The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off) - by Thirith
Jeshibu on 21/1/2018 at 15:38
What happened with the AI: One of them got stuck behind a couple sandbags and refused to move, so naturally I executed him. Since everyone else was in a truck, they couldn't pull out their guns just yet, and waited until they were ordered out of the truck to demonstrate their inability to differentiate between a completely legitimate execution for insubordination, and a malicious teamkilling. For some reason they seemed to not care that there were friendlies in the way of their targets either, and just shot straight through whoever was in the way.
Neb on 21/1/2018 at 18:35
I can imagine the murderous AI played by Danny Trejo, sat opposite from you in the back of the truck, cutting chunks of apple with a knife - never breaking eye contact as he lifts them up to his mouth by the blade.
My favourite AI rampage was me as a team leader with an AI machine gunner before someone slotted in. I gave him the suppressive fire command just to see what he'd say, not expecting him to unload everything violently into a crowd of waiting friendlies.
Thirith on 27/1/2018 at 18:04
Very nice image, that one - and very fitting for our murderous AI.
By the way, in order to improve the chances of PigLick being able to join one of the
Arma sessions, we're going to move the next one forward by an hour, i.e.:
Quote:
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 3 February 2018
Time: 3-5pm UK timeAs always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's on Steam. I'll post the IP and password on the Steam group, under the Events tab.
Please adjust your diaries accordingly. :D
henke on 3/2/2018 at 17:40
23 hours played and I'm still not very good at this.
[video=youtube;P_yXwUIk4D8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_yXwUIk4D8&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Still, when you're not sure if you're looking at an enemy or a friendly it's better to be safe that sorry... AL. >:|
Malf on 3/2/2018 at 17:50
Yes, I learned a very important lesson about command today.
When you see a truck being driven towards you by a friendly, don't even jokingly say something like:
"There's some dodgy looking guys driving towards us in a truck, so, uh... shoot them."
Al_B on 3/2/2018 at 17:50
Indeed, sorry about the friendly fire at the end there. Having your team leader report that there was a truck with guys bearing down on our position made me a tad too twitchy - particularly as I thought our truck was far away at that point. :(
Thirith on 3/2/2018 at 17:56
Very nice session - with eight (!) players. The game does come alive the larger the group is. And I do think we've got better at it, henke; in general, while we still wouldn't be mistaken for professionals, I do think we're more systematic, by and large.
Not that we still don't fuck up in fun and educational ways, mind you... Though at least when I shot Jeshibu through that window, I did so because you'd just said that there was a hostile in the building. I couldn't know that Jesh had just killed the guy! :cheeky:
On today's menu:
Warmup (Altis)
Under Lord Penney's expert guidance, we cleared out a small town... though we did have a bit of trouble figuring out which teams we were on, with Team Alpha's Al_B and Piglick joining Team Bravo surreptitiously, while Sulphur (who actually was Team Bravo) stayed behind to cheer up Alpha for their unexpected losses. Once we got into position, though, Bravo took care of larger groups of enemies from the safety of rocks (that we didn't even clip through and die!), while Alpha cleared out the town. Yes, there were some setbacks (see henke's post and video), but after everyone was patched up we were victorious. Hooray!
Pirog Ch. 1 (Chernarus)
Not our brightest moment: the radio kept fritzing out on us, the friendly AI kept shooting Sulphur - and then Malf, after he'd revived Sulphur three times - and I'd mistakenly added a second revive system (I downloaded the mission from Steam and tried to tweak it a bit) on top of the first one, which didn't really work. At one point I went back for Sulphur and Malf, killing the AI that kept shooting them, so then the rest of the Russian army - i.e. our side - turned on me. As I was bleeding out, the chat was deactivated, which meant I couldn't even enter the server admin command to end the mission. Good times!
Kavala Lost (Altis)
Altis sure is dark at nighttime... Without night vision goggles, we were pretty much lost in Kavala, except for the dim light of burning wrecks. Lord Penney and Piglick died early, but the survivors reunited. We did pretty well but didn't want our dead friends to have to wait for too long, so two of us jumped into the water and drowned while trying to swim to safety, and the others made a last stand at the harbour, getting killed in the process.
Apparently there would've been boats just a hundred metres down the pier, and we could've used them to escape Altis and win the mission. Ah well.
Hot Foot It! (Altis)
Like Warmup, this one was done by Lord Penney (not a TTLG member, but a dab hand at Arma and a great guy all round). Led by Malf (whose radio was unfortunately set to a different frequency from ours), we entered another lovely mediterranean town, looking for a hidden ammo cache. We soon found out that not only did they know we were there, they also tried to kill us with mortar fire. We found the mortar guy up a hill, in a little hut (which is where Jesh was torn to shreds by machine gun fire due to a bit of miscommunication between me and henke) and eventually found the cache and blew it up. Henke got back to the truck first, with Sulphur and me close behind - yet he decided to just drive past us towards the rest of the group. That sort of rudeness was soon punished when Al_B put a single bullet through henke's head. Harsh punishment for leaving us behind, but that's The Fighting TTLGers for you - the only way you learn to live with the murderous friendly AI is to become equally murderous yourself, as Nietzsche wrote.
Thanks to everyone for a great session! The next game of Arma will be in three weeks:
Date: Sat, 24 February 2018
Time: 3-5pm UK time
Thirith on 19/2/2018 at 18:19
Since we've got an Arma session coming up this Saturday, I wanted to share some of the stuff I found that mad Arma fans get up to in their spare time... We're not adding these maps (yet... the best map isn't much good without good missions), but I think it's quite cool what the community comes up with, for instance Esseker, a post-disaster terrain, and Prei Khmaoch Luong for all your Vietnamy needs.
[video=youtube;j5NTKyiElpE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5NTKyiElpE[/video]
[video=youtube;UKrnh1MpfhM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKrnh1MpfhM[/video]
Thirith on 24/2/2018 at 17:25
Thanks to everyone - including newcomer Dema - for a fun session! As always, Arma 3 and the mods we use did produce the occasional bug, but they were entertaining bugs, and isn't that the real fun, as Leonard Nimoy once said?
Today we played:
SRCS Random Patrol
Our first Tanoa mission. It's a cool map, very atmospheric and jungly and oh my god we're being shot at I'm bleeding out I'm dead! While the team didn't survive particularly long, it was still a good intro. Though Malf didn't have any in-game sound, just our voices via radio, so we imitated the sound of footsteps, gunshots and the screams of the dying.
Slow Is Smooth
We were tasked with clearing out an enemy-infested construction site on Altis. We'd played this one before, but seeing how we're so much more experienced at this stage, it was clear the enemy had no chance whatsoever. And then Sulphur was shot and sank through the floor, Lord Penney was taken down by friendly fire, and it seems that our experience mainly amounts to us making more advanced mistakes. Or having more advanced excuses for why we kill one another 'by accident'. Still, the construction site was cleared once Malf found the handful of enemies still hiding in nooks and crannies, so, success! And Penney recovered just fine as well.
A Feast For Crows
Yeah, that one didn't work as well as hoped... We were supposed to take a drive down a dusty Takistani road, when we were ambushed, and half of us were gruesomely killed on the side of the road. But after that initial kerfuffle, nothing else happened - the four survivors drove down the road to the nearby base... and the mission didn't end. Turns out it's designed for one player to direct the enemy AI via Zeus (Arma's Game Master mode). Those of us who were dead watched the survivors search for an end-mission trigger, so we took mercy on them and called the mission. If we had one person extra to Zeus the bad guys, this could be pretty cool.
Chesty Puller 1
Weird mission name, but anyway... This one had us join the invasion of Chernarus, and while it took a long time until we actually joined battle, it was atmospheric and had a great 'cog in the machine' feel to it, added to which Chernarus is a great map with its Eastern European forests and villages. Then we came to the APC, and it shot us to bits. Ah well...
Fight or Flight
We ended on a versus mission that pitted TTLGer against TTLGer. One village, a surrounding mine field, simple assault rifles and little else. BLUFOR tried to trick OPFOR by having one guy fly away in the escape helicopter, but we took that one down. In the end it was Penney and myself against henke. I thought that it would be good to get to higher ground to spot henke, so I stepped out onto a balcony... to be taken down by ever-vigilant Lord Penney. And then the mission kinda crashed. I consider that a victory, because we killed more than they did, even if some of the people we killed was us.
And that was it for today. I'll post something as soon as we've fixed the next session, which should be in 2-3 weeks.
Jeshibu on 24/2/2018 at 18:05
[video=youtube;y_JtTXCRzcg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_JtTXCRzcg[/video]
Here's some of Sulphur ascending beyond mere physical boundaries.