[SP] Punishment Battalion, scored 9/10 at Ofpec!

[leehunt27]

Thanks for the ideas on future missions. I'm probably going to wait until ArmA II to create another long mega mission, however, as this was a lot of work and time (though fun) and I think I'm going to wait....

[Snake Raper]

>>>>>>>>>>> Spoilers




I rather enjoyed the mission as it made me go into survival mode right off the start. I fell back on my OpFl Res days and began taking every weapon and ammo bit I could and stuffed them in vehicles. I found that by the time I attacked the armoury in Bagango, I really didn't need anything there.

I found that the clusters of 3 UAZ MGs scattered about were a little on the "fake" side as they were on each other or on another object and very unresponsive (maybe I was just real sneaky).

I spent large amounts of time wandering the roads in nothing more than a UAZ and was only engaged by a Heli once and a soldier once. The roads were very empty as I found that the QRF vehicles (M113, T-72, BMP etc) were driving across open ground and often overturning due to terrain. This meant that I didn't really have to fight them and only engaged a T-72 and BMP (other than the QRF that came to Bagango when I attacked the armoury) while on "patrol".

Once I had the BRDM AT, well it was over for any armour at Pita as this gave me the ability to get into the base and take the T-72 which ended the game (you can repair and rearm through the wall without exposing yourself to the tanks on the runway). Not sure if it was intentional but I would suggest moving them farther away so one cannot "exploit" them. By ending the game, I mean I just drove about and shot or squished everything I missed the first time through. Although I had several close calls in the BRDM with RPGs flying about.

Again, I really enjoyed the mission but it did feel a bit "sterile" at times. Thanks for your work and time spent.

[leehunt27]

hi Snake Rapper,

Glad you enjoyed it-- sorry bout the overturned vehicles! I had a hard time adapting scripts to fix that to ArmA unfortunately. But anyway glad you had fun with it!

[ThudBlunderQ8]

Back to the top...

I've a few days off work while my leg sorts itself out, so I thought I'd finally get around to giving this a try. The day has just flown by - this mission is very immersive to someone with my low skills; thoroughly enjoyable.

Had a real surprise when scouting around to see M113s operating alongside a ZSU23-4 - couldn't work that one out at all to begin with!

I found it immensely annoying during the 15 minutes as Carla to hear my alter-ego issuing all sorts of ridiculous orders to the group, some of which were tantamount to suicide. Not knowing ArmA all that well, is there some clever way (constantly team- switching doesn't work) to shut him up while I'm having my out-of-body experience?!

Am now complete on all but one of the sub-missions (grammar? that doesn't sound right...) and setting up for the final move on Pita. Tell me - the cluster of enemy in the village north of Pedro's group: did they have a task of their own? I encountered them during my scouting-around, destroyed the 3 armoured vehicles and killed the 3 Especas in/near the pub. The civvies all just stood around and watched; is there any way they could be co-opted into the guerilla group?

Despite suffering no casualties I'm getting quite low on manpower, as in addition to the combat-stress sufferer mentioned above I have one character who resolutely refuses to respond to any orders (including "get in" - ) - any way I can get back up to more than 10 men?

Anyway, many thanks for your excellent work and here's to some more lost hours tomorrow as I complete the task!

[leehunt27]

hi ThundBlunderQ8,


Glad you got a couple surprises and are enjoying the mission. It means a lot to me that people are having fun with PB because man it was a lot of work (though i liked it too).

I couldn't find the editing commands to turn off your alter-ego during the "Carla Phase" unfortunately.

The enemy vehicles north of Pablo are on GUARD mode-- meaning if you are spotted anywhere nearby they will rush to kill you. The Especas are just having a drink at the pub-- that is until you came along .

Those civilians are just regular civilians in Carmen, they have no orders or anything.

The game itself seems to have a bug with units not following your orders sometimes, very annoying to myself as well. About 10 men is all you can get-- this keeps the suspense level up a bit as you want to be careful not to lose them!

Let me know your progress and if you unlock the easter egg code word

Lee

[ThudBlunderQ8]

Lee,

Thankyou for the reply. Managed to complete it today; was surprised/delighted by what you had done with the "venue" for the endgame. Having been to that location many times in other missions/campaigns, it was jaw-dropping to see what faced my straggly band as we moved into visual range!

Having decided to hang onto the US aircrewman (I needed the extra manpower for my convoy&#33 ) I never did get around to arranging his extraction/US supply drop. Is that where the mortar would have come in to play? No worries - the mission was capable of being completed without the new toy. Amazing how accurate a captured PKM on single-tap can be when you're up in a lofty perch!

Much appreciated - a good advert for ArmA and its possibilities as a medium for talented editors. Must give it another go to try out some ideas I picked up first time around...

[leehunt27]

hey ThundBlunderQ8,

Hahah, glad you enjoyed the endgame finale! It was a lot of fun to create that.

Its ok if you never extract the pilot, but yes that is where you can find the mortar. Where did you use the PKM from at Pita?

Thanks again for your feedback, much appreciated! And congrats on unlocking the code word for a complete victory!

[SS9]

ok, this CTD's my game. No error message. Before 1.14 it was just loading, now it's a little ways into the intro. Too much for my system specs?

[leehunt27]

hi SS9,

Sorry you are having problems.
Hmmm. ***As you can see a lot of people have played it so far successfully, but i don't know about 1.14 patch. I also don't know much about system requirements so i'd be speculating there. PB was created and finished during ArmA Patch 1.08. ***One option could be to reinstall ArmA (save all your save games and editing stuff in another folder) and then only use patch 1.08. ***

I don't know much else about what to suggest other than that really. Anybody else have a good idea? thanks...Lee

[tourist]

Hi there,

first of all I want to thank you for your effort in creating a mission for ArmA in the tradition of Thobson's Abandoned Armies for OFP.

I enjoyed playing punishment batallion very much, until I was struck over the forehead by a vicious bug right in the most pleasant gaming flow.

As soon as I had recruited Maria, the framerates dropped drastically to a point where the game became almost unplayable, like 7 to 9 FPS.

Now, I am of course aware that my rig isn't the most powerful; to be honest it is a generally weak system which only got a decent GPU because at the time I bought that one I neither wanted to spend money for a soon outdated Dual Core technology nor pay the then still beefy price for a Quad Core CPU. Therefor, I now play on the following system:

Windows XP
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @2200 Ghz
Geforce 8800 GT 512 MB PCI Express
2 Gigabyte DDR RAM in Dual Channel Mode

This is, of course, what the guys over there in the performance and tweaking thred would call a misbalanced system.

Practically, it means I can use ArmA, a game designed to simulate Combined Arms Combat between regular army units with up to 100 Soldiers with Aircraft and Armor for each side, only as a Resistance fighting or Special Forces Simulator, because my CPU defines the point from which on there is 'too much folks walking around' way below the game's maximum number of units at the same time and place is reached.

While I can get decent FPS (18-60) most of the time up to 20 v 20 skirmishes, it gets real choppy during real battles.

BUT: If I could play punishment batallion up to the point of Maria's recruitment without lag, why went the mission down like that afterwards?

Just keep in mind I had reduced the total number of enemies continuously until that point (about 20 or 30 soldiers, a T 72 and a BMP were down at this time), even one patroling chopper wasn't straining the CPU anymore with it's flight path data because it had crashed while pursuing my car. A second one crashed shortly after the first while I fought my way through the lag after Maria's recruiting.

What could be the reason for this bug? Maybe the fact that the female civilian Maria is implemented as a male fighter (at least her voice becomes male as soon as she joins the squad) puts
too much script mess on my poor CPU?

No, seriously, I play with a shitload of addons (in short: the content from the Addon Compilation thread. All of it. Period.), but if they would be too much, then the mission might be lagging from start, but that is not the case.

Hope there is a workaround for the Maria Situation.

kind regards,

tourist