Rick_the_new_guy

roger that

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Grunt 70

I can't wait...I decided to download the game on Friday evening. Can't wait til March...

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|TG-22nd|Grunt



"When force is necessary, it must be applied boldly, decisively, and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with maneuver" - Leon Trotsky

Rick_the_new_guy

One more kid runs off the porch to go have some fun.

sigh.

Did I just feel my leg muscles twitch?

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Chappie

C'mon Rick!! You know you wanna!!!!
twitch*Twitch***

Chappie

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John CANavar

You resisted longer than I expected, I will give you that


Hey Rick, what about putting a motor on your boat... It is a long way to Sahrani from the Gulf of Oman

Rick_the_new_guy

Way to go on being an admin Grunt.

Now the MIPs have two out of four admin spots on the server.

The conquest begins.


I guess the village of Pita should be secure for some time.

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John CANavar

One thing is for sure Rick, Armed Assault will bring 1stMIP much closer to the TG community. Our simulation approach to BF2 was keeping us quite isolated from the rest of TG since BF2 was not a simulation game.

It is indeed... until the next air raid

Rick_the_new_guy

I have some more questions.

1. Does the game have a built in 24 hour clock like GTA, only it is actual seconds?

If so, that would be sick awsome.

2. Just how many AI bots can be on a team at one time?

3. How many Player characters (real people) can be on your team?

4. How high does the ranking go? What I mean is:
Can you be a Company commander? or does it stop at platoon leader?
Can there be more than one Platoon leader when playing on-line and all?

5. What side of the road should you drive on. Do not want any civilian deaths.

Thank You for your time.

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Dslyecxi

Flashpoint had this. You can also set time acceleration so that it can be 1 real second = 20 in-game seconds, for instance.

It's not really "AI bots", it's AI soldiers or enemies. There can be as many as you want to put in... the game can simulate massive engagements.

As many as the server can handle. There's no hard-coded limit.

Ranking isn't really in the game, aside from the intra-squad ranking that dictates what unit gets command when the others die. By default the biggest unit on the field of battle is a squad. They do not group together to form platoons, companies, etc, though there will be mods that will do just that. (bear in mind that the typical squad size is 12 units, so with a tank group, that is actually a tank platoon - 3 crewmen per tank, 4 tanks, that's a tank platoon. my point is that it's typically 12 humans in a squad by default). All the talk of Platoon Commander/Squad Leader/etc that you see in my articles (assuming that that is where you're getting these ideas from) are based upon organizational things that I introduced into my group independent of the actual game. Again, ArmA (like OFP) is what you make it.

To be clear, you can have a large number of players in a "squad", it's just that there are no really solid provisions for making fireteams or platoons by default (aside from assigning group colors, but that's no more useful in ArmA than it was in OFP, and it wasn't very useful in OFP). The Wargames League mod that we play helps this in some respects (for OFP, that is), but much of it has to be done mission-maker-side with standards and such. If you'd like to know how we do it, let me know, it might serve as a decent guide for the TG server if you guys want similar organization.

If you are interested in military organization at a higher level than the basics that you get in ArmA, I would encourage you to look out for the Chain of Command and the mods they make, as well as whatever the Wargames League team does for ArmA. Those are the two groups that are the most interested in providing realistic organization, gameplay, etc for ArmA/OFP.

It doesn't matter, and you won't see civilians wandering around unless the mission maker specifically put them there.

Rick_the_new_guy

awsome feedback. Really appreciate it.

Just how many players could play on a server without it crashing all the time?


So in fact if you were playing a scrim on-line agaisnt another team you could come up with your own system similar to real life. Like this:
" In the United States Marine Corps, platoon leaders are called "Platoon Commanders," but hold the same rank and function. The Platoon Sergeant often holds the rank of Staff Sergeant, although ranks from Corporal to Gunnery Sergeant are possible. In Marine infantry units, rifle platoons usually consist of three rifle squads of 13 men each, with a Navy corpsman, a Platoon Commander, and a Platoon Sergeant. A weapons platoon replaces the 3 squads with a 60 mm mortar section, an assault section, and a medium machine gun section (using M240G 7.62 mm machine guns)."
Source: Platoon Wikipdia: 15-December-2006 :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon

Set-up your teamspeak channels for RTO (radio dudes) and Squad Leaders and have at it.

This would make the platoon have 39 grunts and 1 medic. 1 PLCO. 1 Platoon NCO. for a total of 42 players.

Hell if you wanted to, you could have Aplha and Bravo platoons and a Company commander calling all the shots.
this would mean that it is about 84 vs 84.

The posibilities seem endless.

P.S. OMG, in real life there are 39 grunts to a medic!!!!

Project reality should have that as a limited kit, holy cow!

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Dslyecxi

It depends on how beefy the server is. We're running a not-too-beefy server for OFP and had 45 people on it this past Saturday. We need to upgrade to something more modern to really push it further, but considering that ArmA is supposed to have improved server stuff, it should be pretty easy to get 60+ people in a game. Probably higher, but it's hard to say without trying it.

Try to remember that this game is more than just player-vs-player combat. Cooperative is IMMENSELY enjoyable and should not be overlooked.

As to your question, yes, it's entirely possible to form a platoon with realistic structure AS LONG AS you have a good playerbase to work with. I'm sure the TG crowd will make this possible, if someone wants to take the time to organize it and structure it.

Also keep in mind that you can flesh out player teams with AI, so you could have player-controlled PltCo, Squad Leaders, and Fireteam Leaders, and have the fireteam members be AI. Or just have PltCo/SL as humans and the rest as AI.

If you'd like to see how my group does it, here is our new organizational structure. Our squads are 14 players strong, with 46 people in a full, fully-human-controlled platoon.


In-game, with Wargames League, the groups are tracked on the map as long as they have someone carrying a radio. So you'll see the fireteams marked, the squad leaders marked, and the command element marked by NATO markers, similar to this:


We're transitioning over to this platoon layout after having experimented with it in last week's session, and it's looking like it'll be pretty successful. We had a loose platoon organization prior to this, but now we're standardizing for various reasons. If you're interested, I'll let you know tomorrow after we've played with it and I have some screens of how it turned out.

As to communication, Teamspeak works great if you use subchannels for squads and use channel commander mode to talk on the 'command net'. You have to have a basic radio SOP to do this to avoid confusion, but it's not hard - just announce your unit when you talk over command chat. i.e. "Command, this is Bravo Actual, blah blah blah". Hopefully ArmA's VOIP will mature to the point that it becomes more useful for coordination purposes, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. Teamspeak 3 should be out in the not-too-distant future as well, so that might give us all more options as to how we communicate and organize.

Oh, and as to making this all work with a group... the way I do it is via an established rank structure (not a milsim one, more one borne out of practicality that acknowledges the general abilities of a player insofar as leadership and personal proficiency is concerned), which means that we have NCO's (the highest rank) leading the Platoon and squads, Specialists (second-highest rank) leading the squads and fireteams, and regulars ('standard' rank) fleshing out the fireteams and such. The newest players are encouraged to take riflemen roles until they're comfortable enough to move up to a higher position. Some people don't have any interest in leading at all, so that's accounted for.

It will be interesting to see how TG deals with such things. As I've said before, I'm looking forward to the day when we can have some TG vs ShackTac adversarial missions, or even some nice epic cooperative joint sessions.

edit: I edited this to reflect our revised structure in which the squads are Alpha/Bravo/Charlie and the fireteams are 1/2/3, instead of the other way around.

Rick_the_new_guy

Once again, great feedback.

Blasted computer is telling me to spread rep around elseware before given you some more.

It is possible for someone to play this game as a Officer in real life and come up with tactics and never see any combat. That actually sounds appealing to me.


I am starting to barley grasp the infinite possiblities to AA.

I would love to watch a video of you'all playing!!

I have been wanting to start a random AA videos thread.
Every day more and more awsome video comes out.

One last question, and I'll let you go.

1. Can people create their own missions (all AI players) and have their friend download it and have their friends try to beat it?
What I mean, is assign certain squads to patrol certain areas, and what routes they will take and what kind of weapons they will have and vehicles.

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John CANavar

Great discussion, thanks for the questions from Rick and answers from Dslyecxi.

Rick what about making a new thread called "FAQ - Armed Assault Game Play and Mechanics" and quoting all these good questions and answers over there. We will make it sticky if you or someone else starts it.

It would be a waste if this good information is buried in forum pages.

Dslyecxi

Of course. You can make anything you want. The game has robust options for both singleplayer and multiplayer gameplay, it's just a question of how much effort you put into it and how skilled you are at the editor. It's easy to make basic missions, but it requires a bit more knowledge to do intricate stuff. The possibilities of ArmA (and OFP) are pretty much limitless. I've been playing it (OFP) for over five years and am still constantly experiencing new stuff.

One of the guys who is frequently a Platoon Commander (Syixxs) jokes that he has degraded combat skills due to spending most of his in-game time looking at the map and directing various squads and fireteams around. When I play as Platoon Commander, I never get in firefights. I'm too busy telling everyone where to go, what to do, evaluating the situation, etc. You can have a ton of fun like that, too. You don't have to get in firefights directly to have a thrilling experience.


Here's something you'll probably love. It's a full after-action report from one of our platoon-sized cooperative missions.
http://dslyecxi.com/articles/wgl_warfle.html

There is a big video at the end that is about 20 minutes long and has various clips from the mission (the full mission was 1h40m). You can find a Google Video version of it here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...90202139632242
Note that in the video you can hear Alpha squad and Command, so if it sounds confusing at times, that's why. There's profanity in the video, so if that's a problem for you, you've been warned in advance.

Also, I made a thread here on TG recently that had a lot of other videos from us.
http://www.tacticalgamer.com/armed-a...ktactical.html

I can't help it, I have a vested interest in TG having a robust and thriving ArmA community. If my feedback and input can help that to happen, that's great.

John CANavar

That's the magic word as far as I am concerned. Standardization ! Backbone for organization and coordination.

Please share your observations after the session.

Once the platoon structure is established, the next step is to define how a) squads b) fire teams function. Communication (TS procedures, command/radio language), movement and maneuver standards, defensive and offensive mission critical task lists to be carried out by SLs and FLs. In other words, micromanagement of platoon at squad/fire team level.

I am not sure if this is something ShackTac is interested in or you folks let things a bit flexible at that end (to my very limited experience it seemed so) but as 1stMIP we pay special attention to how fire teams and squads will operate by practical SOP guides called handbooks.

These handbooks will be especially useful for new players visiting TG; providing them a very basic tactical knowledge and summary of what they are expected to do when they join 1stMIP organized coop sessions.

Those who are interested in stepping up to leadership roles will also be guided and supported with practical guides written for leadership positions.

We hope to introduce revised versions of them to TG community when they are ready. I would love to see similar publications from other tactical groups so that we can improve as a community by supporting each other with experience and material.