For Occupation vs Occupation (or Invasion) missions, you don't need civilians at all. For those missions, since I like civilian ambience, I just keep them at medium placement (Civilian Placement module) and filter them to only small and above objectives. Sometimes I use even less with higher filters. No civs is an ok choice as well.

It's Assymetric commanders which need the civs, just an FYI.

I usually prefer two way battles myself but that's up to you.

I'd say try reducing the civs and seeing if performance improves. Then gradually either increase the profile placement, or lower the filtering in the civ/mil placement modules to increase the enemy profiles by taste.

If you really like enemy reinforcements, try out ASR AI and grab the Project OPFOR compatibility PBO for it (either on the ASR AI BI page or standalone on Steam). Remember you'll need ASR AI and the Project OPFOR patch running together.

What map are you playing on? What do your mil/civ obj modules look like? Can you take a couple screenshots?

Here's the profile counter:

if (isServer) then {

	_profilesBySide = [ALiVE_profileHandler,"profilesBySide"] call ALIVE_fnc_hashGet;
	_profilesBySide = _profilesBySide select 2;

	systemchat format ["Profile Count OPFOR - %1", count (_profilesBySide select 0)];
	systemchat format ["Profile Count BLUFOR - %1", count (_profilesBySide select 1)];
	systemchat format ["Profile Count INDEPENDANT - %1", count (_profilesBySide select 2)];

};

Paste this into your debug box in the esc screen and click local exec and go back into your mission and you'll see the count on the screen.

It only works in SP (so for mission testing only) and don't be alarmed it it changes every time you start the mission. ALiVE is random-ish by design.

OPCOM installations? You have an Assymetric commander then? Then you need civs if you want them to ever replenish their killed profiles.

Assymetric Commanders will get less profiles than the other commanders by design.

Assymetric commanders will grow in size very fast and have no limit! In fact I always try to make them start as small as possible and even reduce how they can recruit even further by adjusting the civ recruitment option in the OPCOM module.

Assymetric missions starting slow is pretty normal and very desirable IMO.

@Carmine39 I don't have an Assymetric commander. Just used debug and thought those meant something.

Oh ok. I'd love to see your mil/civ obj modules if possible. And possibly what the profiles counts are in game as well using that counter I posted for you.

"Civilian Placement" is the module that spawns civs. "Civilian Population" is what defines the civs role and hostility and I don't think has a purpose in non-Assymetric missions. Delete them both.

Don't get confused with "Military Commander Civilian Objective" placement. The one that's synced to OPCOM. You'll want to keep that!

Ok thanks. Everything looks fine there.

One thing regarding CQB. That's quite a high density. I've never used anything close to 50%. Granted, I usually use "complete map" and set it to dominant (I like 10% set to pairs for this) but it may be something to look at for FPS.

I'm sure going higher than 10% using towns only is ok for performance than using the whole map, but if performance is what you're after, I'd start with CQB first.

If performance is still suffering, increase the mil/civ obj module filtering a bit. Do not filter, if using the entire map as an AO, will obviously spawn max profiles and objectives.

Do you get a warning on mission start for Objective count? What's the number?

212 is a lot of profiles man! That's Takistan, right? I don't see how that wouldn't be populated enough but it's tough to say depending on what you want to do. :)

I'd personally just play around with it as is, tinkering first for performance, then let ASR AI do its thing and report back with what you're seeing and what you're hoping for.

I'm not sure on the exact numbers, but ALiVE commanders won't generally have a ton of units occupying the same objective, and/or attacking the same objective.

Again, I'm fuzzy on the numbers but I wouldn't expect to ever see more than a handful at any objective for too long.

If you really want certain cities/towns to have a high priority to the commander, place a high priority custom objective module in these places (with a large number in the size and priority fields). If you want to amp it up, it's ok to place several in the same location. If you want to amp it up even further, set one or more of them to spawn units too (cust obj modules default to "Objective" only. You need to override the zeros for them to spawn units).

That said, I've seen this asked here several times. ALiVE is an amazing mod but if you're expecting it to just pound a certain place with wave after wave of enemies you will be disappointed. ASR AI can help with this (no joke, a few times on AuTigerGrad's server we've had to defend objectives with countless waves thanks to ASR AI), along with some of my other suggestions with cust obj modules. But seriously don't expect 50 profiles coming all at once to a specific location by default with ALiVE.

For that you might need to set it up yourself with waypoints and manually placed units and triggers. Or see how it goes with AI mods and messing with cust obj's first. It really all depends on what you're looking to accomplish.

Also I don't want to pretend to be an expert here. And especially I don't mean to pretend I set up tons of missions for large coop groups. I usually play alone with friendly AI.

Friznit and AuTigerGrad would be excellent people to ask on this. They play in coop groups regularly so they may have some techniques for you.

The AI commander will certainly continue to send groups to locations, even ones being fought over, depending on how many they have available to send out and how important the objective you're fighting over is.

I'm not sure how new to the mod you are but trust me, even with vanilla AI, expect battles larger than 1 1/2 profiles lol.

Again, as I said in the post above, I don't generally play in large human groups so I'll defer to those players that do to help you further. But I will say, when I do get online and play with AuTigerGrad (which is rare) trust me when I say we can get totally obliterated! Holy crap Vietnam!!! :)

Perhaps you might want to download some of his missions and open them up in the editor. Or better yet here's me pinging @AUTigerGrad so maybe if he has a sec he can give you some pointers.

If I was you I'd place a few cust obj modules down with high priority over some of the key areas, get the profiles spawned over the map in a way that pleases you, and play for a few hours at the very least and see. With ASR AI too if you fancy, because it helps with reinforcements.

The magic of ALiVE is its randomness. Don't under estimate how it can surprise you. :) My favorite moments are the ones that come out of nowhere and ALiVE will do that to you (ex you're patrolling for a bit with a whole lotta nothing going on and then BAM you're suddenly fighting for your life for the next half hour and calling in CAS and all neighboring profiles to come to the rescue lol).

For the best advice, I'd personally suggest playing for a bit and then coming back on and asking very clearly what you're seeing and what you want.

I've got some missions too that you're more than welcome to unpack and look at or edit (or even play with your group) if you want. They should all play well with several humans.

Most of them are insurgencies (which is easily my preferred mode), but I have a couple conventional battles on Chernarus and Diyala too. And all of them use Project OPFOR in some capacity.

No biggie either way but that's always an option too if you just want to play for a bit and see.