WinterMute

I am impressed at my employers for suggesting I take time off as a "high risk". Glad I've been there long enough for sick leave to kick in...

You just want to flex, 12 core man! But yeah I'm up for it. Would prefer F@H though as I've been doing a fair bit on there the past fortnight...

Oh my god I have the worst memory. Luckily I have til the 20th so I will procrastinate a bit more...

January 15th 2019 was my first public server experience in Arma 3. EU1. I was miles out of my depth, but got hooked quickly. I haven't yet felt like I needed to go anywhere else in Arma. So from the perspective of someone who has never been in any of the admin type channels, it has looked like you've run a pretty tight ship with minimal bullshit rolling down to where us mooks would notice. No pressure on the next person!

Fair enough. I think creativity and mission quality would suffer if you're finding it a dreadful chore and/or burning you out. That would make the ops toxic and generally ruin the fun. Do them as and when you feel like it's fresh - the historical turn out seems to indicate that Sunday evening is a good time to have an op and it would be cool if we stick to that as a general time slot for whenever one is run (extenuating circumstances notwithstanding)? Also, I dunno who else is interested in the idea of making a mission - I have dicked around a tiny bit in EDEN and I dunno... are there any guides to mission building that are heartily recommended? It'd be cool to bung a mission up on a Sunday evening some time and with the help of an experienced spartan or 2, make y'all have a good skirmish.

What is the button for naruto running? I'm in, if I can get my PC to stop BSOD'ing during Arma...

Oh, cool, I found my stats from the first time I ever played on EU1. 15th January 2019. Been just over half a year. Flippin nora.

I'm a solid "maybe" for the first event. Future ones are more certain.

As long as it plays acceptably (fps) I'm all for it.

Side Mission, Militia Camp, completed ~2212 GMT (idk if there's errors that would have logged somewhere). The camp was present. A single static launcher was present. No enemy forces were present. The spacebar-prompt to detonate the camp did not detonate the camp. The message that I had set the charges was displayed, though. Mousewheel menu did not function after this attempt to detonate the camp. Had to drop explosive charges from inventory next to the tents and blow them up with the timer (as this was the only option usable, as the rest needed a functioning scrollwheel).

I think there was some confusion about how best to use teamspeak and in-game chat for comms, rather than anything inherently wrong with using TS. TS was good for post-death spectating chat, and for when the mission was over. I think it made things a bit murky for during the mission solely because there wasn't a good plan about how it was going to be used and the system used was a bit rushed/not fully thought through, to the detriment of some peoples' experiences. A teething issue. I think Johnson's idea to disallow TS is a bit of a kneejerk reaction that doesn't solve the exact problem... but at the same time, if we'd stuck with vanilla in game comms we would have had an adequate experience despite it not being ACE. Group chat and side chat would have been enough. I would suggest turning voice off on Global, just so people can't accidentally misbroadcast to EVERYONE on there... I really liked the premise of the mission. A bit gutted that CSAT did not prevail, I think mostly due to comm issues. I would have appreciated some way of telling how far away something was though - no rangefinder and the T-bars on my telescopic sight don't work unless someone is standing still so I can measure the width of their shoulders... I would have preferred a rangefinder over having thermal vision. It would have made spotting NATO harder (I was the first to have eyes on) but easier to understand where they actually were... Mission overran in length. NATO were the only side that had to actually travel anywhere in particular. They moved very carefully (crawling hundreds of metres at one point), of course, so the fact they had to traverse (how many) kilometers meant things took a long time. I enjoyed it though, but my lack of situational awareness needs some working at... I'm up for Rd. 2!

Last week with Gambit co-ordinating you did a brilliant evacuation on a fairly hot mountain top! Best bit of emergent gameplay I've had on EU1 I think - one of those situations that gets a bit out of hand and instead of just giving in and relying on the respawn I cleared as many EI as I could and you dropped in and got me outta there!

I signed up, it'll be interesting to see how movement is different with human enemies...

Oh, I don't think it's a problem exactly... I don't think it is something that requires fixing. It was an edge case scenario, it only happens when a major timezone realises it's late all at once, and only affects 1 AO. Future AO's spawn proportionate amounts of enemies. Same problem happens in reverse when a big lump of players descends on the server suddenly! I wouldn't worry about changing anything gameplay-wise. Certainly don't mess with spawned enemies. Imagine if you were successfully sneaking up on an enemy and they went out of sight and despawned... you'd go crazy looking for them. Or in the other scenario, where people join the server and a cleared building behind you fills with enemies that shoot you in the back... yuck I was just thinking out loud really - some way of indicating to a player whether the AO was spawned when the player count was much higher than it currently is. Either passively, like having the larger AO circle (related to MDCCLXXVI's idea) than the current server pop would normally see, or explicitly in a message like "Mission Update: Intelligence reports a high enemy presence at the objective." when the server population presently is less than a certain %age of the population when the AO spawned.

That would also give a good idea of the relative risk of entering the AO. Last night the server pop halved soon after an AO spawned and it was only when I got there, got killed, and 3 enemy vehicles drove past my corpse that I realised how lethal it was ? 2 squads of enemy soldiers with 1 vehicle (or whatever) is only enough to hold a courtyard or something, and would allow for a pitched battle to be coordinated with the limited player count available. Also aware that there is a drive to get I&A4 released in a functional state first. Consider all my suggestions just ideas to chew over for after 4 is released bug free. It's nicer than 3 (sorry 3!) and I want to avoid adding complications and potential bugs that would push full release back!

Ooh "internal" is the keyword. Whoops! We'll see it when we see it

I&A4 is being tested on EU1 at various times, no password required

Would it be possible to buff enemy AA abilities when the ratio of pilots:infantry gets too high? Either increasing the rate of "Anti-Air (Goalkeeper)" objectives, or spawning a few more AA-infantry/static launchers? It sounds like you don't want to neuter the abilities of Talon etc... but it could encourage them to work with infantry, if they are unable to knock out an AO without significant risk to their (limited availability, iirc?) jet.

I might have been struggling desperately to find the exact magic angle to get the "revive" trigger, and done the swap in that process ("I've got it! Oh, I don't have it") rather than during the animation, actually. That sounds more like it, what with the insane hitboxes for certain actions on things like vehicles etc...

When reviving people, the animation can cause your point of aim to move over whoever you are reviving. This can result in you triggering other "space bar" events. Which is how I as a grenadier lost my grenade launcher without realising. I was reviving someone who was lying on the (unreviveable) corpse of another player. I saw the rifle-logo while holding space bar and thought "oh!" but after reviving I had a very pressing issue to deal with (a few shooty bois) and got distracted. 20 minutes later I went to switch to grenade launcher... doh. Adding to the Shelldrake debate: I have seen them used effectively once. Jin87 had taken on squad lead, there was some amazing teamwork going on, and he was getting Shelldrake to drop smokes to shield us from view, rather than as offensive weapons. I'm not sure if this occasion justifies keeping them - it was the perfect storm that you rarely see on a public server ever.

That was a bug and a possible misunderstanding at the same time. There was a "Secure Intel" and a "Kill Enemy Officer" mission in that particular AO. "Kill Enemy Officer" was tied to the success of that AO. Secure Intel missions create a desk, intel pack (on the desk) and an Officer (and possibly some other assets). This officer was killed, and this was briefly misunderstood to be the officer from "Kill Enemy Officer". When the actual enemy (kill enemy) officer was located (which involves clearing buildings, which is part of annexing a location tbh, unless you want enemies to start emerging behind you) for some reason the trigger did not work, so the AO got stuck. That was the bug. Perhaps a prompt could appear on-screen to people within the AO if, say, the objective has not completed despite n% of the enemy forces in the AO being killed? "New Mission: Clear Buildings in this area" with a circle on the map that would narrow down the location of the enemy officer without just going "HE IS HERE"? Later on there was another "Kill Enemy Officer" mission that worked without a hitch. Further to rewards, maybe the reward menu could do with a bit of a declutter. Maybe categorising things and using a bit more screen-space for the menu would be an idea. If I'm using 6.5mm ammo I don't really want/need to be looking at upgrades for 5.56mm gear. I would like it if, instead of "unbought" items being auto-removed from inventory when you've loaded a saved loadout, there could be a prompt to purchase those items using the correct number of points... if you have them available.

I made a lovely dent in the ground last night when my parachute decided to not exist during a paradrop - I had a message saying it was removed.

Yes, "AA Assistant" is just what I'd name a regular rifleman-class loadout that has a large pack and as many AA missiles in as possible.

The ability to create a custom squad with roles (rather than trying to get people to join into the correct roles, and then form a custom squad) should hopefully make this simpler to achieve. In IA3 on a busy night it's easy to end up in a role with a limited loadout, but the custom squads mechanic lets you create more slots for preferred roles. I'm happy to work on an AA Assistant type loadout and occupy that sort of role when it's needed. You favour the Spar because it lets you carry almost-lightweight 150rd box mags if I remember right?

No, I mean, if an AT rifleman takes missiles out of your backpack (or if you put your missiles into their inventory), you gain RP. Oh, and a loss of RP for taking missiles out of an AT's pack to prevent RP farming...