Trial by Fire

This is the first mission in the Scenario section and I have two problems with it.

1:

Once my squad secures the village an APC comes in, the squad leader calls for air support but it arrives too late and my team mates does nothing to avoid being brutally massacred by the BRDM, they just go prone and that's it, they do not try to find cover even though they know it's coming. I managed to avoid heavy casualities by running ahead to the perimeter of the village hiding behind a brick wall and as soon as I saw the APC I opened fire on it so it got distracted by supressing me until the Cobra arrived. If I don't distract it the BRDM just drives right in the middle of the village and kills 2 or 3 of my team mates no matter what.

2:

My team mates get completely scattered all over the place because the squad leader is still able to spot targets from miles away and he sends the guys to engage them. It's very rare that we manage to arrive at the airport as a whole squad.

This mission realy bugs me (even though it is great fun):

We have no AT gear (there is an LAW in the huey but no ammo!) and the Cobra keeps getting shot down. Mission therefore becomes uncompletable. Also, each time I play my team gets slaughtered until just I'm left. To be fair though, I guess we are outnumbered (it seems) so in reality I think we'd all be killed attacking through a village.

Weird, The Cobra always came and shot down the APC here.

I played it multiple times. The guys stayed fairly grouped, though I played medic most of the time, dragging buddies to safety and patching them.

Playing in regular.

Not completed this yet, seems to me this missions about patching holes in your team mates.

It seems to be very random. Sometimes you'll have very good air support and sometimes the timing isn't there. I guess it's just like real life. And the scattered troops also seems random. Sometimes after leaving the beach you'll never see anyone again and you'll arrive at the airport as a lone wolf while other times everyone moves as one big group straight to the airport.

I noticed something a few times in this mission and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen it:

There's a Soldier on the apron of the deck just past the Helicopter that you're going to get on that just falls over sometimes. Sometimes he'll just slide through the deck and disappear and sometimes he just lays there.

Has anyone else ever seen this?

One other thing:

Sometimes after being dropped off at the beach I'll receive a '<number> is down' message and look over and find someone dead on the beach. I've always thought that the helicopter hits the guy when it's taking off but I'm not really sure.

Has anyone ever had someone die on the beach like that?

Not completed this yet, seems to me this missions about patching holes in your team mates.

That's about my experience (playing of VET with enemy AI accuracy reduced 0.6) also. I'm amazed to hear some of you guys have made it to the airfield with I assume some of your team intact.

playing the scenario in the demo (I haven't touched it yet in the full game) the cobra always comes in, and kills the apc WELL BEFORE it even makes it to the town. I have had most of the squad get injured on me once (I managed to patch the majority of them up befor ethey died).

Apparently, it's completely random as to what is going to happen.

Haven't ever seen the Cobra hit the BRDM. The Hellfires always hits the trees around it, so the BRDM is left intact. Have had to try to take it out by shooting up the wheels until the crew bails out.

Managed to beat it with 1 teamate alive, very poorly designed mission.

3 objectives: village, AA on the hill and the airfield i think?

Cobra kills the BRDM and the Tunguska*, i dont know if it cleared the airfield too but i only found a few pilots there, wich i killed over the distance.

All the SP scenarios are pretty poor, abrupt endings, no cutscenes, etc.

If you played OPF you probably remember how awsome Ambush was.. nothing like that to be found in Arma II.

Weird, The Cobra always came and shot down the APC here.

I played it multiple times. The guys stayed fairly grouped, though I played medic most of the time, dragging buddies to safety and patching them.

Playing in regular.

How did you patch them Eric? I can only drag them to safety (and then they crawl back out and get shot :rolleyes:)

All the SP scenarios are pretty poor, abrupt endings, no cutscenes, etc.

If you played OPF you probably remember how awsome Ambush was.. nothing like that to be found in Arma II.

I agree. Ambush was probably one of the best missions designed officially, in my opinion. I remember playing that mission every time I loaded up OFP.

Anyways, Trial by Fire get be either frustratingly hard or frustratingly easy depending on your settings in difficulty. I always play with AI skills set to 1 on both sides with Super AI turned on. My team rarely makes it to the airport in a group with more than three members.

I just found an awesome way to get past the BRDM part, shoot the tyres out! When the crew jumps out you can mow them down with your machine gun :)

I hate that village. It's a death trap.

It seems to be very random. Sometimes you'll have very good air support and sometimes the timing isn't there. I guess it's just like real life. And the scattered troops also seems random. Sometimes after leaving the beach you'll never see anyone again and you'll arrive at the airport as a lone wolf while other times everyone moves as one big group straight to the airport.

I noticed something a few times in this mission and I'm wondering if anyone else has seen it:

There's a Soldier on the apron of the deck just past the Helicopter that you're going to get on that just falls over sometimes. Sometimes he'll just slide through the deck and disappear and sometimes he just lays there.

Has anyone else ever seen this?

One other thing:

Sometimes after being dropped off at the beach I'll receive a '<number> is down' message and look over and find someone dead on the beach. I've always thought that the helicopter hits the guy when it's taking off but I'm not really sure.

Has anyone ever had someone die on the beach like that?

I've played the mission a number of times always on Regular and once I've seen the guy by the helicopter fall over and lie on the deck

Another tip, play it in the editor! It works flawlessly!

Just played this mission tonight for the first time. I had a lot more fun playing this than the single-player campaign. It's definitely a bit of a challenge on Vet, but I managed to complete it okay. Best part was taking up a position on the southern hill behind a small pile of rocks with a nice overview of the village. I was able to provide great covering fire and mow down a number of targets. Good fun!

Another tip, play it in the editor! It works flawlessly!

How involved of a process is it to extract the missions and do that?

How involved of a process is it to extract the missions and do that?

Extract the .pbo file and place it in your profile folder. Load it in the mission editor. Play.

@Maturin

You need a program like Eliteness to extract PBO's. Not sure if DePbo.dll is needed together with Eliteness to extract PBO's. But download both files and add them into a folder you create. Then double click Eliteness.exe from that folder (or make a shortcut if you want), and then youll get an interface to where you can look around on your harddrive. Go to where the mission.pbo is and choose extract or unpack (dont remember what its called). It will create a folder of the mission where the mission pbo is.

Move that mission folder to: C:_Documents&Settings/yourname/ARMA2Profile/Missions (something like that - im at work...)

Then start ARMA2 and go to the editor. Load Chernarus or Utes wichever the mission is played on, and click LOAD and the mission will show.

Link: Eliteness

Link: DePbo

(Files are RAR:ed, but 7zip can handle that)

Good luck & ask here or PM me if anything is unclear/not working.

Alex

That's what I meant. Thanks.

Also having troubles with the BRDM.

When the air support comes flying in it's under heavy fire because of the BRDM. I've never seen the chopper, I just hear it approaching but he doesn't make it to the BRDM due to enemy fire.(it never goes down though)

Maybe I could try distracting it by providing suppresive fire untill the chopper arrives? Any other ideas?

I played this last night. BRDM annihilated my entire team. Had to complete the mission on my own from there. Mission also ends really fast. Once you secure the airfield it's an instant end. You miss a radio message that is sent to you at the end.

I agree. Ambush was probably one of the best missions designed officially, in my opinion. I remember playing that mission every time I loaded up OFP.

I keep hearing this. Why hasn't someone converted it?

the mission isn't even fun, you kill some random troops in Strelka, and then the cobra sometimes destroys the APC, and then you shoot a little group by the airfield and you go inside a hanger and the mission ends.

It would've been better if they had a few tanks you had to destroy or sneak past.

Yeah I finally got to beat this mission today, lost 2 guys but the others were smart enough to get behind a brick wall when the APC was shooting. :)

I really hope BIS, makes more longer/higher quality official missions, I havent finished any other scenarios because chernarus is bugged to death on my computer no matter what settings I have. I heard the 1.05 patch is taking alot of problems out so hopefully I'll be able to decide.

It's a tutorial mission, so it's no fun, but they also managed to make it very difficult. The village is a deathtrap even without your suicidal team.