Okay guys, I started my own topic about all the things that keep me busy in the game.
This shouldn't be a 'first impressions' topic, since I already spammed my first impressions elsewhere. But this game definitely keeps me thinking, and I need a space to write it down other than 'screencaps' , 'videos' or 'starting a campaign'.
This game is extremely open world in one way, but extremely scripted and corridor in another. What I mean to say is that I don't like the core mission ingredients in the main campaign. I'm not an army-sim kind of guy. I don't like taking orders, and I don't like giving other AI units mine. I do find the general gameplay adaptive, and do like the change of pace being part of a small army-team doing some sort of operation in the field. But the game doesn't give me much liberty in the way I achieve the goals. The next mission I'm about to do is one where we have to raid a supply transport. I'm sure that my 'Alpha squad leader' will tell me where to do that; although the mission briefing says; attack and raid the transport anywhere along its route.
Being a squad leader it might become funny, but then again I'd like to operate alone, or with real coop partners. Ordering AI to do what I want is too much C&C for my taste.
Having said that, I have to state that I'm still heavily impressed by the game's graphics design. This world is unequalled in nowadays open world environments. If you want to keep a proper FPS you will have to lower the graphics settings (even me with my GTX780 overclocked) but it's still brilliant.
The world has massive potential in any open world task so I hope for the best to come. And I hope for coop fun, because I think that's what makes this game grow legendary. Now I got a new task; convince Art (and who knows who else) to play this game and join online coop missions ^-^
I will continue the campaign first, and scripted or not, I will try to get better at the general combat system. The realism in the game is something that keeps me going and makes me want to purify my gaming experience. The game is extremely hard. Sometimes I think; How can these freaking AAF soldiers see me and alert all their friends of my presence so quickly, while I'm still busy trying to be aware of my general surroundings? The mission "Adapt part 1" took me probably around 30 'reverts' to get it done. The soldiers searching the area are extremely aware of any movements, and are pretty good shots.
It also happened to me that I was killing ally soldiers thinking it were enemies. Sometime it's hard to keep track of the mission briefing and the exact situation. I did not find out yet how to recall the spoken conversations in-game, so from time to time it's guessing who's who. Along the campaign I suspect to grow in both tactical and skill level and will become a good soldier in whatever battle to come. The real fun though, is to be expected in custom missions and, like I said, coop tasks or who knows; multiplayer.
I will keep you guys posted about my thoughts, now that I made a start spamming my joy, doubt and concern :)
Nice topic Binn. I like to have a topic to read one specific impression of a game. :-X
Yes, gameplay can be very dependent on AI instructions. The reason why you are receiving orders at the beginning of the game is because they want you to understand how a squad works and get the hang of the game's pace. And giving orders comes with the job, if you lead, someone is following and in this case you need to issue orders. From my past experience though, AI is very capable of doing their tasks without too much interference from you so one option is to let them find their own way of fighting and backing you up. You just w@&k on their formation and they'll do the rest. :) :)
That's true. But I have a certain need to fill enemies with lead, so I will put myself in a major role, whatever my crew is about to do.
For now, I know you are right. I need to just continue learning. Something else that bothers me, is that the AI is so damn alert and precise. It seems to me like fighting a pair of cyborgs, trained to take me down, whatever the situation is. But now's the time to stop complaining and continue; push through and learn to adapt ??? That's what the missions are called anyway :angel:
Nice topic, Binn :-X
I like reading impressions because I am still so early in the game
Well, I wrote about the supply convoy mission. That it would probably be another 'follow the leader' act. It turned out that I was given the command of a group of 4 soldiers for a change. Cool ^-^
So I was the man in charge, I could decide where I'd want to raid the convoy and how to do that. I chose a spot that later on turned out to be by far the most popular spot; in a turn in the road, just after a long straight part along the coast. I figured that since I have an AT rifleman (carrying a massive rocket launcher on his back) I had to put him into position to fire the first assault vehicle. The middle truck was to be unharmed, since this was the supply we were after, and the 3rd and last vehicle was another assault vehicle with armed men on board. I figured if the rocketeer could shoot the first truck down, it would block the whole situation and me and the rest of the men could take care of the rest of the soldiers and the last truck. Just to make sure the convoy wouldn't rush through the area, I parked our own pickup truck across the road to block passing vehicles.
I put my team into position and doing so I found out it isn't that easy at all, in fact it is bloody frustrating. These soldiers are damn hard to control. They simply just don't go to the spot that you point them to go. They start running around the area, as if they are blocked by something, or just go to a spot somewhere nearby. Try to send a team member to climb to the first floor of a wrecked building, regular stairs, nothing complicated about that. I tried it a dozen times and if in two times the guy succeeded it's much. Anyway, I gave up to pinpoint their position, so I moved them roughly into position so that they either could fire at the approaching convoy from affront or could fire from the side, in a hiding position. Not bad, thought I, and I let the convoy come. After trying this setup a couple of times, I found out it wasn't working. Somehow the first vehicle, with its massive turret, always shot me before anything else happened or just drove through. No success, just dust to bite :D
I tried in different ways, and found out I had more success when concentrating all firepower at my first idea; make sure that the first assault truck gets blown and then we'll see. So I grouped my soldiers to the rear end of the area (where I had primarily parked only the rocketeer) and hoped for the best. I found out that once I see men or vehicles approaching, my character immediately starts to describe what's coming, like I was used to when other men were the team leaders. Glad I didn't have to do that myself :-D
This new tactic seemed to draw some success. At least the first car got destroyed and we had a chance to shoot the driver of the supply truck. I also lost 2 of my men, but we managed to get away with the truck. When we arrived at the hide-out, it turned out that we were being chased by, what I figured out later, what was remaining of their forces. The last vehicle came rushing in and destroyed our freshly stolen truck when we tried to make an escape to an alternate hideout. I figured that was my fault, by not destroying the last vehicle before leaving the area, but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, I decided to redo it, better this time. It turned out to be a disaster. I didn't manage to get a good position and dominate the battle, and everytime I either got shot, or the first assault truck wouldn't get destroyed and the whole setup was a disaster :D
Heavily frustrated I tried to find clues on commanding the different types of men I was carrying with me, and browsing a couple of youtube videos, I found out that others managed to succeed the task by either; plant explosive charges to destroy the first vehicle, or carry a rocket launcher themselves. Not much of a team effort thus ????
Anyway, I found out that I also carry two explosive charges, so next time I might as well try to use those. 8)
I've had enough for now. Am a bit sick (flue probably) so I'm going to bed early. I think the commanding is clumsy. It is not working the way I'd supposed to. Your men are either dump and need every footstep being prescribed, or simply don't respond to what you want them to do. Disappointing so far. All this mission I've been focussing on trying to bring my men up in position, and all I got was disappointment. Checking successful youtube videos show a mayor role for the team leader, and just side support for the team. I had expected different.
Apart from me being a rooky at the whole commanding thing, it has to be done in a short amount of time as well because the convoy is coming. I didn't get any info on how to deal with the situation, it was all up to me. I didn't even know I had explosive charges for the task, nor did I know how to properly use them. It was a lot of frustration, and with a little guidance, that wouldn't have been necessary. Why combine the first true commanding mission with an 'it's-totally-up-to-you-mission-design'?
It all felt like being pushed into the ocean after having had a single lesson to swim. Maybe it is because I am new to this military concept, and maybe I suck at it even harder because I am a bit ill at the moment. I decided to leave things like they are and retry this mission tomorrow, with the newly gathered intel and some fresh motivation ;)
Sounds like a difficult game to master. It doesn't help when your guys don't quite do what you want them to.
I never had much success with games where you have to order a team around. I tried it once with some game years ago, might have been one those Rainbow Six games (might have been - I don't really remember now). Team members would get stuck en route to where I sent them, would get themselves shot or do stupid things like blow themselves up with grenades.
In any case, the only team games I like are ones with other humans players and not AIs. I'll content myself with reading about you guys' experiences :)
ArmAII cured me ;)
In the 2001 OFP-CWC game you get to command very large groups of soldiers in one of the last missions. You also have the ability to call an air strike and/or a tank assault in some missions. It was madness. If you just call in the helicopters, the AAA guns will blow them up in a second, so you have to destroy their AA capabilities first but if you call in the tanks too early, their men will manage to destroy your tanks and you are rendered with just infantry to attack, which is not enough. So you have to march in, thin their infantry and armored vehicles down to a certain level that allows your tanks to to some damage to the enemies while you order your men to destroy the AAA. Once you do that, just call the helicopters and they'll swipe all other enemies. After that you just have to sabotage a nuclear missile by yourself. ???
That was a tough mission! :-()
In ArmAII you only control three men so things are much easier and the battles are not so overwhelming.
I found out that ordering my men to hold fire and seek shelter while I positioned myself was a good starting point. ... some of those guys are trigger happy. Giving the order "danger" and sometimes "copy my stance" are also good options. "Danger" will make them very careful and they will go prone to avoid detection. Once I knew what I wanted to do, I order my men to do it and, since they have the "hold your fire" order, they would just position themselves somewhere and say "ready to fire". For example. order my sniper to attack a given enemy, order my heavy gunner to attack another group of enemies and one rocket man to destroy armored vehicles or take the rocket launcher and do it myself. They normally find their best position undetected. As soon as I fire my first shot, the "hold your fire" order is overrun and they engage the enemy. It used to w@&k reasonably well in AII... well keep in mind I'm using the words normally and reasonably, which are self explanatory ;D
I'm still very early in the game. I didn't have time to play since I'm travelling for the holidays and will only have some gaming time mid-January.
Nice read Binn... keep it coming! :-X
The only game I've enjoyed controlling other AI is AC when you ask your assassins to attack various targets. It is quite satisfying to get them started and see them take cont4rol of the situation. I would hope something similar in this game.
Well, PZ, there is hope. Today I managed to get this supply convoy raid to an end. Not a good end, but that seems the usual in this game. Anyway, I completed the mission, with only one casualty. Not bad, for a first time commander ^-^
Like I said in my previous post, I tried the mission again from scratch. I went to the same spot to raid the convoy, and I planted explosives on the road. I made sure to hide our own off road truck, since I figured we might need it on our way back.
I positioned my men along the road, somewhere in between some ruined houses. They had a nice shooting position, but like I mentioned before; pinpointing their exact spot is very unsatisfying. They will always go 'roughly' there, so most of the time they won't climb that stairs or get behind that obstacle you had in mind ::)
They were in a good fighting position however, and I made them all go crouched so they wouldn't be spotted before the fireworks would start.
This setup worked fine. I could blow up the first assault truck, actually called MRAP or Ifrit. My men started shooting immediately at the last MRAP and I made sure I was in the right position to shoot the driver of the supply truck. Somehow my men missed him, or just totally forgot about him. It happened sometimes that the truck would get away after a nice blow and a cleared area. Not this time, I shot the driver, my men said "area clear" and I got in the truck. One of my men had fallen, the medic for god's sake, so there were four of us remaining. Not enough room in the supply truck. So I ordered my engineer to drive the truck, and I took place in the off-road. We drove back to our hideout in the hills, as told. Once we arrived there, we heard a helicopter approaching. Turned out that our hideout was discovered by the enemy, and suddenly the place was about to be crawling with 'greenbags'. Multiple helo's and gunships flew in and paratroopers dropped down, so we had to make an escape. Again! Will it ever end different? :-\\
Another mission to get supplies, another failure, again the enemy outnumber us and wins :D
"Damn, let's forget about that, we want to stay alive, so we escape!" The first few times I tried to escape with the supply truck. I thought that was what the commander asked me. Then I found out, after being blown to pieces a dozen times, that they actually said "try to blow the the supply truck" instead of holding it. Okay, since I didn't have any charges left and most of the times the gunships would do that last bit of w@&k themselves quite accurately, I decided to get inside the off-road with my men and flee. We had to move through a small canyon to make an escape and I've tried it with and without truck. All the times we got shot to pieces by these damn gunships. Then I found out that :ideas I could order my men to act stealthy. From that moment, we ran from tree to tree, and the gunships didn't see us. Bit by bit we made it towards the exit and finally made our escape. Only one casualty in the beginning of the mission, only 18 reverts. :-D :-D Not bad 8)
Or should I mention that these 18 reverts were the total of today, excluding the ones from my previous attempts? 8-X
Whatever, it was an eye opener that you can order your group to go in stealth mode. You can also make them alert, and you don't have to tell them to fire or engage. As soon as you attack, they will follow. That makes it all a bit easier to manage. I hope the next mission will finally bring some small success to our side, because I'm a bit sick of the disappointments all along the campaign so far. First in Stratis, everything that could go wrong would go wrong. Only saving a team stuck in a village went successful. The rest; supply deliveries, taking over a comms tower, pull back our enemy, all went wrong. Then on Altis it goes the same. You wash up o na a beach with nothing but a pistol, and when you manage to get through the enemy lines towards some friendlies. When that is done, you move towards a new stronghold, and it turns out to be unsafe. You loose almost all your fellow soldiers and have to escape with some local guerrillas. The first mission you get in their camp; stealing supplies, goes terribly wrong. What's next?
And all the time the air is filled with gunships, helicopters, there's enemy troops and heavy combat vehicles all around; you really feel small being just a small group of men with a bunch of assault riffles and a single rocket launcher. :-\\
aw, come on.. it's just your mind playing tricks on you. :-D
??? uh-oh. It doesn't sound like I am going to do well
:laugh:
Well PZ, I suggest starting a campaign on easy. I started regular. You can adjust both AI difficulty and general game difficulty.
I put both to regular. Edit: I put general game difficulty to regular and AI difficulty to expert :angel:This way, the game is freaking hard. I am considering putting the difficulty settings back to easy. After regular, there's also
hard and something like extreme Edit: Expert. That is probably undoable. I can stand a lot of frustration when playing hard games, but this one is of a different league. I hope to describe that in my story about the next mission of the adapt-part of the campaign:
It's called "Breaking Even". The situation is as follows; We (remaining NATO forces and Guerrilla army) have regrouped after the disaster with the supply convoy and have a new stronghold in an old factory building. Our head commander has intel on a new outpost being formed as we speak in the vicinity of our territory. It's a threat once it's fully equipped, but it's also an opportunity to deal some serious damage to our enemies when taken in, and will as well result in supplies. So that's what we're about to do; raid the unfinished outpost and steal their supplies (freaking supplies, why always supplies ???)
The mission starts as me being the squad leader of Omega, like the last mission. I have 5 men to my command; A Machine gunner, a Marksman, a Grenadier, a heavy machine gunner and a life saver.
We have approached the outpost up to 300 meters and are awaiting orders form headquarters. They aslk me to report the situation, and my character responds that there's 2 guards overlooking the terrain through which we want to approach the base. Headquarters orders me to silently take out those guards. That means I have to command 2 of my men to simultaneously take out those two guards with a single shot. Sounds easy, in ArmA reality it's almost undoable. You have to know the exact order of the commands to put your men in position and you have to know the exact moment to strike. Even then it's possible that your men f@#k up, and this first task is failed. I have been busy more than an hour to get this done correctly. And after that, on a second attempt, it still took me several tries before I hit the targets right :angel:
Anyway, after you succeed or fail to take out the guards, the available machine gunners start firing the base to provide cover for a sneak-in operation. I, my team and another team approach the base carefully and once in range we start a firefight with a few soldiers. Usually my men and the ones form the other team kill them without casualties, but sometimes you loose a man or two. I don't see a way to prevent that, but there's got to be some sort of strategy to avoid that. Anyway, once we reach teh base the machine gunners are ordered to stop firing, and we get involved in a close quarter firefight. If you are careful, and make sure to operate from cover, you may kill all remaining enemies without too many trouble and the sign 'area clear' is given.
Now that we have taken over the outpost, there's a short moment to loot corpses. Our supply truck will drive in so that our men can load it with all the remaining goodies of the enemy.
Suddenly, explosions are heard, and all around us mortar fire is incoming. Headquarters asks me what's going on and I tell them without a second of hasitation there's a mortar firing at us... "Location?" "The nearby village called Ifris". (Lol, I didn't know I knew that :angel:)
Spoiler
Funny how the enemy does prepare for a raid in terms of positioning a mortar team in the nearby village, but refuses to properly fortify the outpost to prevent such a raid ::)
Headquarters orders me, Omega, to move in and take out the mortar. Great! We can choose our own way of approaching the village and find and destroy the team shooting these mortars at our men in the guard post.
The village is about 500 meters away. Between them and us is mostly open terrain with a few trees to provide some cover, not much though. We are advised to move quickly, because the mortar seems to have help of a spotter and knows where our men are holding. The first time I did this, my men followed me without trouble. That was a one-timer, though, because on my second attempt (I fucked up a small "supply-task" on my first completion so I wanted to do it again with the knowledge I had acquired) on my second attempt it seemed almost undoable to have my AI team follow me properly towards the village. My men got stuck in a four-wall structure with only two exits and couldn't get out. Every time I ordered them to 'move 100 meters front' or 'return to formation' I got a 'negative'. I had to run back to pick them up manually (literally) and when they finally followed me they moved so slowly that it took them so long to reach the next area of attack, me and my fellow machine gunner were already killed by the soldiers in the village >:((
Anyway, the first time, when my team followed as to be expected, we had a good fire fight with the forces in the village and we got in with 2 remaining soldiers. We managed to kill the last soldiers hiding inside the village so the way was free to find and kill the mortar guy. That's where the next frustration started. Headquarters advised us to 'listen well for the distinctive sound of the mortar'. Funny thing is; after we killed the last remaining soldiers that we could find, the mortar sound was gone. No more attacks or explosions, so no clue where to find the mortar guy. I went all across the village twice, and couldn't find it. I entered a pickup truck and drove through it again, no mortar. I went checking for videos on youtube and yes, others had managed to find the mortar. I got back to my game, checked the area where they found theirs, no mortar. I reverted to my last autosave and tried to listen to the mortar shots. I did hear them, and after the final fight with the remaining soldiers (as before) I had an idea where to go to find the bugger. This time I was lucky, after a good 10 minutes of searching I found him. Killing him was easy, and caused another autosave to happen. That autosave was a good thing, because the next stage of the mission was where an MRAP would enter the village trying to kill us. First, as we were told, I tried to escape with my men. On foot, by car, didn't w@&k. Every time we got killed. So we decided to attack these bastards. That worked ^-^
We managed to get into a car before more freaks came bothering us, and we drove back to the outpost. First, I thought we had to go to the outpost again, but the waypoint indicated another 150 meters so I drove past it. Suddenly, the game autosaves, and I'm told to defend the supply truck from another offense. Jesus!!!! I just drove past it!!! When I returned, tyhe truck was already destroyed; bye bye supplies :-\\ Again!! :angry-new:
I was told to escape the area, so we drove off. And made a safe escape. No supplies again, but a successful mission, for what it's worth :angel:
When I was inside the small village, I had trouble again trying to have my squad follow me. They either got stuck on an entrance, inside a building, or just on the streets. They were prone when I wanted them to move, etc etc. It was really frustrating at times to have them with me. After all, I think I could've done it without them. At least moving was easier and quicker. Probably I'd lost the bigger firefights, but for the rest of the tasks they were just a pain in the arse. Maybe I need to understand more about their state of mind; aware, stealthy, combat mode etc. That might slow them down or make them overreact in certain situations. No idea. The game doesn't warn me for these things, and there's not much online footage or walkthroughs to check what I should be doing. Occasionally I come across tiny tips, hope I will indeed figure out how to finally control these unwilling AI pricks. All together these commanding missions turn out to be a frustrating chore instead of a joy of open world freedom. I really hope that either I get the hang of this, or the campaign changes drastically. >:(
In search for some acknowledgement for all the frustration I am facing while trying to master this game, I came across this review:
ArmA 3 Review @ign.com (http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/19/arma-3-review)
Credits to Emanuel Maiberg, for this splendid review :-X :)
What this guy describes is roughly the same thing that I am facing. There's so much to learn before you can have some proper gameplay, the guidelines to lead you there are just so poor. I do think as well that the best part of this game lays in multiplayer and coop, where you can skip the clumsy AI and complicated commanding. I will go on with this campaign though, since it got me hooked already. I'll just get going, for better or worse >:D
Good article, BinnZ
I have not had a chance to get into the game due to the kids visiting for the holidays, but hope to soon. I'm likely going to start modding straight away
:laugh:
I have to withdraw some things I said. It is not true that I play on regular. Well, normal game settings are regular, but AI is expert :-D Didn't know that. Maybe that's hwy they shoot me so damn fast :D
Anyway; I went back into the difficulty settings because of the following, and this may be important for all who want to enjoy SP campaigns: I was only able to make ONE manual save per mission. After that, it was simply unavailable. Now I started digging the net to find a solution, and it turns out you can check/uncheck 'unlimited savegames' ability :-[ :-D
Glad I found that out. Don't know if I keep the AI on expert. ?It's the highest of 3 difficulty levels and it's pretty hard. Maybe I'll lower it to regular as well, so that I hve more joy out of this game.
I had another annoying experience, and haven't found a solution to that yet; whenever you 'replay' a campaign mission the game will not save any progress. For examply, you can replay your previous mission because you did not pick up that wonderful AR silencer that was laying on the ground close to that fallen soldier. DONT EVEN TRY! The game will stick tou your previously saved inventory :angry-new:
There's more: Whenever you start a new campaign mission, you first get a moment of 'free roam possibilities' being the moment when you are in the hide-out. In my current case; Gori, the abandoned factory. I found out that there's loads of side quests, that can help you gear up and find cool weapons or stuff like that. But when you revert to a previous visit to the hide-out, you will be drawn back to the game menu whenever you start a side quest or the main mission.
This is especially annoying when you ARE in that next main mission, with a wrong choice loadout, and you desperately want to change it. That is thus an impossibility. I picked a type of assault riffle that's very suitable for long range combat. It carries high power rounds and I'd hoped to do more damage from a greater distance than my previous weapons. The downside of this weapon is that; a) it only uses 20 round magazines instead of 30 rnd ones, and there were only 3 available in the base b) no one else is using this weapon, so no luck looting for additional ammo :D
Now I will have to search the battlefield for another riffle that has more commonly used ammo so that I can at least keep defending myself :-\\
The fact that you can restart a mission but cannot reassemble is a flaw in the game design imho. It's so easy to mistake the many weapons available, especially since you don't know what kind of confrontation you're up to. At the start of a mission there's always a small list of features you are obliged to carry with you (explosive charges for example) but the weapon choice is totally up to you.
Maybe it's not a flaw but just me not understanding how thing w@&k in ArmA-world, but I wish things were just a little bit different :angel:
The fact that I am pursued by Murphy's Law in this game doesn't mean I'm not starting to like it. On a contrary; I'm starting to dream about it :angel: :angel: :angel:
Maybe there is a mod to clean up the game play a bit. After all, the game has been out a year, and there might be others that are also a bit disappointed.
Yes and no. I did read about others who don't seem to be very pleased about the game, and I'm sure there has to be some mods available for the game; The franchise is known for that after all. But when you go searching for ArmA 3 footage, reviews and other stuff concerning ArmA 3 the amount of hits seems a little low to me. Usually you get at least 3 or 4 hits for videos showing playthroughs, and there's a number of wiki pages telling you all about the game you request, but in this case it seems there's not too many people busy with the game. That might even be a good sign, I don't know. The game is definitely something to keep you busy, and the gameplay is very immersive, so once we get around the many things there are to learn, it might pay off double. It has the right potential :)
Well, I'm looking forward to getting in to the game just to play a bit :-X ^-^
Yesterday I spent 6 hours of intense gaming on the next mission called Bingo Fuel. For some screenies check the Screencaps (http://www.openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?topic=3589.msg72229#msg72229) topic.
I put the AI difficulty back to regular, like I already mentioned, and that made quite some difference. Now at least not every enemy bullet has my name on it written in blood; I manage to stay alive a lot longer and fire fights are much more fun! I also enabled limitless savegames, which added a lot to the fun. Now I can save whenever I think it's necessary wherever I want. You can make a maximum of 8 or 10 save files and once they are all used, you start overwriting. The game will not automatically overwrite the latest save, it will pick an older one. However, you can choose yourself which one you want to overwrite; excellent!!!
This mission is a warm treat to those who like open world and strategic planning. The task is simple; cross the busy highway in the south to reach the factory terrain where our fuel truck is held. Steal it and bring it back to our base.
Crossing the highway can be done exactly the way you want to. You can choose the spot where to cross it; in the middle of a village or outside of it through the woods, or anywhere else if you like. On your way you can meet up with some team mates who are already in the area and they provide you with enemy intel. After that they join your squad, so you finally have a squad of 8 members, including yourself.
When you crossed the busy road you can advance through the woods (if you like) towards the factory terrain where there fuel truck is hidden. You will have to deal with enemy patrols both airborne and on the ground before you reach the terrain. Again, you may choose to go in loud and destroy the enemy, or move silently and remain undetected until you reach the factory.
In the factory you will have to fight. I reverted many times because even on regular it's damn easy to loose a man or to get killed by an unforeseen enemy attack. I don't care, I wanted to keep my crew alive and we did it. On finding the truck, it turns out to be empty :D Again :angel:
Captain Miller reports in, and suggests we go steal an enemy fuel truck that is a bit farther to the south in a construction site. Headquarters gives us the orders and we move in. It's roughly 2 kms away so we use trucks. The offroad with a massive cannon on board did a great job eliminating soldiers who were still alive in the area. You can of course also decide to go on foot.
Again, it's completely up to you how to reach the new area of interest, and you can take it easy; no timed event. In fact, during this mission, it is getting dark very slowly. You start in the evening, and once you enter the factory terrain where the first fuel truck is hidden, it's completely dark. The rest of the mission the sky is ink-black. So night vision comes in very handy.
Stealing the second truck is more or less the same task as the first one. Only the terrain is different and the enemy has a sniper this time. managed to get his rifle >:D which was a little bonus on completion 8)
I think I haven't had this much fun with a video game for a long time as I had last night. It's so cool to proceed bit by bit, change plans, order your men to do certain tasks, shoot some enemies yourself, great!! I begin to understand the basics of commanding your men, and am at least able to keep them alive and with me during various tasks now. They still act weird sometimes, but not like before. Probably lack of good commanding skills caused most of their stupidity :-D
On the other hand; I haven't tried to send them to a second floor of a building or something, I let them have more freedom of movement. Their way of steering vehicles is horrible, so if you let them drive, make sure to have them drive a truck. Trucks can take a lot of damage before they get immobilized, and that really is no luxury with their traffic behaviour :angel:
I am thinking about creating a topic to help new players getting started, since the in-game tutorials aren't really sufficient. Some additional tips for getting started. But first, I'm going to see if I can do a side quest now, now that I have made it back to our hideout in Gori 8)
Nice to see that you're so dedicated to that game. I guess it's the DayZ thingy without the zombies and even more importantly, human player killers, that got you hooked to the game.
Keep having fun :)
That is definitely part of it indeed. But this world is much better, much more beautiful and the weapons are a lot better as well. And the missions; they really start to get good ^-^ :-X
Somehow I don't like the look of the game at all, seems that they wanted to use somekinda "vietnam" theme and filter on it.
Makes the game look rugged and really dull to look at.
Also there is no clear instructions to the missions, what I saw from YT and read from Binns comments.
I don't exactly get what you mean by a Vietnam theme. You mean that graphic-wise or gameplay?
It's true that the game lacks of proper instructions, and that can cost quite a bit of frustration in the first few hours. But when you start to manage it things get better, only better 8)
This afternoon I started playing side quests. It's easy in fact to start them. If you are in the hideout, after a main mission, you can start them once you heard the groups of guerrilla soldiers out, speaking of a variety of things that have happened in the surrounding areas. Like a helicopter crash, an abandoned battlefield, a sniper that took down several of our men, stuff like that. They appear on your map with an orange marker on your map, and the way to travel there is to start 'scouting'. There's two ways to start scouting; you either start by climbing the small quad-bike inside the base and choose you starting position (you can choose between 5 points, shattered around the hideout in all directions) or you leave the base in any direction. Once you get far enough the scouting missions are triggered and you have to choose from the same starting points. Only this time you will start on foot instead of on the quad bike. The quad bike btw is a very nice vehicle to go offroad with it's small, manoeuvrable and strong; it can climb the steepest hill without any difficulty.
I had great fun trying to outsmart the sniper. He's hidden somewhere in a factory terrain and you are supposed to find and kill him. A cat and mouse game where discovery may cause immediate death. He found me first and I was glad I saved the game. The second time I knew in which direction to search, and I killed him. Now I have a massive sniper rifle with an SOS scope. Zoom ability: -18x to -76x magnification :o
I love collecting scopes btw. I have three now; two of low magnification levels (-10x or -12x), ideal for assault rifles, and the above mentioned for the sniper.
All the weapons you find and bring back to base, are stored in the armory. So you don't have to carry them with you, don't need persistent storage in the woods ( :angel: ) to keep them; just bring them home and they'll be safe :)
I'll post some screenies soon ^-^
Man I love this game. It's getting better and better 8)
I'm happy to see your perseverance with the game is paying off, Binn :)
Dang, your report sounds very encouraging, BinnZ! This sounds like my kind of game :-X
I like the idea of starting a tutorial thread where ArmA 3 gamers can get help - goodness knows I need it even on easy game play.
^-^
I saw you already created one. And I must confess; I haven't read that article you linked to. Maybe it is a very useful guide.
I will try to read it tomorrow. And if I have anything additional, I'll add my own advice to new players below, in the next post ^-^
PZ, this game is AWESOME!!!! Today I've been busy doing side quests around Gori. I didn't do any side quests in the previous hideouts, so I missed a lot of fun. Anyway, knowing that, the game has already some replay value :-D The side quests are best to be compared with taking down an outpost FC2 style. You approach an area where you have do get something, or search for something. Medical supplies, ammo, illegal weapons... and sometimes it IS an outpost or a 'enemy checkpoint'. Usually you have to deal with a couple of resident soldiers and some guys on patrol around or through the area. You can do it totally your way. Sneak in and try to kill them all silently, pick a sniper rifle and keep some distance, or bring your crew and create a proper mayhem >:D
So far, I've dealt with most situations with a sniper-like configuration, but I also tried my luck going in stealthy. I have an assault rifle that has good accuracy up to 300 meters and I have a 12x magn. scope on it. Great view, lovely way of taking out the bastards. I even start to do headshots; usually a one-shot-kill. Can be hard if they wear a helmet; aim for the face then :-()
You can make good use of the environment. You will need cover, or an escape route in case they spot you and try to penetrate you with their counter fire. They are good shots and they aren't static, be warned. There's hills, structures, shacks, rocks, trees, bushes, everything. You just plan your strategy and make sure to save often.
I've had the most fun trying to hunt down a sniper who was hidden somewhere in a factory. But I guess I already told about that. The good thing is that most of the time you will be rewarded by finding special stuff like new scopes, rifles or supplies. The last mission I did was searching for an outpost of illegal weapon dealers. When I found them, I killed the bandits (6 I guess) and went to in check their stash. They had literally hundreds of goodies stashed away. smg's, rifles, pistols, scopes, ammo of all types, assault vests, everything. I had just learnt that you can fill a truck with stuff, so I dragged everything over to an offroad which I also stole from them, and had it all saved back in the base. Now I can give any soldier the loadout of my desire; smg's, launchers, rifles, machine guns... I still only have one proper sniper rifle. It's the one I got from the sniper in the factory. It has a good accuracy up to 1500 meters :o and with a range finder it should be easy calculating the bullet drop etc. I'm dying to test it in the next mission. 8)
Pictures will follow later ;D
Your reports keep getting better, BinnZ! :-X
I've been busy with power failure (most of yesterday) due to heavy snow fall, the kids visiting for the holidays, and keeping a fire going n the fireplace to keep warm. Power was returned at about 3am my time.
Hope to get back to a little gaming soon! ^-^
Well, power outage isn't what you call a welcome Christmas present, but at least you have proper snow and winter over there :)
Here all we get is rain, storm, bits of freezing in the morning, more rain, :angel:
today everything was white when I got up. Now it's mud.
Bright and sunny but cold today - a high of 22F predicted. -2F is to be the low tonight. Have been putting a fire into the fireplace the past couple of days, and I must admit it was fun reading a book by firelight with a snifter of brandy.
:-X ^-^
I can't imagine that here at the moment. It was 38°C (100°F) earlier today, dry and cloudless. Currently 22°C (71°F) at 1:00am.
yep, welcome to the flip side (of the world) :-D
Today I did a first 'sniping mission'. Well, that's not exactly true. I dealt with a side quest with my sniper rifle. I went to the Northernmost Side quest called 'Crashed Gunship'. I figured it would be an excellent mission to test my new sniper rifle, the Gepard GM6 Lynch (12.1mm) with its SOS optics (x18 - x75 magn)!!!
The rifle is known to be accurate for ranges up 1500 meters and the area where the gunship had crashed is a hilly terrain. No mountains, but sloping hills like massive ripples. I saw some high spots that might be perfect to overlook the entire area. It was still dark, but not too dark. My SOS optics has incredible magnification but it has only default vision. No night- or thermal vision options. I equipped a somewhat heavy pistol, the Zubr .45 ACP, which is so far the only pistol that has a simple red-dot sight for aim assistance. It has a six-round revolver and the muzzle is located in the lowest chamber for more precision and less sway due to recoil; the reverted power of the explosion is drawn more into the fist than over it. (I just sort of copy-pasted this info from the field manual, don't think I'm the expert talking :angel:)
With the pistol for life insurance once the area seemed clear and the rifle for the long distance attack, I drove off and found a perfect sniping location which, indeed, overlooked the entire area of let's say 700x900 meters. Using my night goggles I soon found out the location of the wreck. Around it, through the woods and slopes, there were two teams of 4 soldiers patrolling the immediate surroundings. The stupid buggers used flashlights to view their surroundings, which made it easy for me to find them looking through my optics.
In the following picture you can see the smoke of the wreck a little left of the centre, and a flashlight lighting up farther to the right. That is the closest patrol group. The other group is not visible here.
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I laid myself down and started checking the range. Turned out that one group was around 650 meters away, the other was about 800 meters away, sort of behind the first one, from my point of view. This is what you see through the range finder. It has an incredible zoom functionality. even better than binoculars:
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Here you see the situation on the map. Me is the little blue dot to the left. The red dot is the last known location of a soldier that was in my view shortly before. He was roughly 700 meters away then. He was actually the last man standing after I killed the other 7, but I couldn't get a visual on him.
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I found out that sniping in Arma 3 isn't that easy. Of course you have to deal with weapon swaying, but being prone and holding breath helps a lot steadying your aim. If you're not out of breath you will have no problem aiming. Calculating the bullet drop is something else. It is not the exact same with all guns and a little practice isn't superfluous. You can deal with the bullet drop both my 'zeroing' your scope (using page up and page down) which will set the rifle to auto zoom on a fixed distance of 300 / 400 / 500 etc. meters. You can also use the knots in your scope vision to adjust a bit more, because finding the range and zeroing will take time. When you shoot moving targets you may not have the time to quickly adjust your zeroing from 600 to 700 very precisely. So you aim a bit up or down, depending whether your victim is approaching or receding.
Something else to deal with, and now it gets really realistic, is the fact that your bullet needs some time to travel from leaving the chamber to the point of impact. In my case, the bullet took almost a second to hit its target 700 meters away. So you have to aim in front of your moving target if you want to hit it.
I had some trouble taking out my guys, but with some practice and a little extra saving ( :-D ) I managed to make every bullet count.
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Here you can see the flashlight on a tree, indicating an upcoming soldier:
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Finally I managed to get to the crash site:
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Sniping in Arma 3 reminds me a lot of Sniper Elite. The only thing they didn't add was the effect wind has on a bullet. There is an option in the game menu to enable the effect wind has on flight dynamics, but I am not able to enable it. Maybe it only has effect on flying choppers and thus will only be unlocked when buying the DLC's, but maybe there's another reason why it can't be changed. I tried to put the difficulty to expert, but that didn't make any difference.
So sniping here is like the excellent sniping in Elite, but now on real distant enemies. I hit some guys who were over 700 meters away this time, but with this same rifle I should be able to do the double. And there's even another sniper rifle that will be accurate up to 2000 meters!!!!
Love this game ^-^
Nice story, BnnZ :-X
I had a little trouble with the darkness of some of the images on my PC, but could see well enough.
I like how you laid out the mission with details and pertinent images - reminds me of the stories some of us did in FC2.
Can you create some sort of sniper range to do practice? I think that might be very helpful.
Thank you PZ! I like writing about the missions. They are so intense and the liberty of approach makes it worth it going through your strategy again while posting ^-^
Well, there is a shooting range at the hideout. I used it to experiment with bullet drop and various zeroing settings. But with these long range rifles it will probably not be very helpful. The range in the base is like 25 meters, but you can check the point of impact with different zeroing settings. That is helpful. If you want to test and play with the heavier sniper rifles I suggest going on a mission like this and save just before you try to shoot a guy. Or moving to any high spot where you have a clear view on a distant wall will do. You can see the point of impact of your bullet, so you will know if you aimed too high or too low. The range finder will tell you exactly what distance the wall is at. In the dark picture above, it indicates that the enemy soldier is 645 meters away. So I put the zeroing at 600 meters and aimed slightly above his head. With this rifle btw, it doesn't matter where you hit your target; any shot will kill instantly as far as I can see. Even a hit in the leg is deadly. >:D
Later I did another 700 meter distance mission. Went smooth. Looking forward to test it on a longer range. But even making every bullet count I spent 20 bullets in these two missions, and now I have left only 30 rounds for the rifle. It's ammo is scarce :-D
I wonder what the virtual training environment can do for you setting up a shooting range. I saw you had equiped a sniper like mine in one of your screenies inside the program, so maybe you can test it out there, if you choose to equip a range finder as well. ;)
a night really is dark there, isn't it ???
The virtual reality training area is good, but limited - no real chance to play.
I'm thinking a trip to the editor to see how it works might be in order. I can see creating a mod where you place targets at various ranges, load the area with all sniper rifles and unlimited ammo, plus range finder of course. Just a simple play area where you experiment with sniper rifles.
This might even extend to playing with other weapons and vehicles.
I think that would be a good idea! I haven't tried anything yet in the editor. But that would be the best way to test things. If it acts like the editor in FC3, with simple 'in-game testing' it would be possible to do such testing 8)
I went in to the editor the other day, and did not find it intuitive. Of course, it was only about 10 minutes, but usually after that amount of time I can at least get the gist of how to do things.
I've done editing in the past, and have continually added functions/items to the file - was quite fun, and gave me much needed experience with weapon systems and vehicles.
It's been almost 3 days ago since I last wrote about my experiences. That doesn't mean I haven't played, or that I lost interest. Even the contrary! I've been playing a lot and am becoming more and more addicted to it. I am still learning and practising, but now's the time to share my recent adventures again with you guys ^-^
After the self-created sniper mission, I decided to do another one. And another. In fact, since I found out about how great sniping is in this game, I did all the rest of the side missions with the sniper approach. Not every time with the high range snipers; sometimes I pick one that has a maximum range of 900 meters, but with bigger magazine size; 10 or 20 rounds.
Only once I went in with my crew, just to test how side missions w@&k when a crew is brought in. Nice! I took them with me on a trip to a small village where some spec ops were hiding, killing our patrolling men in the area. They gave me proper backup, but I like it most doing these quests on my own. More liberty of movements and more kills for myself >:D
So I went in sniping the living daylight out of another helicopter crash site. This time I was about a thousand meters away from the enemy activity. Here's some screenies to give you an idea:
Using the range finder to check the distance:
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Changing to sniper view, ready to fire:
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With a few reloads I managed to take out all of the foes. From this distance, bullet-traveling-time is the hardest part to predefine: when they were fast moving from left to right in my view I had to aim something like 3 meters in front of them to hit them!
Here's some pictures to give you an impression of the distance:
On the map:
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Normal view:
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Using SOS scope, x28 zoom:
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Using SOS scope, x75 zoom:
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After completing all side quests I went on doing story missions. The first I did was a mission where we had to get in contact with a renegade. He would provide priceless intel and would make it possible for us to deal an important strike to the enemy forces. I could choose between raiding a repair depot or blowing op air support (helicopter). I chose to blow the helo. Great mission, with a lot of freedom of choice. You had to secure an area and have the renegade call in support. Then blow it. I managed to do this mission with only 4 reverts. I'm getting good at it :angel:
Here I'm ordering my crew to board an Ifris troop transport. It's a great vehicle, but unfortunately it is not yet available in free roam mode. I think they don't want to make things too easy, because any vehicle you bring back to base during free roam / scouting, will be your default crew-vehicle if you want to take your crew with you on patrol. Having an Ifris is a great advantage, because it's fast, reliable and not easily detected. If you find one in free roam, it's simply inaccessible :-\\
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PZ, I tried to help you out on the testing thingy, and I found out that the game provides a great way of 'field testing' any given item or weapon. I haven't gotten farther than selecting my current loadout and making a screeny of it, but it's definitely the way to test certain weapons without having to go through the stroll of half a campaign before you discover them :-()
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This is what bad weather looks like:
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It's on the next story mission. It's a great mission actually. Miller has word of one of our friends being held captive on Stratis, the other Island, and it may be a good opportunity to free him. So we move back to Stratis in an attempt to free him. My task it so create Chaos in the South together with a small team. The goals is to attract enough attention to draw the main forces South, giving Miller and his crew the opportunity to free our man.
First I have to make my way to the excavation point on Altis, on my own. It's crawling with enemies and have have to act fast to make it in time. It's doable though, and actually great fun! Here I reach the excavation point, at the coast. Miller is waiting for me with his boats:
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We've just disembarked on Stratis. It is foggy, but climbing the hill makes the view clearer. You can see the fog in the valley, and the lighthouse on top:
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You are going to die my friend:
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Creating Chaos in the south wasn't that hard for me. We had to attack multiple small enemy outposts, like roadblocks, air support spots, repair facility and, last but not least, an ammo depot. The hardest part was to escape after our jobs were done. The main forces of Stratis were rushing in on our position and my men were following me inside the ammo depot (I had to check all these crates for nice rifles, scopes, ammo and more :angel:) Time after time we were late, and ended up being cannon food for the enemy troops. Finally I re-attacked the last depot and ordered my men to move over to the extraction point already, while I made sure to secure those precious sniper scopes and ammo. I did good business down there >:D
We made it just in time, and me being alone I could easily avoid the troops. Nice score:
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The best reward I got down there was the "nightstalker". A special optics with 4 different views and built-in range finder. Here you see normal view:
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Night vision:
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Black thermal view:
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White thermal view:
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max scoped: x25:
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This cope has become my standard equipment for whatever mission I start. If needed, I bring a High Range Scope as well, like the SOS for super magnification up to x75. When I completed this Startis mission our base camp was moved to a new location. With 3 new side quests. They looked promising: 2 of them were involving secret ammo stash >:D
And YESS!!!! I found the precious, 2000m range rifle called the M320 LRR, based on the real time, record holding Cheyenne Tactical M-200 Intervention (http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Tactical_M-200_Intervention) (click for details @ imfdb)
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I tried to empty my weapons cache a bit, to free some space. To no avail: All the weapons I threw on the ground reappeared inside the crate again when I came back from the next mission ::)
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On my last patrol I went to an island where there had to be a weapon stash hidden. I had to have a boat, so I wrecked havoc on an enemy naval base.
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The actual port, with two gunboats to my avail:
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Great boats, with heavy fire power. Both a cannon for the commander and a gattling gun at the back side of the ship.
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Me, steering the thing towards another naval base:
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Indeed, why just raid one naval base? Lets raid two of them! With my thermal scope and sniper power it's easy to get the job done. Rushing in with the gunboats was not so successful though. I prefer the silent approach; medium range sniper rifle with that nightstalker thing, and a good suppressor to avoid being detected. They all sleep with the fishes before they even know what happened :angel:
In this next picture you see a submarine transport device. It can transport two men under water, as long as they provide their own air support, and act like a mini submarine complete with diving abilities and periscope functions. Really cool device. I had used it once on a mission, but it's much cooler to have it to your avail during free roam. It was dark but I spotted sharks in the ocean 8)
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Here we go! 3rd person view using the submarine:
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Here you see it from the side. You can dive with it, and of course switch to 1st person view. But 1st person is hard to get a good view of your surroundings. Nice for cinematic purposes, but I prefer the broader view ;)
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Finally, here's the mission I'm about to start. We finally attack the main airport. Miller should be able to talk NATO forces into helping us and raiding the airport from the ?North. We go in south. I discovered that before the mission actually starts, in this briefing screen, you can call up all your men's invetory and pick all the gear you want them to carry with them. Then it comes in handy if you have more than one sniper rifles, suppressors, scopes, etc. For this task I armed all my men with powerful scopes and suppressors,. We're going to strike hard, precise and from a safe distance. Will be great!!!!! :-() :-() :-()
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Dang, BinnZ, that's better than any other review I have read on the 'net :-X
Really gives me a sense of what you are doing in the ArmA 3 world. I really like those sniper rifles, and their accessories. I recll doing a CheyTac mod in ArmA 2, and it was an amazing weapon.
Looking forward to being able to spend some time gaming. :-X
nice scope with black or white thermal view, perfect for creating contrasts :-X
I don't know why you are given the option between white and black thermal view. Sometimes the black view is shown with grey background, instead of orange, but if you already have the thermal view showing the targets white, why bother giving another option and make them contrary ????
PZ, I checked; the virtual arsenal is working like I expected. You can load weapons and attachments of your choice and test them in a virtual reality situation. You will see yourself in a variety of colours and you can thus practice shooting from distance if you want.
I also checked the editor, it looks quite complicated but it seems you can design an entire mission with various objectives and everything. I only managed to introduce myself to Stratis airport together with an enemy, and in the preview mode I was able to shoot the bugger :-D
Binnatics, if you have a camouflaged target (white suit) in a snowy environment, the whit thermal view won't help so you switch to black thermal view. If you have to find a target at night, black thermal won't help much so you switch to white. :)
I get your point, but it doesn't really w@&k that way. Even at night, the rest of the environment is shown opposite to the colour used for the body warmth. Generally speaking; everything is orange, medium obscure, and the thermal presence is either light or dark, depending your choice. ????
Quote from: Binnatics on January 03, 2015, 02:27:03 AM
PZ, I checked; the virtual arsenal is working like I expected. You can load weapons and attachments of your choice and test them in a virtual reality situation. You will see yourself in a variety of colours and you can thus practice shooting from distance if you want.
I also checked the editor, it looks quite complicated but it seems you can design an entire mission with various objectives and everything. I only managed to introduce myself to Stratis airport together with an enemy, and in the preview mode I was able to shoot the bugger :-D
Sounds promising! :-X
Well.. The only reason to use black or white, in that case, is to keep your eyes adapted. At night, if everything is dark and your pupils are open, a full white image will blind you when you look at it and makes you lose your night vision when you put the rifle down. Kind of the same the other way round with the white image at daylight.
That might be the explanation. Although I've been thinking about your first reply as well... it does make sense. So far I've only been using the nightstalker at night time, but I have no idea what it will be when used in daylight.
Funny side detail on the scope; when you hit an enemy in the leg, his leg turns a little darker. As if the warmth is lowering already when you pierce it with a cold bullet :-D
I think that the silhouette is dark as in warm. Shooting the leg causes blood to pour out that is warmer than the skin surface of the rest of the body, hence darker.
Sorry, this is really getting confusing. I use the thermal sight that makes warmth glow bright. And when hitting a corpse, the part that got hit turns a little darker. As if it cools off. It is probably only a helpful thing, not meant to be reality. Because dead bodies on the ground (recently killed) show as bright ad living creatures. Which makes sense since they don't cool off just like that. I don't know, whatever ^-^
lol :laugh:
Since my last report I have completed the Adapt campaign. I won't tell the story to not spoil it for others, but the last fight, where NATO is supposed to come in, was somewhat a disaster.
In the next campaign, called "Win", Corporal Kerry is back under NATO command. He first starts as a soldier, but rapidly climbs up to his commanding position and even makes a small promotion after a couple of missions. First you command you guerilla friends, then you start commanding NATO groups in what seems to be the last heavy strike against AAF forces. CSAT, the other main enemy, has drawn back from Altis, and NATO, who came in with a huge force, is winning terrain quickly. At, or close to, the front lines Kerry operates in small tasks helping in the battle. I must confess I like the guerilla strategies much more. Again I'm operating in a well organized battle system with shouting commanders and rushing missions. Not really my thing. In my last mission, the one I'm currently stuck in, I need to hold a position in a small village that we just secured. Incoming tanks make life impossible. You have an UAV (drone) in your possession and I checked youtube again; that thing is the key to winning. It's again so damn hard to figure out how to fucking control the damn thing. I will have to dig into the players guide, because until now I completely suck at it.
There's no headquarters in between the missions, so no free roaming or cool missions. All my snipers and scopes that I collected in the previous campaign are gone, I have to deal with standard NATO armoury stuff. I hope this s#!t changes fast, and I do have good hope something is going to happen. This captain Miller, the British commander that helped me reach the guerrillas and was always busy with secret stuff, he seems to have a major role in this last campaign. Something else is going on; we keep being disturbed by heavy seismic activity on our missions. I hope these two factors will change the gameplay a bit, because the military C&C-like battlefields aren't exactly my cup of tea. There are still fights involved, and you still have freedom to complete a task your way, but usually it's already complicated enough to at least accomplish the mission without dying or failing, and if I can't pick my own weapons choice I feel pretty damn limited >:(
One good thing I discovered though. It is possible to revert a mission to its start, where you can still choose your loadout. Careful though; if you choose to revert to a mission prior to your current one, all missions you completed after that mission, will be gone. You will have to do them all again. Happened to me once, glad it was only one mission I had to replay, and it wasn't such a bad one ;D
So much for the third campaign now. Sergeant BinnZ - out
Dang, Sgt. BinnZ - thanks for the warning. Sounds like you need to find just the right attack method, which will likely be quite different than prior attacks.
Indeed. They want you to learn. Not a bad thing. The game has much to offer. I just hope for more of what I've experienced in the adapt campaign. That was simply outstanding. :)
After a pause I gave it another shot. I reverted to an earlier moment in the mission, because during the attack on the village, I had lost both my UAV drone aircraft and a AMV vehicle of an accompanying squad. Figured I'd make a better change leaving these things in tact, especially the drone. I saw on youtube that someone was able to defeat in incoming tanks with the drone's missiles so I tried to do the same.
It was a very hard fight. Once you control the city, 6 tanks are coming in from 3 different directions, accompanied by foot soldiers of all sorts and some multifunctional vehicles. It's extremely hard to get them all down. You have helicopter support and artillery, but both remain useless in my hands. I can't make them attack the moving targets on the battlefield. There must be a way, but I haven't managed so far. So I made good use of the missiles and finally I brought the total amount of armed vehicles back to 3 tanks and one more MRAP vehicle. I used a rocket launcher I found along the way to defeat the 4 remaining tanks, because they were already in between the buildings, where they are easy to approach if you do it carefully. In the mean time my men were getting slaughtered one by one due to the incoming troops and finally the MRAP finished the job. At least they managed to hold off the main group of soldiers so that we didn't loose the position while I was bust defeating these tanks. I went searching for extra rockets on the ground near dead soldiers :angel: and the last one I found was for the MRAP. Once all the enemy vehicles were defeated, we won the mission. I had one man still standing on my side. The rest of my 7 soldiers were down.
This mission was heavily frustrating, and the lack of proper support during the mission was a major pain in the a$$. It's funny that they offer both artillery support and a CAS helicopter, but all they do is fly in or launch some explosions somewhere in the battlefield. All the main target I had to take out myself, nice >:(
I think it's my lack of knowing how to properly guide the support, I should dig into that. But during the attack you are under heavy time pressure. Once the tanks manage to reach the centre of the village, the mission is lost. So while you try to get some tanks down with the drone's missiles, you don't have time as well to coordinate a precision attack for incoming support. Well, at least I couldn't.
Countless times I've been thinking "why the literal f@#k don't these generals send in some proper defense to guard the terrain we win? They are all held steady at the main airfield and aren't used in the battle while we, a bunch of foot soldiers with a bit of supportive technology are force to do the heavy job?"
I'm glad though that this mission's over. The next mission starts promissing. I get a call from my elder commander James, from back in the first campaign. He has been attacked and asks my help. In the mean time the shouting a$$hole general commands me to go in a truck to join battle against AAF remaining forces. I choose to let hem shout and go for a rescue of my old boss. He's not to be helped though, but he speaks of Miller being in trouble nearby. For once I feel free again, search the surrounding area for weaponry and go on my own task, letting that horrible NATO commander cook in his own fat >:D
I think I will soon discover what is going on with all these earthquakes in the area 8)
Nice story, BinnZ :-X
I can't say 'm fond of frantic action, but in a military simulation I suppose some of that is inevitable. Seems like you have to make use of all your resources to make the mission reasonable.
Yep!
I played around with the next mission today. Turns out to be the end. lol, that's pretty disappointing. But, meeting Miller seems to explain some of the weird appearances. Then the game is over.
Funny enough, there will be an additional mission. And that is quite a piece :o
You will be thrown into a total chaos situation on Altis, with a simple mission; escape the island! And to make it all even more exciting; no savegames at all!!!!
You will have to use the skills you've learned throughout the campaign in order to stay alive. It's not easy, and some great surprises are to be found during your play. I haven't succeeded yet, but I hope I will get it done tonight ^-^
I sure do have a love-hate relation with this campaign ^-^
:-D
???
From what you've reported Binn, I think you've done well to get through :) This game doesn't sound like my cup of tea, but it does sound quite involving for anyone it appeals to, which is certainly no bad thing! I admire you for your tenacity, Sarge :-X
:)
Same here - I can jump into FC4 at any time because it is more of an arcade game with very simple controls. I love the idea of ArmA3, and will definitely go in once I have larger blocks of time to be able to devote to the game.
I'll probably start modding straight away, just like in ArmA2