29th of December - OPERATION MERCURY Feedback thread

[flakt]

as stated in the title, I'd really like some feedback on the mission, as it's my third mission and first large scale one. post any ideas, suggestions, etc in here aswell.

[AdeptAbyss]

Airlift option, blufor spend a lot of time driving from the base, I like where the base is so dont move the base closer.

Flares? If possible, can you add a script to put flares on the helos, AA just overpowers any air unit as is, and with the Ah-64 having trouble locking yesterday, we couldnt do much but hide behind mountains.

Linked objectives, Opfor said they had to guess where we are going to attack and for a large portion of the game there wasnt much fighting yet 3 cities went down, if we only have 2 cities that can be attacked first it will focus the fighting but still give the options to blufor.

Bigger bases, landing the choppers is tight, once your out of base only 1 helo at a time can really land.



Otherwise great mission, one of the best tvt maps we got

[Ghost02]

I really like it. Leave it alone, you have balance that is hard to acheive.

[Donegal]

I'm suprised at your comments Ghost. Although it is a very nice mission (hey, we actually finished the mission and the end-script worked) with lower population it can be boring. Ghost and My squads defended Zirtina (sp?) for the entire 2.5 hours and only saw about 3 minutes of action.

The rest of the time was spent endlessly calling in Helo audio contacts as the whirlybirds dueled each other in the sky.

Maybe you could make a smaller version with less objectives, or objectives that need to be taken in order.

Also, there should be some defensive equipment for Opfor to use (mines, claymores, etc.) because some of those towns are pretty large and there is no way to cover every entrance. Basically you are forced to point your weapons inward at the MHQ and send out occasional patrols. Which isn't un-fun actually, but a concerted attack will certainly succeed on a full server.

Only other thing I can think of is I heard our Helo pilots say their birds weren't respawning so you might want to check that.

All-in-all a fun mission I would love to play again, and one that could become a classic with a few tweaks.

[flakt]

I'm suprised at your comments Ghost. Although it is a very nice mission (hey, we actually finished the mission and the end-script worked) with lower population it can be boring. Ghost and My squads defended Zirtina (sp?) for the entire 2.5 hours and only saw about 3 minutes of action.

The rest of the time was spent endlessly calling in Helo audio contacts as the whirlybirds dueled each other in the sky.

Maybe you could make a smaller version with less objectives, or objectives that need to be taken in order.

Also, there should be some defensive equipment for Opfor to use (mines, claymores, etc.) because some of those towns are pretty large and there is no way to cover every entrance. Basically you are forced to point your weapons inward at the MHQ and send out occasional patrols. Which isn't un-fun actually, but a concerted attack will certainly succeed on a full server.

Only other thing I can think of is I heard our Helo pilots say their birds weren't respawning so you might want to check that.

All-in-all a fun mission I would love to play again, and one that could become a classic with a few tweaks.

opfor does have mines - they are in the ordnance crate. the birds did respawn yes, I saw atleast 5 or 6 hinds go down.

I will make the MHQ something that can only be brought down with a satchel, as an AT4 can do a good number on it, like a building. thanks for the feedback guys, keep it coming

[viper1986]

I couldn't play because I lost power last night but to limit people standing around doing nothing at towns that aren't being attacked, only allowing 2 objectives at a time could work out for the best. Make it so that they both need to be captured in order to advanced onto the next objectives. Not sure if you want to make it so the opfor can take them back or not but if you make it so they can't, it's really up to blufor to protect their supply lines and keep the organization going after you have pushed far beyond your base.

I didn't play but just trying to make suggestions from what I have read. I know we had a ArmA 1 mission designed so that the attacking force had to take towns and objectives systematically. I believe it was one of beita's missions where we had like 70 players and it was epic. The objective was a town and following that was a bridge which the Russians had to defend at all costs. Doing a TvT with a systematic approach offers the defending team a chance to provide a good fight and make it interesting for everyone.

TvT isn't always about points but the experience and your mission flakt could become a epic one with a few tweaks if your interested.

[Ghost02]

I'm suprised at your comments Ghost.

I really liked it. It worked perfectly, the suspense was there. It is an intense situation guarding something like that and was a nice adrenalin rush. The friendly helos only added to the atmosphere of paranoia.
I saw blufor once and shot the position 600 meters away, and I was scared, scared of a DMR or Tac 50. The length of the mission allowed me to use Defensive patrols and other defensive stratagies.

Also, opfor did not see any mines, I looked myself.

[Sam Hoy]

You know what I'm going to suggest, but I'll say it anyways!

Remove the auto-locking missiles (or add counter measures). Most of the kills we got in the Apache was on armor that probably couldn't even see us, which isn't very fun. Now, I still like the dynamic of close-air support and anti-air artillery, but I'd recommend removing the linebackers, and Tungestas and replacing them with M163s and Shikias. Also remove the hellfires from the Apaches and add the Hinds with the optically tracked missiles.

[1longtime]

Good comments so far.

Agreed on linked objectives. I can see multiple simultaneous objectives working with a very large group, but sequential objectives would help tremendously for a lower playercount because there would be plenty of action for all. For 40-50 players, keeping the action focused in one city at a time seems ideal.

The air vs. armor will always be a problem. I had a chance to paint a T-90 on a hilltop at one point, but to be honest that target was probably already Hellfire bait regardless of my laser. What about keeping the birds with dumb iron and going with laser guided arty? Just a suggestion.

Very enjoyable mission, although I had to leave before it ended and I have no idea who won or how the end was triggered (I arrived late as well, so I never heard the "win" condition). Would someone care to re-state how to set off the end trigger to the guy who cut class?

[Soupy_Norman]

nanananananananannana
Missed this one, i was and still am drunk. nananananananan
Sounds loke it was good. nanananana

[tyrspawn]

as stated in the title, I'd really like some feedback on the mission, as it's my third mission and first large scale one. post any ideas, suggestions, etc in here aswell.

As I tried to say on the server, the mission must be scalable.

The COs should have an option of voting for how many towns they want to include in the AO - so its possible to unlock up to 5 towns for 45+ people and down to 1 town for 15 people or something. When we played Boon decided to not even attempt to defend the northern 3 town due to lack of forces, and I totally agree with that decision - it would have been impossible for our team to hold all the towns. The result was us waiting for a couple of hours before we saw any action.

Even when we did see action, the infantry saw little, as most of the firing was between vehicles.

I think it would have been much more fun given our number of players with 2-3 towns.

I also think the amount of time required to hold should be scaled in conjunction with the number of towns - perhaps -30 minutes for every town reduce.d


Another unrelated suggestion: I think our team especially was far too willing to lose helicopters. Even with an 11 minute respawn... I think there should be a limited amount of respawns, perhaps 4 or 5.

[viper1986]

Althought it can test the commander on both sides what he needs to allocate for each town, it's not always very tactical because he could just send 2 guys to a town and capture it. You want each town to be a challenge and let both commanders take the time to setup their attack or defense strategy. Nothing is more challenging then knowing then the defending commander know's your coming and setups up how he wants. It's then up to the attacking commander to either recon the objective and plan his attack accordingly.

I do like tyr's idea of making the TvT mission adjustable to the number of players connected. It's kinda like how BF2 does it with small, medium and large versions of the map.

With a mission like this and planned ahead of time and not so late, we could easily get 70 players I think.

[flakt]

Good comments so far.

Agreed on linked objectives. I can see multiple simultaneous objectives working with a very large group, but sequential objectives would help tremendously for a lower playercount because there would be plenty of action for all. For 40-50 players, keeping the action focused in one city at a time seems ideal.

The air vs. armor will always be a problem. I had a chance to paint a T-90 on a hilltop at one point, but to be honest that target was probably already Hellfire bait regardless of my laser. What about keeping the birds with dumb iron and going with laser guided arty? Just a suggestion.

Very enjoyable mission, although I had to leave before it ended and I have no idea who won or how the end was triggered (I arrived late as well, so I never heard the "win" condition). Would someone care to re-state how to set off the end trigger to the guy who cut class?

9000 minutes gone past or all MHQs destroyed.

[1longtime]

9000 minutes gone past or all MHQs destroyed.

That's a typo. 9,000 minutes is 150 hours.

I assume you meant 9,000 seconds? That's 150 minutes (2.5 hours).

[flakt]

That's a typo. 9,000 minutes is 150 hours.

I assume you meant 9,000 seconds? That's 150 minutes (2.5 hours).

seconds, yes. my bad.