(Review Completed) [SP] Volatile Border - a SP desert mission on the East side

[bedges]

*bedges pops his head round the door*

to check if a unit is running away to his momma, use fleeing

*bedges nods to mikero, and closes the door behind him*

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi bedges!

Thank you for your friendly hint! I think

unit allowfleeing 0; should do the trick. Will update my mission once I am back at my regular PC.


Friendly Greetings

Mathias

[Pilot]

Ok, I'm going to give this a try.

Overview:
Good, everything looks fine to me.

Intro:
Nice.  Mikero already touched upon the wording of some of the sentences, so I won't repeat any of it here.

Mission:
Oooh, a BMP2.  How nice.  I immediately order my men out of the BMP2 and I hop in as gunner.  I re-order my men back in, and about that time mortar fire starts.  I move to the mortar, easily taking out it's defenders.  I get the radio message telling me to assault the town, and I move in.  I take out the 3 technicals from a distance and proceed slowly into the town, watching out for soldiers.  As I enter the town I realize that there are soldiers on the roofs of buildings.  Very nice touch, this would have been very difficult without my manning the BMP2.  I do suggest that you add a few RPG soldiers to the roofs as well.  I didn't notice these units until I was very close, and they could have been a problem for me.  I continue clearing the town, then order the assault squad in.  We easily mop up the rest of the infantry, then destroy the counter-attack from the base.  Mission over.

Outro:
Quite basic.  Please use a Black Out to finish it up (although it might be good to include a Black In after the camera is destroyed so we can navigate the GUI after the mission has ended)

Overall:
Way too easy for my method of play.  If you supply the player with a BMP, be sure to include RPG soldiers.  I only got shot at once by an RPG soldier, and he missed.
Everything else looks fine.  The change of scenery is quite refreshing.

-Pilot

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi Pilot!

Thank you for your comprehensive review. Good to have another viewpoint. I tend to play it on foot to avoid being toasted by a RPG while riding in a BMP. But it seems that I have put in  too few enemy RPGs (there is a RPG ambush just outside the town; I wonder why these two soldiers did not get you).
True, the Outro is very basic, as my Intro/Outro-Skills are very basic too. I will see what I can do about it.
I am glad that you liked the mission nonetheless.

Thank you for testing, friendly greetings

Mathias

[Pilot]

(there is a RPG ambush just outside the town; I wonder why these two soldiers did not get you).

Well, in keeping with my overly cautious nature, I drove the BMP to the top of a hill south of the town and totally destroyed anything that moved.  My guess is that in doing so I took out the RPG guard.

I'll try to test the mission again in a day or so.

-Pilot

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi Pilot!

Ah, now I see. This ambush is meant to "persuade" the player to clear the city on foot, but I think adding RPG soldiers to the roofs would enhance the effect. Thank you for testing so far, and it would be very nice if you find the time to give it a try once more.

Many thanks

Mathias

[Pilot]

Ok, I was able to test it again.

I started out with the intention of going on foot, but when the mortar shelling came more than half my squad was wiped out.  Actually, I only had 2 foot soldiers left.  So I said screw it and took the BMP.  The assault on the mortar was similar to last time, very easy.  The difficult part was coaxing the driver to get up those hills, with some help from me in a few spots.  From the mortar, I headed east along the road, coming across the RPG soldier and machine gunner.  They were easy to eliminate.  I suddenly saw the enemy technicals and switched to AP rounds.  When I finished firing there wasn't much left of them.  I assaulted the town and called in the assault squad.  Now we come to a small problem.  I spent 10-15 minutes looking for the last few enemy soldiers.  I finally got them, though, and prepared for the counter-attack.  Frankly, it was a bit pathetic.  After a few seconds with the machine gun I received the titletext that that was the last of the reserve.

Overall:
First off, fix the last loon bug.  Instead of a Not Present trigger, detect when a certain percentage is left, then start the counter attack.  For the ending trigger, do something similar.  Don't end the mission when every loon is dead.  Instead, when a certain percentage of the loons in the area are dead, make the others flee and end the mission.

Second, the counterattack is way too weak, especially against a force of 2 BMP2s.  Don't forget that this is a border town, they will have a larger garrison in anticipation of a border violation.

There's some more work to do to polish this mission up, and I hope you do.  The theme and setting are refreshing and the mission seems solid.

-Pilot

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi Pilot!

Thank you for spending time with my mission!
I will update my mission during the coming week. The rather weak garrison in Konduz is balanced against the fact that my intention is to have the RPG ambush (originally two of them, +  rooftop RPGs in the coming revision) kill off the AI BMP which leads the assault. In my beta tests, my BMP was most often eliminated by the RPG soldiers in the city. You style of playing continues to amaze me. 
But I think adding more RPG soldiers will take care of your "overstrength assault force".

I have not yet rediscovered the script that works with percentages of enemies dead. When I don't find it, I will use "unit allowfleeing 0".


Many thanks

Mathias

[greg147]

Just a thought, but have you tried putting a few mines down instead of flooding the map with RPG soldiers? 1 or 2 mines hidden in bushes in the slight valley before the RPG ambush could take care of the first BMP more effectively than some RPGs. 

Also, IIRC the RPGs don't damage the BMPs as much as BIS RPGs do. I seem to remember the first time I played this I surived 2 RPGs at the ambush point without any real damage taken.

You could also disable the players BMP if you wanted to make the attack harder. Have a IED or something that simulates destroying the BMPs tracks when it approaches the town, so the player must attack on foot. Obviously you couldn't take out the BMPs tracks ingame, but you could disable the radio, remove it's fuel, then after 15 seconds or so, put the radio back (this will get rid of the 'out of fuel' radio comment) 

Just a few ideas there.

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi Greg!

Thank you for your very useful ideas. Strange how one can be stuck with mission concepts. Your ideas are much better than flodding the map with RPG soldiers!

Cheers

Mathias

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi there!

I just posted another updated version of my mission. The Intro features arabic music end the "Hunt the last loon" bug should be no more. It can be found in the first post of this thread.

Cheers

Mathias

[Pilot]

There is one error message when I start the mission, something about missing TalebMortar and NaMortar.  As Mikero pointed out, these two pbo's were merged into one with the latest version of the afghanpack.  You will need to open mission.sqm and remove these two references from the Addons and AddonAuto sections to remove this message.  In the meantime, I'll remove them myself and give the mission another test.

Intro:
Music is much better, although there are times when bursts of static come through the speakers.  If you can, try to clean it up or find a cleaner version of the song.
Add a Black Out at the end of the intro.

Mission:
Ok, I start the patrol.  My men and I start walking back towards the city when I spot some rebels coming over a hill to the north.  We engage them, and just as we do so, mortar rounds start falling.  They are freakishly accurate and half my squad is eliminated.  I get them in the BMP and finish off the rebel patrol.  I follow the river for some time before I cross it.  The mortar was easy to eliminate and I recieved no AT fire from the rebels.  I then proceeded east and took out the MG and RPG group near the dead tank.  I also took this opportunity to destroy the three technicals.  As I approached the town I called in the assault squad and proceeded to eliminate any threats I saw on the roofs.  Suddenly the attack squad BMP explodes and there are no survivors.  It sounded suspiciously like a mine.  I continued to rove through the town taking out anyone I could.  There was 1 point when I was hit by an RPG and killed, and another when I hit a mine.  However, the basic hunt the last loon bug was still present.  After several minutes of looking for the remaining loons, I quit the mission.

Overall:
Intro music is much better
I didn't really notice any change in the number of RPG soldiers.  Maybe I'm that good?
I noticed that there are a few soldiers in those walled areas west of town.  I would suggest that you place them somewhere else.  The player is apt to skip those areas altogether, and the AI can't go in or out of those areas.
The mortar fire at the beginning is way too accurate, especially the first shot.  Disperse the fire a little bit.
The mortar is always in the same place, I suggest you change this so the the mortar is randomly placed in 1 of a few different positions.  Doing this would add replayability to the mission.
The mines were a neat idea, but I think there might be too many of them.  Also, if the attack squad hits a mine on the way in, it sort of defeats the purpose of having an attack squad.  Think about changing their waypoints so that they miss the minefield.
The hunt the last loon bug was still present.

This version is an improvement, but there is more to do.  I like the general concept of the mission, it just needs to be a bit more polished.

-Pilot

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi Pilot!

I start to hate the missing addon thing...I definitely took those addons out of the mission.sqm, yet they reappear for any other tester. 
I noticed the crackles in the intro song, will test it with another piece of music. I hope this is not a "feature" of Audio Grabber.

Will see what I can do about the mortar accuracy. I already used the random placement, but the mortar almost everytime ends up in the same place. I suppose this is a feature of the map's geography....simply not enough flat areas.
I had previous beta testers complaining about the low difficulty of the mission with a fully functional assault squad.  That's why I introduced the mines in the valley and the minefield just before the city. I also figured that the mines would serve the purpose of removing the BMP suppport better than additional RPGs and they would not contribute to lag.

I am not sure what you mean about the soldiers in the wall west of the city. There is a walled area just south of the city which contains 2 RPG soldiers - they are part of an ambush.

Many thanks for your continous contribution to my mission 

Cheers

Mathias

[mathias_eichinger]

Hi all!

Many thanks for helpful testing and comments. I could not reproduce the "last loon bug" myself and therefore I decided to submit my mission to a communite site.
It can be found at the German community Page www.ofpc.de and has 31 Downloads so far 
Therefore I choose to solve the topic now.

I am grateful to be part of such a nice community here at ofpec.com.


cheers

Mathias

[Trapper]

Mathias the version you offer to download still contains the missing addon bug (talebmortar, namortar)! At the moment any average player isn't able to see more of it than the intro.

What you've to do is remove the addons from the mission.sqm manually and never again save the mission in the ofp editor afterwards. Create the pbo with the MakePBO tool or something equal.

It's a shame to see what happened.  :-\
Your host only posted intro screenshots in the news about your mission - probably they thought the bug was there fault and didn't inform you after they encountered such an important bug. Neither did the 30+ players, which downloaded the mission so far, report anywhere that they weren't able to play it.


EDIT:
Moderators please merge this with the original, solved topic. - And to who ever disabled reporting my own post directly to a moderator: It does make sense after all, doesn't it?