For the tactical nerd with a copious imagination and an urgent itch to fight the firefight he just imagined, there is nothing more convenient than ArmA's mission editor.The editor always allowed to create a rapid prototype and dive straight into it to tune it up into an exciting new mission.
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| NATO infantry infiltrating enemy positions north of Kavala. |
Today I thought of an ArmA 3 mission about the control of those bridges north of Kavala. The CSAT forces would be controlling the bridges and the mission needs computer controlled bots that would hold positions around them and continuously patrol the nearby areas. In ArmA 2 and before this could have been edited in several ways. From scripting to a clever combination of waypoints. The new ArmA 3 offers a click and drop module named "observation post site" that takes care of everything I needed.
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| The Observation Post site module and its options. |
I dropped on of these modules at each of the three bridges north of Kavala. The result is enemy forces holding positions nearby the bridges, with frequent patrols sent out from their site. If military buildings are present, like those spiffy deployable modular command posts, the enemy will occupy them. This offers the enemy forces the possibility to fight from cover, which puts a veil on their frequent tactical sins.
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| The posture and aggressiveness of the computer controlled bots changes when one of their team mates has detected the enemy. In this screenshot, the enemy is actively looking for us. |
Mission editing-wise, I achieved nothing. The quick mission concoction I threw together was entertaining enough to keep me off further progress. I just got to infiltrate near an enemy position, shoot some bad guys, get killed and get out of the virtual island of Altis in total awe at the versatility and approachability of ArmA 3's mission editor.
And just to share the fun, a quick rundown of how I got my NATO fireteam near the damn bridge, just to get killed in the most miserable way.
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| This is how close we got to the bridge (A). My fire team is in the patio of this house. I was very disappointed to find out that the patio door (C) was locked so I had to make it in through the maid's house (note open door at B). I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my fire team was able to move through door B to join me in the patio instead of performing the annoying stunt of moving through the main road leading to the bridge. Kudos to the pathfinding routines. |
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| While still in the patio, we could manage to ambush a couple of enemy patrols like this one. |
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| Oh boy. That is me a fraction of a second before I got killed. I crossed the street with number #4 as a buddy team. I don't know what on earth stopped him but as soon as I crossed the street an enemy grenadier was walking along the sunken line of the canal. Instant surprise to me, I can't get my finger in the trigger so I panick a grenade towards him and take cover behind a wall. The grenadier dies and so does my left flank as seen in the screenshot. |
Cheers,
4 comments:
cool. Arma 3 looks great (also looks like it would eat my laptop for breakfast) certainly sounds nice than codding stuff in... which is what I am doing currently.
BTW I have a load of mods for ArmA 2 but never seem to have enough... what would you recommened?
Also I have thought of trying my hand at campaign building so... what sort of things would you look for in a campaign. just looking for ideas and if the campaigns any good I guess I'll upload it.
If anybody manages to sell me on A3 it will be you, JC. There will have to be a very solid total conversion mod to remove this futuristic shit before I spend money on it though.
Gowan: I recommend Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (AFRF) mod, which is the successor of the work done by Red Hammer Studios. JC did a post on them here at one point, some very nice eye-candy screenshots.
I also recommend Cold War Rearmed 2, shorthand CWR2. They recently released their v6, and there are a number of "DLC" additions to it including the British and Dutch. Some things are of higher quality than others, depending on the artist who made what, but everything is of a consistent middle quality level, there are no bad placeholders.
FDFmod also released for ArmA 2. It's not as extensive - nowheres near as - as what they did in OFP, but still a very good mod, solid work all the way through. Especially popular is the island they released for the mod.
CSLA made some excellent releases for ArmA 2 as well, I would highly recommend their work.
CSLA and CWR2 are both 1980s Cold War Gone Hot kinds of mods. FDF and AFRF are modern day. Both CSLA and CWR2 and AFRF and FDF pair up quite nicely, if you feel it necessary to do so.
thanks NW. I have already got the FDF and AFRF mods but I'll look up the other two.
really interesting to see some cold war stuff.
In Arma 2 I was disappointed of the behaviour of infantry in buildings. Hope that Arma 3 is better out of the box even without the need to run custom scripts....
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