Nibbs

This one is a lot more chaotic than the Blackfish guide, but I decided to keep it that way as it impresses the need to multitask on UAV, rather than editing it up into self contained chunks. This is purely a functional guide, so it does not describe the expected communication between players, I felt that is something best left to the individual, to learn with, and also does not describe the full extent of the UAV tricks. (such as abusing Darters and datalink to your squad) I was tempted to add them but I already knew this was gonna be a long vid as it was... I know this is going to be out of date real quick with I&A4, but I also got the impression that this may give some of the guys who are less familiar with the UAVs an idea of how the role works, and the multitasking nature of it, which maybe helps with balancing/testing whatever comes out of the role in I&A4.

Just a minor one, been trying out the autonomous GMG and MG backpacks. They might be a little over the top as available assets. With a Prowler I was able to bring 4 of them to an AO, Despite them being a UAV asset, they automatically engage any enemy they see, so don't really need a UAV guy to be effective. (they correctly ID friendly/enemies, so you can place them without giving a damn) Additionally the GMG has quite a large ammo load out, and can level most buildings in 3-5 shots. (essentially you have enough ammo to flatten ~20 buildings) Thankfully it seems no-one's noticed that as (for example) a sniper they could take a couple of these to watch their backs on a hillside. Or just set up a bunch overlooking a city to annihilate any enemy that becomes visible for a millisecond. They seem a bit too potent for I&A3

Make Eu2 a server where everyone spawns as a pilot and everyone gets a wipeout, and EU1 will hopefully become free of people standing waiting for the Blackwasp to spawn I'm just kidding, I miss EU2 as Tanoa too but the issue with not everyone having Apex, and not everyone's PCs handling Tanoa gracefully meant it was always low population whenever I checked it Looking forwards to seeing what it becomes with I&A 4 then

Also, thanks for all the nice comments guys, it's appreciated

It was dark and it all looked the same ? That's how bad that fancy NV is needed. Errr I'll go with that excuse... To be honest I don't really make vids, so a few mistakes due to me trying to think and fly at the same time. Yeah I usually do, that was the whole point of drawing on the map... just too focused on multiple things at the same time. (hence why I after the event added the note that drawn lines are visible on the map)

I got bored of watching terrible Blackfish pilots, so thought I'd make a quick video (including mistakes) of how to fly it on the server...

And with the sharing of enemy intel in I&A4 it's quite conceivable that if something is within 1400m of you as you're on a chute, every AA vehicle within 4km could open up on you, no? or am I misunderstanding the enemy intel sharing thing?

this is I&A4... the Tigris are outside the AO

It's more the giant floating target for every Vehicle and Manpad in the area that's the problem, Tigris and kamish loooooove Parachute dropped vehicles you have to get them down on the ground ASAP screened by a hill as they glide down on chutes

Just a comment on this one from experience with using the blackfish a lot, Make sure the drop height is no more than around 50m, or people will be paying to lose their expensive vehicles

Holy thread revival batman, I'm resurrecting this bad boy, and there's nothing any of you can do to stop me... well except maybe the admins.... There is/was a Modless script that mimicks some of the TFAR radio functionality using the ingame VON, which might be of interest - Phronks Arma 3 Radio script

4th post: Miscellaneous topics 1. Terminal needs billboards pointing directions to the helipads from the arsenal. 2. Blackfish Infantry transport is probably a bad idea if it's full of people, and gets shot down, things could get interesting for the server load. 3. Because it will happen there should be some guideline for what happens when someone buys a DLC locked vehicle, for which one of their crew doesn't have the DLC, so can't use. I'm assuming the aswer is tough luck to the guy without the DLC and they should leave slot... but there should be a policy.... Also are all the purchaseable vehicles requiring a 3 man crew? I've got a vague recollection that one of the tanks DLC ones, only takes 2 people (I don't have that DLC though) 4. Vehicle crews and Team Killing... Ensure that when points gain is shared between crew, that doesn't also mean Team kill negatives get shared. 5. There's not nearly enough Vehicle targets to supply 3 vehicle crews, a UAV, the squad AT guys, and a CAS jet with targets

3rd post, suggestions on Vehicle crew role: Suggestion 1: Have 2 vehicles available for every crew, one for then to cherish, and one crappy one on fast respawn, for when they suck and get blown up, so they're not sat in base for 15-30 mins waiting for a vehicle. Ensure only Drivers can get in the driving seat, so there will only ever be 3 vehicles active at any time. i.e. if there's 3 vehicle crews, there should be 3 marshals on say a 30 min respawn timer, and 3 IFVs on a 1 minute respawn timer. that way there's no squabbling between crews as to who gets the Kuma, and there's no standing around in base trying to decide if you should 3 man crew a hunter. Suggestion 2: Points accrual penalty for having people in your squad, but not in your vehicle. (i.e. if someone joins your squad, your priority should be to disengage and organise a rendezvous with them.) Suggestion 3: Exceptionally visible notifications that someone has joined your squad, so that mid-combat you know you should be looking to pick them up.

Second post UAV bugs On the UAV terminal, friendly units aren't shown, so I no longer have the capability to set UAVs to follow a target. This is useful for scouting, I can have a darter set to follow a squad lead at 100m, which means the UAV is always near them, and following their direction of advance so I can guide them to the enemies easier. (although I guess this would have to be typed or tactical pinged now if I can't join their squad for voice comms.) Purchased Mk45 Hammer ammunition, no ammunition delivered to the hammer... Delivery service is worse than the Royal Mail. I'm giving a 0 stars rating on Yelp.

First post on the topic, general state of UAV. UAV as it currently stands in the points system: If I drop a GBU and switch to a darter to laser guide it in, I get no points. If I drop a GBU and another player loses line of sight, or is just bad at lasing, whilst it's falling, I get no points. If no players lase anything, I get no points. If players actually lase targets often and well, I get a small trickle of points. (assuming perfect accuracy and utilisation immediately on availability, with 15 min turn around time, around 2 kills per 15 minutes, which I guess would be something like 240 points per hour) If I enter the AO, I'm essentially a badly geared soldier without a squad, trying to get some points. UAV as it currently stands in usefulness: Since spotted enemy no longer show up on the map, spotting enemies from the UAV and pinning down their location is time consuming, and only really worth it for garrisoned troops (as they won't move invalidating your map markers near immediately) However the AI seems to very rarely garrison now, so I would consider this a lost activity. As far as off-grid fire support goes, the base UAV loadout can realistically field 2 GBUs every 10-15 minutes, and no Cruiser ammunition without needing points (see points system section). If the single greyhawk gets shot down, you have nothing to do for 10 minutes, except for pretending to be a soldier with no squad in the AO.If the greyhawk is shotdown on takeoff after rearming, you essentially have 5 mins RTB flight from last ordinance drop, x mins rearming (instant?), 10 mins waiting for respawn after it gets shot down, and another 5 mins waiting for Greyhawk to reach altitude and get on grid with the AO... 20+ minutes with nothing to do. If you want points (see points section) you're at the mercy of waiting for one of the ground troops to lase something. (example during the testing today, I blew up one thing, which I self lased thus no points - in probably an hour of being in slot) The conclusion? The points system doesn't work for UAV, as it's so vastly different to the other roles. As I posted before I feel UAV should be a consumer of points, not a generator, so people don't stay in the slot forever. It should have sufficient GBU and mk45 Hammer delivery capabilty to do it's minimum role for every AO, without costing points, but should be a consumer of points for all the additional toys (VLS, extra drones, etc)

I'm still of the opinion that the Blackfish vehicle lift is one of the greatest and most underused assets in the game. Used properly it's one of the safest ways to deploy a squad near an AO, with transport to reposition to an assault vector of their choosing. Not to mention it's simply damned good fun to fly, blasting past an AO near the ground, airdropping a squad behind the only small hilltop cover, that no chopper could safely manage Aside from all the bugs (that can be circumvented) It has just 3 problems.... No-one flies it, because no-one know's how to get in it. No-one knows how to get in it, because no-one flies it. Almost no-one flies it well because they almost never get to fly it. My suggestion is to add more utility to it, giving people a second reason to fly it, which will hopefully help break this doomed circle of inactivity. Since the ability to drop ammo crates was added (which perhaps from an immersion standpoint could probably have been a blackfish function) it made me think, could we replace the existing Rearm/Refuel/Repair trucks in this manner? By having it load (assumedly via a script like the ammo crates,) in one of those Huron containers, and airdropping it near the AO? Ideally, if you used the script to load in (for example) the repair container, it would delete all other repair containers from the map, to prevent excessive clutter. Bonus points if it auto adds a marker to the map with the location the 3 crates are residing

That would work, but I would probably disable access to the VLS, it's just that tiny bit too excessively potent Although thinking about this. As a UAV op, "I've fired x shots already this AO, so I can accept Y more support requests" is easier than managing shots respawning on a timer that's invisible to you.

Yes, UAV has absolutely everything accessible, which was why I was more considering how to bring the role into balance, in the contextr of how the other squads are shaping up in I&A4 That I expected, I just wanted to point out that the Approach glide path to the runway should also probably be considered for this Despawn area I assumed this would be in the spirit of encouraging teamplay and pushing the UAV into a pure support role, counterbalanced on it's lack of independence by also giving it the Mortar role in the form of the Mk45 Hammer. On a side note, I'm pretty sure when I logged into EU7 I also didn't have a darter backpack, I can't recall if I checked the arsenal or not, but it should be on the default loadout to help new players, if it's accessible That would work, but I would probably disable access to the VLS, it's just that tiny bit too excessively potent This is true, but UAV is about managing the assets you have in consideration for the time it will take to rearm, and the risks of flying them to/from base (especially with ambient Tigris'). Any good UAV op is going to set them to never fire, as they already do with the GBUs (since those will also auto fire by default if someone lases something near their orbits). Any average UAV op, is probably either not going to be able to afford those assets, or will lose them quickly enough for them to not be a concern - Andy

I've been thinking a lot about how the hell the UAV role would be balanced in the context of I&A4, since it is a role which inherently has plenty of bugs to work around, here's my considerations / thoughts / suggestion as to how I could see it working ---- Considerations ---- Point 1: UAV must have a role when not running air missions, and should have something to do to support ground troops when ground troops aren't supporting them. Point 2: UAV must have enough variety for its points accrual Point 3: general UAV Gameplay concerns ---- Thoughts / suggestions ---- Point 1: UAV could be in the AO, shooting with rifle? (issue UAV guy dying locks any active UAVs to their corpse for anything up to 20 mins) Point 1: UAV could be flying reconsaissance? Can the laser designator (and optionally thermals) be removed from the darter? If not would the AL-6 Pelican be a good alternative, with it's Laws of War DLC requirement to use? (assuming Greyhawk orbiting is out for 10mins whilst it's RTB to rearm, and also has a small skill requirement on accurately marking enemy positions on a map from a drone that's constantly orbiting shifting cardinal directions that you're looking, providing a barrier to entry for new players.) Point 1: UAV can use AL-6 Pelican to perform minor resupply operations to AO (ambient spawning of tigris may cause this to be frustrating?) Point 2: The inclusion of the Hammer mk45 on the Cruiser allows UAV to also run mortar missions, effectively dual roling, whilst fun there is no way to rearm the Hammer. Option - could there be a points cost to rearm cruiser to a few rounds of HE ammunition? (preferentially cheap enough that you could afford to do this every AO, and have some points to spare towards unlocking a UCAV or similar) Option - could the cruiser be auto rearmed to 8 rounds of HE ammunition on completion of each AO? (I say 8, as that feels an appropriate amount to being able to provide support to a couple of requests, or to clear a designated compound, but not to reem an entire AO) Point 2: How does UAV accrue points? Getting kills is very dependant on ground troops providing accurate designations, and Arma correctly accrediting the kills. Shooting things in the AO, whilst on foot, gives the UAV lockout issue on death. Point 3: Are there deadzones around the runway approaches where AA vehicles won't spawn? ---- How I would like to see it work ---- Armaments: a Single Greyhawk - 2x GBUs, 5 min servicing pad time, 10 min respawn time on death ( equivalent of 5 min return to base flight time + 5 min servicing time) Cruiser Mk45 Hammer - 8 HE rounds, fully rearmed on each AO completion AL-6 Pelican - unlimited back packs from arsenal Ar-2 Darter - (ONLY IF LASER CAN BE REMOVED) unlimited backpacks from arsenal Purchaseables: Additional Greyhawks - GBUs (Very cheap since these are very likely to be lost to ambient Tigris spawns - Should be very affordable on UAV's rate of points accrual) UCAV sentinel - GBUs (Mediocre priced - less susceptible to Tigris due to stealth) UGV Stomper - RCWS (Mediocre priced - potent, but also extremely vulnerable) Greyhawk - Scalpels ***needs testing if effective with its passive only sensors for locking ATGMs onto things, or if Radar is a requirement to use those*** (expensive, likely to lose it, but very potent.) UCAV sentinel - AGM-88C HARM (Extremely expensive - stealthy and very potent, but only against enemy with active radars) Greyhawk - Falchion 22 / ASRAAM (prohibitively expensive - Likely to lose it, Anti-Air drone to protect other drones) Additional Tweaks: 0x multiplier on passive points gain from being in the AO, to discourage UAV becoming useless for long periods from the operator dying issue locking out drones. Keep average points gain per AO very low, since there's only 1 UAV slot and it's normally contested, this would push people to play other roles for a while to gain the points to unlock the more advanced UAVs.

Honestly, when piloting, I'm constantly switching between direct, vehicle, group chat channels and typing in side... adding in Teamspeak for the convenience of the 2-3 non-pilots on there is just too much. It's commonly accepted, in game, not to talk in the global channels so people can hear important chatter in squad. To me Teamspeak is just another global channel where chatter can prevent me from hearing important info from vortex squad on placement of enemy AA, and who's en-route to pick up outlying squads to/from side etc. As Chuck says, TS made sense when the in-game VON sucked.

I strongly agree with this, it's common to see 2 people in the AA jets. 1 in the blackfish, and only 2 transport. but I feel the solution to this is not to remove things like the fish, but to change the Recon JTAC role into a 6th pilot slot. I understand Scar's sentiments on the blackfish, but it's biggest issue is no-one flys it as no-one knows how to be a passenger in it, and vice versa. I've been trying to change that during the mornings, and I do start to see people grouping up as squads in vehicles to be dropped together. ***edit*** just to add, there's usually up to 56 players who need to get to the AO most spawning at the nearest FOB, not where the vehicles are, there really should be at least 6 hunters/prowlers in each FOB to support this, is my feeling

Does that involve my character being stuck doing press-ups for 10 mins?

Oh and for 1000 points I should be able to buy a fully functional MLRS sandstorm, right?

Oh 1 more to add. Blackfish respawn time 1 minute Blackfish servicing time 10 minutes ***edit*** And on that note, Kaijman should probably have a 10min rearm time to put it in keeping with the rest

Since I&A is one of the busiest servers, and requires no mods, a lot of new players end up here... Maybe it's a good place for a Video training series centred around how the Main/Prio/Side AOs work, rewards and FOBs. and how to use the assets like the Mk-6? Edit, this should of course include advancement onto EU3 and all the mods required for that