CO20 Invasion - Missionpack

[subroc]

I´ve made a couple of missions with Rydygiers great HAC script, they are based on a mission "Invasion of the fatherland" for CWR by Grip which is based on a mission "A-mob" for SFP by me. And a lot of credit goes to theOden for un-F´ing my mistakes and adding the mainpart of the coding and also collecting them in a .7z pack.

The basic layout is that AI is invading the island and you have to defend and eventually throw the invader off the island. At your disposal are recruitable AI units. Some missions contain a lot of armor scattered around based but as the enemy often have a good aircover, its suicide to try to mount an all-out armor charge in the beginning of the game. You will find that most of the time its best to use guerilla style warfare, mining roads, scavenge enemy weapons and ambushing supplytrucks.

The missions are pretty dynamic, we have played 8 hours rounds (2-4 persons) a couple of times now the AI is pretty good at changing behaviour between each time. (Most missions have 400-700 units from start so feed your server som steriods.)

Features:
*AI recruitment (BON´s recruitment script)
*Respawn at closest respawn point not captured by enemy (thx to theOden)
*Move static weapons (theOden)
*Many hours of gameplay

Versions:
CDF defends Utes from russians (A2, possibly A2Free)
Guerilla defends Zargabad from russians (CO)
Guerilla defends Takistan from russians (CO)
Guerilla defends Nogova from soviet (CO + CWR2)
Soviet defends Kolgujev from USA (CO + CWR2)
Soviet defends winter Kolgujev from USA (CO + CWR2)
Guerilla defends Malden from soviet (CO + CWR2)
Finland defends podagorsk from russians (CO + FDF)

Download:
Co20 Invasion - Missionpack
(thx to theOden for serverspace)

Mods required by some versions:
FDF
CWR2

[Günter Severloh]

Nice!,
Thanks for posting, will check em out.

[froggyluv]

A couple of us played Zargabad version last night and a few questions:

- Whats up with the recruited civlian AI behaviour? Meaning they join your squad but then become easily distracted putting their guns away to give salaams to passerbys while under fire. Also they often have a "Busy" in their avatar icon in which they don't respond to orders. Also if you place as gunner in your armed vehicle -they jump out whenever you stop.

- Are the enemies finite in number as they just swarmed the city seemingly endlessly. Don't get me wrong -it was awesome survival feeling and we all felt like pissed off insurgents literally scrambling for our lives. But can the enemy actually be beaten?

- How does HAC effect the overall AI?

Cool stuff overall!

[subroc]

thx!

The recruitable civilians are acting up, seems the alice2 module won´t release them from its grip after they have got recruited. Think i will remove the possibility to recruit them in a later version. There are still recruitable terrorists from the flagpoles in the terroristbases (orange markers).

Every enemy is there from the beginning, not a single enemy spawned. Victory condition is set to <50 enemys left, dont remember for zargabad version but i guess there should be atleast ~400 of them from start.

Im no expert on HAC (maybe Rydygier sees this thread and can answer this himself) but i think its only acts as a force commander, sending troops to capping locations. There are however some nifty little tricks done by HAC, if you come with armor it will most probably send CAS in our direction, if you have set up heavy AA coverage it will keep its choppers out of danger. Only disadvantage i´ve noticed with HAC so far is that its probably sending reveal commands for discovered player between all enemys, this can act up a bit during longer rounds making the AI übersnipers knowing your position instantly: I´ve been headshotted by a rpg from ~900m after shooting a single m16 round in the rpg-gunner general direction. Will look more into this but its probably within the mechanics of HAC.

[Rydygier]

True, HAC as much as possible stays away from low-level AI (unit and group level; there are only very few exceptions, as limited AI for choppers and trucks on cargo missions, or smoke deploying before withdrawal) and takes control mainly over waypoints designation for controlled groups. HAC can and will try to flank, to keep reserves, to use recon, to handle cargo and logistics vehicle support, to choose preferable terrain at target area for given kind of forces, to use best available kind of forces against given enemy and to keep given forces away from enemy weaponry, that is highly effective against that kind of unit/vehicle. He also may go to the defensive stance, if opponent's advantage is high enough. All this (and more) is "fuzzy" by randomizations, where chances for given order are dependent of HAC's leader "personality" (chosen or randomized).

About reveal: currently, if RydHQ_KnowTL config parameter is true (default), all groups led by human-controlled unit will share info about known position of all allied and known to any controlled (allied) unit enemy forces. If this parameter is false, only HAC's Leader group have access to that informations. Anyway groups led by AI teamleaders shouldn't have such info, because this may affect their behaviour in unrealistic way (exactly as this 900 meters sniping possibility). This is only for human TL as some kind of intel from HQ, that helps to fill his orders better, with greater awareness of situation on the battlefield. So this shouldn't affect pure AI forces under HAC control. Maybe try to turn off mentioned variable by making its value false at init or in any moment you want, and then check, if such sniping ability is still present.

[Günter Severloh]

Hi, I had some fun on Zargabad with this mission, a real blast, i love the idea of an invasion and you trying to do things to sabotage, or slow down their advance.

Just a suggestion but I think a caching script would be perfect for this as with the ambient civilians which have their use if you use them,
and the ambient vehicles, as well as the number of enemy AI roughly 400+ seriously lag the mission.

This script can help the mission out, check it out:
cB AI Unit Caching Demo
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=10102

I had used this script in many of my mp missions that had quite a bit of AI, and it has upped the performance of the mission alot!

[Rydygier]

However, if some group is cached, so in given moment only group leader exist on map, Hetman will count only this leader as own unit, because HAC takes into account only units "phisically" present on map when making its decisions. So caching for HAC-controlled groups is very bad idea - HAC will think, that most of his forcers suddenly died (big morale drop, most likely turning into defensive mode) or, if groups was cached before HAC init, that has only not cached leaders of groups under control (also, because AT- and AA-soldiers (and other specialistic units) will be also cached, HAC will consider, that has no AT or AA weaponry to his disposal and will take this fact into consideration when making his decisions).

[subroc]

yeah, the unitcount can be a little hard on middle-/lowend servers, but as rydygier said HAC dont work with cached units. I might do some missions with a 2-wave spawningsystem

[Rydygier]

Just tried Utes mission on pure Arma2 1.11. Encountered two problems:

- error message at start: "class land_fortified_nest_big_EP1 no longer exists"
- target point for "move to the base" task is every time located on [0,0,0] position (lower left corner of the map, open sea)...

[subroc]

ah, still some OA content in it, i blame theOden, he made the utes version , will fix this