Ryko

No problem, I'm aware of that bug and am taking steps.

Long term conceptual plan is to create a RHS / TFAR / ACE version of IA4 which can run on EU3.

The FPS you get in a multiplayer setting is largely dependent on the server you're playing on; if it's got lots of players and enemy units on it, you can expect between 15 and 25 fps when things get hairy. Most missions aren't optimized very well and it's the player experience that suffers. To Bohemia's credit, in their single player missions they use a lot of tricks to keep fps upwards of 60fps, but still give the player the feeling that there is a big war around them, when there really isn't. If you're getting stuttering, it's definitely sounding like a memory issue. If your SSD is using a page file and the drive is nearly full, that could go a long way to explaining it; clear up some space and see if that doesn't help. There are some things you can do to fine-tune your experience in game, the simplest of which is just to lower your view distance and resolution. But in my experience Arma doesn't suffer from stuttering, the fps experience usually degrades over time as more players and units join a mission.

Thanks for your feedback, both. There are a number of factors at play here. The first and foremost is that I&A is meant to accommodate drop-in, casual gameplay, and having to organize a huge exodus to get people to an AO on the other side of the map runs kind of contrary to that (hence, IA3 added unlocked FOBs, so players never had too far to go from a main base). IA4 doesn't have unlockable FOBs, but the AOs are sequential so this strategy tries to mitigate these two competing interests. It's possible to have a pre-planned and marked sequence of objectives, but there are a grab bag of issues inherent with doing that (player goes to the next AO, it spawns on top of them, being the first). Actually there are some consequences, again, they were fairly buried and not immediately obvious. The Command & Control sub ojective, if destroyed, pushes the timer on the OPFOR CAS significantly back. Destroying a mortar team should be fairly obvious as they can ruin your day while they operate. The other objectives I'm still fleshing out, but yes, the intention is that they do have an impact on current or future AOs. But they're not mandatory to complete if the players don't want to, if they just want to go and shoot stuff up, they totally can. Well - this is also pub play we're talking about, from what I've seen you can plan all you want but you need a certain amount of cooperation and buy-in from the players to actually make it happen. Thanks - so that means there is at least one NameCityCapital, could be two.

There probably won't be a beta test this week as I'm a bit swamped IRL, and there are some new features coming into 52 based on player feedback. Here's the change log for 052 thus far: Point 14 deserves a bit more elaboration, based on TheScar's comment (Another thing i really want to happen is randomisation of AO´s). My initial thinking in IA4 was to remove the concept of priority objectives, but then I realized that doing this (while improving performance) does make each AO a bit of a "rinse and repeat" operation. Up until beta 051 there have actually been two random sub objectives, but they're not very well noticed. I have dramatically expanded on this concept, and now they are very much a thing, and they are randomized for each objective: There are six types of main objective zones: Airport and Stronghold - only five extra Airport zones exist on the whole map, as the players' base is one (and there 6 on Altis). Strongholds are military installations, of which there are only a handful on Altis. An airport or stronghold objective has a buffed up enemy presence, and will have a guarantee of two sub-objectives, and a 50% chance of a third. Capital - large urban areas (there might only be one on Altis, but I haven't checked and it's not immediately google-able). Guarantee of one subobjective, a 50% chance of a second, and a 25% chance of a third. City - urban area. 50% chance of a subobjective, 50% chance of a second subobjective, and 25% chance of a third. Village - small urban area. Up to three subobjectives, but a 25% chance of each. Industrial or Special areas - these are factories, big hill tops, and other areas of strategic importance. 33% chance of a subobjective, 33% chance of a second subobjective, and a 25% chance of a third subobjective. What does all this mean? For some areas there will be at least 2 if not 3 subobjectives, and for some areas there will be none. There are a total of 10 different sub objective types which I'm not going to reveal just yet (obviously, from the screenshot, there are at least 3 - destroy an enemy mortar team, eliminate an elite squad, and destroy an enemy command & control center). A sub objective adds 1-2 small squads, and/or a vehicle, and sometimes an objective that must be destroyed. It's not mandatory to complete the subobjectives: if you clear out a majority of the enemy presence in an AO, the main task will complete and close out the sub tasks. But since the troops added by the subobjectives are considered in the overall enemy presence, it's likely you'll be engaging the sub objectives. Other noteworthy points: I've made a first pass at custom squads, where a player can create their own squads and add/remove roles as they like. Up to 8 roles can be assigned, but these exclude special roles such as pilots, armor operators, and sniper/spotters (custom squads are infantry squads). The first mandatory role is a Squad leader, you can add as many basic riflemen as you like, but after that you can only add one role from the other types (medic, autorifleman, rifleman AT, etc). You'll be able to lock a squad and invite other players to join. Squad names will be fixed (NATO phonetic names from Foxtrot to Romeo). Next beta test will be next week, when 052 is ready, and probably after we're done the latest Steam Free Weekend for Arma - Ryko

I think I get where you're coming from. My objective is not to remake invade and annex, otherwise, we could just keep going with ia3. There are various things that don't work with 3, and things that we've decided to go ahead with in 4 as technical advancements. My hope is that some of the new framework elements make an equally but differently enjoyable experience. If it strays too much away from the desired experience I am completely open to modifying the mission to accommodate people's desires - I don't have an ego to bruise.

Well the Pawnee is available to purchased by Viper for 5,000 reward points. I figure that in addition to 3 Vortex units the players can fill in the gaps by themselves with paradrop. I also considered yesterday when implementing vehicle paradrops that you could load a bunch of players in a HEMTT Transport and vehicular paradrop that into the AO, saving a gob of reward points on paradrops... but you do run the risk of the vehicle being blown out of the sky.

I'm on the fence, technically, would you make the same suggestion about Reaper? Now you've got 5 trans squads.

Indeed. The whole point of the points system is to adjudicate the fact that reward vehicles got stolen by players who didn't participate in the mission they were rewarded from, leading to huge strife on the server. Yes, the reward vehicle is given to the "team" to use in the mission, but there is definitely a sense of propriety from players who participated in the successful mission that resulted in the reward. So much that it lead to team kills and hurt feelings. With reward points, you can buy whatever you want or feel is appropriate for the next phase of the mission. It's not like players don't understand the idea of points, in fact, we are seeing some really amazing examples of teamwork where players share and pool points for specific uses. Let's examine how I&A4 is more restrictive than I&A3. For me I think it would be the group/squad system, in that in 3 you run roughshod over the default groups and make your own squads through Bohemia's dynamic system. Meaning that there is no cohesion on which squads are doing what. While this flexibility does allow for more freedom to the player the downside is that newer players don't necessarily know how to fit in or what to do. The system in 4 is indeed more structured, but offers all the same in-role flexibility (if not more) - and I believe the strong advantage in that if you want to do something else, you don't have to go back to the lobby to reconnect in a different role. Feel free to add your examples. The scenario you just described is in no way made any different in 4, than in would happen in 3. So... shouldn't do it then? Is that what you're saying? I am genuinely interested in examples that exemplify this. I should add that the next version of 4 will include the capacity for players to make their own custom squads, which has been a requested feature on the list for some time. I just need to finalize the locking/unlocking and invite mechanics.

I'm still tinkering with the balance, the note actually is a repair to the previous situation where there were around 8 paradrops guaranteed per AO, and they seemed to happen when the AO started rather than after 50% of the enemy force had been eliminated. This brought a major lag to the server while those troops spawned, as well as general chaos. The new program is that by default, there's no guarantee of enemy reinforcements; rather, it's a scaled chance that reinforcements appear based on the number of players (in a full server, it's almost 100%). Reinforcements are chosen from ground (mechanized infantry coming in APCs or transports), air (paradrop from enemy air vehicles) or armor (multiple armor units moving into the AO zone). Though in last testing it appeared only enemy air reinforcements were working reliably... meh (in test phase i assume) It'll probably stay this way in EU1, as most of the time when it rains or is in any way cloudy people ask zeus to make it sunny and clear. For main AOs, the red circle marks an area of 1000m radius; that's the exact distance of the zone wherein players will get credit for being in the engagement zone (if they're in the circle, they'll get points). This was increased from 800m. For the secondary objectives, the red circle marks an area of 500m radius, but the credit radius is still 1000m. I take your point, and I have heard it from other players - the AO's finish too quickly. I am still tweaking the numbers. Balance is a tricky thing. If I populate the AO with too many enemy units, it makes it more of a challenge, but if it's too much of a challenge, the players give up and leave the server, making it more difficult for everyone else. If it's too easy, the players complain (rightfully) that it's not much of a challenge, get lots of reward points and then go on a tear for each ensuing AO. Part of the problem is that I add enemy infantry squads, rather than additional soldiers. With the scale-to-players option set, the current formula for an AO is: * 1 enemy infantry squad per six connected players * 1 enemy anti-air team per 3 enemy infantry squads (1 per 18 players) * 1 enemy motorized unit (ie., armed Ifrit) per 3 enemy infantry squad, as anti-air * 1 enemy APC unit per 10 players * 1 enemy Tank unit per 13 players There's also a rounding in effect for the APC and Tank that occasionally adds an additional one of those units. This means that in a small-pop server (six players or less) you'll get: 1 regular inf squad, 1 anti-air team, 1 armed car, and a 60% chance of a APC, and a 60% chance of a Tank. I do add additional units if the AO is a military strongpoint or an airport: 1 extra infantry squad, anti-air team, car and APC. Every other infantry squad in a town area will garrison a building. Obviously in 6 players or less, you will only get 1 infantry squad, so there are no garrisoned soldiers. My philosophy on these numbers is creating an enemy force that the players can reasonably handle, that doesn't bring the server to its knees. It's a tricky balance on multiple levels. People have said that anti-air is too easy over the AO, so I might build in some code that populates a guaranteed Tigris (or more) if there are multiple Vortex, Viper and Reaper units online. The problem is if there is no appropriate support, a Tigris will make meat of regular infantry. Adding 1-2 guaranteed infantry squads might increase the balance just enough to make the AO last longer. Anyway, I welcome the thoughts here. Well, donate them to other players who need them. I'm not sure you're the best player to look at as an appropriate example of how points are accumulated, as I believe you start off the AO using a Titan to destroy vehicles, and those are (relatively) big points generators. Enemy infantry: 25 points Tank: 300 points Heli / Plane: 500 points Other ground vehicle: 150 points Main AO completion: 400 points (scales 25% per 30 seconds you're in the AO, so 100/200/300 or 400 points) Secondary AO completion: 800 points (again, scales per 30 seconds) Revive a player: 250 points Heal a player with medkit / FAK: 150 points Can you elaborate on what you mean by this? You raise an interesting point; there are actually subobjectives in the main AO, but they're not marked well. There is a random chance of a mortar team, and a random chance of a command and control center (and I have templates as well that aren't implemented for a vehicle repair centre and an ammo depot). I need to explore how BIS implements sub-tasks as I feel that would be the best way to showcase that. Is that all that's missing from - as you put it - the used I+A spirit? The main motivation for moving away from reward vehicles to reward points was to solve the problem of people "stealing" reward vehicles. Reward vehicles were given to the team for completing a side mission, but then they are taken by players who didn't participate in the side mission, leading to hostility. I'm open to additional motivation for people to participate in this or that mission, but I'm kind of hamstrung by this factor, as well as other factors. For example I would *love* to have an opportunity for the AI to perform an effective counter attack, but AI driving makes that a bit of a joke. I'm not sure how to respond to this unless you give me some more detail. Every player is "punished" for picking it up - it's restricted because it's an OPFOR weapon. In previous iterations, you would have been forced to drop it. Now you can use it in an emergency. In the latest revision, if you have the reward points, you can purchase it without being in base (actually, that might not be possible right now as I don't think launchers are included in the reward list - but they will definitely be in the next revision) - and this will remove the walking limitation. The intention is on EU1 on default settings there should be no fog. I think it starts off with fog 0 but then arma over time does its own thing. I'll build in a regular reset to 0. I don't recall putting one in, but it might have been left over from testing something - if so, I'll remove it. By the way, thanks to you both for your comments.

Well technically the MRCO is the optic used by the AAF, and I'm trying to stick to the lore in this mission (it's also the default optic for AAF loadouts). It's also only 200 reward points, so it's something to aspire towards. I believe the default optic of the Marksman is the MOS, which is a higher powered magnification scope compared to both the RCO and MRCO.

Beta version 051 is online, and I hope to run a beta test tomorrow. Changes: 051 --- 1. Added 0.5 second cooldown to spotting mechanic to prevent misuse. 2. Blufor map tracking can now not be toggled on or off (previously coupled with toggling player name tags). 3. Enemy artillery / mortar smoke signals are returned to RED colour. Enemy units who have red smokes in their inventory now dynamically have those replaced with basic smoke. Blue smoke products now returned to player arsenal. Red smokes will dynamically change to green smokes in player loadouts, should they somehow exist. 4. Tweaked TK determination (players were getting TK notifications if they fragged themselves). 5. Fixed error where player attempts to paradrop into base, gets denied notification but loses the reward. 6. Tweak player group joining to fix cases where to Privates were marked as group leader. The first person to join a squad is the group leader, unless a higher-ranking role joins the squad. 7. Reduced enemy paratrooper reinforcement spam, was spawning 1 squad per 10 players, now spawns 1 squad per 20 players, maximum 3. 8. Default setting for enemy reinforcements is scaled to players (cap is 64 players, at that point it's almost 100% chance that enemies will be reinforced when their force in an AO drops below 50%). Previously the reinforcement check was made every 30 seconds, now it's made only one time. Should result in fewer enemy reinforcements. 9. Tweak to enemy counter attack secondary mission (previously didn't complete) 10. Added medical tent to main base. 11. Tweak to blufor tracking in attempt to solve issue of markers disappearing over time. 12. Tweaks to compass direction, especially for vehicle gunners. 13. AI Soldier has been removed for the time being as he was severely bugged. 14. Found and solved issue where inventory was spontaneously disappearing. 15. Tweak to compass UI: bearing direction is now pink (captive colour) when you are in base, and white when you are not in base. This affects things like whether you are targetable by enemy AI, whether items near you will be automatically removed from the cleanup script, etc. 16. First attempt at restoring purchased player rewards after disconnection / reconnection. 17. Set default weather to no rain. 18. Reward vehicles can now be locked in base, and have the default actions (repair, despawn, etc) and default inventory attached to them. 19. Added clear vehicle inventory function to vehicles - must be at service pad, action is available to the driver. 20. DRAGGING IS OFFLINE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE AS IT IS BEING VERY DIFFICULTY AND TEMPERAMENTAL 21. Normally, players may only purchase reward weapons inside the base zone. If they pick up an enemy weapon and they have the points for it, and the type of weapon is available to their role, they may purchase it in the field to remove the walking limitation. 22. Slashed prices on many reward vehicles. 23. Tweaked enemy reinforcements. Also added enemy armor reinforcements.

Hi RoyalKings, Right now there is no requirement for Vortex pilots to be on Teamspeak, though it is recommended. On the EU1 public server, it's not really possible to make it mandatory that everyone use voice comms, so people really have to do the best they can to coordinate through the communication problems that exist in a public server: - some players don't speak English - some players don't want to, or know how to use voice or text communication - some players will use Teamspeak, others will use in-game voice comms. So in a sense it's almost better to insist that players use one form of communication and stick with it; Teamspeak is convenient and offers marginally better voice comms than in-game, but that's not consistently the case anymore. IA4 makes no specific provision for voice comms or communication, other than we don't allow voice comms on sideChat any more. The intention on the EU1 server will be to keep it as open-ended as possible: if people want to chat their comms, or use the in-game voice, or use teamspeak, all those options are available. For other servers, we may make specific communication forms more mandatory.

Thanks Sentri, I have added fixes for all four of your notes. For the new clear vehicle inventory action, you need to be in the driver's seat for that action to appear.

Invisible objects cause issues for players who can't figure it out. I'd much rather just slide the offending concrete barrier a tick over to the right to make it easier for players to pass. Ah... well that's well more detail than I had in mind, again, with performance in mind. The entire medical structure gives a heal action if the player is damaged. I'll add a few bits and bobs but don't expect it to be super detailed. I think it's about right - not enough to destroy a whole bunch of friendly air, but enough to provide a disincentive to constantly fly over the AO. I'm relying on ambient to spawn anti-air assets for players who loiter too long over the AO, if it continues to affect gameplay balance I'll increase the anti-air intensity. My long-term goal is to create a scenario where the difficulty scales upward as the mission progresses, ie., the OPFOR become a tougher challenge as more of the island is captured. Right now it is essentially linear. Right now this is a mission parameter, and the default is Random weather with a cap on rain to a light drizzle. Fog is capped at 0 (there should never be fog). I may change the rain cap to none as you're right, it's consistently bitched about. I haven't seen that consistently, and it looks like a syncing issue. Not much I can do about it in the mission, and if it happened I would suggest that zeus can delete it and respawn it with the admin tools.

I will do some error checking The weapons available to put on the racks are straight from Bohemia's config files, so they're there because Bohemia has allowed it. It worked for me in local testing, but could be messed up in a networked setting: Could do. I'll have a look. Was kind of a proof of concept at this stage anyway Yup, love it This won't solve your problem. Usually the problem is that people get to the objective, clear it of enemies and then realize that no one is an engineer to blow up the thing. Plus if you don't have the points before you go to the mission, you won't be able to purchase the explosive. Solution is to use the ammo drop misc reward, which drops an ammo box, in which is included 3 demo charges. Of course, only a team leader / squad leader can buy the ammo drop reward... Not super fond of this because players will abuse it and become a mortar team when they should be running trans. However I can see a situation to accomplish your goal, being able to deliver ammo to mortar, by letting the pilot spawn a miscellaneous crate that will offer X number of mortar reloads through an action. Balance is the current priority. Right now there are at least two 4-man anti-air squads in each AO. I'm not anxious to add mandatory Tigris to each AO because those vehicles will also shred players. I would like to find other solutions to address your real issue, which is that AT players and CAS players wreck an AO by themselves. If those players are not there and you balance around them, then the mission becomes extremely difficult for regular squads. I can already hear the complaining. Right now unattended quad bikes which are more than 100m away from a player or player spawn are automatically removed and put into the respawn queue. If it's not a pilot leaving a vehicle on the runway, it'll be another player trolling, so I don't want to start plotting exceptions that will just be unpacked in another form. There is a "despawn vehicle" action on every vehicle, just walk up to it. The current criteria are: - vehicle is not moving - vehicle is not able to move (so: destroyed, no rotors, no fuel, no wheels, red damage to engine, that sort of thing) - vehicle has no crew in it - vehicle is within 1000m of player spawn area There's a delay between side mission spawns, but to error check that I need to know what mission was completed (or not completed) previously. I'll check the rpt. I'll have a look, but good notes. Good call, removed simulation, should fix it Sounds like a locality thing. I think the solution is to lock it to the pilot only being able to adjust weaponry, and make it so the vehicle has to be uncrewed to service at all. Yeah, the servicing and squad systems don't take into account those vehicles, and they should. Will look I need some specifics here. Screenshots would help There's a lot of logic at play here. In version 049, every squad in the AO that wasn't garrisoned would create an attack waypoint to engage a single, spotted infantryman, which doesn't make sense and leaves the AO vulnerable (theoretically, a single soldier could have lured away 75% of the OPFOR presence because they were the only available target). So now the enemy is proportionally responsive to spotted units: the closest squad will engage, and all vehicles are free to engage whichever targets are communicated by enemies. There are some other custom bits and pieces: if you shoot them, they'll leave garrisoned buildings, for example. I can't promise to support mods to the mission. On the plus side, you don't lose your RP when re-logging... and eventually you'll keep your custom reward purchases, too.

I'm actually looking into that right now - they should be broadcast on the admin chat channel, but they're not. That's the intended behaviour (that admins should see it, that the team killer sees it) What you reported was that the weapon was marked as purchased, which is what I responded to. That's intended behaviour: you should see that you've purchased the item, but whether you can actually take it out of the arsenal is dependent on your selected role. At present, the SPAR 17 is not limited to a specific role - it can be purchased and used by any role. I'm still working out the kinks for vehicle purchasing, and you've just flagged a few issues that I've been struggling with. First and foremost, is the Pawnee a useful asset? I know it's fun as heck to fly, but I think as air support goes most players would prefer the Blackfoot in the air compared to the Pawnee, as the Blackfoot can arm itself with anti-tank missiles where the Pawnee is limited to rockets. Next, the only squad that logically would have access to the Pawnee would be Viper. If the pilot runs the Pawnee by himself, the co-pilot has nothing to do. Theoretically you could mount anti-tank ordnance on the Pawnee. So I suppose you could purchase a Pawnee if you lost your Blackfoot and you have the points. But I think most players would probably run a default Pawnee (wouldn't take the time to rearm, or know it's possible) which means the asset is not able to counter enemy armor threats. The Viper squad limitation exists so long as the related asset (a spawned Blackfoot) doesn't exist. Once it respawns, a variable is reformed and the squad can be joined. Something I'm considering for vehicle pilots / crews is an option to use their reward points to speed up the respawn timer (ie., spend 500 points to shave off 10 minutes from the respawn timer). If you're rearming from another vehicle, that's vanilla arma and I have no control over that. Yeah, I just realized that - the pylon rearming system won't rearm non-pylon stations like the gun or countermeasures. The intended behaviour is to return the machine gun to 100% ammo. The Blackfoot and Wipeout don't carry extra magazines for their machine gun. Known bug. I hadn't heard about the fix to use the spotting mechanic on a friendly; I might just integrate that on a 30-minute cycle to refresh the icons. I'll have a think about this one.

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Yep, makes sense. When I checked in zeus, they were both there (the first time that mission spawned). Those units are super touchy about spawning, if they fall over they die and thus get removed by the cleanup script. Working as intended. If you change to a role that can't use your purchased weaponry, you still have it in case you change back to that role. These are both disabled commands so working as intended. No idea what your client is trying to create. Put in to make life much harder for script kiddies. Your other errors are also known commodities... And not much I can do about them. Thanks. I think these commands need to be remotely executed on the server, not locally, which is how I currently have it. There is little detail on the commands dealing with pylons, it's been... interesting

Version 050 will test later today. Change log: 1. Fixes to paradrop (hopefully parachute will be consistently applied?) 2. Turret guns on Ghosthawk action repaired 3. Point donation fixed for donating to team and group (wasn't correctly removing points from donator) 4. FINALLY tracked down the bug for grenadiers losing uniforms and other items. 5. Zeus players moving into non-zeus roles no longer retain invulnerability. 6. Vehicle servicing script overhauled. Can no longer spam vehicle servicing action. 7. Vehicles with dynamic loadouts such as helicopters and planes now have a custom loadout dialog, and vehicle servicing will not rearm these vehicles. 8. Slight tweak to OPFOR presence in dynamic enemy count; number of enemy squads slightly reduced when based on player count. 9. Tweak to main AO generation should not allow new AO to spawn on players. 10. Turning off hints will now also disable entry/exit into AO messages. 11. Tweak to script which prevents players from landing/driving vehicles into player spawn area. There is now also a warning. 12. Mission parameter options now allow admin to set the default cost of a paradrop, and low-player behaviour: can now make paradrops free if no Vortex units are online, and if the player count is 7 or lower.

Thanks for your other code notes; this is an error that's built in to Ares/Achilles, it's produced when a zeus uses Ares/Achilles to teleport.

My notes from today's test: - Inventory closing on its own - somehow related to backpack locking or vehicle locking script, no reason why that should be happening. - Users aren't getting a hint on zeus ping to stop endless spam of zeus pings. - Side missions didn't spawn. - Enemy reinforcements came in after an AO was cleared, not when enemies were reduced below 50%. The reinforcements went to the new AO. ? - Body dragging was terribly bad (bodies weren't released) - Gear restriction didn't remove blue smoke grenades, thus they were in some players default loadouts. Solution: don't remove these smokes, but change them to green smokes. - Wounded players aren't showing up correctly in the world and on map view. - Map markers are disappearing after time, for no good reason. - Consider different medium range scopes for marksmen (with alternate reticle) - Paradrop reward produced a script error. - Dead bodies cleanup: it's working as intended, but the result is that bodies aren't being cleared. Next version of this code will be much more aggressive to keep dead body count low - UAV recon missions produced a bug. Will consider making UAV have added functionality, ie., it will automatically recon areas that have the most players. - OPFOR were reacting to player presence appropriately - but this meant that almost all enemy squads responded to the presence of even one identified player. Consider restricting the number of squads the respond to player identification. - Purchased rewards are currently added to inventory; as a result they're not automatically saved to the player's current loadout. Solution will be to add these items to the arsenal, the player will have to equip them in the arsenal, then the loadout will be automatically saved.