Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

***Summary***

The recent attacks in many of the world's leading cities have thrown the Western world in turmoil; in addition, the current armed conflict in Syria is centralizing the attention of all Intelligence agencies of the World as well as armies as evidenced by the Russian presence and the US-led coalition airstrikes.

Altis is a key contributor to this war effort as the runway of the Altis airport is one of the few in the theater which can welcome KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft. No one expected this involvement to be worth the attention of ISIS or any such terrorist organization.
And yet, yesterday, more than 30 civilians were killed yesterday when a fuel truck was detonated at a well-attended concert in Kavala. We suspect some of the FIA separatists to be involved.

As part of the deal to use the airfield, US forces have a small battalion-sized force on the island to help the AAF deal with their insurgency situation.
Your unit is on a routine recon mission in Northern Altis to locate a potential enemy outpost that our UAV detected earlier today.

Maybe will you get your chance to avenge the poor souls that fell to the terrorists' attacks...

***About the mission***

This is a long-range recon mission focusing on infantry combat in harsh terrain.
You will get to fight through a storm and in the darkness, using illumination and stealth to your advantage!
Use the terrain and your best judgement to defeat a well-entrenched enemy.
Take the initiative and kill them all!

***Features***

- Very atmospheric mission
- Full professional voice acting
- FHQ Task Tracker
- Psycho's Wounding System

NOTE: REQUIRES CUP INFANTRY, VEHICLES AND WEAPONS.

Check out my other missions for squad to platoon-sized fun!

Please message me for any bug report and/or feature request.

Available through Steam Workshop and as a standalone download from Dropbox.

Mission updated!
Now includes automatic save points for single player at the key events.
Also slightly updated some event timings.

Updated on the server. Thanks SPhoenix!

Mission updated!
Updated for graphical update.
Tweaked flow timings.
Updated illumination method.
Updated speech method.
Removed most NV-enabled .50 cals.
Tweaked triggers.


Steam Workshop was updated, and if you want the PBO head over to Dropbox!

Uploaded! Looking forward to playing this one again.

To go ahead, I really really liked the mission, it was really great. But there are some things I would like to point out.

First of all, the number of objectives.They kept piling up, and killing 150 terrorists in the island with a small team like this doesn't really strike me as realistic, more so since the feat is made redundant at the end with the artillery strike; if we had really cleared the island, it would have felt like a waste. Also, a specops team should really have NVG's, especially when the night is dark like this.

Secondly, the part of the mission on the island is too long. There is the inherent need for intel (where is the officer, how many guys are there) which will inevitably delay the whole thing. We had a downtime of almost half an hour were we didn't do anything but sit around waiting. I would seriously recommend to tighten up the ending. Point out were the leader is right from the start, so that downtime and reocn can be cut down substantially.

As it is, the mission contributed to some of the most memorable experiences in Arma gaming, as well as contributing to the most boredom I had. The high points were really great, I loved the bit at the beginning storming that camp site and storming Sierra 3. But the downtimes were simply too long, and most of it spent in pitch black. I don't generally mind downtimes, but they have to be short enough to keep you in suspense. As it was, after ten minutes of crouching in the darkness, suspense was gone and it started to get boring.

This isn't meant to be whining or anything. I know how missions seldom develop as the author intended, and it is a question of how the squad leader handles the situation. I don't think that I would have done in any different than Stag did, and quite frankly, anything else would have been suicide. The number of enemies and the spread of the targets made it all take very long, is all I am saying.

I agree with everything you said.
But I would also not change anything. It is a long mission indeed, made longer by the way we played - I'm not bothered by that. My best missions are very long (Extreme Measures, Telemetry are the same way).


And we are not spec ops in this mission. Just recon - the squad leader just decides to take the initiative and storms the place! Don't blame the mission maker, the squad leader is just a dumbass

(06-20-2016, 06:20 PM)SPhoenix link Wrote: [ -> ]I agree with everything you said.

I don't  8)
You all know how I feel about that, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'd say again that even if we were specops, the reasoning the author gave for why we don't have NVG's would have been perfectly enough. It's great to keep things authentic as long as it doesn't take away from experience (or potential for experience). This mission is a perfect example: If we had NVG's, if the enemy numbers and odds were reasonable and realistic, this mission was less than half of what it was.
Maybe something could have done with the waiting time (although I can't think of anything), but probably because I operated the UAV, I didn't feel any downtime. I was plain exhausted when the mission ended due to constant stress.

(06-20-2016, 11:31 PM)Variable link Wrote: [ -> ]I don't  8)
You all know how I feel about that, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'd say again that even if we were specops, the reasoning the author gave for why we don't have NVG's would have been perfectly enough. It's great to keep things authentic as long as it doesn't take away from experience (or potential for experience). This mission is a perfect example: If we had NVG's, if the enemy numbers and odds were reasonable and realistic, this mission was less than half of what it was.

I know, but just like you go off on real-life scenarios, I go off on real-life circumstances
IMO a planned recon mission will have people equipped with NVG's. Of course you can retcon any sort of explanation in, but unless this is an ad-hoc operation ("Team, we're being re-tasked, the chopper will drop us off for a recon mission. Sorry I know we're not equipped to handle this, but we won the distance lottery") a recon team would have appropriate gear.

I once saw a mission were you had to blow something up and they didn't give you explosives. Same category.

All IMO obviously.

Quote:Maybe something could have done with the waiting time (although I can't think of anything), but probably because I operated the UAV, I didn't feel any downtime. I was plain exhausted when the mission ended due to constant stress.

Sure, it's because you had something to do. I used the debug console to start a camera and go on a night vision tour of mainland Altis.

Again, I am not blaming either SPhoenix or Stag for it. I am just saying that due to the layout of the last tasks (no fix on were the target is, the size of the operational area, and the sheer number of units on the map, this downtime was unavoidable.

I still think that the problem was the messed up night lighting. I mean, with all flashlights off and no flares up, the screen was simply black. Even later when the sky cleared. That was definitely a problem of the game, not the mission.

This lead to a situation, however, that made it impossible for the team to operate without having a solid idea what we were facing, making it necessary to wait long stretches of time in pitch black darkness. There just wasn't any other way.

In a way I'm sad we finished it, because quite frankly, this mission deserves to be played in the correct conditions. The night lighting is shit now, and I'll not stop pointing this out to BIS until they fix it.

Having said that, I'm with Alwarren on the equipment issue. I prefer realistic equipment, but that's just a pet peeve of mine.

(06-21-2016, 11:51 AM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]IMO a planned recon mission will have people equipped with NVG's. Of course you can retcon any sort of explanation in, but unless this is an ad-hoc operation ("Team, we're being re-tasked, the chopper will drop us off for a recon mission. Sorry I know we're not equipped to handle this, but we won the distance lottery") a recon team would have appropriate gear.

In war there are so many logistical difficulties and failures that the unrealistic thing would be to always play with the expected gear. What happens if the truck that carries all the NVGs gets destroyed in an ambush? The first marine unit that entered Iraq in the second Gulf war had no batteries for their NVGs (based on Generation Kill, but I bet that really happened). Heck, IDF units were left with no water supply through most of the second Lebanon war, so SPhoenix's explanation as tow why we didn't have NVGs was quite ok for me.

(06-21-2016, 11:51 AM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]I once saw a mission were you had to blow something up and they didn't give you explosives. Same category.

It's not the same thing, no explosives in a demo mission is a game breaking design failure, no NVGs in this mission was a design decision and by all means did not make the mission impossible, only more fun

(06-21-2016, 11:51 AM)Alwarren link Wrote: [ -> ]Again, I am not blaming either SPhoenix or Stag for it. I am just saying that due to the layout of the last tasks (no fix on were the target is, the size of the operational area, and the sheer number of units on the map, this downtime was unavoidable.

I don't see why you guys had to wait for that long. You could have easily wait just until I finish marking Sierra 1, your first target, and start marching, waiting until I finish marking all the rest of the objectives served nothing.