ARMA 3

Toonces · July 23, 2015, 10:03:29 PM

Oh man, ARMA 3 overload!

So I have (had) about 200k in cash in-game. I hooked up my HOTAS and since I have money to burn I've been doing nothing the last three days but flying helos in KOTH. What a blast. I play on the standard flight model, not the advanced model. Still, with the full HOTAS, I find each of the helos handles very differently and it does take some skill to fling them around. I'm just now, after about 15 hours of flight time, getting able to hit my intended landing spot on my first try about 50% of the time. It's not easy. My biggest problem is trying to bring the helo to a stop on a dime, and they just don't handle that way at full tilt.

Anyway I decided it was time to go all-in on the DLC and I picked up the bundle with helos and marksman. So far I've only flown the Huron but what a fun time. I am just loving the helos in this game. The Huron is very heavy and doesn't fling anything like the hummingbird, but it's a solid 100km/h faster and it climbs like anything.

I had a couple of really neat experiences. On one run I bought a hummingbird and there didn't seem to be anybody on opfor running AAA or SAMs so I basically used the same helo for about 1:30 running nothing but round trips dropping players off into the warzone. I don't know why, but I found it strangely fun and it never got boring.

I had a couple of runs in the Ghosthawk with guys who stuck around to gun for me in the side machine guns. That was a blast. I got a good set of tracks set up and just flung the helo down them over and over and the guys who were gunning were racking up kills like crazy. Awesome stuff.

Took up a Pawnee for a solid 3 re-loads and got a ton of kills on my own before I finally got shot down.

Lastly, I parachuted in as infantry after I got shot down. Came across a damaged helo on the battlefield, repaired it with my engineer perk and then flew it out of there. Ran a load of troops in, and on the way I saw a guy wounded awaiting help. Dropped off my troops, backtracked to the guy who was underwater just off the beach. Landed the helo on the beach, swam out to the guy, revived him, swam back to my helo and was about to head back to base when Opfor won the round and the match ended. Still, I thought that was pretty damn cool to do so much in one mission.

I actually prefer more goal-oriented stuff. Like, if someone is wounded in an off-the-wall place I'm happy to go out of my way, land, heal the guy, and then give him a lift back to the action. It just adds more to the whole experience.

At any rate, tonight it was pretty glitchy for some reason, and they had several server resets so I lost about 10k worth of helos for no good reason. I have enough cash to float it, though. I can earn 10k in about an hour of playing so no big deal.

Whew! O0

Bardolph · July 23, 2015, 11:20:14 PM

Have you noticed a performance drop? We took a little break from iRacing the other evening and jumped into our usual Sa-Matra KoTH server and I was getting terrible frame rates compared to what I got back when we were playing all the time. Wondered if they had patched the mission files or something.
Sa-Matra Wasteland also seemed a bit laggier, but not as severely as KoTH was.

Skoop · July 24, 2015, 10:46:20 AM

I love flying helos in arma 3 too, in fact it's my vehicle of choice. The helos are good enough now that you can almost use it like a helo combat sim, it's now taken the place of eech and I've deleted that. My only beef with arma helos is that they have not made it so the AI will fly for you and you can be gunner. If you order an Ai to the pilot seat they just sit there idlling. You can't give them any commands like fly here and hover or go there and hover. The gunner seat is awesome in arma, but you can only truely use it in mp so it's a drag because you can't always find a person that will fly you around and let you be their gunner.

Jack Nastyface · July 24, 2015, 11:32:48 AM

It's good to hear other folks are needing to practice with the helos. I figured I would be able to jump in and dance around in a hummingbird, but that just ain't so.

Toonces · July 24, 2015, 01:34:34 PM

I hear you Skoop. I've been flying some helos with the door guns and I'm always looking for guys in MP who want to stick around and gun for me after I make my drop. I'm happy to run back and forth through the AO shooting things up if the guy in the seat is willing to stay there.

Conversely, I got in a guy's helo the other night in the gun and was gunning away and he kicked me out. I asked him to let me stay in and I'd just gun for him and he said, "NO! GET OUT!" and just sat there until I disembarked. I guess he really needed that tactical insertion XP or something.

RE: Lag. Yes, it was super laggy for me last night. They kept resetting the servers and I lost about 10k in helos from server resets alone. It was super glitchy. I just finished a match going infantry only and make 16k in about an hour, so I am back to my starting point money-wise and can afford more helos tonight. The lag wasn't bad, but since I was only playing as infantry I don't have a good frame of reference.

Father Ted · July 25, 2015, 04:43:00 AM

Saw "you" last night Toonces. I had the usual KOTH experience of being shot down/killed in chute several times before finally making it to the combat zone alive. Once there I managed to find you, but was then promptly splattered all over the road by somebody in a gunship.

Jarhead0331 · August 01, 2015, 10:54:59 AM

Very excited for this new sandbox.

undercovergeek · August 01, 2015, 02:30:11 PM

Saw that - looks great

Skoop · August 01, 2015, 02:31:59 PM

Looks awesome, only negative thing I hope they address is the terminator AI able to see through trees like they have xray vision. Otherwise this will be a great addition, especially pvp.

Jarhead0331 · August 01, 2015, 04:21:57 PM

Quote from: Skoop on August 01, 2015, 02:31:59 PM
Looks awesome, only negative thing I hope they address is the terminator AI able to see through trees like they have xray vision. Otherwise this will be a great addition, especially pvp.

I haven't really experienced that in ARMA 3. I felt like the AI had more of an advantage before I upgraded to a better gfx card. With ultra settings and high frame rates, its a whole different experience. Much easier to spot and hit man sized targets.

Skoop · August 02, 2015, 09:54:12 AM

It's not me spotting and hitting them, it's them spotting me through foliage that I cant, that's the problem. It's been an issue all the different arma games. I wonder if they don't tackle this because it will nerf the ai, I notice they are not so much in terminator mode when we're in urban environments with hard cover present.

jomni · August 02, 2015, 05:15:40 PM

Quote from: Skoop on August 02, 2015, 09:54:12 AM
It's not me spotting and hitting them, it's them spotting me through foliage that I cant, that's the problem. It's been an issue all the different arma games. I wonder if they don't tackle this because it will nerf the ai, I notice they are not so much in terminator mode when we're in urban environments with hard cover present.

Sneaking is possible. They only become "alert" when you are spotted and they will never forget you. If you go hiding, they will keep eyes on your hiding place, shoot at your, send flankers to flush you out. This gives you the feeling that they know where you are. I think it's fair and challenging.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/107410/discussions/0/864971765521456772/?l=french

Toonces · August 09, 2015, 11:36:41 AM

Not sure if you guys have seen this, it looks uber-cool:

It's basically a mod that gives you far more control over your AI teammates. I am still wrapping my head around it, but the video sure looks cool and the feedback in the forums looks positive. I think, combined with Voice Attack, this could be totally epic. I'm taking a look at some of the tutorials now, but this looks like it might be worth investing the time in to master.

Linky: http://steamcommunity.com/app/107410/

Jarhead0331 · August 09, 2015, 02:40:08 PM

^Very impressive.

Skoop · August 11, 2015, 03:10:05 PM

I tried it, I felt like it was a little hard to get it set up properly because it relies on you setting up custom hotkeys. But it does look very promising, especially in mout operations and having ai set up and clear houses. It's a wip, this version in the video is actually a newer version than the one I tried. One key thing the dev mentioned was Looking into commands for ai as pilots using this ui.