Im in. Wife permitting.

I should be in

I'll try have it going by 6:30-7:00 MDST then.

That was the best one yet! We didn't all get killed doing something stupid right at the start and we killed 6 tanks in 2 separate engagements without getting wrecked. I think we're just getting better and learning to be careful. Pretty darn fun from start to finish.

Some more changes since the save wasn't working anyway:

-Reverted HMWWV inventory to non-virtual
-Removed some gear from HMWWV so it's not completely full
-Fiddled with some init code and module configs and fixed the save game.. At least it's working for me right now.
-Turned off dynamic weather because the blue line was annoying

Looks like it's all good now.. I'm sure we'll find more though.

Also, if anyone is using any mod at all that isn't in the official pack, please disable them because they potentially break the save game and can cause performance issues.

EDIT: I saved the mission, restarted the server, and loaded the mission again 3 times without any issue. Looks like it's unbroken now.

Fiiiiiyyaaaaaaa!!

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/158027122755725773/25F6DAF7F2B748929E517D81514DC265A73A2CC6/

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/158027122755725681/25D839A432F0CA674453134CF751BC6B6BEF1239/

Heh, they hardly had a chance to return fire. 2x Mk.19s plus 6 inf put a quick end to that party. I have some screens too that I should post when I get home.

This was after I called it a night? How far did you guys get?

We got up to Zelenogorsk and then pulled back a bit to airlift the MHQ into a 'safe' spot. We pushed hard on the western edge, didn't meet a whole lot of baddies, but when we exited it looked like we just went around a entire army that went around our east, took Petrovka, and are now laying siege ones again to the Northern Airbase.

I don't think we'll play today as I'm gone, but the next op we will move east towards Green Mountain to stifle the flow of reinforcements flowing out of that area and from there we will follow up North behind them until we reach the airport again.
Depending on how many players we have, we might split that into 2 simultaneous tasks so that we don't just jump into the flow of reinforcements and be surrounded just as we surround the enemy. It would be beneficial to leave a squad near Green Mountain to recon exactly the route the enemy is using and to disrupt it as much as possible. I'm talking mines, ambushes, and scouting.

lol, they're really driven to hold that airfield. Funny that we always run in to a tank platoon coming over the crest of a hill in front of some minor town or in the middle of a forest, but all they threw at the airfield were wave after wave of UAZs and Ural trucks. Between us and the blue AI, we must've killed like a combined 300 reds.

Mines, ambushes, and scouting sounds great. Excited to get back in it when we can.

I think those tanks we always bump into are on their way to attack Krasnostav and our base. It's about the only two objectives that OPFOR doesn't control off the start.
There are more tanks though, I know that much. Most of them are defending high-priority objectives although in testing they've been known to patrol as well.
Keep in mind that the entire eastern part of the map, especially the main cities along the coast are also actively being fought for even though we're not in that area. OPFOR is definitely sending a lot of their resources that way too, including the bulk of their air power.

I see the point you make and I agree though. Sometimes it seems like BLUFOR is overly aggressive and too spread out while OPFOR spams reinforcements which results in a train of vehicles YOLOing into players. These vehicles normally don't do this but since the drive is so far from base, their normal behavior to disembark before reaching contact is disrupted because we've pushed beyond their waypoint in the time they took to arrive. This is due to a rather slow AI commander cycle time and I've suggested a solution to the ALiVE developers.

What I've been doing to try combat this is to call a lot of reinforcements to help hold objectives so we're not stuck just defending against the hoard. That said, it's not like the waves of reinforcements are just being mowed down at no cost to BLUFOR. I called about 6 12-man squads and 3 machanized infantry squads onto the airport along with 2 M1A2/M2A2 mixed platoons and 3 squads of infantry onto Grishino. All that's left is about 1.5 squads on the airport and a low health mechanized infantry squad which left of push south. I think the tanks were interdicted while in transport by trucks. I should mention that those aren't free reinforcements. When I call things in, they are removed from a pool that the commander is using to reinforce. At no point can either side have more troops than they started with so they're actually technically replacements.
All that and we still don't have Grishino back and the airport is still very heavily contested.
Last night we took the western towns up to Zelenogorsk which wasn't all that eventful but strategically it's very nice to have that out of our hair, plus it's just more things for OPFOR to think about.
To me that's the beauty of this mission, it's not just a one-off butt kicking, it's dynamic and strategic as well as tactical. Sometimes things feel slow or uneventful but there's a reason to take objectives beyond just shooting bad guys. When we scout it's for an actual purpose beyond just 'oh I want to play scout-sniper'. That intel is actually useful to myself and our AI commander in order to develop strategy. Also, any disruption of enemy logistics is saving someone down the line from having to fight them.
Basically there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. At the end though, gameplay rules.

I'm open to criticisms on the mission though. I want to hear what you guys would change or would like to see even if you don't know how exactly to do it.

In a turn of events I'm already home, got some decent screens last night:

Barring the bugs that come with the ArmA territory, I don't know if there's anything else to be asked of the mission. Maybe for future consideration a map change would be nice. I never played ArmA 2 or DayZ mod so I don't have any nostalgia factor to make up for the 90% un-enterable buildings and low-poly features. Plus come to think of it, I think that 4-FPS-glitch has only ever happened to me on Chernarus or some other AiA terrain, so maybe that has something to do with it. If everyone had Apex and Tanoa would work without a substantial performance hit, that would be my dream. Fighting in the jungle on that map is really something else.

Otherwise, I can't think of anything in particular to change with the mission.

If everyone had APEX I'd have skipped Chernarus and went straight to Tanoa! I still haven't been on that map besides in the editor. If you want enterable buildings then that pretty much narrows it right down to Altis. That map might be a bit much to ask for in terms of filling it up with bad guys, but it wouldn't take much for me to get a mission to the point where we know.

It's not so much about wanting to enter buildings that badly, it's just that in Chernarus you know that every building you run in to is basically just a box-shaped piece of terrain that you can't climb over. Towns just become a pain in the ass rather than some kind of immersive urban combat, just another object you'll end up having to walk around.

Who's up for MSO tonight? Same time-ish

ill join up at around 8.

Sure. Count me in.

Edit: *might* be in, not sure.

We'll see I guess. If we get 5 then it's a go.