DR style full conversion arma3 mod discussion

I was going to post in the ascended thread, but I've got a lot in my head.

I have some ideas about what would be needed to make a DR style full conversion mod for A3. 
 
I love DR, everyone here does, and I also love arma.  They are really very different though, every time I play I think about this. In Arma you must spend more time planning and preparing for the operation. Key points being, using concealment and cover to move into a position which will make the odds fall in your favor or using proper weapons for firepower with the element of surprise. All this is done before the first shot is fired. It's very ridged with this, you cant ignore all this prepwork or you will pay for it, and enjoy arma less.
 
Dragon Rising is more about what happens after the first shot is fired. The firefights can't be beat in any game. I really miss this. Don't get me wrong you need solid tactics and planning, but it doesn't require such precision or armament and can be done more on the fly. You can fight your way out of a bad situation. The snobby community would turn their nose at this element. DR community should look at this as a strength. It's what makes DR so flexible and improvisational. This ability adds so much more coop problem solving. In arma, if your in a bad situation, your simply dead man walking, there's likely no way out. Which is as it should be in a sim. 
 

I think if your going to mod DR into A3, we have to understand DR, and what makes it special. It had a crazy development, went through some different phases. It finished as a 4 player COOP, that could be completed in Hardcore Mode (my favorite). Looking back at this fact through arma colored glasses its just amazing. Even though many DR user made missions do sandbox the finished game and AI player interactions where base on this fact. Trying to make a DR style mission in arma has mixed results and doesn't give you that DR feel. Matching enemy numbers and multiple objectives, it quickly becomes tedious. A DR campaign mission faithful remake would be a four hour exhausting affair. Finishing it with 4 players no respawns would be extremely tough or impossible and not much fun. A FTE style mission with 4-5 player work out fine. This still takes atleast twice as long to execute properly. Like I said arma is about armament, large groups, planning, and executing crappy AI. The higher level AI are good, but this takes even more caution. Though I really like playing with high ai, it tough to do on large scale.  

At some point in development DR was pushed into 4 player coop and playtesting showed players feeling unfairly killed, not even knowing where they had been shot from. This is just a everyday feeling in arma. So in my eyes the biggest factor in making a DR am3 mod would be the dispersion shield from Dragon Rising.

This is a 1.4m bubble that surrounds a unit, and blocks incoming bullets, deflecting them off at an ever increasing angle from the center of the bubble. Shots extremely close to the center of the bubble will not be deflected enough to prevent the unit inside from being hit, but the chances that they miss is GREATLY increased.

With this in A3 I could see being able to play and make missions like DR. It's basically a mulligan or do over. It doesn't last long but, it allows for the times you would have felt unfairly killed (ie. unknowingly bump into enemy line of sight, being spotted where you thought you shouldn't, handles some of the problem with threat assessment(everyone fireing on one person at once), thinking your behind cover when your not, general rushing). Overall it allows 4 players to take on a long mission with the possibility of completing it in HARDCORE(no respawns).  It also has a lot to do with the best firefights in any game part.

I know what you might be thinking, but try to ignore the "realism" veil, it's really about coop. I've really come full circle on this Dispersion Shield/DR shield. Anyone who hears about this thinks it's stupid, including me once. You have to check your hardcore card at the door. Because it ultimately allows for something like DR hardcore mode and a more intense mission style. This shield is the single biggest reason the arma community turned on DR, well besides the OFP name. The funny part is that the large part of that community plays respawn/revive with health systems less than DR. The DS is the reason why DR is so flexible.

Most of what I learned about the Dispersion shield has been from Templars postings, forums, and playing. I'm not much of a scripter, so you guys know more than me. But, in my opinion, if this mod is worked on, I would shoot for as close to DR base as can be, then maybe adjusting to feedback or making it what we think it should be. To match this DS the AI need to be pretty good, so I would think max skill level, or even modded. Arma ai is lacking compared to DR, not sure yet if A3 is a big step forward yet. 

Besides that, there are a number of things I think help bring the DR style to arma.

Including....

AI plays (flankleft, flankright, assault, fallback). Nothing like playing cat and mouse in skiras hills. Smoke dropped and they are running left behind hill, you know what to do. Upsmon did a little of this, but not as great. Upsmon AI functions did use empty vehicles much more than standard AI, aswell.
Morale....The ebb and flow to a great firefight (plus you can hear the Chinese cover there heads and cry hoowo....hoooo) this was much more prevalent in console versions.

Let me know your thoughts, I know it's a lot, but I got more.

paul

For anyone who doesn't know what the hell i'm taking about, check this out. Remember, it's not really about AI accuracy.

templar wrote:
Dragon Rising has what is called a DR Blocker, or more commonly known as the Dispersion Shield.
This is a 1.4m bubble that surrounds a unit, and blocks incoming bullets, deflecting them off at an ever increasing angle from the centre of the bubble. Shots extremely close to the centre of the bubble will not be deflected enough to prevent the unit inside from being hit, but the chances that they miss is GREATLY increased.
There are 4 main settings that control the DR Blocker :
--Maximum Effectiveness
--Minimum Effectiveness
--Sustain Time
--Fade Time

When the first bullet hits the blocker, it has a chance to be blocked, controlled by Maximum Effectiveness. Providing that bullets continue to hit the blocker, it will stay at maximum for the Sustain Time. After that time, it will reduce the effectiveness down to Minimum Effectiveness over a period controlled by Fade Time.

Here are the different settings for each configuration in this video :
VANILLA and BASE
--Maximum Effectiveness : 100%
--Minimum Effectiveness : 80%
--Sustain Time : 4 Seconds
--Fade Time : 20 Seconds
IMPROVED DS
--Maximum Effectiveness : 100%
--Minimum Effectiveness : 50%
--Sustain Time : 4 Seconds
--Fade Time : 7 Seconds
EXTREME DS
--Maximum Effectiveness : 100%
--Minimum Effectiveness : 20%
--Sustain Time : 2 Seconds
--Fade Time : 5 Seconds
HARDCORE DS
--Maximum Effectiveness : 80%
--Minimum Effectiveness : 0%
--Sustain Time : 1 Second
--Fade Time : 1 Second

Code:


  <drblock weapon="WEAPON_TYPE_SUBMACHINE_GUN" plyrFilterStart="80.f" plyrFilterEnd="0.f" plyrSustain="4" plyrFade="20" plyrProneFilter="60.f" aiFilterStart="25.f" aiFilterEnd="0.f" aiSustain="4" aiFade="10" />
  <drblock weapon="WEAPON_TYPE_ASSAULT_RIFLE" plyrFilterStart="80.f" plyrFilterEnd="0.f" plyrSustain="4" plyrFade="20" plyrProneFilter="60.f" aiFilterStart="25.f" aiFilterEnd="0.f" aiSustain="4" aiFade="10" />
  <drblock weapon="WEAPON_TYPE_MACHINE_GUN" plyrFilterStart="80.f" plyrFilterEnd="0.f" plyrSustain="4" plyrFade="20" plyrProneFilter="60.f" aiFilterStart="25.f" aiFilterEnd="0.f" aiSustain="4" aiFade="10" />
  <drblock weapon="WEAPON_TYPE_SNIPER_RIFLE" plyrFilterStart="80.f" plyrFilterEnd="0.f" plyrSustain="4" plyrFade="20" plyrProneFilter="50.f" aiFilterStart="25.f" aiFilterEnd="0.f" aiSustain="4" aiFade="10" />


templar wrote:
this is the settings from the "Improved DS" addon for that mod.

the settings are as follows :

plyrFilterStart - this is the starting percentage for the DS filter
plyrFilterEnd - this is the lowest percentage the DS filter can go down to
plyrSustain - this is the amount of time that the filter will stay at the start amount before lowering to end amount
plyrFade - this is the amount of time it takes for the filter to go from start to end, and back again
plyrProneFilter - this is the mininum filter percentage when the player is prone.

the filter is the percentage chance that a bullet that strikes the DR shield will be blocked by the shield, rather than hitting the player and wounding him.

these number are not absolute however, there are a sh*t tonne of modifiers that change the effectiveness (lower the percentage) of the shield. this is why 1 shot from a 50 cal doesnt miss 80% of the time for example.

By default, the players filter does not drop below 80% (base) this is a huge part of why the AI seem to not be able to hit the side of a barn. the changes I made above, meant that the first few shots can be blocked, but the filter will very quickly go all the way down to 0. Unforunately it seems CM has no intention of changing this

I know this idea is very controversial, but I really believe its at the heart of DR. Go into Arma editor and place the same test in desert, make sure skill level is all the way up. It's basically like hardcore ds. Now turn skill level down, it's not like base though. It takes them much longer to locate and once engaged, bullets are really inaccurate but then they zero in and your dead. It looks and plays idiotic. 

I want to play with the full skill lvl ai. but have the ds provide a little more time. In the deleted forums I asked James Nichols during RR development about the DS, he kept explaining it as fairness. DR has very reactive AI, but you can't play with them without some kind of blocker, Arma can be the same(full skill lvl), but without a blocker either your dead or they are = no DR style firefight. So to play with them you must use all that prepwork that I last posted about. This makes arma into a sim not a shooter like DR.

Hoping to get some kind of response..

I can't really give a positive or negative response tbh, I've never really paid much attention to the dispersion system in both games. As soon as I here shooting, I'm that reactive, I hit the deck, crawl, cover and fire back if I can.

Basically IMO, I think DR/Arma should have a dispersion system more like DR because the fights can get pretty brutal. But in saying that, I've played around with some pretty funky AI in Arma and I've paid more attention to the way you get flanked and out thought by them. I prefer this type of AI thinking tbh, because it does make them autonomous and give them a mind of their own and use the terrain against you. 

If there dispersion is erratic, I'm not wholly bothered really, as long as they put up a good fight. I've played a few good games and on a few occasions, myself and JJ have had to think thoroughly about how to go about the mission without having our asses handed to us. All because the AI out think us or out number us.

Thanks for the response MD.

Sorry if this is confusing. I'm not talking about dispersion, which is (from my understanding) boils down to AI accuracy. Dispersion can be configured in arma, it's basically the spread of the bullets as they travel, like cone shape.

I'm talking about a dispersion shield, which is only in Dragon Rising. Think of a invisible bubbles that surrounds the player, if you are shot at and the bullet hits the bubble, for 4 seconds you cannot be wounded or high chance of defection (not sure). Then over the next 20 seconds 100% moving to 80% of the bullets are blocked or defected. It feels like AI accuracy in game, but it's not.

Sorry to anyone who didn't know this, it's a little shocking at first. But, don't think less of the game. This feature allowed dragon rising to do soooo much more. It adds many positives, during these 4 seconds, player can locate where the fire is coming from (if caught of guard), missions will have ability to have less players, more enemies.  If you don't have more than four friends, no need to drag the 10 AI around with you. It's really promotes great action.

This would take the some simulation out of arma, and make it slightly more of a "shooter", but what is gained is more than worth it IMO. You don't lose the tactics, you in fact gain more chances to use tactics in play session. One hour of DR equals like 3 of arma, you just can pack more in.

Sorry if my posts sound like i'm pitching this, but I've been pitching this in my brain for over a year.


Check this video out, with the idea of the bubble/shield, and how bullet deflect of angles at 8:10. Objects have many different LOD's (level of detail), the hitpoint LOD and the fire geometry LOD are the two that need to be used to make a Dispersion Shield (atleast I think). Along with a script which adds the cycle, filters the ammo rounds, and all kinds of math and random stuff, yuk. FSM sounds like something that would work with this.

Sorry to bore, but one more point.
 
The whole point is to add awesome firefights, having a shield should allow for using the highest level AI, which I really want in bigger missions with less players. Dragon Rising had very reactive AI, there's one big reason for this. I'll get to it with next post.

Arma's ai really haven't changed that much since the original OFP , firefights lasting no longer than a couple of minutes majority of the time. DR's ai system still not the greatest but the firefights were more intense and something about it was far more immersive. I think adopting Arma's ai to be a little more like DR would do good for the series.

I have just tried the bCombat mod, and it might be just what you are looking for, with firefights prolonged and units flanking you from both sides. Really interesting and well worth checking out.
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?167288-WIP-bCombat-infantry-AI-Mod-SP

Deffo worth looking. 

Have you had issues running it in AiA, i know i had a conflict but not sure whter it was the custom map i ported or not?? 


But this bcombat mod, is pretty good from an aistandpoint. It does improve their movement, fire orders, cover ability and fire fight efficiency. The FF's are long and they use smoke to flank and conceal movement.

No conflicts with AiA. Actually, Chernarus' big towns is where I first tried the mod.