fa3_c74_capital_punishment

[SuicideKing]

So I've been told you've all had a crack at this. EXCELLENT! rubs hands with glee

Things corrected already:

- hopeful FPS fix - all civilians removed
- all enemy Titan ATs now RAT (PCML).

Things that are intended to be as they are: enemy tanks, CAS, length of the drive to Pyrgos.

v2 is up on test, but if there's anything else that people want fixed, i'll put up v3.

Cheers

[Sparks]

Too. Much. Driving.

Seriously, guys were stuck in the back of bravo vic for 30 minutes before dismounting...

[AmishStrikeForce]

Too. Much. Driving.

Seriously, guys were stuck in the back of bravo vic for 30 minutes before dismounting...

I agree that the drive was a bit long. Maybe there was something that was supposed to happen during the driving? And just to be fair, I think Bravo was experiencing comms and driver issues of some sort. Overall, barring the initial drive, I had fun. FPS was good for me, but the FTL (Wafflynumber I think?) was experiencing severe FPS problems.

[Sparks]

And just to be fair, I think Bravo was experiencing comms and driver issues of some sort.

Yes, we were (I was the Bravo vic commander and our driver had connection problems). Thing is, that happens from time to time; the mission doesn't handle it well. If we started closer to the front line or had a one-shot teleport function to get closer, that would be better - historically, we do *not* do well with convoys

[SuicideKing]

I know. Location was chosen because it was the only patch of clear land that was close enough for the initial set up of vics and tents. I'm not going to change that till Eden releases, because it's a pain.

Also, the location allows you to approach Pyrgos from three routes - the west coast, via the highway or the hills to the SE of Pyrgos.

As for things to do; the aforementioned hills have people, and Chalkeia and the other town (Sofia?) have people and reinforcements that you can clear so that you're not overwhelmed on Pyrgos (this is stated in the briefing).

Finally, from my testing, I reached the border (lines of control marked on the map) in under 5 mins. You have to remember that Netkev Zeused away a lot of things, and if he removed EI till Pyrgos then I suppose that would contribute to the delay that the infantry faced in dismounting. Alternatively, if the IFVs weren't double-timing it till the border region, then that's something that is out of my control - the AO is clearly marked during briefing.

Again, the point of the mission was the convoy and combined arms combat, so I'm unwilling to change things there. Like I said in the opening line, after Eden is out, I'll try moving the start location closer to the border/line of control.

p.s. I hope what I mean by Line of Control is clear, I'm just super used to the phrase because of Kashmir.

EDIT: The reason that enemy Titan AT was kept in was exactly so that infantry had something to do, and clear the path for the vics through the hills.

[darkChozo]

So, looking at the video I took (we were in the lead for a lot of the early part of the mission), it took us about 8 minutes of pure driving to get to our FUP on the western end of the border. Between waiting for people that were having issues (which took about 4 minutes) and moving carefully through enemy territory, there were seventeen minutes between us starting to move and first coming into enemy contact. That's a very long time for infantry to be sitting in the back of an IFV staring at a bunch of fidgety soldiers.

On the other end of things, taking what's probably the fastest possible route, against a defanged enemy and with a simplified objective the mission still took an hour and seventeen minutes. If we had done the full mission, secondary objectives and all, I imagine it would have taken at least two hours and maybe significantly more.

So, my idle suggestion is that if you want to make these big sweeping mission, you might want to look into making the platoon feel like it's part of a larger action. Like, for this mission you could have the players attack Pyrgos while an AI screening force (simulated or otherwise) deals with the reinforcements. If you were feeling clever, you could even make another mission where you play the screening force protecting the AI assault on Pyrgos and make a little mini-campaign.

[fer]

Because NetKev used Zeus to alter the mission, it's probably not safe to draw a firm conclusion based on one play-through. In particular, if the mission maker's intent was for the drive to the LOC to feature some form of ambush / opposition, perhaps that lengthened the waiting time for us crunchies (I was CSL). However, please be aware that if a session host believes a mission is unlikely to deliver much excitement to the majority of guests until many minutes have passed, there is far less chance of it becoming part of his run-list. Similarly, if a mission is too epic in scope, it runs the risk of being artificially curtailed by the session host - most often because of mounting casualties, but possibly just because we don't want a single mission to consume all of the first 2 hours.

Maybe it's useful to consider 2 different 'dimensions' of an ambitious mission:

1. Approach options - This mission does this in two distinct ways: with a choice of OrBat, and a huge variety of routes to the final objective. It's really many missions in one. However, this does comes at a some logistical cost with the lack of pre-mounts, and the potentially long drive (possibly buttoned-up) to combat.

2. Length of mission - Put simply, even if the mission is a complete success for our platoon, will it take over an hour to complete?

The first dimension is something that can often be addressed through techniques like mission parameters (to pre-mount in selected vehicles, delete unwanted ones), and element-leader teleports. The second is harder to tackle, but historically we've had excellent successes breaking epic missions into 2-part affairs.

Hope that is helpful.

[Freyja]

I did not remove any full elements outside of the helicopters, plane and possibly a tank regiment, the time to engage was vanilla.

By removing most the enemy AT and armour assets and creating a large amount of infantry I changed it from an armour to a mech mission.

The infantry did well.

[SuicideKing]

I understand, the squishies need something to do sooner, and yeah, sitting for 10 mins at the back of an IFV isn't fun.

So yeah, I'll move the spawn location further up, when Eden drops.

Alternatively, I can make two versions of this mission, one without all the dual slotting schemes and just IFVs + tanks + AAA, and remove the garrisons in the other towns. I can, that way, move the spawn even further up (probably along the west coast or in the valley in the no-man's land between LOCs). That should both cut server load and shorten the mission a bit.

So you'll end up with fa3_c74_capital_punishment and fa3_c64_capital_punishment_light or something like that.

[SuicideKing]

So, my idle suggestion is that if you want to make these big sweeping mission, you might want to look into making the platoon feel like it's part of a larger action. Like, for this mission you could have the players attack Pyrgos while an AI screening force (simulated or otherwise) deals with the reinforcements.

Server can't handle that. I've tried recently on a much smaller mission (Christmas Challenge thing) and I was seeing 15-25 fps. With stuff cut out it became 25-35. Pretty much had to scrap the entire AI screening/ambient force thing.

I think another option is to have vehicles break the lines and have infantry be dropped in via helo or truck. So like tank, IFVs in front and infantry (far) behind in trucks/helo, at least they can see stuff around them till then. CO could get an IFV too, or something.