TEDF

6 hours ago, Spartanish said:

Congratulations  @=VG= keed !

Regarding mission itself, any additional info about enemy's garrison on the island? Are we gonna have any chance pulling that out without making noise? 

Regardless, I am up for it!

Enemy has large garrison on an island so it's highly unlikely for anyone to pull it off without alarm going off. (Cheating AI yeee)

Warmup Battle / Start of the COOP Campaign 2018

 03rd of february 1900 PRT

Faction : M.E.C.

HCO : KEED

MAP DOWNLOAD : 

CLICK HERE!!!

The signups are closed and after reviewing the application, a decition was made. Please welcome your High Commander for the COOP Campaign, @=VG= keed . In the next couple of days, he will be debriefed on how the campaign is going to work. As of this moment, the course of the campaign is in his hands and only he has the rights to tell where which asset / division goes, which research should be done etc. Others are allowed & encouraged to give the HCO advice and suggestions, but remember his decition is final.

Campaign overview can be checked out : Here

But now let's get down to business. As the first lines suggest, the first battle will be held on 03rd of february at 1900 PRT. This will be a warmup battle during which commander has a time to settle in the office and therefore this battle takes place outside the campaign map and outcome doesn't have serious inpact on the Campaign. 

M.E.C. expeditionary forces are sent to Mexico to aid them in their fight against the United States. To avoid this op being traced back to us, all our units will be using foreign uniforms and weapons and are taught basic Spanish. 
Our objective is to land on one of the US controlled islands just south of Florida Coast, locate and destroy enemy SAM and Radar stations and then get out before the americans can counteract. We will infaltrate the area from the south using a civilian cargo ship. Once close enough, teams will move out using RHIBs. Once landed, we must be quick to locate and destroy the objectives. It's estimated that the US navy will arrive within an hour once the alarm is risen and once it's there, we won't be able to escape. Alarm is given once the first round has been fired near or on the island.

Mission objectives : 
1. Locate the SAM and Radar sites.

2. Destroy them by planting C4 Charge on them. Only Combat Engineers have access to C4 on this and you can only have 2 Engis at a time.
3. Once destroyed, exfiltrate back to the Ship. Remember where you parked your RHIBs!

4. This is an undercover operation, so remember : No Arabic!
 

Additional info:

1. Your primary goal is to destroy the SAM and Radar sites. Do not get caught up in long firefights against the enemy as it will just prolong the mission and will result in too many casualties. Remember, you only have limited tickets & time.
2. Before the mission begins, you'll have 5-10 minutes of prep time for people to load in, grab their gear and set up in the boats. You are not allowed to leave until green light is given.
3. All SAM and Radar sites will be spawned by the game host during the setup phase to avoid anyone attempting to locate them via editor.
4. One hour timer starts once first shots have been fired either near or on the island.

Mission outcomes : 
1. Success - 5/7 targets are destroyed & remaining forces made it back to the cargoship before US Navy arrived
4. Failure - less than 2/3 of the targets are destroyed, units didn't make it back to the ship before navy arrived.
 

Signups are closed. Commander shall be announced alongside with the first battle details tomorrow.

Going to lock this as it's slowly getting out of topic and heated up. If you got anything to add towards the AI changes, please do it HERE . This post was solely to address the issue of bots spamming LATs at choppers and unfortunately there's not much to do about it as the bots can't make a difference between transport helis and attack helos atm, otherwise I would have left the transport helos untouched.

I appreciate the feedback, but as I mentioned in the original notification, all changes are temporary and will be removed after a while which happens to be this weekend. I'll tweak the files and test out the AI during the course of campaign and once I'm happy with the results, it will be loaded on to the main server again for further testing and feedback.

Yes, lets have the tanks and APCs rape even more than they already do. Sounds good.

Don't worry ranger, server will be set back to normal this weekend anyways.

3 hours ago, =VG= SemlerPDX said:

*We are still looking for Map Makers familiar with PR coding because we'd like a few specific maps edited with more/less vehicles of certain types, and in some cases, some restrictions lifted so, for example, a Squad Leader Training can bypass "minimum squad members required for...." limits to allow more actual Squad Leaders without so many squad members needed (imagine base building tutorials, but can build 5 fobs right next to each other for training/instructional purposes).  Whoever is interested in helping to make these Workshop maps can post up here, or contact me in a private message.

Send me a list of which map and what you want on it and i can make it. All weapon / vehicle / FOB etc. restrictions are server sided and can be edited easily as needed.

Signup closes in 24h. 

3 minutes ago, =VG= ciro said:

Good man Murder!

Should i feel pissed nobody want into my squad? i even gave TL up!

LOL

Sydney and I are waiting to hear back from couple of others, which is why we took a separate squad. If they say no then we are more than happy to jump to squad 2.  

Squad lead for Three plz. 

Question : What kind of equipment do we get (rifles / AT)?

11 minutes ago, Jersans said:

So then we should consider a 2IC structure. I'm happy and confident to command (at least I think I'm a half-decent leader) but I don't want to let the guys down like if my wife needs her 'us time' or my dog needs to poop etc. Considering I'm not committing for a day or time this might get complicated. See what I mean? 

Moreover this is so awesome I don't want to screw it up. 

Commander doesn't really have be around during the battles, it's preferred (moral support for your minions), but not required. As long as he has time to come online few times a week to select research, troop movements, Check the world map, think over the strategy etc, which all will be done over the forums, it's fine.

As for screwing up, don't worry about it. The only one who's mostly likely to do it is me when I accidentally "blow" the server up by editing the server files.

So all the hard work the mappers and COOP devs have put into PR is just "waste of space" and thrown away the moment it doesn't suit for PvP. Brilliant. 

Just out of curiosity, why were the maps scrapped in the first place? Why not just leave them in, if not for Deployment then for COOP? I seem to remember that Shikotan was one of the most popular INF maps on COOP back in the day. Same question about the old PR mappack. The maps work perfectly fine, just need to have some of the outdated stuff removed/replaced, init file organised and the AI "flag" file updated.

Bump.

10 days left until CO signup closes.

3 hours ago, Spartanish said:

Totally against this particular decision. In my eyes Kashan ALT should stay as it was. Perfect layout for 1-6 players and we have both STD and LRG for rounds with bigger amount of players. 

Apart from that, I am looking forward to all those changes.

We played around on it with 20ish people and I didn't notice any changes, apart from instead of having 10 vehicles camping on the hills, it was only 2. 1 f16, abrams and 3 bradlies is more than enough to counter the first wave of t62s and BMP1s that roll out.

These changes will propably never be added to the official release as the PR standars require for both teams to have same amount / balanced assets. We tried to talk about it years ago and got completely shut down. Best thing we can do is start a petition to have the COOP devs add couple of lines for each vehicle spawn and flag that state the ownership, delay and amount so we could edit them freely as needed.

EDIT : All the changes are currently up on the test server (PW: 123). I can upload them to dropbox sometime if needed.

Uploaded additional changes to the server. Again all of this is temporary and will be reverted in a few days.

General : 

1. Reduced tickets for bluefor on some of the maps

Muttrah : 

1. Bots are now more aggressive on their deployment

2. Slightly increased time it takes to cap docks. Reduced time it takes to capture ECC & WCC but increased time it takes to neutralise them.

3. Increased TOW HMMWV Respawn time slightly

4. Increased Cobra respawn time on STD to 10 minutes

EDIT : Looks good so far

Khamisiyah : 

1. Bots now spawn on bunkers & chem factory

2. ZU guns now respawn after a while

3. Increased f15 respawn time to 10 minutes

4. Bots now focus more on defending/spawning on the flags rather than going for the vehicles

Kashan : 

1. Bots are now more aggressive on their deployment and should be able to capture both bunkers in reasonable time, provided that human side doesn't rush the hills before village is captured

2. Bots now get AAs once they capture bunkers

3. Increased jet respawn times to 10 minutes.

ALT : 

1. Removed 1 man tanks and reduced the total number of tanks to 2, with one of them being delayed.

2. removed one of the f16s

STD : 

1. Reduced total number of tanks from 12 to 4. All tanks have increased respawn times. All one man tanks have been removed.

2. Reduced respawn time on bot aircrafts

Pavlovsk : 

1. Bots are now more aggressive on their deployment

2. Decreased ZU gun respawn times slightly

ALT : 

1. Increased time it takes to capture west beach fort so the bots would have a chance to fight over it before the 2 man tank squad captures it.

2. increased TOW HMMWV respawn time slightly

STD : 

1. Increased harrier respawn time to 10 minutes.

2. Increased time it takes to neutralise West Beach Fort so the bots would have a chance to defend it properly.

40 bots with ratio on 200.

So far the spawn time changes that I've tried on the test server have ended up either not working or forcing you to CTD after loading in. The same with the flag ownership changes and swapping 1 man assets with 2 man assets. The caporder change was just an example.

EDIT : Error from my part. flags seem to work. Not sure why it didn't work earlier, propably some stupid typo somewhere. Disregard those lines on last post.

Jup everything besides removing the 1 man assets works and I'm a dumbo.  I'll be adding some ticket and respawn changes to the test tomorrow.

Unfortunately range is something that is and always will be an issue when it comes to fighting against bots. Only way I see that could fix it is by decreasing the view distance to insane levels and then reducing the bot engagement range to that level, which could in theory provide quite amazing INF battles, but would render the entire air arsenal useless in the process. 

The changes on the server are temporary and will be reverted in few days.

The biggest issue in COOP atm is the amount of assets available on both sides. An issue easily solvable if the COOP community was given free hands to modify the maps based on the playerbase needs, but unfortunately most of those tools have been ripped from us over the course of latest updates. (yes I'm taking the piss on devs. Sue me). If the files weren't blocked by every imaginable "code" or whatever check system, we could easily increase spawn times of assets on human side, force the bots to spawn on the foward flags, change cap orders etc.

One thing that has been discussed every now and then is to reduce the slots on the server to 30 or so and increase the bot count by the extra slots recieved. Unfortunately in my opinion it would only end up with less inf being on the field and more assets raping against the bots on human side. Again, something that could be fixed, but oh well.

Like Jersans mentioned, in the end it all comes down to the players and how they choose to play the game. We have had really amazing rounds when the regulars and usual "asset whores" went to do INF and left the heavy assets for newer / noob players (not sure if allowed to used that word in 2018, so sorry if offended anyone), so if we want to improve the teamplay even by slightest I suggest : 

1. admins running more INF maps during peak hours (I know that some of you already do that, so thumbs up)

2. On asset maps, favour doing inf and leave the heavy assets to randoms.

3. Don't kick randoms from your squad just so your usual buddies could join in. If the dudes in your squad are following orders and aren't running around on their own, let them stay and explain things if needed.

4. Don't lock your INF squad until it's full (7-8 people)

3 hours ago, =VG= Fastjack said:

Problem with most apc's is that they use the ATGM's and autocannon's at the same RANGE but having different priorities against targets or one weapon overrules the 2nd weaponchoice. You need different Range settings for each weaponsystem to get the bots cycle through all weaponsystems.

Already did that. Made it so that they fire ATGMs at certain minimum and maximum range and once that minimum range gets breached they swap over to AP. For INF, the BMPs use HE and if the inf gets too close, then they swap over to HEFRAGs /GL Launchers if available. 

3 hours ago, =VG= Fastjack said:

I dont get what you mean with AT vehicles. You mean a TOW or Spandrel?

Wouldn't rockets a little bit more mercyfully and giving the autocannon ai only priority to helicopters xD

Jup. They still go for the vehicles, but will also shoot at inf if aggrevated. Changed the Jets over to gunrun the inf and choppers as the bomb didn't do as much damage as I thought it would do.

3 hours ago, =VG= Fastjack said:

TEDF, all what you listened sounds really nice but how you modify the ai.files in the zips ??? Serverside Modding???

Jup. You can modify the values on server files as much as you want as long as you don't add anything to it. Basically works the same way as the server.zip files in map folders, you can edit the values, but can't add additional stuff or change ingame "items"

EDIT : files have been uploaded and server is now running on modified AI settings. Feel free to post any feedback and bugs that you encounter during the rounds.

I'll apply the changes this evening. Doing some last checkups. 

The BMP3s do fire their ATGMs due to them not having any delay which is the same with some of the sp static at launchers, to answer Double's question. 

Trying to get the heavy attack helos to fire their atgms properly as well. Looks promising so far, although the gunner fires the rockets like an average COOP player with every 20th or so rocket hitting the target atm.

From what I can tell PR doesnt use half of the esai things but rather the old default PR files. 

The jets bomb just fine, they were just missing target values for some of the ground units. Same with atgms

Hi chaps,

Just a quick notification to let you guys know that in the next few following days VG COOP server will go through a few temporary AI balance changes to make the rounds a bit more challenging. 

As always any feedback is welcome during the testing which will take roughly around a week or until people get too salty.

The changes include : 

1. Bot controlled autocannon APCs / IFVs now fire at incoming enemy jets. IFVs have increased range for ATGMs and now occasionally use them against heavy armor (BMP3)

2. LATs now fire at helos that wander too close & have increased range against IFVs and MBTs.

3. AT Vehicles occasionaly fire at INF, but prioritise on vehicles.

4. Jets now do gunruns on helos.

5. Bots now use GL launchers from longer range and fire smoke rounds at light vehicles and INF that's beyond their usual engagement range.

6. BMPs now use HEFRAGs on INF that get too close.

Any additional changes are to be added here throughout the testing.

I feel that the easiest way to solve this years long claiming "problem" is to follow the same rule every popped deployment server has set : 

1) APCs that don't require both crew members to use crewman kits (VAB, WZ 50.cal, fuchs etc.) are unclaimable and fall under same rules as jeeps.

2) Scout vehicles such as batmobile & BRDM2 are unclaimable.

3) Mech inf squad has access to ONE apc/ifv once the squad has more than 4-6 members.

If APC squad was created before mech inf, Apc squad claims all the apcs/ifvs, but must reserve one of the vehicles and its respawn to mech inf (chosen by apc squad lead).

If mech inf was created before APC squad, then mech inf can claim ONE of the apcs/ifvs and its respawns.(chosen be mech inf squad lead)

If mech inf gets created mid-round and has enough members,  the APC squad lead must designate a vehicle that goes for mech inf once it respawns.

I personally feel that mech inf should only be allowed to claim 2 man vehicles due to the 8 player squad limit, but I'd like to hear other's opinions on this.

36 minutes ago, =VG= Double_13 said:

Here is Critism/questions

If every faction starts with vietnam eara guns what disadvantage does the EU gain with the saying “starts with outdated equipment” This as every faction starts with it. 

It is logic to disable some guns but if you say G3 is only for Mec then Germany cant obtain marksman or alt officer that use those guns. 

"Poor early game equipment" = shittier and less amount of vehicles / guns compared to other factions. China for example has quite a powerful apc, compared to the german fuchs that besides tickleing can't do much against enemy vehicles. 

Rifles in kits can be changed as needed. As germans won't get G3s, they can get other rifles for their marksmen. I don't see a problem with german officer/lat not having the g3 as alt gun.

36 minutes ago, =VG= Double_13 said:

Russia would stick to 1 weapon been the AK and the only possible research would be scope (that is when you finished all the nam guns research). Then what else would the potential inf research be? if it can’t capture enemy weapons.

Like I mentioned if you lock the tanguska behind extreme research delay a gaskin is all that Russia could research in early stage as a shilka is nearly as powerful as tanguska. 

There are more than 1 AK variants + other soviet era guns ingame. As I mentioned, most of the specialist kits would have to be unlocked as well, so no need to worry about lack of INF research.

The research delay goes down as the campaign progresses. The research delay is soley to prevent the heavy tanks / BMP3s rolling out and starting to rape after the first battle and ruin all the purpose of having INF around. All delays are neglected after about 1/3 of the planned campaign time is over. I expect the first tanks to start rolling out about 4-5 weeks into the campaign (3rd - 4th battle) depending on what the CO decides to focus on. The first wave to tanks will have no thermals, less ammo, no HEFRAGS/ATGMs and longer reload times, which can be upgraded in the research tab.

It's all up to the commander to choose which way he wants to go : does he want to go more fun way and focus mostly on INF and have vehicles as a backup for combined forces or does he want to go all rape way and focus on vehicles and leave INF in the background. If you focus on solely on vehicels then you'll have to keep in mind that if you lose them, then they are gone forever and if you didn't upgrade your inf at all, then you are in a tight spot.

36 minutes ago, =VG= Double_13 said:

This is what was originally mentioned to me that faction stuff can be combined so a leclerc and chally on the same map

Assets can and will be combined, soldiers won't. If more than one nation's divisions happen to be on the same sector during the battle, then it's up to Commander to decide which nation will be used during the battle as the main force. Others will act as a backup (Delayed vehicles + additional tickets).

Campaign Edits : Changed russian action : "for the motherland" - changed to "recieve 75 additional tickets if army runs out during the battle. Can only be used once per battlecycle"