"Anyone playing Arma 2?" Topic

If you are not familiar with ARMA 2, it is a military simulator that allows you to fight as infantry on foot. You can seamlessly move to vehicles/armor and aircraft for a great combined arms environment. Many of the engagements are miles from your base of operations so things like logistics and transportation are important. Despite this it remains very playable and the AI can be downright evil at times.

The game is a downscaled version of VBS which is being used by the US military as a training aid:

arma2.com
bistudio.com

Having been an Operation Flashpoint fan naturally I became an ARMA addict. I ran a dedicated server for two years or so. Now that ARMA 2 is out, I've updated the server and am running small SpecOps scenarios and the like. If any TMPers would like to join our small 3 person band you are more than welcome. We play in the late PMs to early AMs Eastern. The server is password protected and we have a separate Vent server for voice.

As usual, the boot camp and campaign missions that come with the game have scripting bugs. Frankly the players write better missions and triggers than the developers. There is already a ton of user content out there that is flawless. Most of the OFP and ARMA 1 missions can be used without a lot of work. If you enjoy modern simulations from infantryman upwards to pilot you should give this a try. I'm an armor/recon fan myself. There is a learning curve but if you would like I will gladly train you up. Its on the shelves now or you can download it via Steam. It will run on most recent machines (within a year or two with an actual non-shared video card) but will take as much hardware as you can throw at it. The upper ends seem almost photo realistic. PM me if you want to pitch in with us…or email me at:

meustrader at hotmail dot com

Hey Balin, I was curious about ARMA. The reveiws that I read were mixed, and as far as I was aware there was never much of a modding community for ARMA as there was for OFP (which I still play!)

I never really got into online gaming, but some of the OFP campaigns were great and I have played them through several times (I really loved the partisan campaign), as well as a ton of the commuity-made missions and campaigns.

You mentioned lots of user content for ARMA, perhaps I was misinformed??? Is there already a modding community for ARMA2?

Jason (who just installed OPF into his new laptop three nights ago )

A large chunk of the OFP developers jumped ship to make ARMA. Since the early days the game has had a large modding community. Take:

armaholic.com

..for example. Many of the OFP projects got ported into ARMA. Currently people are working them into ARMA 2. They left the core model of ARMA intact…giving us things like more vehicles, more AI commands, and medic/evac abilities. ARMA 2 hasn't been out that long but I am running a core of 10 or so user made missions on my dedicated box.

The great thing about the community is that we Americans are actually not the largest demographic. As such there are all sort of things out there like Turkish skins for infantry, rare splinter-state variants, etc. All you have to do is download them and script them into your missions.

I run two main scenarios depending on who is on and the amount of time that can be invested. Civil war is a low intensity conflict between the Chernorussians Insurgents. It starts off slow with infantry, BRDMS, and Gaz gun jeeps. There is an RTS engine on the backend that lets you buy equipment as mission and action rewards. When your commander has enough resources to deploy a heavy vehicle supply at your base, you can roll out T-72s. It tends to take an hour of game time or two to escalate to that point. You can build defenses in remote villages when you capture bunkers but you have to go back to base to buy more hardware.

The Superpowers scenario is the same concept except with the russians versus the Chernorussians back by USMC and it generally escalates a lot faster. You spend a lot more time hugging the ground on that one hoping the Abrams with TUSK does not notice you.

The AI makes still makes some mistakes…but all AI does. Now it uses suppression and bounding overwatch to try and triangulate you. It really keeps you on your toes. They don't cheat either. They have to see/hear you…otherwise they try to get to your last known position then they sweep out to find you. Engagement ranges are realistic so often I am firing at muzzle flashes when the combat breaks out.

Yeah…not sure who you talked to. There is some hate between the ARMA and OFP guys from time to time. Its silly though. Each incarnation of the engine is just an improvement of the last. If you can play OFP then the learning curve will be minor.

The lighthearted mods are already being ported/updated. Farms Wars is a riot and I expect we will have the big Zombie Infection mission going within a month or two. Someone was working on Star Wars there for a bit but the amount of skins required was mind boggling.

Can you tell I dig this stuff? Where else can you command an MI-18 5 miles away to take off, fly to your position, and unload infantry, then return to base and pick up your friend who just bit it and respawned? All while trying to pick infantry out of Russian back yards with your small team of BRDM mounted goons? I find myself just enjoying the country side at times. Civilian vehicles are your friend too. I am not to proud to jack a Work Ural or a Vaz to get to the front line if that's all I have access to :)

Alright, Balin, you sold me! I'm gonna start shopping around. I loved the open-ended aspect of OPF and was really disappointed when I heard repeatedly that there wasn't much in the way of community support for it. Given your description, it sounds like ARMA2 has everything I enjoyed from OPF, but vastly improved.

I loved the way OPF missions required manuever, combined arms, and logistics to all come together cohesively on the battlefield. It is the only shooter I have ever played that really made me feel like I was actually on a dynamic battlefield that wasn't (for the most part) dependant on scripted events to simulate battle. It really was an eye opener to, say, be fighting in an urban envirnment and have have my rifle squad pinned down by an enemy BPM and call in a tank to deal with it, only to watch it be immobilized enemy armor reserves that pop up out of no where trying to flank us.

There was another battle I recall that involved a huge amount of armor and required stopping an advancing Soviet tank coy. and mech infantry with inferior forces. I recall setting up a pretty sophisticaed set of fire zones with my few tanks and taking a squad of AT infantry onto the hill above to fire down on any armor that tried to flank the tanks. It worked beautifully at first, although my team would have to displace frequently to avoid counterfire from the tanks. I almost crapped my pants when suddenly I heard russian voices, gunfire, and armor from behind, only to find that the sneaky bastards had sent a couple of BMDs and some infantry all the way around the hill to root out my AT troops. It was great fun and just the sort of shrewd, open-ended enemy behavior that made me really love the game.

Well, I guess when I get home from work I am not getting any brushwork done tonight. Am going to fire up OPF for a quick battle or two and then hit Amazone for a copy of ARMA2.

Thanks Balin!!

PM me when you are up and running and I will get you the server info. I just got Farm Wars running tonight. Take all that sandbox military action and twist it with Mega-farm corps battling over pastures. Cow napping is required strategy. Its bent and I love it.

Still running ARMA, but having great fun with it. Will probably move to ARMA2 when I am in a position for a PC upgrade (ARMA2 demo won't run on mine)

Its a phenomenal game series. It has been invaluable to my modern 20mm gaming too. I am thinking of painting up the factions from ARMA 2 soon.

I've just re-installed OFP (plus the two mission disks) on my laptop for the umpteenth time – it is definitely my all-time favourite computer game. However, I've still not got ARMA due to my lack of a decent-enough computer and now you tell me that ARMA 2 is out?!

I've obviously got some catching up to do.

When ARMA came out the reviews mentioned considerable bugginess. Has this been ironed out? And have their been any add-on packs for it?