Airlift & AirToAir Rearm/Repair, Your Thoughts?

[=VG= XOR]

I already wrote these as part of something I'm putting together to wrap up the year along with some other shit I should've gotten done months ago & I'll post these below  if anyone's interested but, what thoughts & objections might you guys have to these concepts in PR?

 

Airlift Is Basically just a pair of commands that works with crates, repair stations light wheeled vehicles like humvee's & boats, '!load <str:crate/repair/wheeled/boat>', logically 'indexes' pos of first found matching object with in 5m &  '!unload' drops/'teleports' linked object from aircraft height much like crate drops,if not moved from loading position  so you'd need to get low.

 

AirToAir Rearm/Repair is basically a command '!a2a', reserved for trans helis with 2x crates,with a cool down timer that 'attaches' a fast supply object(from testairfield) usually found on helipads & runways to the transport heli of player that invoked command for 60 seconds, if invoker heli isn't more than 60% damaged, and only to Rearm/Repair other aircraft. So you could rearm/repair other aircraft provided they fly slow enough & in close (<25m) formation, in midair. I always figured the osprey should be more useful, so mehh, why not, you can rearm/repair an entire cas squad in one go in midair with one of those.

 

Both commands additionally cost player team 100 tickets and give bot team 100 tickets & are intended to be used in the context of bots at max difficulty, extended engagement envelops (range),a custom spawner and no squad lead respawn, among other things... As I happen to be one of those idiots who don't subscribe to the idea that the only game you can play is the one in the title.

 

Thoughts?

[=VG= keed]

Hey X0R! As a TRANS main I'll give my thoughts on your ideas. 

1. Gameplay functions preferably should be accessable via GUI (weapon slots, mapped keys or sub menue). Is this something that is possible? Otherwise the function might not be used much, outside of us forum dwellers.
2. Airlift: Loading objects by action might be a great way to flesh Logisitcs out. I like the necessity to physically load cargo - and not waiting in special zone for it to magically appear in your asset like we are now.
3. AirToAir: This seems like a programatically challenging fun idea but it would seem out of place because in flight rearm/repair is not something being done irl. I know this is a game but I believe that functions are only so much game-y because of engine limitations. At some point it has to be abstracted otherwise there is no end. While fuel is not something we have in game I feel that there would be no appreciation or place for a fictional method.
4. Ticket Cost: 100 is a bit too high. The situation on VG COOP is that tickets, right now, don't matter so assuming we would be on the default 1000 tickets (uhh is that vanilla?) a tenth seems high. If anyting tickets were never taxed when doing anything logistical so I'd say make it free, but rearm times back at the real resupply point way longer.

Additional notes:

• Ok, I fully agree that the Ospey should be given unique capabilites. What I would love to see is the vehilce drop feature for the big bird. Combined with your un/-loading script it would seem possible from a laymans POV. For gameplay purposes it would be cool to be able to request, say a TOW hummer from TRANS . The Opsprey would go pick it up from the deck or mainbase and deliver it to the squad. This would feel authentic and remove the inevitable respawn at main when your motorized squad wrecks one of the vehicles.
    (Maybe no visible vehicle but hey...)
• Maybe expand this to the chinook, so CAD and Army get something to lift too.

 

Cheers!

[=VG= Nyther]

5 hours ago, X0R said:

So you could rearm/repair other aircraft provided they fly slow enough & in close (<25m) formation, in midair.

I can imagine the pilot of a huey leaving the cockpit on autohover and just chuckin missiles perfectly at the missile pods of a cobra mid air

[=VG= XOR]

@=VG= keed can't quite modify ui server side, but shouldn't be too difficult to bind commands to existing UI events like weapon selection, certainly a better approach, I just be lazy like that 😏

Airlift would pretty much apply to the big birds so it's inline with what you indicated, Chinooks, Osprey & anything with 2x large crates.

And A2A rearm might not be a thing irl, but given the size of the maps, figured why not, cos the only in-game analogue to fuel is ammo, so perhaps might just rearm AA missiles/flares & not bombs/atgms, I do see your point tho.

 

100 ticket cost is just a base line, I'll probably tie it to player count & elapsed round time multipliers to make it a bit more dynamic & reasonable.

@=VG= Nyther exploits over hacks, always 😏

 

ftr, l'll post the code for these for anyone to use, but it's mostly for use on a private server in a coop Arma community of all places, cos it be like that, sadly.

[CptHawk]

Instead of Air to air, is it possible to script it to require both aircraft be landed? It would only really help Gunships this way, but could it be possible to also allow Armor/APC/TOW resupply in some degree?

Fat cow missions are pretty common among U.S. Aviation and it would be pretty useful to keep Rotatory assets up if they had a closer repair point.

[=VG= XOR]

33 minutes ago, CptHawk said:

Instead of Air to air, is it possible to script it to require both aircraft be landed? It would only really help Gunships this way, but could it be possible to also allow Armor/APC/TOW resupply in some degree?

Fat cow missions are pretty common among U.S. Aviation and it would be pretty useful to keep Rotatory assets up if they had a closer repair point.

No reason why not, easier actually, I considered making big birds repair/rearm points for everything, but I could hear the outcry & screams of my treasonous ways, so I Just went with A2A, less controversial & actually takes a bit of skill to execute within a time crunch & while needing to have to execute commands in-flight.

[CptHawk]

So if its possible in some way, what about requiring the helicopter have two crates still in its inventory and requiring it be landed with in a FOB envelop? It would better then just landing on top of a tank in the field to rearm it, and would require more teamwork as well as still force assets to break contact back to a safe area to repair and rearm. As well if there is a way to limit the amount of supplies the aircraft can rearm so as to force it to RTB at some point so it cant just sit at a fob all game.

It would make it a bit more realistic and useful for the team, and hopefully some what appease those that would have a grip about it.

[=VG= Kavelenko]

13 hours ago, X0R said:

Thoughts?

The last time I looked its the PR Devs who make decisions about these things. Have you asked Melon and FastJack about these ideas they should know whether they'd fly excuse the pun.

There was talk of players being able to fast rope from choppers in PR, still waiting for that welcome addition.

[TEDF]

Sling loading has already been done by some of the PR contributers and devs with some rather amusing results.  (Can't find the vid atm). And as for the rearming CAS in the field - yea don't see it ever happening in PR. CAS is already op as it is. I believe there were some thoughts about giving osprey the repair stations like logis do, but I think that idea got thrown in a bin as it would make US unbalanced on maps with osprey.

[=VG= XOR]

@CptHawk

I wish I shared your optimism, people it seems define 'realistic' in the context of that with which they've become accustomed, however unrealistic that might be, in my experience, even in past posts on this forum, tbh, but it's just a couple minutes of work to modify it to do what you describe.

 

@=VG= Kavelenko

These are not intended for PR integration, but as server side mods on passworded servers so more likely than not, they're to be used on events(writing these for a PR event on Volition) & so on, if someone wanted to, I post all code for PR under an older alias in the proper forums, for brevity. Everything I post here is shit I know won't ever be added to PR, such as systems focused on coop, completely out of place in deployment or just stuff I know to have been dismissed for less than forthright reasons. So generally I post these to make them publicly available cos I've written too many of these over the years for PR & private servers, and I don't even know where they are anymore, so....  

Like I said, there's a common misconception in online gaming that the only game you can play is the one in the title, sure it comes with a hassle , especially with PR's licensing rules, but one of the main reasons I made my account here is to dissuade people of this notion that you should wait for R-DEV to solve all your little problems & wishes, cos They Won't && They Can't especially not for 'stupid' coop 'that no one plays',  the fact that there's not a single continually passworded (modded) server that exists to explore this other way of playing PR says as much, I'm too lazy to set one up & maintain one myself, so here ya go, hell most of my stuff that's ended up in PR was taken from other bf2 mods, if that says anything.

@=VG= TEDF

Familiar with that, and also familiar with why it was abandoned, O C A M S R A Z O R,  'logically' doing something is sometimes superior to rendering it needlessly, especially in such an old game.

4 hours ago, =VG= TEDF said:

And as for the rearming CAS in the field - yea don't see it ever happening in PR. CAS is already op as it is. I believe there were some thoughts about giving osprey the repair stations like logis do, but I think that idea got thrown in a bin as it would make US unbalanced on maps with osprey.

Xacly my point, it's never gonna happen, because it makes ABSOLUTELY no sense in deployment where it breaks balance, but in coop, it just might be perfect & above all enjoyable, but it's lack of value in deployment means you'll never see that in PR, which is why I'm here & not there, infact I think that's what's missing from your events, which I so enjoy, instead of just different maps, perhaps you should consider using some abandoned/obsolete features of which there are plenty, got no issue helping out, events are passworded, you can do whatever....

 

[=VG= Kavelenko]

Great ideas nonetheless, ok how about this scenario for Coop? Take the Goose Green map and develop a Harrier vs Mirage map, pure Air to Air combat only. Some of the best dogfights I've had in PR have been on the Falklands Vehicle Warfare maps, it is awesome when you can fly against 10+ jets, pure chaos but a helluva lot of fun!

 

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

First idea seems neat (though not the part about typing out a console command), but as for air-to-air reloading of CAS, I gotta agree with TEDF on that one.  CAS is way too OP already (and talking COOP here, not Deployment) where adding this extremely unrealistic and rather arcade video-gamey air-to-air rearm/repair would drastically change the balance of combined arms operations gameplay is it currently exists in PR (INF/ARMOR/TRANS/CAS) IMHO.

But above all, if any of these sorts of ideas are on the table for integration, they should at all costs be key commands and not involve typing - even if using something like AutoHotKey was required.  Just my opinion here, but the concept of typing out game actions makes me think of the days before 'graphics' - talking IBM x86 era.  Just sayin.

An event with special functions would certainly be the best place to try out something like this, and we're always down to host an event if someone puts in the time and effort to be it's 'show runner' as TEDF and others have done in the past.  That's how it works around here - but it's gotta be playable, and testing should be done prior to any event for stability and playability.

 You got some creative ideas, and some that are odd to some of us, but thank you for taking our constructive criticism with tact and grace, and understanding.

[EuroStep]

On 20.12.2020 at 12:33 PM, X0R said:

Both commands additionally cost player team 100 tickets and give bot team 100 tickets.

We have plenty of tickets in CO:OP anyways, so why not?

The idea of mine I told you today was about a cross-faction-custom-weapon-loadout thingy, meaning as an officer you would be able to chose your own pistol; or to have (let's say) a spotter with a rifle of choice plus the radio and nothing else (no bandages, ropes, knives, smoke grenades, etc.). Or (let's say) an Anti-Tank guy with nothing but his launcher and 3-4 ammo boxes in his inventory.

Obviously that will never happen.

Airlift sounds cool -- I don't think there's enough factions to utilize that method though, even if we ever made it simple, just like in Battlefield 2 where vehicles fall from the sky.

Re-arming in air is something that you will find in Ace Combat or some modern RTS games and should never belong here.

The biggest problem in this game right now is the air-to-air and surface-to-air combat which is simplified beyond my imagination.

 

[=VG= XOR]

@=VG= SemlerPDX cheers, commands can be bound to weapon selection, so it's no biggie, just easier for testing, tho as a matter of personal preference I don't mind it 😛

 

@EuroStep 

Rearm was more a meme than not, 'comes in the box' but repair I feel can make a difference for the better, I just ended up adding a modified supply object with repair only & instead of using a command, however many crates & size of crates a heli has determines if it can repair other vehicles(so it can't repair itself), at what speed it repairs. Same with airlift, size of aircraft & vehicle determines airlift, and a command-less load/unload using crates, whatever vehicle you drop a crate on directly you get a notification & you may use commorose okay/negative to accept/reject prompt to 'load' vehicle if no passengers inside & 'getout' commorose to unload, will add prompt to driver if any in vehicle.

11 hours ago, EuroStep said:

The biggest problem in this game right now is the air-to-air and surface-to-air combat which is simplified beyond my imagination

A lot of people would disagree with you on this, it's only simple for veteran cas whores, like myself 😛 Although ofc there's somethings that are too simplified.

11 hours ago, EuroStep said:

The idea of mine I told you today was about a cross-faction-custom-weapon-loadout thingy, meaning as an officer you would be able to chose your own pistol; or to have (let's say) a spotter with a rifle of choice plus the radio and nothing else (no bandages, ropes, knives, smoke grenades, etc.). Or (let's say) an Anti-Tank guy with nothing but his launcher and 3-4 ammo boxes in his inventory.

Obviously that will never happen.

Like all things in PR there's a hacky way to do that but it requires a whole custom map & scripts, so def not happening outside of events.

 

Again appreciate the feedback, it's much better than it was when I posted the OP,keep it coming, cheers.

[=VG= Connor]

I think big birds having repair capabilities is cool, yeah maybe it makes some of the factions a little stronger when they have that capability if the other faction only have logis, but it’s not like having a Cobra/Apache against  them is “balanced” (at least not when I and X0R are flying ). 

However air to air is a mad lad sort of idea, definitely would make CAS insanely strong so, maybe if we do some event where we have to defend hordes of zombies attacking one defend point (which we should totally do btw!!) then it would be cool! I really hope we can get some of your ideas and scripts in an event some day because they’re so damn fun 

[=VG= =AMPH=]

On 12/20/2020 at 4:56 PM, =VG= keed said:

Hey X0R! As a TRANS main I'll give my thoughts on your ideas. 

1. Gameplay functions preferably should be accessable via GUI (weapon slots, mapped keys or sub menue). Is this something that is possible? Otherwise the function might not be used much, outside of us forum dwellers.
2. Airlift: Loading objects by action might be a great way to flesh Logisitcs out. I like the necessity to physically load cargo - and not waiting in special zone for it to magically appear in your asset like we are now.
3. AirToAir: This seems like a programatically challenging fun idea but it would seem out of place because in flight rearm/repair is not something being done irl. I know this is a game but I believe that functions are only so much game-y because of engine limitations. At some point it has to be abstracted otherwise there is no end. While fuel is not something we have in game I feel that there would be no appreciation or place for a fictional method.
4. Ticket Cost: 100 is a bit too high. The situation on VG COOP is that tickets, right now, don't matter so assuming we would be on the default 1000 tickets (uhh is that vanilla?) a tenth seems high. If anyting tickets were never taxed when doing anything logistical so I'd say make it free, but rearm times back at the real resupply point way longer.

Additional notes:

• Ok, I fully agree that the Ospey should be given unique capabilites. What I would love to see is the vehilce drop feature for the big bird. Combined with your un/-loading script it would seem possible from a laymans POV. For gameplay purposes it would be cool to be able to request, say a TOW hummer from TRANS . The Opsprey would go pick it up from the deck or mainbase and deliver it to the squad. This would feel authentic and remove the inevitable respawn at main when your motorized squad wrecks one of the vehicles.
    (Maybe no visible vehicle but hey...)
• Maybe expand this to the chinook, so CAD and Army get something to lift too.

 

Cheers!

We have wehicle lifting in Battlefield Vietnam

But yeah, that would be awesome...

 

[Rabbit]

 

[=VG= XOR]

@Rabbit @=VG= TEDF

Calling it 'rope' is a reach, but here's a better video by Suchar, I loved it but it was bitch server side. Great for events tho...