Hi all! First post here, been reading for a while to learn, seems like a great community, hoping I can come to you guys for some help.

Been watching Arma vids for a long time but just recently decided to take the plunge and try and set something up for myself and a small group of friends to play. After researching it seems like ALiVE is the perfect tool to help me accomplish this.

The basic mission concept is this: players are a small group of Special Forces operating under the radar in a simmering conflict zone that hasn't quite boiled over into open warfare. The Blufor players are operating in conjunction with friendly AAF forces against the narco-funded, ultra- nationalist FIA insurgents.

The idea is the players need to use their wits and rely on intel reports as well as information supplied by the local population to hunt down insurgent positions and assets. The AO is most of western Altis, so it's definitely aiming to be more of an open world experience, where danger could pop up at any time. Very few in-game aids, so we'll be using GPS to navigate, relying on communication, figuring out how to get resupplied and such. Ultimately, since this is intended for a small group (usually 2 or 3, sometimes 4), I'm hoping what this end up turning into is a sort of fun buddy/road adventure layered over the mil-sim experience that Arma 3 innately delivers.

I've been messing around with the posted templates in my spare time for a few weeks getting a feel for how everything works, and I've gotten confident enough to scrape something together something functional using Spyder's Altis Insurgency as a starting template.

These are the mods I'm running:

CBA
ALiVE
ACE
RHS
ASR_AI
Spyder Addons
Massi's SOCOM
SMA weapons
MRT accessories functions
FHQ accessories
3BAF units, vehicles, weapons, equipment

I've had a few questions pop up, both technical and about some basic concepts and functionality.

1) Do civilians repopulate? As in, does my insurgent faction have an endless supply of civilians to recruit from or will that resource deplete as they recruit more and more?

2) I do have a drone incorporated for recon and CAS, but I'm a bit stumped as to how to incorporate a way for the drone to re-arm. I like the idea of it having to RTB to rearm. I know getting a drone to land is... tricky. So is there a way I can have it fly to a certain part of the map (over my little base) and have it be re-armed and refueled in flight just by entering the area?

3) I've done some testing with MCC and think I'd like to incorporate that for its mission generator. The kinds of missions it generates seem to dovetail nicely with the ambient conflict environment I'm trying to create. Anybody have any experience doing something similar? Any words of advice/wisdom on using MCC with ALiVE?

4) I'd like my players to be BUFOR units, Massi's SOCOM units to be specific, but still have access to the intel, logistics, and command functions of the AAF OPCOM. My current idea of how to do this is to actually create a NATO OPCOM that also commands AAF forces, using the faction override on the military AI commander module. Would that be the correct way to go about it?

5) I'm on the lookout for a script that would indicate on the map areas of influence or control. Like a color overlay that indicates the level of hostility or threat in an area, probably based off the numbers of enemy units present. Anything out there like that or anything close? I've looked some but haven't found anything yet. Anybody have any mods or scripts relating to intel collection and display in general that they're fond of?

6) I've managed to get my mission as it is up on a dedicated server on my machine using TADST and can connect to it, bu here's the rub: I can only connect via LAN. As soon as I try to connect via the internet tab in the server browser, I get a "failed to connect" error after trying to load something for a minute. I've forwarded the correct ports on my server, 2302 - 2305, and have set my machine up with a static IP. I haven't set up persistence yet as I'm trying to take it one step at a time and am focusing on just getting a mission up on a dedicated server first. So far I can connect to it fine via LAN including with the second machine downstairs over LAN, but not via internet.

The server also only seems to display all the mods in use (bottom right window in server browser) on the internet tab, but some of them are red, such as CBA and ACE. When viewed on the LAN tab however, there's fewer mods displayed, but they're all green. The game seems to play fine when connected via LAN though, so I'm at a loss to what's happening. Any ideas on what sort of shenanigans are going on?

Sorry for dumping a word bomb here and a bunch of disparate questions here, but hoping I can tap into the awesome brains around here to help me get this going!

Here's the thing with the drone: I cannot get him to take off, I've lined him up on the runway, assigned waypoints straight down the runway to take off, but they always veer off. So I just ended starting the mission with a drone spawned on station already, so I'm not sure how the built in ALiVE RTB function would work in this case. I was leaning towards just using the drone entirely with UAV terminal, but if there's a way to use ALiVE's RTB and avoid all the micromanaging via UAV terminal, I'm all for it.

Everything seems to be in order with my TADST and router setup at least. I definitely used the wiki as my guide to getting my server setup, so I followed all those instructions, minus the War Room stuff. Do I need to set up a War Room account if I'm just trying to throw it on a dedicated server for quick connectivity tests? I can post some screens of my TADST and router settings shortly to confirm.

Also, regarding my map intel question, I just discovered the TRACE settings. Woops.

What determines when the Assym commander decides to stop recruiting?

I see, but will he then come back around and revisit a town for recruitment later on?

Cool, thanks for the tips guys. I'll give the server a test with the vanilla templates tonight and see what's up.

Also, I tried just putting the Massi faction under the control of the AI commander, told it to command IND_F and mas_usa_delta, but apparently since they're on different sides (AAF being INDFOR and Massi's units being BLUFOR) it throws an error at the start of the mission and the OPCOM becomes non-operational. Any clever workarounds for this?

Also gave the drone a test. I tried just setting the start height of the CAS module to 1000, but the drone appears keen on dropping out of the sky like a rock when spawned using this method

Hm I see, so you're saying I let the AAF AI Commander do its thing and then create a 3rd AI Commander that is BLUFOR and in charge of the player faction. If I made the BLUFOR commander asymmetrical would it then give me different types of missions through tasking than, say, an occupation commander?

Also, now APEX just came out, I need to see how these mods all play with each other with the new update.

My experience using MCC is that MCC and ALiVE have no functionality together. It causes a plethora of client loading issues, and if any single client is running MCC sandbox it causes loadscreen problems for everybody, even if the server isn't!

If you want more dynamic missions I would just add a Zeus module and allow logged in administrators to access it.

Hm, I wonder if that's what happened last night. I was updating my mission to accommodate the APEX update and all the ensuing mod updates it brought about, everything was functioning swimmingly until the very last test. Now my mission gets all the way to the final load screen (client side) and never leaves that spot. I hear the environment sounds, I even hear tasks being generated and coming in, but loading screen never goes away.

It's like a weird Kafka nightmare, I hear my AI teammates asking where I am constantly... I'm in the loading screen man, can't you see me?!

I had been testing with MCC loaded both on server and client all day and no issues though. Actually had a real fun thing going. I'm hoping it's just a weird module thing since the last change I made was throwing down an ACE respawn module and some custom objective modules.

It would be a shame if I couldn't use MCC though, as most of the time it's just going to be 2-3 of us playing. Would be great to have all of us playing and not have to rely on constant Zeus-ing or have somebody in the group that essentially knows what's going to happen because he's Zeus. I still haven't found anything better than MCC at procedurally generating good, well-balanced, intricate missions. Or anything else at all. I know Alive tasking sort of does this, but still not anywhere near the level of detail that MCC does.

Future feature, perhaps?