My new mission called CDN MSO is ready!

The mission is USA versus RU and covers the entire map of Chernarus. We play as BLUFOR and start with a small airstrip base. Everything else is OPFOR territory.
Each side has 400 AI units, an AI commander, and 1000 reinforcements. The BLUFOR commander will aggressively try to take strategic military and infrastructure objectives while the OPFOR commander tries to hold or recapture his objectives. The AI commanders will come up with their own overall strategies and tactics based on the priority of different objectives and known enemy positions/movements.

We have to help the AI commander win the war. There are too many tools and ways to do this that I'm not even going to put them here.

Mission persistence is working so we can shut the server down and load it up like a singleplayer game at a later date.

This mission is not easy. The Russians didn't leave all their equipment at home for this one and Chernarus is pretty easy to hide in.
You won't always see the enemy before they see you, you won't always outgun the enemy, and you won't even always outsmart the enemy. Having an AI commander means that all enemy units are actually moving and doing things to further their cause. This means that we won't be shooting at a bunch of guys just standing there like a bunch of frozen horse turds; but it also means that the enemy might be the one doing the surprising for ones.. Actually that happens a LOT so keep your eyes open.

All this missions needs is more players.

I made a few changes since the last game:

-I think I found the cause behind the flocks of helos and squished the bug

-Manually placed AI helos on both sides for AI commander.

-Commanders on both sides should ignore some of the really tiny objectives that didn't really have any significance (AI were going after little shacks in the woods. Another hopeful effect is that less OPFOR will filter through BLUFOR lines although I don't want to prevent that altogether.

-Vitualized AI will move and fight at 50% normal speed. This should allow the players to play even more of a part and keep up better with the BLUFOR commander's blitzkrieg.

-Made the base defenses prettier. They were nice but I used some tanoa assets which caused errors for those without the DLC. The initial quick fix was ugly and unrealistic.

-Slowed fast time from 1:7 to 1:5. This should pretty well sync day/night changes with the need to resupply on ammo.

Had a really good run of it last night. Instead of pushing south like we normally do, we decided to push west since in the past our AI struggled there and our base even was overrun ones.
Anyway, I think was a good decision as we got right up to the big airfield in the north.

Just as we thought we pretty much had the airport captured a BTR-90 with like 20 Russians riding on it busted in and lit us up before we could get the rocket from out of the vehicle and use it..
We didn't move any MHQs up so we had to spawn back at base. From there we decided to airlift a MHQ and a vehicle to a clearing that was close to the airport but secured by friendly forces.
By the time we got that all set up and got on the ground we heard fighting nearby in a direction that was supposed to be "cleared". Apparently the Russians kept pushing hard and our MHQ was now on the front line!
We flanked some Russians that were engaging our forces and swept up the area around the MHQ.
After that we very carefully made our way to the main airport to have another go at it. We got in without any contact except 2 foot mobiles on the far end of the runway that we didn't engage. We wanted to glass everything we could so we knew what we were dealing with, especially after the BTR incident.

Sone of us got up in the tower to see what we could see. I was looking around and spotted a Russian looking right at me with binoculars. We looked at each other for a bit, I wasn't sure if he seen me, and then he reached for his gun.

All hell broke loose. Two squads were behind the hangers, along with 2 sniper teams including the 2 men we seen earlier. We got shot at, we got shot, but by the end we kept the upper hand.
By this time it was getting really dark and I had left my NVGs in the vehicle which was in the middle of the runway, the only thing the BTR didn't light up.
I needed to get to the vehicle but there were some more enemies and I couldn't see them.
After a few more small gunfights just shooting at muzzle flashes, we felt good enough to get the vehicle. I couldn't even see where it was because it was so dark so Colby had to get it and turn the lights on.

We got out and went back to the MHQ which is where we logged off. Next time we'll go through the airport more throughly as we left a large section on the north and west side.

Pretty great progress for one session. BLUFOR occupies about 1/6th of the map including so pretty strategic points. OPFOR will be pushing back hard though. They've proven to be aggressive and mobile. I suspect they're shipping in reinforcements as we spotted a Mi-8 in the area. If we take the airport I fully expect a large armored counterattack. Every few minutes gunfire can be heard signaling that there is definitely still fighting going on in the area north of the airport.

These Russians continue to impress me with their tactics, mobility, and how much damn AT they pack around lol.

By the way, all the mission and personal stats are recorded online at the ALiVE War Room. You can make an account and join the F99th group to check out mission stats, and the personal stats are really good too. It shows a lot of info like time spent in each vehicle, kills with each weapon, etc etc just like battlefield.
Heck you can even replay the mission on the map like TACVIEW and any SITREP and PATROLREP markers that people put in are shown there as well. Lots of features, check it out.

The best part is that it's not over, next time we just load in where we left off!

You should reinstall, Mata and Sweep already popped in so that makes 6 so far. More people would only make it more fun.

Right now we're just playing whenever we feel like (so every night) but with more people it would have to be more structured. I have a good idea of what that looks like and I'm itching to try it.

That said, I consider the mission to still be in 'beta' because there are some things I might still want to change. There is a bug where after a couple hours the AI commanders stop responding. Restarting the server seems to fix it, and if it does indeed always fix it, then it's ok. Otherwise it's a bit game breaking
Point is, I still might change things Willy Nilly so the 3-month long operation might get reset every other day.

Soon though I'll stop resetting it and we'll give it a good play through.

Im all set up.

Tonight I will make some edits that require a reset. I'm pretty sure the mission will be complete and working as intended then. It won't take long so I can still have it up in time to play tonight if people want. Otherwise I'd like to go on Saturday with as many people as possible.

Made some more very necessary changes:

-Reinforcements were set to deploy from any captured military installation.. Arma is pretty loose with the term 'military installation' so reinforcements were coming from really weird places.. Very annoying and confusing until I finally figured out what was going on. Now both sides only get their reinforcements at base and they'll need to truck their troops and equipment to wherever they need to go.

-OPFOR used CSAT trucks a lot for logistics. Not a big problem except the OPFOR commander didn't control CSAT troops (the driver) so they were dumb as bricks. Now the OPFOR commander controls CSAT as well.

-BLUFOR gets a 75% larger starting area.

-Moving and fighting speed lowered again from 50% normal speed to 25% normal speed. Virtual AI don't take any type of speed penalty from terrain which is why it's necessary to slow them down.

LOL! A bit of Arma epicness the other day:

Enemies were continuing to push into the area north of the MHQ no matter how frequently we cleared the area. We started getting the idea that OPFOR was using that area as part of his supply and reinforcement routes. Colby and I were the only ones on the server so we decided to head up into the area with two objectives.
1) To retake a small camp but strategic camp that kept on changing hands, and
2) Recon the area for intel relating to enemy movement and numbers.

We took the camp although we were lucky to do so and so we drove around looking for more baddies. We came upon a intersection between two roads. Both of the roads were possible routes for the enemy to use. We pulled off into the trees and decided to mine the road. We put 5 AP mines on and around the intersection and placed on big sucker AT mine right in the middle.
We were standing beside the road hidden by the bushes fiddling with persistent map markers to mark the mines for friendlies when we heard a vehicle coming up the road. Hoping it was friendly but not taking chances I exited whatever menus I was in just in time to see a Ural packed full of OPFOR reinforcements come barreling down the road, right by us, and straight into the AT mine. LMFAO I''ve never had a 'random' mine pay off in arma before, never mind so quickly. So much yes lol.

Sounds and looks awesome.

Got all the mods set up yesterday and I'm excited to join in one of these nights. My cousin may also join in, he just got ArmA a little while back but still hasn't played it. At the very least he'll be another body for the AI to shoot at, but I'll try to get him up to speed to a level where he can contribute.

This is currently being hosted on your own computer, right runny? Would you be interested to try using the cloud server for it?

After hearing about this constantly via Sweeper and G-man I downloaded everything last night, will join in as well when able. Sounds like it'll be a blast

@pyro, yes I'm hosting it on my own machine. There are some benefits to that as it cuts down big time on the steps necessary to get it going. That's pretty big when the mission gets tweaked as often as it has been lately.
Right now I'm not experiencing any performance issues that would be mitigated much by more power. If that becomes an issue then I'd be interested.
When you say "the cloud server" are you implying there is one available already?

Just a reminder to those who are new or returning:

-You need keys bound to ACE interact, ACE self-interact, and ALiVE menu
-Make yourself some default loadouts in the virtual armory. Remember your medical gear, don't look like a Russian, and keep your weight under 35 Kg.

I just mean the Amazon server we have access to through Kocrachon. I don't think it has ArmA installed yet (although it could, ArmA is one of his go-to things) but I'm sure it would be a relatively quick setup. Updates I'm sure would be more inconvenient, especially if they're still really frequent, it's all up to your discretion. If/when you want to give it a shot just let me know.

That was a lot of fun! I think the mission has it out for you guys, it was supposed to be on the difficult side of things but it was never that crazy during testing!

One of the things I should have been doing the whole time but completely forgot about wads calling in reinforcements. That nearby armored section plus a bunch of paratroopers would have been real handy in holding Gorka. Next time I'll make more use of the support available to us.

I'm glad that the performance is up to par as well. My old CPU still got it haha. I'm also glad to have 11 people now who are at a stage where it's just 'click play and go'. It's a high priority of mine to keep it that way so mod updates will be few and far between.

I guess the only question is: when is round 2?

How does tonight sound for round 2?

In!

I'm in.