(Review Completed) [SP/A3] BOBCAT v1.3 Final

[Gruntage]

'Ello everyone! It's been a while but I've finally got a mission ready for release. It's only been 11 years but who's counting 



Version: 1.3 Final
Type : Single Player
Island: Sefrou-Ramal
Time of Day: Night/Early Dawn
Weather: Moderate fog, dry

DLC Required: Western Sahara (other DLCs will give you access to other weapons etc, like Marksmen).

*NOTE: This mission has NOT been tested with AI enhancing mods. These mods could cause unwanted behaviour. Use mods at your own risk.

Download: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3036685614


Description: SAS Team Sabre are tasked with destroying key enemy assets at the airfield in Sefrou-Ramal province, Argana.

This mission was designed to blend Arma 3 with stealth elements from games such as Splinter Cell. The result is an immersive, atmospheric and tension-filled mission that requires patience and attention to detail.

Features:

- Choice of infiltration method
- 30 minutes of custom soundtrack
- Around 1 hour of gameplay
- Random Objectives and placement
- Random quantities of enemy patrols
- Random placement of enemy patrols
- Ability to shut down power and remove base lighting to give the player a slight advantage
- Fully voiced cinematics
- Improved AI detection and behaviour, including but not limited to:
   - Dead Body Detection
   - Checking for suspicious activity, such as opening of doors, shots being fired
   - Ability to shoot flares when alerted to player's presence
   - AI conversations when player is close

Changelog:

V1.1

- Reduction in AI dialogue volume
- Adjustment to flares script; the flares were appearing too soon
- Beta testers added
- Bug with satchel charges fixed
- Extra information added to briefing and tasks for clarity
- Minor visual hotfixes in outro

V1.15

- Slight rewording in briefing
- Addition of hints for drone usage
- No longer possible to shoot friendlies in the FOB without punishment (sorry Inlesco  )

V1.15 Hotfixes

- Civilian truck now locked
- Campbell is no longer immune to damage
- All choppers are now locked
- Campbell cannot be dragged on the floor
- Player's stamina increased slightly
- Ambient radio messages from air support are now conditional on whether there are enemy vehicles still intact at the airfield

V1.2 Beta

- Addition of a selection of satellite images accessible via the action menu in-game to provide a little extra intel for the mission

V1.2 Beta (Hotfixes)

- Minor corrections to player addactions (addactions were accidentally being duplicated or not being removed)
- Minor fix to briefing (missing word)

V1.3 Final

- Generator shutoff mechanic simplified and fixed...shouldn't trigger the alarm when used
- There are now consequences for shooting out lights in the base. If enemies are close to any lamps being shot at, they
   will respond and the alarm be raised. This was a better alternative than simply making lights indestructible.
- The briefing detail concerning enemy night vision equipment has been clarified
- Detonation range corrected from 600m to 300m in briefing
- Claymore, AT Mines, APERS Mines, APERS Bounding Mines, Tripwire Mines and SLAM Mines added to 'FIRED' exception
  list; allowing player to place these without the alarm being triggered upon placement
- Nearly all empty vehicles have been locked for player use
- Enemy patrolling MARID waypoints synced to prevent queuing
- Minor adjustments briefing concerning friendly attacks on the airfield
- Updates to BETA testers
- Minor adjustments to intro cinematic for better timings and fadeouts
- Task location for the 'Destroy AA' task has been fixed (by using modules rather than scripting commands)
- Adjustment to one enemy patrol group location. The group was previously patrolling along a dirt path and
  occcasionally would get run over by an APC; triggering the body detection and subsequently the alarm. The group has
  been moved away from the road to prevent this from happening.
- Slight increase to patrol count outside the airfield
- Leaders of enemy patrol groups outside the airfield have been given night vision goggles to increase threat and
  difficulty. Testing by myself has not resulted in a huge surge in difficulty, but this can be amended if others find it too
  punishing
- Addition of tower sentry in Al Mahbes village
- Addition of additional patrol group between Al Mahbes village and airfield.

v1.3 (Hotfixes)

- Generator shutoff action should no longer appear during the shutoff animation
- AI animations restored (they were accidentally removed when I saved the mission without 3DEN Enhanced)
- Minor adjustments to FOB buildings to ensure all are locked

Known Bugs:
- For some reason, when save games are loaded an error message may pop up stating that an image is missing from the mission. The image in question is in the mission folder in the directory that the game says it's not. Not sure how this can be fixed. It doesn't affect gameplay though.
- Animations in cinematics exhibit occasional freezing (not sure how or why this happens); not serious but could damage immersion
- FPS drops during parts of the mission (this is discussed below, hopefully what you experience won't be anywhere near as bad as what I've had)

Author's Notes

So as I mentioned this is the first mission that I've managed to get into a releasable state. A lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into the mission and it's in a state that I'm fairly proud of. Whilst I have been very thorough in my own testing (I'm extremely pedantic), it is possible that there are bugs that I've missed. This mission has been play tested close to 50 times and I haven't come across anything gamebreaking; the mission is very simple in its structure. Though that's not to say that there is no complexity.

Unfortunately during the course of developing this mission I've run into many performance issues and sadly some persist in this build. This mission isn't particularly big but you may experience FPS drops at points, particularly later in the mission when the bullets start flying. There isn't much I can advise here other than possibly reducing your graphics settings should you need to. This is something I've had to do as my PC is no longer the cutting edge machine it once was (it's 6 years old and needs updating).

It's for the above reasons that I'm tentative about adding more content to the mission as it will only exacerbate the performance issues. The mission has been trimmed back multiple times to try to improve performance. Hopefully you guys won't have the same issues I've had in playing.

Despite all this however, I do think the mission is an enjoyable experience and worth playing. I don't make missions for myself, but rather for other people to play. So hopefully you'll like it.

In terms of strategy, I won't give too much away at this time. However, what I will say is make sure you read the briefing, have patience, be careful with your movement and avoid light sources. That is of course assuming that you'll take the stealthy approach  . Dead bodies can be dragged using the action menu in order to hide them from view.

Credits:
- Dead Body detection by The Futurist
- Jukebox script by Celery
- Animation recording functions by HLF
- Drag body script by H8ermaker
- Music score by Alexandre Desplat, Lorne Balfe, Avery Alexander and Scott Buckley

I hope you enjoy what I've put together!

Regards,
Gruntage
 

[Inlesco]

Congratulations on the release, Gruntage! Will be testing this out in the upcoming week!

[Undeceived]

I'm in too! Looking forward to play it.

Edit:

Jukebox script by Celery

A classic. Simple and effective!

[Undeceived]

Ok, I tested it yesterday night. As written in the SW, it's a great mission! 

Some smaller things I noticed:

The voices (soldiers and the officers at the meeting) are too loud. I thought they were just next to me but they were still about 50 or more meters away. I guess that a realistic volume would be too low, but you could tune it down a bit anyway.

The flares came to fast, IMO. Maybe a randomization would be an idea. 5 to 30 seconds or so.

At the end of the outro sequence, where the group is standing at the chopper, they all have the same face.

Another thing in the ending cutscene: There were no beta testers listed. Only "Beta testing by:"

A small suggestion for the briefing: Add a small line that you start as lone wolf. This wasn't clear until I read that unit 2 can join you. It could be that there is such a line, if yes, then put it more to the start of the briefing.

This might be an AI or Arma thing but: When putting big satchel charges (I used them for one the choppers) the alarm is raised, even without LOS. The smaller explosive charges worked well. Perhaps you could remove the satchels as finding this out, took me a while.

Other than that the mission seems to be solid, didn't find any bugs or showstoppers.

Ah, I started with the civilian insertion.

[Gruntage]

Hi man, thanks very much for the feedback!

The voices (soldiers and the officers at the meeting) are too loud. I thought they were just next to me but they were still about 50 or more meters away. I guess that a realistic volume would be too low, but you could tune it down a bit anyway.

Yep, will tune the volume down a bit FIXED

The flares came to fast, IMO. Maybe a randomization would be an idea. 5 to 30 seconds or so.

Good point; will increase the time FIXED
 

At the end of the outro sequence, where the group is standing at the chopper, they all have the same face.

Haha! I hadn't noticed that. Will change FIXED

Another thing in the ending cutscene: There were no beta testers listed. Only "Beta testing by:"

Yeah this was intentionally done until I had names to add. Now I do  FIXED

A small suggestion for the briefing: Add a small line that you start as lone wolf. This wasn't clear until I read that unit 2 can join you. It could be that there is such a line, if yes, then put it more to the start of the briefing.

I think there might be some text explaining that already somewhere but I'll make it more prominent if so. FIXED

This might be an AI or Arma thing but: When putting big satchel charges (I used them for one the choppers) the alarm is raised, even without LOS. The smaller explosive charges worked well. Perhaps you could remove the satchels as finding this out, took me a while.

I hadn't noticed that while testing but it sounds like an Arma thing unfortunately. I'll remove the satchels as they're not needed; explosive charges do fine. I tend to use the drone to deal with the optional objectives personally. FIXED

Once again, thanks very much for your feedback. I was worried there would be a showstopper I'd missed 

Thanks,
Gruntage

EDIT: Actually, I just realised what the issue with the satchel charges might be. I have a script that checks whether what weapon the player 'shoots' with to see if it's unsuppressed or not (the alarm sounds if not), and I have a line that allows the usage of explosive charges but not satchels. Placed explosives are classed as 'fired' weapons in eventhandlers. That's a mistake on my part and easily fixed. Sorry about that. Oops 

[Undeceived]

On your edit: That's great! I went with the satchels at first because they are more powerful. As I didn't sabotage the electricity I didn't dare to sneak closer to the second chopper (where the two guards look at). So I took the more powerful satchels to destroy it from more distance. If you'd fix this then it would enhance the quality of the mission because you have more possibilities to solve a problem (if the satchels can destroy it from some meters away, of course).

Ah, forgot one thing: What is it with the drone? Did I oversee it in the briefing? When does it come into play?

[Gruntage]

Yeah adding a line to 'exclude' satchels from the unsuppressed weapon script should be easily done.

As for the drone, it comes in when the AA has been destroyed. There's a radio line that says 'there's a drone on standby to use at your discretion, Sabre'. You can use the drone to quickly destroy enemy vehicles and the other objectives, including the guys at the tower. You have to make sure you switch on the laser first or the missiles won't work. The drone was added to basically be a reward or payoff for the player having done his job.

I'm not sure if I've included a line in the briefing about the drone but I can add it in if not.

[Undeceived]

Ok, got it. However I'm still unsure about this part / feature. At least from my playthrough I got the impression that when the AA is destroyed then the mission is basically over. That the player has to try to complete all secondary objectives before the big boom (due to the alarm, combat mode of the soldiers, etc.). Could be that I misunderstood something here, but obviously with such a plan in mind it doesn't make sense to offer the UAV when the only thing left is to exfil. I didn't think that I could be able to complete secondary goals after the alarm raises, the idea to use the drone for the officers hasn't cross my mind.

This probably leads to the question how I did it with the officers. It really took me a while. My first plan was to storm the meeting which resulted in alarm. Then I climbed on another building to take them out from the distance. The alarm was raised after that too though, so I wanted to combine this with blowing up the AA, commanding the other team members to do the same and to get out of there somehow. I had to trigger the bombs anyway because the choppers would lift off as well. So the only way I saw was to complete the mission and break through somehow.
Turned out that getting out of there alive (I was not far the air control tower when the shit hit the fan) didn't quite work or would be hard as hell but eventually I sniped all five guys on the tower in such a perfection and speed that the alarm wasn't raised. This enabled me to get out of there first and find a good spot outside the base to watch the fireworks unharmed.

This is how I played it. And as I said, after that of course the UAV didn't make sense anymore.

What if you offered the UAV right at mission start already? I know, the AA is a problem, but maybe the drone is so high tech that the AA can't detect it from the distance? I don't know.

The alternative could be to make it more clear in the briefing that the secondary objectives can also be completed after the AA is taken out. However it's illogical to expect that these highly ranked officers would just stay put as sitting ducks in the tower when there are explosions all around them. They'd probably hide somewhere else in the building (which makes the UAV useless unless you have a hell of a bomb that flattens the whole building (which however would make the airport useless for the allied forces, big collateral damage)). Or they'd haul ass in these fancy cars of theirs. Maybe you could even use the drone to intercept them on their escape route (with the option of failure if of they make it away from the region). 
Here of course there could be a new problem: Why wouldn't the choppers and planes shoot the crap out of the cars (which would make the UAV unneeded)? Well the answer could be that they're too busy with the tanks that are still a thread to the planes. This way there could be the need for the drone operator to get the job done.

A small thought on my briefing related suggestions: It could of course be that the things that I missed in the briefing could already be there. In that case sorry. Maybe this helps anyway to optimize it even more a little bit, as you have to do everything from the perspective of the DPP (dumbest possible player). :⁠-⁠P

Edit: Guess it's called BDU in proper English...

[Gruntage]

Ok, got it. However I'm still unsure about this part / feature. At least from my playthrough I got the impression that when the AA is destroyed then the mission is basically over. That the player has to try to complete all secondary objectives before the big boom (due to the alarm, combat mode of the soldiers, etc.). Could be that I misunderstood something here, but obviously with such a plan in mind it doesn't make sense to offer the UAV when the only thing left is to exfil. I didn't think that I could be able to complete secondary goals after the alarm raises, the idea to use the drone for the officers hasn't cross my mind.

I mean, I'm not opposed to removing the drone from the mission since it's not an integral part of it. It never struck me as an aspect that didn't make sense. Maybe I'm missing something obvious here. It always seemed like a neat tool for the player to use when the AA was destroyed in order to do more damage, rather than opting for the stealth approach the whole time. During development, I think I asked myself why wouldn't a drone be part of the mission once the AA was destroyed, and I couldn't see a reason why there wouldn't be. It seemed like the kind of thing that people would ask for during testing, and honestly, I couldn't think of a good argument for why a drone couldn't appear when the 'skies are clear', so to speak. But maybe that's because I haven't thought about it enough.

I'll think I'll wait on what other people think about it before removing it. But as I said, it's not a big deal for it to be removed.

This probably leads to the question how I did it with the officers. It really took me a while. My first plan was to storm the meeting which resulted in alarm. Then I climbed on another building to take them out from the distance. The alarm was raised after that too though, so I wanted to combine this with blowing up the AA, commanding the other team members to do the same and to get out of there somehow. I had to trigger the bombs anyway because the choppers would lift off as well. So the only way I saw was to complete the mission and break through somehow.
Turned out that getting out of there alive (I was not far the air control tower when the shit hit the fan) didn't quite work or would be hard as hell but eventually I sniped all five guys on the tower in such a perfection and speed that the alarm wasn't raised. This enabled me to get out of there first and find a good spot outside the base to watch the fireworks unharmed.

I was wondering how you achieved that  . That is impressive. That objective was originally mandatory but was made optional as I even I was struggling with it. The option to do as you did is of course available; the drone just makes it easier. I saw this objective as perhaps being a source of frustration and the drone seemed like a way of solving that. But then you could argue if the officers aren't in the tower then the frustration will happen. 

What if you offered the UAV right at mission start already? I know, the AA is a problem, but maybe the drone is so high tech that the AA can't detect it from the distance? I don't know.

The reason why I wouldn't do that is for two reasons really. The first reason is I think it would be unrealistic; the enemies would react and of course if the drone could fly that high then it raises the question of why bother with having guys on the ground at all.

The second reason is to have the drone flying heigher would mean a player would have to greatly increase their view distance, which could cause lag. I mentioned having performance issues and so I wouldn't be inclined to do anything that would make that worse. Honestly I'd sooner remove the drone than go down this route.

The alternative could be to make it more clear in the briefing that the secondary objectives can also be completed after the AA is taken out. However it's illogical to expect that these highly ranked officers would just stay put as sitting ducks in the tower when there are explosions all around them. They'd probably hide somewhere else in the building (which makes the UAV useless unless you have a hell of a bomb that flattens the whole building (which however would make the airport useless for the allied forces, big collateral damage)). Or they'd haul ass in these fancy cars of theirs. Maybe you could even use the drone to intercept them

I will make it more clear that the optional objectives can be completed at any time. Unfortunately the AI can be both stupid and unpredictable. Sometimes the guys will evacuate the tower, sometimes they don't. Someone might think that if the officers left the tower then the drone automatically becomes useless. I would probably disagree because the drone can still be used to destroy other vehicles that may be hindering the player's escape. Sometimes my route out of the base has been blocked by a Marid or by a Varsuk and the drone is a handy tool to deal with that.

I'm not convinced about the drone one way or another just yet. I think perhaps it's simply a handy tool that makes sense to have when the AA threat is neutralised. Just gives the player another toy to play with to deal more damage if nothing else. Right now it seems that the pros and cons are about equal. But as I said, I don't mind removing the drone at all.

A small thought on my briefing related suggestions: It could of course be that the things that I missed in the briefing could already be there. In that case sorry. Maybe this helps anyway to optimize it even more a little bit, as you have to do everything from the perspective of the DPP (dumbest possible player). :⁠-⁠P

Yeah that's fair enough and I have tried to keep the briefing concise because I know people tend to be put off by a lot of text. I will add in the points about the drone, the optional objectives and the starting as solo.

Thanks for your extensive feedback so far!

EDIT: There is a 'in universe' reason why the officers may not leave the tower and that's that they would need to stay to keep the base organised so that there's a command structure. The tower does offer a good vantage point so the officers can keep tabs on what is going on. Yeah it's a dangerous place to be; I wouldn't want to be in there!  . They might even think that the tower is not likely to be hit because it's too important a structure for the airfield's function.

That's a 'story' reason but the real reason is that they're too dumb to leave 

[Undeceived]

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here.

Not at all, it only doesn't make sense if the player has completed all side objectives before the destruction of the AA. As a disciplined special forces soldier I'd not sit back and enjoy the show too long but rather head out to the exfil right away. And I'd also think that the remaining tanks and vehicles were to be the airboy's job, no need for assistance from my side.

BUT: This is only for my way of playing the mission yesterday. In another situation, e.g. not having killed the officers, then the drone would be very welcome to get the job done.

And if you emphasize a bit more that the secondary goals can be finished after the AA too, then it's already better.

And even if someone plays like I did, maybe it would help if you not just mentioned the drone briefly in that radio sentence (which I did not notice in the explosions and radio chatter of the flyboys) but rather have it more importance. Maybe a hint or optional task or so would already help.

Your reasons for the officers not to leave are good of course. I just hoped that I could get you to completely revamp the project as you did for me in my mission Petrovka Strike.

[Undeceived]

Thanks for your extensive feedback so far!

That goes without saying after the innumerous hours and lines of feedback you have put in my campaign!

[Gruntage]

Not at all, it only doesn't make sense if the player has completed all side objectives before the destruction of the AA. As a disciplined special forces soldier I'd not sit back and enjoy the show too long but rather head out to the exfil right away. And I'd also think that the remaining tanks and vehicles were to be the airboy's job, no need for assistance from my side.

Yeah that's a good point. At that point, the drone would serve only as an extra tool that could be used if the player wants to do more damage for the sake of doing damage. I might be the only one but I do like seeing guided missiles hit targets from a long distance away 

And even if someone plays like I did, maybe it would help if you not just mentioned the drone briefly in that radio sentence (which I did not notice in the explosions and radio chatter of the flyboys) but rather have it more importance. Maybe a hint or optional task or so would already help.

Yeah agreed. I admit I thought the radio was enough BUT then I knew the drone was there as I made the mission    . Sometimes I forget to see things from a different player's point of view.

Your reasons for the officers not to leave are good of course. I just hoped that I could get you to completely revamp the project as you did for me in my mission Petrovka Strike.

I was wondering if you were gonna bring that up at any point  . You're never gonna let me off the hook are ya 

That goes without saying after the innumerous hours and lines of feedback you have put in my campaign!

Hey it was my pleasure  . It was great fun playing and it had been a long time since I'd gotten excited about anyone's campaign.

[Gruntage]

New version uploaded after a few minor fixes. The briefing has received the most changes; more information has been added for clarity. I have no issues with adding more information if needed though.

The alarm script has also received a couple of changes. The flares now appear after a short, random amount of time ( 10 + (random 10) for those interested). Also, Sabre 3 will express his frustration after the alarm begins rather than before ( that was a mistake I forgot to remedy).

It's worth noting that flares will only appear if the player is near enemy troops, otherwise who would be firing the flares  . Just something to bear in mind for those wanting to test this aspect out.

Thanks and hope you all enjoy the mission! 

[Undeceived]

Tested it again. This time I went with the HALO insertion and took Sabre 2 with me. Sabotaged the lights too.

The briefing is better now. One thing still jumps at me, sorry... The last sentence in "Maintaining stealth" seems to contradict the sentence that you can use the drone after the AA is destroyed. Maybe this is exagerated too, I can't remember what was written there to be honest.

Other than that it might be just me but Sabre 2 wasn't much of use or needed. I parked him somewhere and continued on my own, getting to the objectives. However, when the alarm was raised and the show began, he took out some enemies from his position. And on the way back I took him with me and he got some there as well. So saying that he wasn't of use might be too hard. Let's say that it didn't give me thaaaat big advantage. But it's not a big deal.

This time I let me be spotted on purpose and tried to shoot my way through. This was, as it is often in Arma, full of action but also frustration (which is not your fault ). The AI is quite good though. Or I'm just bad, but I had the impression that their reaction and shooting was a bit too fast / too good.

I also noticed that the performance of the mission gets quite bad when the action starts. At first I had only 20 FPS while before I had around 40. A little later it then climbed up to 25 or so - this was better.

When aiming without the NVGs, there is a red tint over the screen, this might be an Arma bug. It comes, when you don't use the zoomed in scope mode. I'm talking about the normal scope here, not the thermal one.

And to finish my small report, I have an idea, for the case you want to add something. After all you declare the mission still as Alpha
You could add some civilians here and there (very few, maybe one for each infiltration mode). E.g. on / at that tower in the village where you start or a goat shepard. And if you stumble into them, they run away, shouting "Americans!" / "The Brits!" or in this case "Westeners" or whatever they call the enemies down there in the Sahara. Then a patrol could head out, searching this area.

And before I forget it: This time I used the drone. Targeted the tower and activated the laser, but then I wasn't sure about what to do next. Spammed some buttons (e.g. the key for command fire in tanks) but I don't know if this made a difference. Eventually two rockets hit the tower and killed everyone inside. Shorly after the drone was destroyed by enemy fire.

So all in all it again was a good and fun playthrough (apart from the dying frustration). Overall I might say that it's a bit easy to infiltrate the airfield. I'm also not sure if I had an advantage by disabling the electricity. It didn't seem to be too hard to get in anyway, even if I had not disabled it. I guess that the player could be motivated enough at the first playthrough to get through a little bit harder challenge, because the mission start is positively atmospheric.

Good luck with the mission, my friend!

[Undeceived]

I edited quite a bit in my last post (in case you already read it).
And a small addition: I liked the changes of the alarm system, good job.