Too Hard?

[The_Oakster]

Quote[/b] ] have you seen black hawk down?

Thats a film isnt it, therefore not reality *** *** ***

[GI_Rutger]

Damn, BHD is a hole other story than a night infiltration. If you wake up the Russians, they will hop in there BMP's, and that's when the shit hits the fan! In BHD the skinnies had no tanks, and they were attacking. All of you know that if you defend a city with 250 men, the enemy needs 1000 men and a lot of time to capture the city. If you want to make it realistic, I can give you a few advices:

- Don't give your men heavy weapons, like sniperrifles, LAW's and MGuns.
- Give the mission something original, a Clean Sweep mission is a bit standard. Maybe you can have a goal, the Delta's have to free a pilot, blow up something etc.
- Real Spec-op's don't have air-support, artillery support etc. when they are behind enemy lines, unless there goal is to find a camp and call in the artillery/airforce.

[ruff]

make it a 6 man team more realistic
1 machinegunner 1 radio guy for support 1 gl 1 sniper 1 AT soldier 1 leader

[The_Oakster]

Right, the mission is getting there, just struggling with some scripting issues at the mo, anyhoo,

The story line is that the Navy have managed to intercept 2 freighters inbound to the port. The enemy are therefore low on supplies allowing a 'window of opportunity' to attack the main supply route...

What would the chances be of the USMC doing this mission rather than Deltas?

Would they be flown in from the sea or would they 'sail' in.

Would they parachute in?

Would they work as a 'spec-op' team? I have no idea of the roles and typical missions undertaken by the USMC.

[ruff]

force recon

[General Barron]

Woah... doin a little diggin here, but thats okay.

Anyway, on the realism side, yeah, 4 men taking on a platoon (I'm guessing you have at least 40 enemies + armor) of well-equipped enemies over the course of the mission is... well "Rambo style".

If it is supposed to be a "behind enemy lines" scenario, then remember that such operations are usually done with a minimum of shots fired, because IRL those 4 men don't stand a chance against a coordinated enemy of that strength. Basically it would be a "place charges, blow $hit up, run like hell before they figure out what's up" scenario.

I suppose if you add in some artillery or air support it would be more... plausable, as long as you give a good reason why only 4 men can do the operation, instead of a full platoon. Perhaps the bulk of the enemy force is fighting the marines elsewhere, and only a small team can slip through the front lines to mess up the supply chain? Of course, those men would have the support of artillery (those guns can shoot for miles and miles) or some bombers (via a laser designator), if the operation needs to be a success. Anything less than that would smack of "rambo" to me.

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Anyway, I'm a firm believer that you should increase the difficulty by other means than just plopping down more enemies. That way you can keep up the realism, but also keep up the challenge. In your case, you could start by placing some of the defenders behind cover and concealment, instead of letting the AI just lay down in the middle of the parking lot (I mean grass). This simple script here can help with that. Basically, it sux to have enemies just sitting there in town, or wandering around aimlessly. There should be some well-placed guys on guard duty, while the rest should be doing something like resting, fixing vehicles, etc. The guys behind cover will be harder to see and kill, and the guys in other places will come help once the fighting starts. Another script that can help with this is Blanco's groupchain and my own information sharing script.

Another thing that would make it harder (and increase the "behind enemy lines" feeling) would be to have support come and help the enemies after they are attacked. These could be guys coming from the front lines or elsewhere to help defend the town. This would mean the player has to complete his objective quickly and run like hell, or else he will have to face some enemies he isn't prepared for. You could quite easily achieve this thru some "guarded by" triggers + "guard" waypoints, or you could use a script such as Bremmer's AI script or Keycat's grouplink II.

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Personally, I don't care too much about the difficulty of a mission. If anything, I'd rather a mission be too easy than too hard. I see no fun in hitting "retry" a dozen times just to get through a 3 minute firefight. The realism factor is more important in how fun a mission is for me.

Personally I tend to think I'm not that great at OFP as well, and in the past I've tried "compensating" for this in my mission design. I figure if I can beat it easily, then it is too easy. But you also gotta factor in the little thing about you knowing how everything is set up and works, which should dramatically reduce the difficulty for you.

So even if you aren't that great, you still should be able to finish your mission, because you know everything about it. If you can't, then it's probly way too hard. But that's what beta testers are for, right.