Arma 2 ACE Multi-Session Operations thread

[=VG= poffadder (Inactive Duty)]

Currently updating the mission to have less weapons in the boxes and MGO attach without TWS and the new black hawks.

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

Good points guys.. I think for now we'll put MGO back on.. keep the preset loadout selector, hold off on the vehicle fill thingy and see how it goes

[PITN]

FYI it took 2 hours to build a crappy FO on Altair mountain this morning. With one guy calling in deployabales and my 2 trips to base I managed to secure all of the largest base items and these still were not enough to build a decent FO. Part of the probem was the size of the container and the size of the materials. The largest walls and bunkers currently at base are all the medium size stuff. Arma has much larger buildings and longer walls available. I also discovered that the container holds 110 units but the truck holds 110 units. So there was no benifit to the container and I realized I wasted my time with one.

Recommendations:

• Containers need to hold double or triple what a MTVR can hold.

• MTVR should carry two containers or it can remain as one.

• Container should be AIRLIFT capable and two can be joined together as a pair for a lift.

• Pre-Filled containers with enough items to make a small defensable FO. Just use more to make it larger.

• Speciallized pre-filled that contain specific base kit. FARP, Radar, Comms, Veh Checkpoints, etc.

[Jager]

I agree with PITN, I hate to say it but I sorta.. maybe.. a tad enjoyed building a base.. SSHHH larger containers would be nice.
Still drooling over the idea of having a larger aircraft for dropping in gear or halo dropping grunts.

[ridDle]

Jager wants an AN-225

[Jager]

ridDle =VG= LAN_WROTE ...

Jager wants an AN-225

Yes and we need you to pilot it.

[=VG= Ingo]

i know this suggestion might come weird but i think we should remove the jets as they are not being used correctly and pretty much just lag the server when someone just flys off and activates most of the AI.

[AKM]

What about this domination-style revive thing ? Is it possible to remove or rework it ? I mean lack of fatal wounds and instant deaths, plenty of time for revive, markers on wounded people, observer mode, etc.

[PITN]

Here a link for a DayZ script to make defensive structures. But the cool thing is that it lists the classnames and images of those structures!

http://aaquacks.com/forum/index.php/topic/2924-build-recipes/

[Random]

I quite like the Revive, gives players a second chance instead of having to find a way back to the AO. Unless you want dedicated pilots to ferry people back and forth but i can't see that happening in casual gameplay. However I do agree the timer is too long there's little risk at all and whilst you're in spectator it's too tempting to switch to thermal and and say to your buddies "hes behind you" I'm sure were all guilty of that one !kungfu !!

@Ingo - I assume thats a subtle !flamed burn at myself for hopping in the F-16 last night. As I was on the ground on the eastern side of the river i was fully aware of the forces we were up against as Myself and 2 others were the first to die (joys of lovely spectator), at this point I decided to respawn at base as i was going to log, until i saw that 90% of the ground forces were down so i decided to hIt up some CAS to help clear out the many technical's so we could secure the area and get the wounded back up. I had previously mentioned on the long range that i was in the air but i assume as everyone was dead or dying I didn't get any response so i decided to line up a few cannon runs on the eastern side of the river to clear the technical's out. Once the threat had been dealt with i held in an orbit in the AO until Poff announced that all ground teams were RTB.

Admittedly as there weren't many people left and you guyz were RTB i assumed that, that was it for today so i went into "silly" mode done a few low passes on you guyz driving home and flew off into the Sunset to burn the 6 AGM's i had left !mental

Prior to that though i can't say that i wasn't using the CAS "correctly" apart from the fact that no1 asked for my help so i went and done it anyway as i believe those techies were putting us up shit creak a bit. Obv CAS should really wait until targets are marked by ground forces but in a situation where well over half the ground team are combat ineffective what sane pilot would just sit on his hand and let his buddies die?? If the situation had been different IE we already had CAS in the air or the ground team hadn't taken a large of amount of casualties i would agree that just hopping into the jet to light up the AO is pretty reckless however that was far from the situation. Either way me defending my actions is pretty worthless as there is probably going to be a rule that states Random isn't allowed to fly anything even the COLT at any time when we go public and the rules come down on us haha!

PS. Personnally i have never noticed a substential enough drop in FPS whilst someone is in the air to consider removing air assets. !wild

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

@PITN - yeah we haven't tweaked the logistics stuff yet those are good points.. everything about the logistics system is customizable.. how much each item (container, vehicle, etc) can hold, the 'weight' of each item, and so on. This will be a large time-consuming task but it will be done once we get the persistent DB stuff working.

@AKM - yes the revive is very easy to customize.. we included it because in our initial tests the AI seemed to target and headshot group leaders on a consistent basis. We also noticed a lot of time 'wasted' ferrying respawns back from the FOB to the AO. When you have dedicated pilots this is OK but otherwise it sucks ass. Revive timer, wounded markers and death messages can all be changed.. and certainly the markers and messages will be removed. What do you think is a fair revive time? (currently 10 minutes).

I would also vote to remove all planes.. too often they are abused and I don't feel they add enough to gameplay to keep. IMO of course :)

[=VG= poffadder (Inactive Duty)]

@Savage, can we turn off spectator in the revive script?

[=VG= Calv]

Regarding the revive scripts. I'm assuming it doesn't override the ace wounding in any way.
So for example you could you receive an incapacitating wound, and be on the ground bleeding out for a few minutes, then "die" and then the revive script kicks in keeping you "alive" for another 10 minutes.

Or does the script kick in the moment you're rendered unconscious?

Either way, I think 5 mins would be an absolute max amount of time, and possibly even consider lowering it further. If it's around 2-3mins, then it means that if someone in your team is hit by a lucky headshot, you have plenty of time to bring them back. But if someone rambo's off and dies there won't be enough time for a team to safely make their way to them, which seems acceptable.


RE: Planes. Could it be set as a mission parameter? If we're running MSO with full enemy armor switch on, then having access to planes would make sense. If we're running just infantry/technicals then planes are a bit overkill.

EDIT: One more thing that just came to mind. Could we have a searchlight or two pointed at the ammo crates at the spawn area. Loading in at night and trying to find them can be painful ;)

[=VG= Ingo]

the removing planes is not an attack on you guys it just when we were playing yesterday at the start of the game someone took off with the A-10 and 5-10 minutes later the server fps went down from 49 to 35, when nobody is flying that drop usually takes about and hour. I know some of you guys like flying but maybe just add a few more restricted rules to the planes :P
also what did you guys think about the new weapons box? any reasonable "ranger" weapons missing?

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

@Poff - yes I believe so will check it out.. the only other option is probably a black screen

@Calv - no you can still go unconscious the revive script (which mostly just extends the existing ACE revive features) will kick in only if you are 'killed'. I think I'll try lowering the revive time to 4 minutes and we'll see how that goes.

[Jager]

Is is possible to change the revive time based on damage?
For instance first stage of blackout gives you 8-10 mins, more serious wounds crawl down the chain of death and lands you at 1-3 minutes.
Also for ze event shizle enforced first person would be nice, it just falls nicely in line with removing notifications on wounds / death.

As for jets, you know me I love em.
However if they cause a real noticeable impact on server performance I'd bow to peer pressure :p

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

No I don't think the revive time is dynamic at all - one size fits all.

Found a small bug: If you die and click on the FORWARD BASE respawn button and the MHQ is not deployed you will spawn at 0,0,0 on the map (bottom left corner).

I'd love to make Force 1st person a pararmeter.. not sure if that's possible though unless it has an existing function that I can use in the init like ace_sys_wounds_ai_movement_bloodloss = false;

Planes as a parameter? Not sure how to do this.. have the plane's presence conditional on a value set in params?


Changes made to 05 version to disable spectator screen (black screen instead) and revive timer reduced to 240 seconds. I'll hold off on updating server for now.

[=VG= poffadder (Inactive Duty)]

Could you send it to me Savage? I wanna make some changes.

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

Yeah just out for bfast I'll be back in 10 mins or so

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

Random LAN_WROTE ...

... never noticed a substential enough drop in FPS whilst someone is in the air to consider removing air assets.

Keep an eye on the debug monitor that pops up in our MSO tests and you'll notice where and when it happens.
Note: The server does not have a monitor and high end gfx card - when we say FPS with regards to the Server, it's different than when we mean client side graphics frames drawn/rendered per second to your Monitor. On the Server, it's all about scheduled and non-scheduled bits of code and such that run the game, with so many lines or processes in one frame, with a maximum of 50 frames ever to be processed in one second.

You can easily force yourself, with graphics settings, to see your FPS drop - mine could still be fine.
If you are used to high frames per second on your PC, any server performance problem which affects client side FPS is going to be very noticeable. I imagine that playing with mid to low FPS on average, these things would be noticed less.

When we have a Headless AI Client, it will greatly reduce the performance hit the server suffers in dense enemy zones.
!hi

[=VG= Ingo]

quick hint building a fob with requesting everything in by choppers kills the server in 3 minutes ...

[Jager]

Ingo =VG= LAN_WROTE ...

quick hint building a fob with requesting everything in by choppers kills the server in 3 minutes ...

Haha somehow that does not surprise me :p

[=VG= Nvram]

once the database is running we all should get a camping tent at the FOB for each Player so everyone can set upp his gear and Store it inside the tent

Is there Maybe a chance to make a tent that you deployed spawnable? so You set up your tent at the FOB and Spawn there if KIA/Spawn there if time from last connection is more than 15min after you left the game

[ridDle]

Can you please update the first post on this thread? It was hell on earth to try to make it work with contradicting messages and trying to look through 7-8 pages of suggestions that may or may not be on the server. I finally had to forfeit and let Jager set it up through Teamviewer.

[ridDle]

Jager LAN_WROTE ...

Ingo =VG= LAN_WROTE ...

quick hint building a fob with requesting everything in by choppers kills the server in 3 minutes ...

Haha somehow that does not surprise me :p

Your premenition came true!