Re: ACEMod Patch 5 Released

**beita** · 03-18-2009, 04:39 PM

I briefly took a look at it back before ACE came out. I figured it wasn't worth it unless some sort of wounding system was made. Now that ACE is out and working however, it might be worth looking into again.

The way I was thinking of doing it wouldn't be exactly as you want, but it would be pretty close.

Since you can't load dead bodies into vehicles, but you CAN drag dead bodies (a great thing for this script), I was thinking something simple. You simply drag a dead body to within say, 10 meters, of a medical vehicle/tent. You do that and the body is considered "repatriated" and the player respawns at the medical vehicle/tent you dragged them too.

Problem comes up on how to deal with players that are "dead" and disconnect/reconnect, what should happen? Yes, people will cheat the system to get to play faster, and since this system is to mainly deter lone-wolves who are EXACTLY the kind of players that would do that. Not really sure how to solve that problem.

Another issue is what to do with the players while they are "dead". Do they spectate via a script? Mill around on an empty island away from the fight? If spectating, can they see friendlies? Enemies? Not really hard to do things, but things that must be thought of either way.

If a solution can't be found for what to do with JIP players, the whole system becomes somewhat useless and isn't really worth looking into. I don't really know how to solve the JIP problem properly, so I'd appreciate some input on that.

**LCpl. Soto** · 03-18-2009, 05:58 PM

I've never been a fan of jip or respawns. If you have lost so many people that you can't complete your objective, you have already failed the mission and if people can't complete the mission without respawns then that mission is meant for a lot more players. JIP's tend to do whatever and don't report in when they join in public games. The easiest way i can see to solve that issue is make them spawn on a secluded island and have to request air transportation from the mainbase on the main island. If they don't, they will be stuck on a little island the rest of the game.

Trying to implement a medical system so people can respawn will make half the mission play time dealing with getting the dead to respawn (unless mission is designed with med evac teams in addition to the regular troops) and the other half would be the actual mission. I'm all for having people med evaced that are badly wounded or picking up the dead, but mission creators will have to design their missions with this element in mind. You will need more than just two medics to do the job, this is of course if it becomes possible to put unconcious and dead into vehicles. Personnaly, if someone really wants respawns, I don't think they will be patient enough to have someone find their boddy and extract them so they can respawn. Evacuating the dead is a further simulation and respawning is something that takes away from a simulation.

**LCpl. Soto** · 03-18-2009, 06:29 PM

Just adding to my post above...

I understand that some people like respawns and want to play missions that have hundreds of enemy forces. Those missions however are for much larger groups and when you have just a plt worth of people, it becomes like throwing people into the meat grinder until you win. The med evac feature could add to the overall gameplay of respawn missions but it will also take away for those that don't want to deal with such harsh penalties. I'm sure on many occassions, many people will be stuck in limbo for 10 plus minutes. You won't ever please everyone, be it people that don't want respawn, people that want penalties for respawn, or don't want penalties.

**Jorge.PT** · 03-18-2009, 06:38 PM

@LCpl.Soto: For those who don't report in when they join, there is no space for them in TG...
Regarding the time dealing with getting dead to respawn, I think transport pilots would be very happy in doing that, instead of staying at base after the initial insertion and it wouldn't consume half of the mission resources as you want to make it appear.

Originally Posted by LCpl. Soto

Personnaly, if someone really wants respawns, I don't think they will be patient enough to have someone find their boddy and extract them so they can respawn.

Then you are wrong.

@beta: Unless you want to release your missions outside of TG, I suggest that you do a system based in the idea of Charles Darwin. Since it seems that in ACE 1.06 you have the ability to load the wounded inside the vehicles, I suppose that is possible to allow it to the dead also.

I believe that the main thought that you have to carry, is that people will act in a correct manner and respect their fellow gamers. If we don't start doing this, we will end in a mental stagnation state and there will never be no new ideas, because of the phantom of the simulation/reality, that some people insist in radicalise.

I've watched many times, people disconnecting right after being killed, in long non respawn missions, and those same people would love to continue playing, just because they have a one hour window in their life's to have some gaming.

I'm not against non respawn missions, I love them also, but there is space for non respawn missions and respawn missions. And above all, the mission makers are the ones that must decide, if their mission should or should not have respawn and how it should be done.

**beita** · 03-18-2009, 06:39 PM

Valid points LCpl. Soto, but consider it this way:

Say you have a mission that is "epic" in scope, has no respawn, and may take your group the better part of 3 hours to complete. It is a mission with short, sharp contacts at long intervals between. You ARE going to lose people in each contact, and the contacts start early on.

Now, say you die in the first contact, 20 minutes into the mission. Now, you could sit out the next 2 hours and 40 minutes, or you could stick around, chat it up with other dead players, and spectate while you wait to see if your group can recover your body.

I agree that a DEDICATED body recovery team of some sort would be needed, and I was thinking on that. Perhaps make it a group that has a medical evac vehicle, and say 2 or 3 medics. Take for example the Chinook. You have a pilot, and 2 medics on board. Your Platoon makes contact, a short 10 minute firefight leaves 4 people dead. You secure the area, have completed your objective and need to move on to the next one. First, however, you call in the medical support. They find a nice LZ, land, offload supplies the Platoon might need, pick up the dead and they respawn on the spot (representing reinforcements being flown in from the chopper).

Now, this system may not work so well in all missions, but it could work well in some. It is in effect a way of allowing for large-scale, long timeline missions without the cheesiness of "instant" respawn, but without the inevitable boredom and player count loss of no respawn. Hell, with dynamic AI spawning, good AI scripting and an acceptable solution to the JIP problem, you could concievably make a mission that has the scope of clearing the ENTIRE island of say a Battalion of enemy. You fight them in small parts and slowly progress, choosing your next objectives and such. It would be similar to Evolution, except without the inherent spam that comes from a simplistic respawn system.

I think a lot of players would be interested in something like that, and if a lot of interest is shown, one of the servers could become a "persistant" server and run the mission in long stretches. I know I would love to be a part of something like that.

Right now ArmA is kind of stuck at the level of only being able to simulate a single battle or firefight. Without respawn it is simply not possible to do anything more, we DO NOT have 150 players nor software/hardware capable of supporting them, so, we have to use respawn to represent this larger number.

If done right, I think it would work. The first step though is finding an acceptable solution to JIP. I don't like the idea of player-controlled aircraft taking JIPers in, what if there is no pilot? What if the pilot disconnects? Perhaps an AI controlled aircraft or something. Any other ideas on that?

**LCpl. Soto** · 03-18-2009, 07:16 PM

I understand the want for more epic battles that go for hours on end. I for one think that the missions that intend to be this way need set days or events for this. Look at domination for instance, it try's to replicate an epic war for the island but is lacking in certain areas. In the process of 3 hours, your plt lead, squad leaders, and subordinates will change out often and something like organizing med evacs will become a big issue. If you have a group of people that can dedicate 3 hours to see it through, then it can be a fun experience but more often than not, when a voted in admin loads it up, things will deteriorate into another session of domination and after a while, you will have 12 of 40 players in game, attempting to do missions For special event this could be fun, but regular public play, it will end up with some people team playing until someone comes in and gets squads resituated.

As for having an ai pilot for respawns and jip, then there is no point of forcing them to spawn somewhere where they need to report in to join up with everyone. If you are playing with 30 people and no one can fly well that's rare. If you have respawns and are playing with 12 guys, then that isn't an epic battle and you should be playing a smaller mission. For dealing with jip and no respawns then, the no pilot issue would be a real problem and i'm not sure on how to fix that

**ironpants** · 03-18-2009, 07:54 PM

I'm very interested in exactly what you describe, beita. I like persistent, dynamic missions which require logistical support operations. However, I don't like unlimited insta-respawn and features that are really just crutches which enable lonewolfing and careless play. Respawning should happen periodically en masse, to represent reinforcements - with caps on the total number of possible reinforcements. This solves the 'meat-grinder' problem where the mission can always be won, even through careless play & lonewolfing.

I would jump on the chance to fly medevac in such a scenario, but I don't think it should be the sole respawn mechanism (or necessarily a respawn mechanism at all!). However, the current ACE medical system is still too simplistic - either the downed soldier dies too quickly or a medic is present and can magically bring them back to fighting shape (rather than just stabilize / keep them alive for evac) by the time medevac arrives. Removing the option to heal at a medic would be necessary to foster medevac scenarios.

**beita** · 03-18-2009, 08:21 PM

Originally Posted by ironpants

...

Removing the option to heal at a medic would be necessary to foster medevac scenarios.

That is easily accomplished. Make your medics not _actual_ medics (the Medic class), but simply re-named Riflemen. They won't have a magical heal nor will they have unlimited medical supplies. I used to have it this way, but unless you have some sort of medical evac/care system, the players will always be stuck with poor aim etc.

**MarineSeaknight** · 03-18-2009, 08:49 PM

Originally Posted by beita

That is easily accomplished. Make your medics not _actual_ medics (the Medic class), but simply re-named Riflemen. They won't have a magical heal nor will they have unlimited medical supplies. I used to have it this way, but unless you have some sort of medical evac/care system, the players will always be stuck with poor aim etc.

Medevac back to main where the Medical Tent is and get healed there (steady aim)? Simulate Medevac and treatment for wounds that can be treated, then shipped back out to simulate reinforcements. That's the simplest way I can think of from a player's point of view.

**norrin** · 03-18-2009, 09:35 PM

Beita,

I think what you are saying for a persistant dynamic mission is a great idea - imagine flying into a hot LZ and extracting the wounded and dead - it'd be sure to get the pilot and his crews hearts pounding.

At this point unfortunately we are limited to loading only unconscious units in ACE due to hard coded changes that occur to a dead body's status in ArmA. Essentially what happens is after either a few second or minutes in some cases a dead body's class changes from its original class eg. soldierWB to a .p3D class.

When this occurs the dead unit is no longer recognised by the normal ArmA scripting commands such as "crew _vehicle" so the code we use to pull-out unconscious bodies no longer works.

There's a second problem to this in that if you load a dead .p3d unit in cargo, the next unit that you load takes the first dead unit's place in the vehicle and the first loaded dead unit is kicked back out.

A final problem is what happens when an unconscious unit dies enroute.

We have tried quite a few work arounds for this but so far we've come up with nothing and we are now looking at loading dead units as part of the RKSL cargo system or possibly creating new "alive" dead units when a dead-unit is dragged eg createunit set its damage high, set it as unconscious and make it immortal and then set it as dead using a dead global var, but I'm not sure how much lag this would generate if this is happening to a lot of units.

Having said all this loading dead .p3d units on vehicles is not a problem its just what happens when you load someone else or you try to get their bodies out again.

norrin

**beita** · 03-18-2009, 09:53 PM

Yeah, I read the topic on the ACE forums about it.

Not to big a deal if you can't load dead bodies into a vehicle, it will just take out one step (flying/driving back to base to respawn the dead player), instead, the player will simply respawn at the vehicle their body was dragged to. I'm sure if everyone REALLY wanted to have to go back to base a scripted solution could be made, keeping track of who's dead body has been "loaded" into the vehicle. Would be complicated, but doable I would think ...

The big problem of what to do with JIPers still remains though. If the medical evac crew was around for the whole mission, they could simply drive/fly the JIPers into the battle on their next run in. That might be an acceptable solution, and the players would simply have to always have a group of players operating the medevac equipment.

This idea is worth trying out I think. I've got a lot of stuff going on right now (new missions, artillery, AI script), so I might not get around to it for a bit though. Feel free to make a thread on it and post mission ideas and other suggestions to expand on this idea though, as I think it could be an interesting concept.

**Gungnir** · 03-18-2009, 10:52 PM

that would definitely be awesome. leave no man behind, for real.

**LCpl. Soto** · 03-18-2009, 11:00 PM

Jorge.PT, the rest of my comment about it taking half the game time dealing with med evacs and caring for wounded stated this would be the case if no med teams were assigned to do the task. With no med teams, the squads would have to break people off to deal with the casualties. Also most missions with respawns, about everyone dies once or twice do to sheer number of enemy forces. So that's a lot of casualties to deal with if no team is assigned med evac detail. Yes this would be a cool feature for pilots, respawns already give them ample fly time though. As for people not wanting to wait, i'm sure several people would want to wait an undetermined amount of time to jump back in again. There will be people that leave also though because they were waiting too long or didn't want to chance it and end up never getting respawned. Not like the dead can talk to let people know where there bodies are after all.

Best of luck with the med evac, respawn thing. It definately adds a new twist to things. I personally try to stay away from playing any game with same round, respawns. I will play occassionally but I guess I'm just biased against respawns and everyone has their own taste. Even in Red Orchestra, i play only realism matches that are one life.

**Charles Darwin** · 03-19-2009, 12:45 AM

Imagine an evo or domination style map where the players cant respawn until their dead corpse is back at base..people would work together more..freidnly fire would be avoided as much as possible..and it would foster the "no man lleft behind" attitude we see in real life

and imagine having to fight off a group of infantry around your buddies body as you wait for reinforcements with a humvv to take him back to base

**beita** · 03-19-2009, 01:27 AM

Originally Posted by Charles Darwin

Imagine an evo or domination style map where the players cant respawn until their dead corpse is back at base..people would work together more..freidnly fire would be avoided as much as possible..and it would foster the "no man lleft behind" attitude we see in real life

and imagine having to fight off a group of infantry around your buddies body as you wait for reinforcements with a humvv to take him back to base

I agree it would be pretty cool. Though, I am a little worried it might kill the sense of urgency in an attack, players will be more concerned about reviving their buddy than completing the objective.

Another take on the whole respawn problem is to have a somewhat simpler solution that works kind of the same. Take Domination for instance, you are given a town to clear. Now, you have say 20 people. If you die, you do not "respawn", you wait in spectate mode until one of two things; 1, 80% of the players who were there when the objective started (to avoid JIP problems) are dead, or 2, the objective is completed. When one of those happens, anyone who is dead or JIP'd will respawn back at main base.

Put that into a different mission for similar results, perhaps even moving the "respawn" point to the objective that was just completed to allow for faster turn over time between objectives. This would allow for a strong "campaign" feeling while not being overly boring for those who have to wait, and it solves the JIP problem.

This is probably the method I would use because it would be simpler than the medevac route and has less room for failure on the player's part. For example, what if the Chinook crashes? The mission is now FUBAR as your medevac pilot is dead and the medevac vehicle is dead, redundancy would be pointless because the redundant players would be bored out of their minds.

If there is some interest in this "campaign" style of mission, it could probably been done. Would be a good chunk of work, but I think it could end up being a good experience.

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