=============================================The player is Platoon Leader and organizes the evacuations, but has only direct control of the 1st squad he accompanys.
1. M i s s i o n O v e r v i e w
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This is a special single player mission, both in zombie and normal mission terms!
In the words of a beta tester:
"Otherwise, where's the fun? I might as well go and buy an ant colony and watch that simulate."
The fun is located in using the original OFP squad control interface to it's max and finding strategies to rescue as many survivors as possible in the random simulation.
The mission is a symbiosis of:
- The Incredible Zombie Machine (http://www.sothisisacomic.com/Zombie/zomb3.html)
- the outbreak "rules" pictured in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead
- Scott Tunstall's Zombie AI
- The default OFP squad control system
!!! It's essential that you really utilize the tutorial you can find in the briefing
!!! Also you should be(come) an advanced AI squad leader
Story:
As the dead start to walk the earth, rescue centers are build to save the living.
Your national guard unit is also mobilized, but badly equiped, as help is needed everywhere. You are a platoon leader, and were deployed at Sarugao by ship with your platoon. That was in the early evening. The last hours were used to improvise a rescue center of the old military habour. - All military installations on the island are long abandoned.
Now, after the rescue center is build, you are ready to start the evacuation of the island. You are in command, and choose to accompany your 1st squad, which is supposed to search the settlements for civilians. 2nd squad organizes the transport when survivors are found, 3rd squad and HQ are maintaining the rescue center.
Technical:
- You shouldn't play this mission with an old PC.
- Disable highquality replacement mods (ECP ect.) to gain more resources if necessary.
- Evacuated civilians are deleted, but resurrected civilians/zombies start walking around. So successfull evacs will help your PC, too.
I'm serious when calling it a simulation. It's like all those flightsims, most people can't spot the fun anymore, if they play it on "ultra realistic" settings.
My mission seems to have a big problem to suck people into it, that are not much interested into zombies, and/or don't have at least a little bit of real military background knowledge. I'll try to descripe what I'm talking about in short:
The zombie fan (or even a zombie enemy) might say:
I've seen/played all things zombie before. Everytime it's only about small rooms, low on ammo, escape. I would like to know how this would be in a more realistic open terrain enviroment. Damn, an army should get such a problem under control in no time, so I don't have to fear this zombie fiction.
The military background thing:
(In short: Make do with what you've got.)
Your busy superior: ...Lieutenant your mission in this worldwide state of emergency is to evacuate all the civilian survivors on Sarugao island. Situation on this small, unimportant island is unknown, we have no contact. Here's an island map, your platoon will be deployed by ship. Set up the rescue center at the old military habour and get on it. Good Luck!...
So many of the things you don't like are intentionally
- Most of the time a soldier will have to work with maps, and not by knowing the area of operations. (unknown island)
- Many operations are dull and uneventfull, and most of the soldiers prefer this I think.
- Communications on the island are broken down, thats why the evacuation has to be supervised like this.
- This mission is a big scale evacuation simulation not a big scale zombie hunt. (so yes, the overall mission is a bit "empty" and doesn't try to entertain hollywood like (simulation again))
- No one really cares if a soldier survives a mission or not, but if he survives and wasn't successful someone will care...
(I want to say: This mission is about how many civilians you can evacuate, not how cool you fight off zombies that might attack your squad. The survivors are the ones in real danger, not your soldiers.)[/list]
It looks like the mission plays like I wan't it, but I'll have a problem to find interested players for it. - Any thoughts on how to interested the normal ofp player for it, without him being frustrated by the dullness/difficulty he'll find in this mission?
Hints
This is a small manual for the new things you will discover in this mission.
Everything in short:
- Search all locations for survivors
- Contact their leaders to start an evac (use the actionmenu and the map, prefer open spaces as evac sites!)
- The rescue center is always there for refitting
- Mission ends when all 175 survivors are rescued or dead
- Playtime is around two hours
Enjoy your strategic freedom!
- Hurry the evacs or play it safe
- Sacrifice groups of survivors if you like to
- Disperse your squad over the whole island or not
- Try to eliminate the zombies or not
But in the end
- Measure your success by the number of rescued survivors! (max score 17500)
Hide their bodies to prevent resurrection.in the tutorial.
Lol, there are multiple convoys! Ever tried pressing next an extra time. ;)??? I don't understand your line at all, sorry. :)
@MachoMan ??? I don't understand your line at all, sorry. :)I was refering to bardosy's post. There are two humvee convoys, right?
Choose open areas, like the ones marked in this image for best evac results...
P I C T U R E (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dxdshot11229095615bw.jpg)
(The evaczone selected on the screenshot always worked fine for me at San Alto)
I hope this image will help everybody with ai evacs that get stuck.
The evac script is very detailed, and I'm 99% sure the ai is able to handle evacs in areas like this. Optimal is to have enough space for two HMMWVs turning around when returning to base. Even space for 1 1/2 should be ok. (The second is scripted to hold until the first found its way back)
Also make sure you won't block the evaczone with your men or cars.
In advance: You didn't do a single map click to finish the evac call, thats all.
Good places for evac sites...Would anything like "Examples for "open spaces"..." be more clear?
the picture itself is misconceivedI SO missed the point of all this evac business.
After calling in the evac, single click in an open area near the civilian's location. An orange marker will appear indicating where the HMMWV's will stop.
Was this misconceiving caused by bad english?Partly, also I'm guilty of "scanning" the text instead of reading it. If anything you've been a little too descriptive, explaining everything apart from what actually happens. ;)
(Be smart, you know AI drivers)Yes I do. ;)
You've got no shotgun, because I don't believe they are standard issue US National Guard weaponsThis is no "normal" situation though eh? ;)
OLDOk?
3. Single click on the map to select coordinates for the evac.
(Be smart, you know the AI drivers)
An orange marker appears.
NEW
3. Single click on the map to select an open area for the pick up.
An orange marker appears.
ALSO CHANGED
Defination of "open area"...
-mapscreenshot-
Keep it simple, stupidAgreed, bear in mind that I sent you that after my own misconceptions about the mission. I now get it, this needs a couple of plays to see if the convoy is consistent.
The shotgun...This was more in jest than seriousness. Don't worry about this, the last play I had required more of the Hummer MG than any fire I could provide.
Almost everyone made the mistake to only scan the tutorial at first. But I'm sure that's a major problem with all long briefings.This is a tricky one to manage. You want to provide as much information as possible but the player just wants to get stuck in. I found having a lot of fluff like:
A) Concept of operation. The 3rd platoon will evacuate all civilian survivors at 2315. 1st squad will search the settlements and establish contact to coordinate the evacuations. 2nd squad is on-call at base and will execute the evacuations. 3rd squad and platoon headquarters are maintaining the base.
B) Missions for subordinate units:
1) 1st squad will support any civilians in danger.
2) 2nd squads priority is to gurantee security of the evac convoys.
3) Corpses have to be disposed.
Service Support.
A) Supply. Standard issue NBC protective gear and one flashlight per man. Additional ammo can be received at base during mission. HMMWV C-11 and C-12 are allocated to 1st squad. They will carry additional first-aid kits. HMMWV C-21, C-22, C-23 and C-24 are allocated to 2nd squad.
B) Maintenance. A workshop is located at base.
C) Medical. Medical support is located at base.
Command and Signal.
A) Command. I will be with the 1st squad, and the platoon sergeant will be at base. Succession of command is SOP.
B) Signal:
1) AlphaRed - Platoon Leader (me)
2) DeltaGreen - 1st evac convoy
3) DeltaBlue - 2nd evac convoy
If you have some more really good pointers about the briefing go onCan't guarantee they will be really good pointers but I'll try. ;)
The end...Needs ending. I may be alone on this but I'll stick to my corner anyway. ;) I really think the player needs to end this himself, just having the thing end on it's own is like someone serving you a fantastic, tasty meal and just as you're thinking you're going to struggle to finish it, they walk up and take your plate away. ???
there is no way for the scripts to tell if the player is sure about all the civilian survivorsThat is a real shame. How are you doing it at the moment then?
IMO an average result for completing it the first time.Pah!
- Mission ends on your command. You decide when it is pointless to continue the evacuation.
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But in the end...
measure your success by the number of rescued survivors:
Maximum score is 17500, also you can get +1000 bonus points for killing all zombies.
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End Mission:
You'll have to end the mission yourself, if you're sure that you evacuated all survivors. Only survivors that reached the rescue center are taken into account for scoring.
Eliminating all zombies before, will give you a little bonus of 1000 points.
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You can't cancel an evac! Even if you reload the automatic savegame, you are stuck evacuating the selected civ group.
It will only help you to select a better evaczone for them, where the evac HMMWVs won't get stuck.
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If you swap squad weapons on the field, everyone will only receive the default magazine loadout for the swapped weapons.
The only civil weapon supported is the Glock.
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Definition of "open places"... (a picture subtitle)
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no ammunition available for these firearms (ingame message)
2nd Beta Version Release
2nd Beta is planed as the last version before the final release. Main goal is the detection of any last bugs that escaped notice until now.
Also my proofreader has no time at the moment. I would appreciate if someone will have a special look at my english for the "Hints" page in briefing. - Or do it right here, at reply #13.
New in 2nd Beta:
- computer voices replaced with human voice actors
- moving mapmarkers for evac convoys
- improved briefing/tutorial
- overview picture shadow
- slightly reduced init lag
- a few, small bug fixes
- improved readme
- two advertisement pics added to the zip
Mirrors:
Rapidshare (http://rapidshare.de/files/5415305/zos_b2.zip.html)
or
Mirror with bandwithlimit - Please try the other first. (http://home.arcor.de/ofptrapper/misc/zos_b2.zip)
- Mission ends on your command. You decide when it is pointless to continue the evacuation.
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But in the end...
measure your success by the number of rescued survivors:
Maximum score is 17500, also you can get +1000 bonus points for killing all zombies.
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Status / End Mission:
Opens the evacuation list.
Evacuations are logged automaticly, but you are able to change status "unknown" to "dead".
You'll have to end the mission yourself, if you're sure that you evacuated all survivors. Only survivors that reached the rescue center are taken into account for scoring.
Eliminating all zombies before, will give you a little bonus of 1000 points.
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You can't cancel an evac! Even if you reload the automatic savegame, you are stuck evacuating the selected civ group.
It will only help you to select a better evaczone for them, where the evac HMMWVs won't get stuck.
-----
If you swap squad weapons on the field, everyone will only receive the default magazine loadout for the swapped weapons.
The only civil weapon supported is the Glock.
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Definition of "open places"... (a picture subtitle)
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no ammunition available for these firearms (ingame message)