Custom mission: Clear Village

[gvse]

hey guys,

My first custom mission for OFP:DR.
Night time and very dense fog. You and your team are to infiltrate the village of Mologa where general Han is on an inspection of his troops. Han is your primary goal as well as a sunburn launcher located in the village. Once you are done, exfiltrate to the shore where a boat awaits you.
Stay undetected as long as possible because Han might call in back-up once you break cover, and things will turn nasty real quick.

I put your team pretty close to the objective as I like to play the mission on hardcore, and without checkpoints I would quickly find the replay of journeys to objectives a bit tedious.
Download:
http://openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=107

Well, enjoy and leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions.

[Art Blade]

Thanks for your efforts, kept me busy quite some time :)

I've been trying to solve that puzzle with different strategies, but I can't complete it.

The reasons so far:

- even if we stay undetected quite long, we at the same time achive nothing
- enemies spot us faster than we spot them (not always, though)
- they seem to be able to see through the fog (I can't)
- night vision is quite useless (I'm going blind once there is light)
- assaulting buildings causes major mayhem if they are inhabited (hehe)
- it feels as if they had endless supply of Night- and SpecOps
- what the hell, they have snipers...
- APC(s)?! (God damn, I even used C4 to take one out)
- funny: The Missile Truck sometimes drives around
- No matter from which direction, getting in always results in massive fights
- I keep losing my men (if only slowly)
- loads of explosive barrels (good for action, but attracts reinforcements I think)
- dividing my team 2+2, 1+3, 4x1 didn't help, keep losing men

wish-list: barrel-mounted grenade launcher and or (at least) infra-red scopes

Any tips on how you've completed the mission?

[Art Blade]

Well, I need to tell you how I took out that APC, because it was like in a movie :)

I ran zig-zag towards that shooting beast (bam bam bam bam bam bam...) hoping the gunner couldn't turn the turret quick enough to take me out, and I ended up right next to it, in it's blind angle, dropped a C4 and ran away from the rear - and during that episode I was also being shot at by some SpecOps. Then I flicked the button... the blast took a house clean off the ground, too  ;D

Unfortunately we didn't make it, though. I'd like to give it some more time, but hell, that is a darn tough mission. I have no clue how many enemies there are nor where they hide, or how big the reinforcement is or when it arrives etc, bloody hell :)

[gvse]

Hey Art,
Thanks for the comments. :) To be honest I have not completed the mission yet. Nearly managed it but stupidly ran into a random guy and I got gunned down. Still I nearly made it so it's doable.
I usually leave my team by the haystacks and creep around and take out as many tangos as possible without attracting any attention (so far managed 3 max). Once they figure out what's going on I call my team and from now on we have to move quickly because reinforcements are on their way (8 spec ops driven to the hot-zone in a heli). You can leave the apc if it doesn't bother you too much because the objective is the general and the rocket launcher. Once you take them out run for your life to extraction zone.
A tip: I use this AI mod (http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=391694). It makes my guys a bit sharper I think, and the enemy are not so aggressive once they see you know how to handle yourself.
Tell you what, my preferred loudout for this mission would be a scar with that heat detecting scope and an mp5sd for silent kills (oh, how I miss it)!

EDIT: I have just had a go at the mission again and completed it:). Did it before the enemy spec ops have arrived, and I lost one man. Friendly tip: it ain't over once you leave the village ;)

[Art Blade]

thanks for the heads up, gvse. I read through CM forum about those mods available but decided against using any of them. In my experience, the vanilla AI is ok the way it is, as are the weapons :)

Will give your mission another go now (oh dear, my poor statistics... will keep adding deaths to them)  :)

[Art Blade]

Man that mission is tough. Still not completed.

Despite of taking out quite a few enemies, the general, all 8 SpecOps, including their helo (see pic) ;D Do the enemies respawn infinitely?

[smg id=1579 align=center width=400]

[gvse]

Man that mission is tough. Still not completed.

Despite of taking out quite a few enemies, the general, all 8 SpecOps, including their helo (see pic) ;D Do the enemies respawn infinitely?

Absolutely not; there is a set number of enemies. I think you should try to avoid the airborne support, and once you get detected proceed swiftly to the two main objectives (Han and sunburn).

Tell you what, I'll upload the editable file so you can mess with it, change your spec-ops and what not.
Here:
http://openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=108

[Art Blade]

excellent, I was actually just about to try to do exactly that... cheers gvse  :) :-X

[Art Blade]

wow, that editor really is different from ArmA2. Played a little around with it, placing weapon crates... and for fun an anti-air unit. Despite of having no idea how to properly use the editor, the placed unit started to move towards the village once the fighting started. Once they got wiped out entirely, and my men LOL

Last time we survived until we reached the extraction point. I had told my men to assault the EP, but it was scary... when unexpectedly some MK19 grenade launcher carpet-bombed the beach... Impressive, and loud  ;D Needless to say, all of my men bit the sand, and I barely escaped with my life. That mission is insane  ;D

(I didn't save my edit, was just for fun)

[gvse]

Haha, but you have made it to the extraction zone! :) Told ya, surprises would be waiting ;)
If you play it on anything else but hardcore there is a checkpoint near the final stage.
I am preparing a stealth assault on the airport now. Dense fog again; I love the ambiance it provides.

[Art Blade]

the ambience is good, only so fecking deadly  ;D I prefer sniping, far sight needed, or infrared visors  :)

[Art Blade]

I need to look into the editor more, I couldn't change the team specifics or the loadout. Unfortunately the ammo crates don't seem to contain NightOps gear. I reckon it needs a lot of research in the CM forums to get the editing right...

[gvse]

You can select a soldier with that kind of weapon: that's the easiest solution. Indeed, crates don't have all the weaponry.
You can change the loadout of each soldier by manipulating EntityDatabase.xml located here:C:\Program Files\Codemasters\OF Dragon Rising\Mission Editor\Database. There is a thread on the forum instructing how to do that.

[Art Blade]

thanks for the tip, mate  :) :-X

[Art Blade]

Just a little hello, your mission and the lone sniper mission really were a decent appetiser for me and made me check the editor. Amazing what you can do with it, if you dive into LUA scripting, and as amazing how much w@&k it involves if you are not familiar with LUA scripting.

Creating a mission basically is to draw a picture (place items onto the 2D editor map) and make it a movie by writing a screenplay for it (LUA script). If you don't "tell" what you want to see or happen, it will be like a stage with actors that just do what they think might fit, and that includes loitering and nap attacks ;D

Right now I've found out that not everything works as it is supposed to (removing EntitySets comprised of several Echelons with lots of soldiers once you don't need them any more, after they had been placed magically somewhere in the area). Of course you can remove them, but a simple command won't do (forget about "despawn" or "destroy" once you are dealing with more than a single soldier)
Edit: Forget it, it does w@&k if you do it right and if you don't listen to everything on cm's forum ;) I just studied CM's Editor example missions including and especially their LUA script  :)

Also, this is different from ArmA2, you can only have so many units walking around (64 is what I know) That means you have to either kill them all before you can spawn more or you have to get rid of the remnants before you can pour more units into a mission.

You were right about "You can select a soldier with that kind of weapon: that's the easiest solution," you can only pick from a set of different types of soliers, and they come with their own weapons, like it or not. And weapon crates just don't contain all weapons there are... and I wouldn't like the idea of using a dead soldier with the desired gear as a supply package... like "oops, where did he come from, fell out of the sky and broke his neck, poor ba$t@rd. But well, nice kit he's got, wouldn't want to let it go to waste... LET'S GO GET IT!!!"  ;D

Anyway, I am mostly occupied with getting things sorted in the LUA script editor. That involves playing around with stuff just to see if and how it works, but sometimes I end up scratching parts of the mission that were nothing but an experiment. I can't count the times I had to fire up the game from within the editor just to see how stuff didn't w@&k right. Then back into LUA, until it finally worked... and so on :)

[Art Blade]

just another sidenote, I had an enemy spawn right above me 50m in the air, for supply reasons, and my team mate goes "specOps, 50 metres!" -- then the poor ba$t@rd bounced off the ground dead where he landed. Nice weapons drop  ;D