Gotta say, last night was a lot of fun! I forgot to take screens which is a shame because there were plenty of bullets flying.

For those who missed it, we started an insurgency mission. At first we operated with Nick and Pb providing Apache support for We3zeL, sweep, PO1, and myself on the ground with a MRAP (PO1 on the gun) with Naro keeping things interesting and providing logistical (and technical) support as the game master. We got wrecked pretty bad to be honest but it was a lot of fun so I don't think anyone cared. Most of it was in the dark as well since the game started in the evening.

After we took a break for the DCS event we had 5 guys including me come back for more. We farted around a while hoping for more to join so we decided to give the fast-roping a try. A couple crashes later we had success.. Sort of.. I was able to drop the ropes from the chinook and drop out, but Nick's rope got tangled up so he was dangling for a while before swinging in a graceful arc to a softish landing. After being dragged along the ground a little bit by the helo he finally let go and was ok lol. I do have a clip of that happening which I need to check out.

After that we spawned ourself a M1A1 tusk II and together with Nick and PO1 in the venom we cleared a good size chunk of the map. Very impressive and spectacular night gunnery skills from PO1 by the way! Pb and I were able to keep the tank alive to the end but had to repair the tracks twice due to IEDs and we got hit by RPGs a couple times which damaged the turret but not beyond repair.

All in all it was excellent fun and the new guys are picking it up very quickly. It's great to play with a bunch of good guys who I haven't personally really met yet before. In time we'll have even more boots on the ground and we'll know what we're doing a bit better so we can stay more cohesive.

Pb is going to set up his box to host so the server can always be up (my PC did excellent too tho) but this will be more reliable. That is also awesome

I'm super happy with how things went and with all the interest from you guys.

I seriously can't wait to play this more with you guys, it was such a blast! Getting dragged by the helicopter was surprising haha!

Well....I had a blast last night!!! If Bohemia could work with ED and mix the two together....OMG! Nick, good piloting skills

I know right? Someone port the A-10 in so we can do CAS for actual players on the ground.

The 10 is ported into arma 3, we are using it,

i remade the insurgency mission Runny, to make it overhauled and more efficient. and alive actually runs it like its supposed to be,
so its not ran by scripting. Nick, Pb, myself, Thug, Sweeper and a few others played last night for about 5 hours.
So cant wait for all of us to get together some night it will be fun, last night was chaotic. insurgents using anti air and everything.

Cool, I look forward to playing the new version! I know the a-10 'port' in aema but it's still nowhere close. No matter to me tho since I'd rather be the one on the ground anyway

I'm hoping to be able to play again on Sunday. Also I'm pushing to be done seeding Saturday afternoon, going around the clock now to get it done since rain is in the forecast. Maybe then next week I can have more evenings off.

P.S. Is the mission persistent or are you guys just starting it over each time?

As of now we are just starting over every time everyone gets in, but its randomly generated, so its already different each time. Adding the persistence is just another module we don't need right now. trying to keep it as simple as possible. its on the road map to add on later.

and the level and difficulty of AI is really high right now. we got shot to hell and back, but it was a good bit of fun, and made us really work together, we even got our ass kicked by anti air so. helis had a rough time. was fun though!

Damn Stingers, lol.

Or in my case, I tried a High Angle Strafe in an Arma A-10..."Pullllllllllllllllll Upppppppppppppppp...."

I ejected safely, though!

Arma Physics, 0. Sweep, 1.

The persistence has its cons too I found. Firstly is that you can't start over unless you remane the mission. That means that any scripts using the mission name or directory path will break. It also doesn't play well with scripted spawns because it'll spawn things ones on init from the script and then again when it syncs from the saved game. That usually means your base blows up.

It's no problem if you're building a mission to work with Alive but to just drop alive into an existing mission has the potential to cause those issues.

Another thing is that it seems like the server must be running all the gun and uniform mods which would otherwise be client-side in order to load up your loadout as well as your position when you load in.

Anyway, it's super cool that you guys have this up and running and are continuing to expand on it.

the main reason i chose no persistence for now, is the insurgency is al random every time we reboot, all scripts stay the same, and IF we CHOOSE to do something different ,I can load a random generated mission in Alive and it will give us objectives, to complete WHILE handling the insurgency, so its a lot of flexibility to have at our fingertips.

as for mods, we are deciding in the end what ones to use, as of right now its pretty close to the mod pack you had, except we removed ones we didn't need to make it easier for people. and eventually we will have one mod, one folder that will be "F99th"

we just have to get to gather after we have our repository up, and its as simple as using Arma 3 sync, and running it, no more play with six, this will allow anyone to play with ease, and not have to worry about the mods. its all kept updated on the back end, and no more guessing or trial and error,. that means less frustration with newer players, and more shooting people in the face with bananas, i mean bullets.

For sure with the mods, especially things like LSD-NVG (full screen NVG) that is client side and not required don't need to be in the official package.

As for the missions, randomizing is one way to increase a missions interesting lifespan, having a game-master is another since even taking random towns is still taking one town after another.

Although that insurgence mission didn't do it too gracefully, I thought it would be fun to be able to build bases and keep expanding on the mission beyond just one session. those familier with MSO from arma 2 know what I'm thinking.

Alive is a mod created for the sole reason of making those type of missions quickly and easily. Basically create a base and plop in a bunch of modules. You can even set it up so a 'AI commander' will give you tasks that are actually relevant to the larger battle at hand

I seriously can't wait to play with a whole bunch of people! Though my epic uncoordinated movements end up in near certain death, or stingers to the face haha. Insurgency is quite a bit of fun when you have people providing CAS for the ground units via Apache or A-10.

I'm shooting for Sunday or even possibly tomorrow. Hopefully I can drag Clayton and Colby along too.

i cant play until Sunday, but make sure you guys get in there and kick ass if you can! I'll be back Sunday afternoon. After my visit with my family.