Small group play

  1. 8 years ago

    First things first, bare in mind I'm the most active idiot on the forums. :) Second things second I use and adore TADST so here's a link to a post I compiled for how to get yourself setup. https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/159708-alive-advanced-light-infantry-virtual-environment/page-342#entry2937748

    SP is not recommended if you want to use the full ALiVE suite. TADST is a dedicated server tool which will allow you to enable persistence in your mission(s) and save your progress to ALiVE's War Room. This ensures good performance and the ability to "save" and "load" while using multiplayer. For me, persistence is key. I hate the idea of my mission progress not saving so this alone is brilliant for my needs. When I'm done for the night I "server save and exit" and the next day I can continue my mission again. It's awesome.

    When I first got into ALiVE, Autigergrad (mission maker. All around good dude. He has some missions here and on BIS and Workshop) turned me on to Assymetrical insurgency missions. You can learn more about Assymetrical missions here: http://alivemod.com/wiki/index.php/Insurgency

    So this is really all I can speak to. It's my favorite mission type and really the only thing I play. It's also excellent for solo players and small groups because there's more to do than just kill dudes. What I try to do is replicate the war in Afghanistan circa 2009(ish). Good guys versus the Taliban. Also excellent for small groups because they really shouldn't be overpowering you unless they overwhelm you with numbers.

    What I like to do when I make my missions (I have one in the mission template thread. Two more coming soon) is to group 5-6 "playable" units to me. These are generally my AI teammates, but I leave them on "playable" in the event I make some friends someday that want to play with me. :) But it also ensures I am never out there alone. I also use SpyderAddons in all my missions, not only because it adds so much life to ALiVE (ambience, conversation trees with civs, etc), but because it also allows me to have an AI spawner in the event I need more warm bodies to tackle an objective and also a vehicle spawner too: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=579263829

    Sorry if the next bit of stuff is a little inside baseball. What I like to do when making my missions is to place a "safe zone" around my base. A decent size TAOR so when I get going initially I'm not immediately inundated with OPFOR. Generally I'll place the opposing Assymetric side's Military Commander module pretty far away from my base so the insurgency starts as far away from my base as possible. When the mission starts my "job" is to go around interrogating civilians in the nearby towns, trying to get a leg up on where OPFOR is doing its dirty work.

    For my side's Military Commander I like to have more units than the OPFOR side to start. So I start out a little more powerful. OPFOR will recruit more units from the civilian population as things get going (Civilian Population and Civilian Placement Modules are required for this. I usually place several Civilian Placement modules so the missions are jam packed with civs. OPFOR can recruit a ton of you're not careful).

    Once the basics of the mission is made, I then like to manually add some more enemies (syncing them to the virtual AI module) as far away from my base as possible too. This simulates a 'the further from base you go, the more dangerous the game gets' kind of thing. I then like to pair that with a high priority custom objective module on the other end of the map too. This increases the likelihood of OPFOR being numerous on the opposite end of the map.

    After placing all the modules and having a basic functioning mission going, the first thing I do is debug the virtual AI module. I then enter the mission and look at the map. Areas populated by BLUFOR and OPFOR will start lighting up. I take note of the empty areas. I then exit out and do this a few more times. If certain areas of the map never get populated by OPFOR, I'll generally place some custom objectives over these dead areas. Or, if the dead areas are only in the hills/valleys, I'll place markers over those spots, add another military objective module for OPFOR, set "random camps to medium, whitelist the module to only populate enemies in those areas. This means any area on the map *can* be dangerous.

    Because I'm usually playing alone, and also because I'm trying to replicate a very specific kind of real life terrorism mission, I don't generally like to let either side use a ton of air vehicles or tanks or what have you. I keep it mostly infantry and light vehicle based. I'm also not a particularly good player. Lately I've been messing around with more conventional all-out-warfare missions too so I hope in the future I'll be able to balance those to a more SP/small group oriented experience as well. But for now, setting that kind of thing up is a little out of my league.

    I have a lot more I could say and many more proncipals I could share but I don't want to overwhelm or confuse you. If you have any specific questions let me know and I'll do my best to help.

  2. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    The dedicated server (the server) and the launcher (the client) should run the exact same mods in the exact same order and nothing else, with the exception of any mods that are only supposed to be run on the client (ex. ShacktackUI, Dragonfyre, etc). The only exception being @aliveserver which needs to be run on the server only (and placed last in the load order!) if you want to use persistence.

    Seriously, don't run mods on either the client or server the the mission itself is not using.

    Don't be surprised if persistence is actually not working! A new error caused by CBA 2.3.1 is causing issue with persistence and also causing the initial load time length to be significantly longer.

    Logistics will use vanilla assets by default. There is a workaround for this here if you so choose: http://alivemod.com/forum/1746-player-resupply-custom-insertion-vehicle

    I'm not sure why your paradrop didn't come. I'll try it myself in Op Landlord later if I think of it but as far as I know it should be working. EDIT: What's a standwall?

  3. It's @aliveserver that only needs to run on the server and only if you plan on using persistence with ALiVE's War Room. None of the clients need @aliveserver.

  4. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    Have fun with your friends!

    Yes I use TADST and have been having issues. I'm assuming this is a result of ALiVE needing an update, but I'd be curious to see how TASDT ends up working for you.

    With 100% certainty, you cannot use TADST itself to edit difficulty. That is broken with the 1.58 update. I hear it's still possible to edit that manually but I have no clue how.

    Barring that one issue, everything should be ok from what I gather aside from two server instances showing up in your server list (I have no idea if that's a problem or not TBH or if TADST is the only server type effected). Definitely intrigued if persistence (if you use it) works for you and doubly more interested if it works with TADST after ALiVE fixes it on their end. If not, I'll need to find another alternative server tool.

  5. Hey @HeroesandvillainsOS it sounds like you play pretty much the same way I do, mostly single player insurgency style missions. I tend to play straight out of the editor and never really messed with persistence, although that's something I really want to try, especially now I have a mate here at work who's keen to try it all out.

    This may seem like a really dumb question but do you run the server on your local machine, on another machine in your network or do you rent a dedicated server?

    I've been mucking around with ALiVE on and off for about a year now, never really all that seriously, but I think I've learnt a lot more from this thread so far than I have any other. So thanks to all who have contributed so far.

  6. I run with TADST on my local machine but after the ALiVE and BIS update, not gonna lie; I'm having issues with persistence and custom difficultly (default difficultly plays fine). I plan on investigating this after ALiVE fixes persistence on their end and then if it gives me problem, I'll (gulp...) try to learn how to use the built in server tools that came with the game ( :( ).

    Here's a link that should help you get the server part set up: https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/187954-alive-advanced-light-infantry-virtual-environment-10-ga/page-16#entry3005833

    Try it and let me know if it works for you! Very curious! The War Room instructions on ALiVE's War Room page are very straight toward so that combined with this should get you up and running.