OP Spring Step Info and Feedback thread
Hi guys, this thread is to give a bit of explanation as to how the new Public server mission OP Spring Step works and some answers to the inevitable questions that will arise. This mission has taken a massive amount of work (I’ve probably spent 100+hrs on it easily) and I hope it will be enjoyable. This will be its first public release and I look forward to your feedback both positive and negative. Please do give feedback, if there’s something you don’t like then I can’t change it if I don’t know about it. Conceptually I’ve tried to make this mission different from the existing mission set to give an entirely different feel.
AI
The mission does not use ALIVE to populate the AO with AI. We’re trialling a new system called DAC (Dynamic AI Creator) which works slightly differently and brings its own features and challenges. AI groups will actively hunt down players they know about, and will call in reinforcements from nearby groups. They will aggressively suppress you and may use smoke to mask their own positions. Additionally, they will call upon friendly mortars for support fire when certain criteria are met. For example they will not call in mortars on fast moving vehicles because predicting where the target will be is too prone to error, nor will they call in mortars if there is only a junior rifleman left alive in the group. However, once you start taking mortar fire it’s usually a good time to get out of there! Groups who are eliminated will respawn at a camp site, so the enemy will move back into areas that have been cleared. You’ll need to destroy any enemy found there thereby deactivating the camp sites for the respawn to stop happening.
Tasks
Although the entire map is populated with enemy and while technically you can go off and do what you like as a sandbox, the mission is designed to be played in a linear fashion, moving from one task to the next. These tasks cover a range of combat and non-combat objectives but will always be in enemy territory. The missions are randomly selected from a list and their location will be in or around an enemy held town generally near to the previously completed task in an ever expanding ring around the spawn base. As time allows we will be adding further task types to increase the variability and replayability of the mission, but I doubt you’ll get two identical experiences playing this mission. There are also a couple of what I’ll call “narrative” tasks, which run alongside the linear progression with the first being the location and return of the UAV black box and these should relate more closely to the story in time. Be aware, some of the task icons are very general and simply point you to the town in question, and some are very specific to the task. Also, please note, that task completion may not happen instantaneously you think you’ve achieved the objective and there may be up to a 60 second delay.
Admin/Zeus
NCO’s who log in as admin need to note, the majority of the AI that you will see are controlled by DAC. You won’t see waypoints for where they are moving to and you WILL NOT be able to get them to follow waypoints so don’t even try! If you want to remote, you can do so with no adverse effect, but if you want a group to move in a certain way, you’ll need to spawn a new one. BE CAREFUL, watch the group limits as the mission is already optimised to be extremely close to the 288 group limit. Should the current task be bugged, then you are able to force completion or failure by inputting the following code into the execute code module in Zeus and running it globally. rdg_ForceTaskSuccess=true or rdg_ForceTaskFail=true. I’m working on a dialog that will make this easier.
Points to note when reporting issues and giving feedback
If reporting low fps, please indicate how many players were on, where they were and whether they were all in the same area. Having lots of players spread out across the map will be bad for performance exactly like it is for ALIVE, potentially more so. If reporting bugged tasks, please try to give as much detail as possible, including screenshots of the problem, the map so I can identify what might be causing it etc.
Known issues
the ACE interact with the objects in the crates is extremely frustrating. Dropping an object will result in it remaining in the air for a number of seconds and then instantly dropping to the ground.
Occasionally AI will encroach within the Base “safe zone”, especially by helicopter.
Some building types take an inordinate amount of explosives to completely destroy.
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