Scoundrels, curs, and brethren (and sisteren too) of the Borg, hello. As of late there have been whisperings and chatter regarding a more organized approach to Arma 3. To this point there have been several of us who have been playing, and enjoying ourselves immensely, but we have more or less floundered in getting anything more expansive organized. I would like to revisit the subject in earnest. First, what is Arma 3? Well, first and foremost, it is a tactical milsim that incorporates combined arms in its approach. It isn’t anything like most of your traditional arcade or deathmatch style FPSs; it differentiates itself in many ways. I’ll name a few just to give you an idea: -You have an inventory, the amount of gear you’re carrying will impact how quickly you become fatigued (which would lead to you having difficulty holding a steady shot for example) -You cannot get shot twenty times and live. It isn’t unreasonable to be killed in a single shot or two depending on the range and type of ammunition -With the mods we have been running, you also have to cope with a slew of medical conditions. For example, you can bleed out and slip into unconsciousness, or even break your legs and be unable to stand or crouch. It is also a hell of a good time. “But Sardonic, all of that sounds like a bit of a pain in the ass. Why in the world would I subject myself to all of that?” It is immensely rewarding. What we’ve done up until now has been a blast. We’ve had usually around 4-5 people hopping on at once and making up a squad: working in unison to accomplish a goal. Sometimes we go after a high-value-target for assassination, sometimes we rescue hostages (or accidentally inflict collateral damage on said hostages), and sometimes we’re one of those infamous routine patrols that goes oh so awry. The harsh consequences of your mistakes are what make it so rewarding. Still not convinced? Here are some other things I’ve found quite cool: -You can launch operations at any time of day, and have time pass as you do. -You get to parachute out of planes and helicopters. -You can pilot planes and helicopters (and drive tanks and other vehicles too). -The “levels” are entire islands, all of which are traversable. -You get to hang out with all of us cool people that already play. Us that already play: Here’s a (long) video of some gameplay featuring our dumb asses (we spend a lot of time dicking around at the start, you can slip ahead to around 20 min). If I were you I'd jump around and watch a few minutes at a time: http://www.twitch.tv/theskjaldborg/b/508130994 Now that that’s out of the way, here’s what I propose: Ideally what I would like to see come to fruition is an extended campaign consisting of several missions that happens over the course of several weeks. Each mission impacts the conditions of the ones that follow. Consequences have real weight. For example, if you die in a mission, you don’t magically come back in a minute or two. Sure, we can work out a compromise of sorts where we can get you back in perhaps in a mission or two, but I want there to be a certain degree of severity and consequence to our actions. I’m confident that we can keep it both challenging and engaging though. That is my eventual goal. As a short term objective, I would like to establish a time when we can get a group of us together (veterans or fresh to the game) and just run some random scenarios and missions together. My hope is that this will help the group get a feel for the squad dynamics and the game itself for those who haven’t played much/at all. That’s more or less what we’ve discussed previously, but the organizational details are where we have fallen short. I am of the opinion that up until now we have had such a difficult time getting something going because we have been trying to accommodate everyones' schedules, and that just proves too difficult when you’re trying to handle more than a few people. I feel that moving forward the best option may just be to set a fixed time that works well for as many people as possible, and run with it. I propose Saturday, since it seems to be the best day overall for the most number of people. From what I have seen late morning/early afternoon seems to be (generally) more free than evening. Starting out, I would rather not do a weekly event while we’re still getting our bearings. I’d rather set something farther in advance that way those who would desire to participate can try to plan ahead for it. I would suggest a week and a half from now: Saturday the 26th. If that does not work, we could push it out until the 3rd. So, how does Saturday, the 26th at around 9 AM PST/12 PM EST sound? The event itself would run around 2 hours standard, and I’d be more than happy to hop on an hour or so prior to that to help familiarize people with some of the mechanics if they’re pretty new to the game.
It is only one file, all of the work is already done for you... I think we are also going to look at getting Six working with it. I will admit I have done very little with the server recently.
the mods aren't too bad to download, while not the most simple things to add in, they aren't very difficult once you get a hang of the file structure they use. I'm playing around with an old friend of mine that is heavily in the modding community and getting into things again, looking forward to the possibility for a campaign.
When I get around to purchasing and learning this sounds like it could be immense fun. My only problem is the Saturday timeslot - I work Saturdays and don't usually get home until 5pm EST.
I'm sure it isn't that bad, but I have quite a bit going on to worry about mods. All I'm sayin. I see the Starbound thread and all the server modding...
I am about as inept as they come about modding knowledge, and it was easy for me to add in the mods; I'm sure you'll be fine. You just have to: 1) Download the mod pack 2) Extract them to the right folder 3) Copy/paste a launch code that the other thread provides you with in a location that it directs you to.
It's about one step removed from installing dlc in any other game. After you download the pack it takes a literal 15 seconds (being very generous) to be good to go.
Just give me remote access to your computer and all your files and I'll take care of it. I'm certainly interested in this and I feel like it could give me some good doctoring practice.
This is a great idea! I've put about 20 hrs into ArmA3 this past month, STILL haven't been able to hook up with you guys, but if we can schedule a playdate, I'll make time to be there.
I am super excited about this, I have been wanting to do something like this for a while. We just need to get some time scheduled. Varg and I will be updating the modpack soon(tm). I would like to keep XMedSys in there, but we tried the updated map with MCC+Zeus+GAIA (New AI) and it was amazing. GAIA was actually actively moving around the AI, creating flanks and popping smoke to move into rooms without being seen... it was kind of scary how good it was. It was genuinely surprised by some of the stuff GAIA managed to pull on us. Here is some info on GAIA.
Those who are interested in it, keep in mind, this is not a normal FPS. It has a lot of power and functionality, but it is not as smooth as a lot of people may expect from modern games. It is primarily a milsim. With that said, I have had some amazing experiences with Arma, and if you think you would enjoy a simulation style infantry game.. it is well worth it. I personally have about 300 hours in Arma 3 and about 500 hours in Arma 2.
We had a lot of trouble with MCC and/or XMed last night. I couldn't place supply crates at all and the only way to get them was through a supply drop, which always came in several hundred meters off target. And XMed crates wouldn't even drop in a supply drop, so something is up there. Other than that Don and I had a bit of fun just spawning enemies and taking them down. It would be really nice to have a campaign though.
Well.. the map that is on the server right now does not have xMedsys on it. We made some changes. Basically the way it is right now, you want to remove Xmed, Xui, and Xevent from your mods, as well as MCC. With that, you will be running just the map version of MCC and it should work great. We have to look to see how we can get xMedsys back in, but as of right now it is not working.
I had been wondering how xmed was functioning for us, some friends have been having issues with it and aren't really happy. They are working on a new medical simulator to use but there is still a good bit of scripting to do on it so its not a viable alternative right now.
It runs with those mods still installed, so I'll just wait for you and Varg to sort them out instead of uninstalling then reinstalling then uninstalling, etc. As long as I don't call in Xmed crates or use the top MCC option in my commands, there should be no issues.
