[SP] Icarus Burns

Icarus Burns by Twangydave's House of Blues - Version 0.13 - Alpha

A single player British Special Forces mission loosely based on Operation Mikado,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mikado

and taking some inspiration from Operation Entebbe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entebbe_Raid

Features:

Story driven and structured mission ideal for newer players or Arma veterans wanting some old fashioned entertainment.

Play as British SAS troops with accurately modelled uniforms and weapons.

Set piece battles featuring over 350 AI. Combat includes building clearance, long range engagements in mountainous terrain and urban fire fights involving house to house fighting.

Random outcomes influence the mission meaning each play through is different. Troop transport aircraft can be damaged or destroyed as can Close Air Support aircraft, re-enforcement choppers and other vehicles. The ability of friendlies to complete their objectives and stay alive will have a bearing on the difficulty of your own tasks.

Realistic ammo loads. Further ammunition must be scavenged from the fallen or taken from squad mates.

Airborne re-enforcements.

Auto-saves at key points with a further user save available if needed.

Group menu included to allow you to join and lead a new squad if yours is killed or lacks enough manpower to complete the task.

Voice acting by Twangydave and original music by Josh Woodward - http://www.joshwoodward.com

Dependencies:

You must download and run these mods in order to play the mission. I'll probably do a Vanilla version soon, so wait for that if you don't like mods.

play withSix is one of the easiest and quickest way to install them.

http://play.withsix.com/

You'll need Community Base Addons installed.

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=18767

United States Air Force mod by fullerpj,Peral, Randomslap, Dezkit and Sig

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=25513

UK Special Forces Mod by massi

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=19346

NATO SF and Russian Spetsnaz Weapons mod by massi

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=21912

Optional sound and vision enhancements:

You don't need these to play the mission but they will really enhance the experience. If you get too much slow down by using them then just disable them.

Blastcore A3 by Opticalsnare

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=23899

J.S.R.S 2.2 Sound mod by Lord Jarhead

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=22150

How to install:

Extract the .pbo file(s) to your Steam/SteamApps/common/ArmA 3/Missions folder.

Downloads:

Dropbox: http://www.dropbox.com/s/4ammv36p2ysbmfw/Icarus_Burns.Stratis.pbo?dl=0

Armaholic: Icarus Burns (@)

Steam Workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=302503352&searchtext=

Disclaimer: This project is in the ALPHA state. It may contain errors or lack certain features. The story as well as mission design are subject of change. Feedback is much appreciated.

Known issues:

Missing sound files: Some weapon sound files can pop up as missing as a result of the last official BI update. They'll be fixed in time and do not effect the mission – just click to continue.

Stuck Choppers: Both the pilots of the AH-99's are fond of taking a breather half way through the action. They do remember their way-points after a while and it doesn't really have any bearing on the outcome of the mission. I will be looking into it further.

The C130/A164/Merlin/AH99/Ghosthawk pilot flew into a mountain! It happens, a mission like this would be highly likely to lose aircraft and teams due to the hazardous nature of flying low altitude at night in enemy airspace. Revert to an earlier save if you find yourself unable to complete the mission or start again. Those are the fortunes of war!

License:

Content created by Twangydave's House of Blues is published under the "Arma Public License Share Alike (APL-SA)". You are free to take or change anything you can use, just give me a mention in the credits.

Background:

Following the successful CSAT invasions of Stratis and Altis, NATO retreated behind a defensive air perimeter to lick its wounds.

As the months passed, CSAT's brutal rule of the islands stoked the fires of insurgency and young men fled from the towns in their hundreds to join with the FIA in their mountain bases.

Lacking both the manpower and political will to mount a re-invasion, NATO continued to assist the FIA struggle with Special Forces and drone strikes. The FIA fought hard but began to lose traction in the face of sustained air strikes that threatened to destroyed their ability to resist.

The FIA reached out to London and begged for a raid that could significantly degrade CSAT's air superiority. Given assurances that such an outcome might trigger a wider uprising in the Aegean region, NATO decided to roll the dice.

Somewhere in Hereford a phone was ringing.........

Performance:

My computer is almost 3 years old now and it runs everything very smoothly with the base game and the dependencies needed for the mission. There is just the tiniest bit of slow down in the busiest sections when I'm also running Blastcore A3 and J.S.R.S 2.2. I'm hoping that means most people will be able to play the mission smoothly but I do have an over clocked processor and lots of RAM so this one might be best avoided if your system is very modest.

My specs:

Intel Core i5 2500K Processor Overclocked to up to 4.6GHz

Asus P8Z68-V LE Motherboard

12GB PC3-10666 1333MHz DDR3 Memory (3 x 4GB sticks)

AMD Radeon HD 6850 1024MB Graphics Card

1000GB 7200RPM Hard Disk - 6Gbps

Thanks and credits:

Bohemia Interactive and the awesome community.

United States Air Force mod by fullerpj, Peral, Randomslap, Dezkit and Sig.

UK Special Forces Mod by massi.

NATO SF and Russian Spetsnaz Weapons mod by massi.

Zuff's Group Managment Script 1.1 by Zuff.

AI Spawn Script Pack 0.90 by fdsspun.

I Want to Destroy Something Beautiful by Josh Woodward - http://www.joshwoodward.com

Cherubs by Josh Woodward - http://www.joshwoodward.com

Dedicated to the bravery of the men, women and animals of UKSF.

This looks great! Just yesterday I read about Operation Entebbe and Operation Mikado. Glad you picked the concept up.

Now also available on Armaholic - thanks Big!:D

Icarus Burns (@)

---------- Post added at 15:55 ---------- Previous post was at 15:30 ----------

This looks great! Just yesterday I read about Operation Entebbe and Operation Mikado. Glad you picked the concept up.

It's been great to have some sort of story to work off. Entebbe is one of the most daring and audacious things I've ever read about. Traveling such a vast distance with men and equipment to try to achieve the almost impossible must have taken brass balls from all concerned. What I've read of the UK military planner's attempt to try something similar in Operation Mikado seems to suggest that the SAS themselves considered the whole thing to be a ridiculous risk, tantamount to 'suiciding' a large chunk of an elite regiment for dubious and uncertain gain. I think they were probably right and I'm glad that the UK government saw sense in the end.

Despite the spectacular success at Entebbe, I'm sure the Israelis realised the whole thing was a massive risk. They were certainly prepared for many casualties as they had a Boeing 707 hospital plane on standby in Nairobi as part of the raid. In the end, elite troops with great recon and total surprise v terrorists and Ugandan soldiers and 1976 radar tech proved to be enough to tip the balance.

For the Brits, it would have been elite troops with no recon and no surprise v high quality radar and 'four battalions of Marine Infantry of the Argentine Marine Corps of the Argentine Navy, some of whose officers had been trained in the UK by the SBS years earlier'. I'm glad good sense eventually prevailed!

Good mission, was fun to play. Although I didn't completely understand why I should walk 500 m south to a LZ in order to be transported to another spot that is also roughly 500 m away from my position (just the other direction), especially since helicopter transport is always more dangerous than going on foot, and a waste of fuel. The music is the biggest negative issue, it is distracting and doesn't fit at all, I'd chose different tunes and make the one at the start much shorter (so that it stops a good deal before the plane lands), or better leave them out altogether. I did however like the fact that you can decide whether to go as teamleader or follow a team or completely alone, more missions should feature that!

I had some serious performance issues, but my PC is slow, so no accusations at you from my side ;) Just for information to other people with similarly weak rigs: I still have a Phenom II with 3.0 GHz, so really quite old, I assume your overclocked 2500K is easily twice as fast. And I had JSRS and Blastcore running, but also TPW, which put even more CPU stress on the rig. So I had only 6 fps (in words: six!), always hoping that it would improve after a while, but it didn't. Maybe I'll replay this without all the extra addons. Or maybe I'll buy a new comp eventually... *lol*

Good mission, was fun to play. Although I didn't completely understand why I should walk 500 m south to a LZ in order to be transported to another spot that is also roughly 500 m away from my position (just the other direction), especially since helicopter transport is always more dangerous than going on foot, and a waste of fuel. The music is the biggest negative issue, it is distracting and doesn't fit at all, I'd chose different tunes and make the one at the start much shorter (so that it stops a good deal before the plane lands), or better leave them out altogether. I did however like the fact that you can decide whether to go as teamleader or follow a team or completely alone, more missions should feature that!

I had some serious performance issues, but my PC is slow, so no accusations at you from my side ;) Just for information to other people with similarly weak rigs: I still have a Phenom II with 3.0 GHz, so really quite old, I assume your overclocked 2500K is easily twice as fast. And I had JSRS and Blastcore running, but also TPW, which put even more CPU stress on the rig. So I had only 6 fps (in words: six!), always hoping that it would improve after a while, but it didn't. Maybe I'll replay this without all the extra addons. Or maybe I'll buy a new comp eventually... *lol*

Cheers Brainbug!

Thanks for playing and the feedback. I'll see if I can address a few of those issues.

1) Right at the point you are directed to the LZ, there are quite a few off road vehicles and quad bikes. I thought about directing the player to these and saying to drive but I didn't want to hand hold too much. The LZ is where it is as the ridge protects you from fire from the hill top base. If you tried to go up the first valley in a vehicle or chopper, you'd get shredded!

2) Music is totally a subjective issue but I accept that the usual fare in shooters leans more toward stuff like 1980's heavy metal. To my mind, that's a bit stale and not my cup of tea, so I thought I'd do something different. I like how Apocalypse Now did inventive things with their music. Although we are used to hearing stuff like The Doors paired with Vietnam footage now, at the time Hollywood was notoriously stuck in its ways, always pairing obviously strident music with its war films. I did have the start music on a fade as the plane landed but some technical issues are preventing me getting this right. Hopefully I can fix it in a future update.

3) Glad you enjoyed the Group Management Script - all the credit goes to Zuff for that little gem, my work was confined to a copy and paste!

4) Performance. There's a lot going on and you will need a decent rig to play it smoothly but do try again without the mods. I could run jsrs and blastcore with only minimal slowdown but anything else after that really started to big down my fps. I'll be interested to hear from others about performance, it may be that I need to spawn more of the AI, rather than having them active in the map from the start. If so, I can add this to an update.

Many thanks for taking the time to give me feedback:)

Regarding the music, I'm not a soldier myself, but I assume it is quite unprofessional to turn on loud music when you have to concentrate on what you are doing, people need to understand orders, and warning the enemy with loud noise is not helping either I guess. Maybe some American National Guard rednecks who think the war is just a big holiday will run music and toy around until the hit an IED, but one would think the SAS are a bit more serious.

What you could do is play some really shitty music at the start (some crap from the top of the recent pop charts), then have some Sergeant yell "turn it off FFS" before the plane gets close the runway. At the end this is a different matter, that would be seen as movie style ambient music, like the coybow riding into the sunset, some slow music would indeed fit here.

What you could do is play some really shitty music at the start (some crap from the top of the recent pop charts), then have some Sergeant yell "turn it off FFS" before the plane gets close the runway.

Now that's a great idea mate! I might just steal that!

I've got a slight problem with some of the vehicles in the mission after some mod updates. Hopefully it will be fixed soon but I'll probably be putting up a new version so best to wait until then for a download. Cheers!

EDIT: FIXED NOW - STILL GETTING A CONFIG.BIN ERROR BUT MISSION PLAYS FINE.

Have at those downloads!

There seems to be a problem with this mission - I have all the downloads, but the mission is not starting, stating missing UKSF vehicles and USAF C-130J. Plus, the Steam version never appears in my mission directory after downloading.