Hey everyone, I've finished making my first Insurgency mission and our team is loving it so far. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to make it even better, or any suggestions.

Right now I'm noticing a lack of terrorists although IED's have finally begun to be planted and we have encountered one car bomb.

We had something crazy like 139 friendly squads out and a lot of captured sectors so it kind of ruined the feel by the end.

I'm still new to this so I'm not 100% how everything works as a lot of tutorials are very out of date. Any advice or suggestions or modules to change/tweak would be helpful.

Sorry for the vague questions, still a newbie :P

Yeah I usually just use the ied module unsynced as it spawns a lot more ieds on mission start. The asymmetric ieds take ages to get to a level where you are actively worried about them.

I like my insurgency missions to have players more worried about ieds than enemy contact with the eod tech out front securing a path for rest of squad.

@Friznit, Can we use 2 ied modules? 1 synced to asymmetric commander for strategic ieds and one unsynced for random roadside etc scattered throughout map?

And a suggestion for the ied module. Would be cool if we could put down specific ied taors that spawn ieds regardless if it's a town or not. In places like clafghan with very little towns and lots of road the ieds only spawn near towns. I would like them to spawn randomly everywhere :)

@Friznit My suggestion is scenario based rather than anything technical. Based on experience on ops in theatre, you rarely have enough resources to cover the whole AO and there are usually no go areas, for either political or other reasons (e.g. we're not allowed to cross the border into Pakistan even though the insurgents have a base only a mile that way). You can model this in a mission by making no go zones for players which are insurgent hot beds, reduce the number of friendly AI or restrict them to specific areas. This leaves areas for the players only to operate and provides a continuous challenge.

We've had significantly less players than usual and have only really been testing missions yet, I'm not 100% confident to FULLY launch an alive mission with all 10-12 of us as I'm just not that understanding of everything 100% but I'm getting there!

@GhostNI Yeah I usually just use the ied module unsynced as it spawns a lot more ieds on mission start. The asymmetric ieds take ages to get to a level where you are actively worried about them.

I like my insurgency missions to have players more worried about ieds than enemy contact with the eod tech out front securing a path for rest of squad.

@Friznit, Can we use 2 ied modules? 1 synced to asymmetric commander for strategic ieds and one unsynced for random roadside etc scattered throughout map?

And a suggestion for the ied module. Would be cool if we could put down specific ied taors that spawn ieds regardless if it's a town or not. In places like clafghan with very little towns and lots of road the ieds only spawn near towns. I would like them to spawn randomly everywhere :)

I like the idea of just using the ied module unsynced, asymmetric does take ages.

I'm still trying to figure out how to set this all up best, thanks for the ideas and advice. Any more is appreciated. I'm still dissecting missions to try and get a feel for it all :)

My main goal right now is to make a nice asymmetric mission on Takistan, I've somewhat accomplished the basis of this, but right now have way way too many Blufor that control so much instantly the asymmetric commander can't even start lol. I've set my blufor stuff to objective only but still seems to secure the map.

Perhaps I should set the blufor TAOR smaller, then have an area for the asymmetric .. but I'd still like Blufor to come in and take over eventually as my idea is we're on the invading side.. but I still want the asymmetric to have a chance

Edit: Looking at the Op landlord map has given me a good idea of how things work.

Sorry for dumb questions, or noobie sounding things, I'm learning :)

@AUTigerGrad Some tips on building assymetric missions as I've created about 924858539 of them. lol

1. The biggest 2 areas that affect the intensity and/or difficulty is going to be the initial strength of the insurgents and the initial strength of friendly forces. I recommend doing a spawn cap on the insurgent groups. Even Platoon 60 spawn setting with no limits is too high IMO unless you are trying to create a more conventional style all out battle at the beginning. I good number for both Civ and MIl objectives for me is around 6-8 groups capped. I'll usually add in some technical vehicles for some flavor as well, and I usually lay down at least 1-2 static support weapons to simulate especially strong Insurgent strongholds (a .50 cal emplacement for example).

As far as friendly forces go...same theory. Insurgency missions are not intended to be full scale war for the most part so I usually limit friendly units to objective only and I manually place the initial starting groups strategically to simulate a small occupying/patrolling force.

2. Playing off of #1, you'll want to limit the Player Combat Support. The more entertaining missions, in my opinion, are where there is more fire fights and less "call in the artillery to blow the enemy to kingdom come". For insurgencies, I'll usually give the player some MRAPs/Jeeps/Land Rovers for vehicles and for Combat Support, a transport helo and maybe a CAS Attack Helo. I don't use artillery support in Insurgencies..it's a bit overkill.

3. I agree that IEDs placed separate from the Assymetric commander are much more numerous, but I'd also mention that I've seen instances where they can be a bit too numerous. Was playing on Gunkizli the other night and there were about 12 IEDs in the span of 500 meters, no kidding. So it's a balancing act.

Members of the community, like Spyder, are also creating some really great "ambiance" scripts as well, such as vehicles spawning in that may contain suicide attacks/Insurgent vehicles, etc. I recommend checking some of these out.

Just my .02.

Thank you so much for the advice! Your .02 is definitively appreciated as I learn more.

If you cap the insurgents does that mean they won't recruit from civilians once that cap is reached? Say we wanted to do a larger map like Takistan and have the insurgents start in a small area and build up over time, requiring lots of sitreps and patrols.. perhaps boring to some but, could be fun, would you say still cap it so slow?

My idea is to have US forces having already "invaded" and secured a portion of the map, and then the Insurgents start and move out to grow and secure, and you'd be working to eliminate their threat.

Do you pre-place insurgents too or just the Blufor?

Once again, sorry for any dumb questions I am new but love learning all of this :)

@AUTigerGrad The cap only affects initial placement, not recruitment. So the Insurgency will continue to grow over time.

So if you wanted to do small initial insurgency on Takistan...start with 1-2 groups capped in a small TAOR. That group will continue to recruit, expand into a bigger force over a longer period of time.

Have your occupying US force limited and attach a Military Logistics module to allow for the friendly forces to replenish themselves via reinforcements.

Thanks a million for your help.

Wrapping my head around all this is overwhelming sometimes but you've helped me get a better idea of how things work :)