck.
Starts kinda early so euros can play a lil. but we run long!
or down to smg's ....
all previous Armas, g was for gear
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Right now it's open to all, altho the mission caps out at 16 players + 1x Zeus and 1x Moderator. The server has a hard limit of 30 players, unless I up my rental agreement. I would prefer to keep the 16 player cap, as it makes the sessions more intimate and less of a 'horde mode'. We aren't near that number of people yet, so we are in the clear.
All of the suggestions are great, and I appreciate the feedback. I will be leaning more towards milsim than call-of-duty unlocks, but the principles are sound. Also, if we get enough for multiple squads, I'm going to suggest that each squad pick a leader for purposes of talking to Zeus, otherwise it's going to be a mad scramble and the net will get tied up with chatter.
I recommend reading the back story I created on the updated OP, as I mentioned in previous posts, it will give you an idea of "why". The missions will focus around the developing campaign story.
Origin: Kaguto
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Though LMG's can still do their job. Except the NATO LMG firing standard rounds. That thing is lame as hell.
This game is janky as hell at times but when it all comes together there's nothing else like it. Even the AI gives the appearance of being decent when you're playing on large co-op servers. We found an APC moving slowly along a treeline and after I hit it with AT (while being covered from a nearby ruin) it swung around into a ditch and appeared to get stuck, the AI troops got out and took up defensive positions around it trying to hold us off, we could have been playing against other players at that point and I can't imagine it would have gone any different.
Weren't there working bipods in Arma2? It does seem like an odd development decision for a milsim regardless.
you could prop on rocks, fences, the side of a building and in a pinch, use another player by having them kneel and look down, then you set up on their shoulder or back.
I cleared out an opium field on the UO servers using a fire team member that way.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
EDIT: This campaign mission is pretty shit. Throws your whole team in a valley with no support, then when you engage, you're at a 2:1 disadvantage against troops that are auto-firing across the valley with better accuracy than my single shots. What the fuck? Maybe it's built around grenades, well, killing things instead of just making noise and smoke?
EDIT EDIT: Getting killed something like 6 times now in this one spot. Finally managed to kill a guy with a grenade, but it pretty much had to hit him in the face. And his buddy laying on the ground two feet away? Completely unharmed. Maybe not move through the valley floor coming at an enemy position, Team Fuckwit? There's a reason I keep being the last man standing up on the hillside with cover while you are all corpses on the valley floor five seconds after the ridgeline enemies start shooting.
EDIT EDIT EDIT: Got it figured out. The key was to ignore the game's fuckawful advice for a firing position for grenades with seven zillion trees between you and your targets with Xray vision; if you go way up the right side instead of the left, the whole thing is a cakewalk because you neutralize the cover of all the enemies that show up while having your own excellent cover and height advantage.
I mean, I figured something was up when enemies could hit me easily from long range with an MG when I couldn't even hit them.