Heavy Vehicle Code

New vehicle restriction system, which means that more vehicles are available overall now that we can restrict them in certain situations. The restriction mechanism chucks the player out as soon as he gets into a restricted slot, and puts him in the nearest passenger seat if he’s incorrectly qualified (infantry getting into copilot seat) and just puts him outside if the vehicle isn’t available for use due to player count. It only checks player count when you get in, so you won’t be chucked out of your vehicle in the desert or while flying. Each vehicle will tell you the minimum player count it needs when you get into it if you are the correct role, but I’ll write it down here as well for easy reading. The only change to existing vehicles is that helicopters can only be piloted by pilots of their own nation, and only when there are 5 or more people for unarmed helis and 9 for CAS helis. The copilot seats can only be operated by the newly created crew chiefs, and again only from their respective nation.

Then we have the new additions:

The armoured medical vehicle (M113) on domination can only be driven by the medic or any vehicle crew/commanders. No player count restriction.

Lightly armed APC’s such as the Bulldog and M113 can only be driven by vehicle crew/commanders of their nation, and only when there are 6 or more players. There will be 2 apc’s per map. The mounted guns on top can be used by anyone.

Heavily armed IFV’s like the Warrior and LAV-25 are restricted base on their crew slots, so the driver and gunner can only be operated by crewmen and the commander seat can only be operated by the commander, and this is also restricted by nation. These vehicles are not usable until there are 10 or more players on the server. On a side note, the LAV-25 you will be using is the variant without the extra M240 for the commander. I would have used it if I could, but the handheld gun is an RWS in code and the bullets don’t come out of the barrel. No big deal as the warrior has the same armament, just heading off complaints early.

The M1A1 Abrams tank has the same position restrictions as the IFV’s, and requires at least 12 players before it can be used. It’s an older non-TUSK variant, because the only tanks the russians currently use are from the 70’s. This is a bit of a tricky one as the kind of enemies a modern abrams would have a challenge with would decimate anything that isn’t an abrams, so the solution will likely involve modifying the enemy composition as playercount increases.

Attack helicopters such as the AH-1 Cobra and the AH-64 Apache can only be piloted by their nation’s pilot and only be crewed by their nation’s crew chief. They can only be used when there are 14 players or more. The apache is considered british on every map apart from Kunduz, where the cobra isn’t available. This is to stop a USMC team inadvertently blocking a GB team.

Jets and other planes like the hercules can only be used by their nation’s pilots when there are 14 players or more.

As you can see these numbers are pretty low, none of these numbers are higher than what we’re getting regularly already. This is intentional, it’s supposed to only restrict uses outside of common sense and encourage it for everything else. I’ll be keeping an eye on this as time goes on and it’ll be adjusted if necessary if it compromises the infantry experience.

There’s a new artillery crew for domination, which will use Rik’s light gun when he’s done it but for the moment is on the big 3cb mortar. This is only available on chernarus currently. This is only usable by artillery gun operators when there are more than 10 and less than 14 players on the server, otherwise you won’t be able to get into it. This is not usable by the artillery gun commander, who carries the long range radio and can ferry shells and reload the mortar externally. The count restrictions will open up when Rik’s gun comes in with the proper firing system that isn’t point and click, currently it is deliberately difficult and the max range only covers about a third of the map. Don’t forget about the base cleanup, it’ll automatically delete any shells you leave on the ground so keep them in inventory or in boxes until they’re in the tube if you don’t want to lose them. HE, Smoke and Illum 81mm ammo can be spawned from the crate spawner by all artillery personnel. The big RHS guns are also on the bases, but are locked and will remain so unless we do testing in an event because they have very long range, crazy accuracy and no ammunition handling system. The mortar team for insurgency is the FST and they use the M6, but I’ve added a proper mortar team on reshmaan for testing. They’re unable to get into vehicles and access inventory until there are more than 10 people on the server.

Speaking of which, there are now some restrictions on the statics that the FST can spawn. More than 4 are necessary to spawn a GPMG, 7 for the other weapons. No restrictions on any of the ammo currently.

The sniper team has also been restricted. If there are less than 11 players on the server then the sniper team cannot enter any vehicles (or statics) or access the base’s ammunition box, and noone can spawn the sniper ammunition box from the spawn pad. The sniper and spotter also spawn with a skeleton level of ammunition now to basically make sure the sniper team is unusable in combat with the restrictions, and only has just enough for a team to go out on an empty server and put some rounds down to get their eye in if they feel the need to.

Domination

The domination gamemode has now been added to Takistan. I just used the insurgency base with some light modification for the extra helis and armour, so there might be some errors. Notify me if you see anything.

Flares

New flares for nighttime use. Designated L5A4 but known under the moniker of the schermuly, this is a little handheld popper that fires a flare about 300m out and lights up a large area for just over 2 minutes. This is a bit ghetto, I’ve used the RHS RPS-30 flare popper and remade the ammunition for it so that it burns brighter, longer and stays up for longer so that it’s not entirely useless. Real parachute flares vary greatly from model to model, so we’ve gone for the higher end just because we’re staring at a computer screen. These are available in the ammobox for everyone, but currently they work like a pistol, so you take one tube and multiple flare rounds, which are also called L5A4 for ease of use. Each tube only fires its corresponding colour so that when I figure out a way to make it work properly in future I can do so easily.

Future plans:

I put in a fix for the mortar radar’s map marker script, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test it yet. In other areas I have an issue where the sniper team on domination uses a ghillie suit that needs the marksman dlc to use, which it very helpfully hides from you completely if you have the dlc so you have no idea what ghillie suits will work (sarcasm). My plan for this is to make a more advanced version of the role switch point in previous insurgency, where it checks if you have the correct uniform and webbing and then swaps it for non-dlc kit if the player wishes. Cram work is slow because it looks very much like a bug in arma’s scripting is causing my issue. Also, the version of the hercules that can paradrop people is in some of the maps (it’s the camo one) but the airdrop script is broken so I’ll need to look at that. The vehicle version is also in though (the black one) so that can parachute vehicles with people in the meantime.

There's one bit I didn't make entirely clear about the restriction mechanism: passenger slots are always available to everyone (apart from sniper teams and artillery crews below 10 players) regardless of the pilot/driver/crewman restriction. So if a pilot flies a heli and the playercount drops while he's flying, people can still get in and ride around in it without issue.

Mini update:

The vehicle restriction system now reads from a central list that the map specific initialisation file can add onto if it wants to. This doesn’t mean much for you guys, but for me it means editing restrictions is much easier as every vehicle restriction is kept in a single file apart from the apache.

Added long range radios to jet pilots and the heli pilots that didn’t have them, and switched out the USMC aircrew’s microdagrs for a ctab as well as spruced up their uniforms a tad with what I’ve got.

AI are now using the exact same medical system as players. Previously there was a single setting that meant AI died as soon as a player would go unconscious if he received the same injury, but that is no longer the case. Infrastructure will be added in future to allow and reward capturing, disarming and treating enemies.