Epic reply! Thanks man. I may reply several times as I try to digest it all. Ultimately, I see what you're getting at. CAS is only realistic, fun and a balanced option if the mission is designed to be hard enough for it to be a valuable tool. Otherwise it would make more sense to just remove it entirely. Makes perfect sense.
I use CAF Aggressors for my Taliban units. By design, they only are comprised of infantry units (which can shoot you down with their RPG guys), and pickup trucks with technicals. However, RPG dudes don't seem to spawn as much as I'd like. Thus, I don't have any huge deterrents from spamming CAS unless I increase their initial force pool numbers and just get overwhelmed. I'm thinking of now manually placing some additional RPG guys so it can work exactly this way: I want to have to THINK TWICE before calling CAS in.
The mission itself is on FATA. It's a small map (5x5) which I'm finding increasingly difficult to balance. More on that in a sec.
5) Another option would be to put in a BLUFOR OPCOM - but I'm not sure if this commander will ever request those units that are synched to the Player Support Modules for his own purposes. There are various ways to bring units under an OPCOM Commander's control as the ALiVE Wiki states:
"Commanders must have some troops to control from a synced Placement module set to spawn troops or some manually placed and profiled units."
I haven't tried what happens if you sync the very same units to the Player Support Module AND to the Virtual AI Module - but maybe that could achieve the "Sorry, unit is on a mission for OPCOM already" you would like to see.
I'm wondering if anyone knows how to accomplish this? Would it be possible to give access to my CAS chopper to the OPCOM? I currently have a manually placed armed CAS chopper (for testing) synced to the Virtual AI module, but as of yet, I've never seen OPCOM use it. I was told this is the proper way by a few guys here. Can anyone confirm that I have this right? And secondly, could anyone conform whether or not it's possible for us to all share a single CAS chopper (meaning one I can cal in via support but also be used by OPCOM too)? If so, how would that be set up?
3) Without a BLUFOR OPCOM, all assets like Arty and CAS are always at my disposal. Although if I play alone, I can never rapidly deploy more than 12 men ground forces at once under my direct command. It is possible to recruit forces at the FOB though via Spyder Addons Recruitment Module, up to 24 additional US soldiers to help the BW units. Since there's Base Respawn, I never will run completely out of Infantry, but my ground Vehicles are gone if destroyed. Of course a replenishment via Spyder Addons could be implemented with a few mouseclicks.
Ah. I like this idea. What map is your mission on? Like I was saying about mission making on a small map like FATA, I'm finding balancing the initial Force Pools to be a real nightmare. Initially, I had my side set to 120 units (plus my squad. 60 mil, 60 civ), and OPFOR set to 90 units (30 mil 60 civ, plus three civ placement modules so they can recruit) but even then the map is too barren over the first 2 hours and any OPFOR I do stumble across are wicked small in numbers. My BLUFOR OPCOM must be obliterating then on mission start. If we average a unit consisting of 5 men (CAF has teams ranging from 2-12 men), that's 450 Taliban that should be spawning on this tiny map! You'd think I'd be up to my eyeballs in terrorists! :)
As a response to this, I did try I dropping my forces to 60 total (plus my squad) and increasing the Taliban to 130 and NOW FINALLY the map feels populated. CAS finally becomes a viable option again. But my gut says 120 Taliban units (so around 600 estimated guys) is WAY overkill on a map like FATA. Especially considering they still need to recruit civs.
What I'm thinking now is maybe bringing the Taliban forces back down to 90 units and just getting rid of BLUFOR OPCOM all together. Just like you. I like what you're doing. You have all the tools at your disposal and it's your squad against the world. It's a good idea.
Question. When doing this, are any of your manually placed units out on the map fighting their own objectives without you at all? I can definitely add some squads and sync them to the Virtual AI module. Is it possible to also have these manually placed units under OPCOM's control? If so, how? Is syncing them to the virtual AI module enough? I doubt it. Would I sync them to OPCOM?