ArmA III Campaign is released

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Yup.  A nice new modpack came out with many of the maps from ArmA II and a lot of the present day US, UK, and Russian weapons.

[JudgeDredd]

I'm going up the hill, find the bino's, see the helicopter landing to my right dropping troops off then I head over to the ruins to try and find supplies - and I'm always getting spotted.

I've played it almost two dozen times and I just either don't have the patience to go slow, or I'm unlucky in that I'm looking around and thinking I'm good to go, only to realise some eagle eyed bugger somewhere has spotted me and then they close in...with no weapons (a pistol?) I'm toast before long.

I loved the first chapter and was really looking forward to the second chapter - but repetition killed it for me...at least for a while. I go on, try a few times, come off, leave it a week or two and get the urge again...

I'll try it again I'm sure - but I'm also pretty sure I'll leave it another few weeks after trying again.

OK. Close to where the mission began, there is a Strider MRAP with two crew. Its on a road on the far edge of the city on the reverse slope of a hill near the coast. I ambushed the crew with my pistol and was able to grab some light gear, but namely a carbine. I had to beat a hasty retreat because nearby mech forces and a patrol boat responded almost immediately.  Anyway, I managed to get away and the carbine helped me clear a few enemies I ran into when working my way around the flank of the city.

Its a tough mission, but it is totally worth persevering through it.

Thanks for that. I spotted them right off the bat and choose, for the majority of my tries to ignore them until I found a weapon (which I thought I would find in the ruins...and didn't). The two times I did try and take them out, the patrol boat engaged me. I guess I might have been in more of a hurry than I should've. I was also a bit dubious about firing off the pistol with all the enemy forces kicking about - so for most of my attempts I was trying to do it sneaky - but got rumbled everytime.

I'll give it another try tonight.

[RyanE]

Yup.  A nice new modpack came out with many of the maps from ArmA II and a lot of the present day US, UK, and Russian weapons.

You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?  I did see that a mod had come out that put a lot of ARMA 2 content in, but there was a lot of discussion about the amount of work to get a lot of them actually working right.

So what are the advantages of 3 over 2, other than more advanced graphics.

[Jarhead0331]

Yup.  A nice new modpack came out with many of the maps from ArmA II and a lot of the present day US, UK, and Russian weapons.

You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?  I did see that a mod had come out that put a lot of ARMA 2 content in, but there was a lot of discussion about the amount of work to get a lot of them actually working right.

So what are the advantages of 3 over 2, other than more advanced graphics.

From a technical standpoint, ARMA 3 is light years improved over ARMA 2. Everything feels better. Movement, weapons handling, combat, etc. Its so much better in this regard that it is hard to go back to ARMA 2, even though it is still generally a really good game in its own right.

[JudgeDredd]

+1

I was thinking how to answer your question - and JH put it exactly how I was trying to formulate a coherent answer

[RyanE]

Thanks for the insight.  I play Arma 2 almost as an RTS wargame.  There were a bunch of really good mods that let you do that.  That is the main reason I am waiting.  I want to see how that plays out.

[Jarhead0331]

Thanks for the insight.  I play Arma 2 almost as an RTS wargame.  There were a bunch of really good mods that let you do that.  That is the main reason I am waiting.  I want to see how that plays out.

There is no question in my mind that ARMA 3 will eventually be just as thoroughly modded as the prior titles. Hang in there. Still, its presently a fabulous game and in my opinion does not really need to be modded in order to get enjoyment out of it. The vehicles and kit are futuristic, but barely. Its not like a sci-fi game. The camo is digital and some of the lines on the vehicles are a bit "sleeker." Otherwise, its still just modern conventional warfare.

By the way...speaking of "sleek," I really hate the look of their modernized "A-10." I think it looks horrible. They should have put in a JSF, or something.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Yup.  A nice new modpack came out with many of the maps from ArmA II and a lot of the present day US, UK, and Russian weapons.

You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?  I did see that a mod had come out that put a lot of ARMA 2 content in, but there was a lot of discussion about the amount of work to get a lot of them actually working right.

So what are the advantages of 3 over 2, other than more advanced graphics.

Here's a shameless cut and paste of Near Blind's excellent post over at SimHQ.

Gameplay Mechanics
Taosenai's Modular Realism
This is a suite of mods that enhance the game in a few ways. It adds weapons resting and bipod simulation, realistic ballistics & recoil for small arms, realistic guidance for the PCML, realistic 2d scopes, and much more. The best part is that you can delete features you don't want (like the scopes for example), and the rest of the mod will run just fine.
http://ryanschultz.org/tmr/

Taosenai's Folding Map
A semi related mod, it's a nice compromise between the in game GPS (which is small and gives a very limited map view) and the map (which forces you to be static and takes up the entire screen).
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?148517-Tao-Folding-Map-2-1

Shacktac Hud & Group Indicator
These are a nifty pair of mods that help improve your situational awareness without feeling too gamey. The HUD gives you a small horizontal situational indicator that gives you an extremely simple compass, and indications of your team size, composition, and relative position. The group indicators  perform a similar function, while toning down the gaminess of the default group indicators.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9936

Blastcore
The simplest way I can describe this is it's Michael Bay mode for arma. It improves most of the action related effects in the game, such as explosions, smoke, fire, bullet dust, etc. All these new particles have a definite performance impact however, so frame rates beware.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=23899

Weapons
Robert Hammer's M4/M16 pack
This pack offers the widest variety of decent quality Stoner creations out there in my opinion. The pack includes the whole M-16 family, the baseline M4 family, as well as a healthy dusting of accessories and goofy variants. The sounds are alright, the models and textures are good for the most part, and seeing familiar weapons does a lot to improve the Arma 3's immersion.
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?167618-RH-M4-M16-pack

Ardvarkdb's Mk-18 pack
If RH's AR-15's aren't operator enough for you, you can scratch your tier-1 itch with the Mk-18 pack (beard sadly not included). It includes the Mk-18 CQBR (Surprise!) and M4A1 SOPMOD 2 rifles favoured by Special Forces in a variety of configurations and paint schemes. These models are superb, and the sounds alright.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=21095

R3F Weapons pack
This is a French mod pack that includes just about every variant of the FAMAS you could ever dream of. It also includes some familiar favourites, such as the FN Minimi (M249 SAW), the AT-4, FIM-92 Stinger, and the Barret M-107 among others. The models and textures aren't the best, but neither are they bad, and the amount of content you get in recompense makes it a worth addition.
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?152761-R3F-French-Weapons-Pack

Massi's NATO SF and Russian weapons
This was one of the first big compilation mods, and offers a great deal of dakka for the aspiring virtual soldier. It probably has a version of almost every weapon I have previously mentioned, and more. The catch is that this mod uses the free assets that were available to it at the time: theArma 1 source models, and their age is very noticeable. You can download and try it, but I ended up passing.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=21912

This list is in no way, shape, or form complete. There are many more out there.

Maps

A3MP
Basically this is a port of most of BI's maps for Arma 2, and all of the objects necessary to run them. The port is 100% total, as quite a few things have changed between engines, and some features have had to be removed to prevent crashes and glitches (ponds), and others just don't work right now (street lights), however it is definitely better than nothing.

The additional upshot is that the object library enables most user created Arma 2 maps to be played on the Arma 3 engine, though due to the aforementioned bugs, your mileage may vary.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=23863

Units
Meatsheild has done some excellent reskins of the BI soldiers, including woodland, desert, and snow for all three in game factions.
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=24906

That said, the amount of unit reskins that have been released in the past year is staggering, and which camouflage is appealing to who is a matter of personal preference. I'll just leave this link and leave the rest up to you.
http://www.armaholic.com/list.php?c=arma3_files_addons_units

Sounds
Sounds are another of those things where preference varies from person to person. As you know, guns are rather noisy. If the video game were to actually simulate them properly we'd all be deaf by now, so anything you get is going to be the "Hollywood" take: how someone thinks they should sound. I personally enjoy the stock BI sounds, but if you don't there are two very high quality sound mods out there for Arma 3.

J.S.R.S
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=22150

Speed of Sound
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=23078

Missions
As I mentioned, the BI campaigns and missions show a surprising amount of polish, and I'd recommend playing them through. The community has also been hard at work, and there are many, many, many user made missions out there for you to try. Getting them is as easy as opening up steam, and using the "workshop" feature. Any missions you subscribe to will automatically be downloaded to your computer, as will any updates if the author as made any.

Alternatively you can download user missions from here.
http://www.armaholic.com/list.php?c=arma3_files_scenarios

[MengJiao]

Yup.  A nice new modpack came out with many of the maps from ArmA II and a lot of the present day US, UK, and Russian weapons.

You wouldn't happen to have a link would you?  I did see that a mod had come out that put a lot of ARMA 2 content in, but there was a lot of discussion about the amount of work to get a lot of them actually working right.

So what are the advantages of 3 over 2, other than more advanced graphics.

From a technical standpoint, ARMA 3 is light years improved over ARMA 2. Everything feels better. Movement, weapons handling, combat, etc. Its so much better in this regard that it is hard to go back to ARMA 2, even though it is still generally a really good game in its own right.

  The thing is, ARMA 2 was a fantastic game and ARMAIII has been spotty in a lot of ways compared to the way ARMA 2 was when I stopped playing it.

   BUT there were some great moments in the ALPHA for me...STRATIS was just such an interesting island!  AND NOW, well I'm just as happy with ALTIS.  But it took a while for me to stop thinking seriously about switching back to ARMA 2.

[Jarhead0331]

^Interesting, Meng...

What, in your opinion, is "spotty" in ARMA3 as compared with ARMA2?

At this point, ARMA2 still has a lot more content than ARMA3, but that is to be expected. Otherwise, from a performance and technical standpoint, I'm not sure how anyone could conclude that the second title is better than the third.

[Skoop]

When the all in arma mod is complete and functional you might finally ditch your arma2.  Supposedly all arma based content is going to be modded to work under arma3.  This means iron front, arma1, and possibly take on helos.

[MengJiao]

^Interesting, Meng...

What, in your opinion, is "spotty" in ARMA3 as compared with ARMA2?

At this point, ARMA2 still has a lot more content than ARMA3, but that is to be expected. Otherwise, from a performance and technical standpoint, I'm not sure how anyone could conclude that the second title is better than the third.

  For me, after this last set of patches, ARMAIII is no longer spotty.  What seemed spotty before was basically that I didn't think the environment on Altis was as interesting as all the places you could go in ARMA 2.  I think now I kind of get what BI has been trying to
do with Altis and the semi-futuristic gear.  Altis is really much more imaginatively filled up than places in ARMA 2, which tended to be
more or less parallel to things as they are now.  Altis is a scary place in a scary future -- which is fine with me.  I think I finally get it.

[jomni]

I played in a nice ARMA3 MP Server the other night. Two opposing human controlled forces. Objective is to capture towns and find the enemy base and destroy it.  Each player has money to build buildings and recruit troops and vehicles under their squad. A pretty nice mode of play if you ask me.

[MengJiao]

^Interesting, Meng...

What, in your opinion, is "spotty" in ARMA3 as compared with ARMA2?

At this point, ARMA2 still has a lot more content than ARMA3, but that is to be expected. Otherwise, from a performance and technical standpoint, I'm not sure how anyone could conclude that the second title is better than the third.

  Well, I had one of my classic, self-inflicted ARMA adventures last night.  Basicly, I set up a basic objective (in this case hold and resupply an airstrip and do some reconnaissance farther inland -- the location is the strip by Ammolfi Bay up north) and then put in lots of AI attacks and so on.
  This time all went well, sort of but in the end the me-player guy was killed in an airstrike, just as the MGs got the plane and the pilot ejected and hit the ground.
   Thenit was switch time and I noticed the crew of the resupply helicoper was still mostly in play.  One was gone but three of the crew including the pilot were somewhere.  So I switched to the pilot and found they were a floating in the bay.  So that little group swam ashore
and made their way cautiously through the debris of battle and some vacation gear all they way up to the plane crash.  So I'm enjoying ARMAIII at least as much as any of the earlier ARMAs.

[JudgeDredd]

I love this game....but I'm really just about burned out on this.

I have tried and tried and tried to get past the first mission in the second chapter and I've never managed more than a couple hundred yards before I'm shot down.

When I hear the crack of gunfire I drop and before I can even get my sights up and on target, I'm taken out...time and time again. I know...I'm belly aching - but I'm not taking the piss when I tell you I've reloaded this scenario more than 3 dozen times and ever single time I'm taken out. The furthest I've got is heading north east onto a hill (just past the first bunch of ruins) before I'm cut down. And I only made that once.

I take the two troops out at the bottom of the hill by the sea and load up with ammo and all the necessary.

I've tried being stealthy. I've tried a mix of stealth and run and I've tried running. I've tried different routes and they all end up the same way - within a couple of seconds of being spotted, I'm spitting blood.

Somehow they just know it's me (even though I'm dressed like them now) and I'm gunned down immediately on being spotted. From near and afar....really quite afar actually. I've got a save just before I take the two out near the sea and that's it. I load up, get moving and die. Reload, start at the sea, shoot, load up, die....and wash, rinse, repeat.

I have hit the wall.  >:(