I'm just wondering how you guys go about fine-tuning this kind of conventional battle. I've spent a ton of time making Asymmetric Insurgency stuff but I'm relatively new to full map commander vs commander battles and having a hard time balancing them.

The last few nights I've been trying to finish up one on Diyala. It's basically full-map warfare, aside from not allowing the enemy side to spawn around my bases, and my side not spawning in one large enemy held city. But otherwise, the entire map is allowed to be fought over. What I'm finding is, about 50% of the time, both sides are replenishing BCR's! I've tested this over 3 one-hour sessions, and around 30 minutes each time are spent with a relatively empty map, with BRC's being replenished and then waiting for the next OPCOM cycle.

The mission is roughly 60 OPFOR vs 50 BLUFOR (I'd go higher which does help but Diyala is a little FPS hungry when I push it further). Both are set to Occupation. OPFOR gets tiny objects and above, while BLUFOR gets small objectives and above to keep the human players more active and not constantly interfered with by friendly AI killing all the enemies (I prefer to ask for their help when I need it).

The virtual battles just seem to happen so fast that I don't think it would be possible to scout or recon or employ any strategy at all. Within minutes after mission start, both sides lose around a dozen profiles. Within 30 minutes the entire picture of the war has totally changed and most areas are completely empty because all the soldiers have killed each other. I use the slowest possible virtual AI speed (25%) so I know there's not really anything I can do there. Tonight I'll be messing around with the objective readiness (I have it at 100%) to see how that goes and see if it helps.

I think this would feel a lot less painful to me if I could somehow increase the rate of the OPCOM refresh cycle, but before making a Github request, I'd love to see how some of you mission makers go about making fun and strategic full map missions.

Diyala I think is 8x8.

I have a mission on Chernarus which i think is 20x20 (ish?) in size, and although both sides lose around 30 profiles literally within minutes after mission starts (I don't get why profiles die so fast?!), I do start with quite a few profiles on both sides (around 100 vs 100) so the map still looks ok enough after the initial skirmishes. That does make me wonder if the amount of initial profiles makes a bigger difference than I'd assume. Maybe I'm supposed to always use a lot more than I tend to?

I certainly could increase the number of troops on Diyala, but when doing that, the FPS totally tanks, and honestly, 110 profiles (so about combined 500 individual units) feels like it should be enough for a map that small. I don't doubt that I could be wrong though.

In your missions, are you letting AI on both sides spawn everywhere on the map and just duke it out? Or do you have separate TAOR's and AO's and only let each side spawn on their respective halves of the map and just see what they do from there?

I kind of like the idea of letting the entire map be in play for both sides and then just seeing what each commander does to take it over and how they go about holding objectives (etc). But both sides pretty much end up just taking heavy losses immediately and never really get to employ any strategy at all. I mean, other than replenishing their troops through logistics and waiting for the next OPCOM cycle to send the new guys on their way (which takes forever).

What I'd like to see is OPCOMS holding areas and make them theirs. I want to be able to scout and recon because the opposing OPCOM conquered something, and then I want come up with a strategy to take that objective back. I want to intercept Logistics routes and try to sabotage them and lots of other strategic types of things. I'm not exactly sure how to accomplish that so any suggestions are welcome!

Also, for all I know it might take a few OPCOM cycles for their respective strategies to take place? If that's the case than I certainly haven't played the mission long enough for the strategy scope of each OPCOM to occur. My longest session right now I just over an hour.

It's only fair I point that out. I'd love clarification if that is indeed how it's designed. Again, I'm sort of new to this conventional commanders only thing. I've pretty much only really played ALiVE Insurgency for the last couple years.

Ok so here's an example. I have both commanders set to replenish their BCR's at a "constant" pace, which is 90% full capacity. On mission start, the battle begins with roughly 70 IND profiles and 50 BLUFOR profiles (that number can fluctuate. I'm shooting for roughly 60 vs 60). Here is a photo from when it begins:

And here is a photo after an hour of play. Notice on the right hand side, IND is replenishing their troops. There are 31 profiles there in that cluster on the right side of the map (whom are all apparently being sent to one spot on the left side?). So basically almost 50% of their entire starting force size is dead and the map is pretty empty:

I was messing with another mission on Chernarus. With approximately 100 vs 100, in one instance OPFOR lost 50 profiles within 2 minutes of the mission beginning. That doesn't happen every time but I find it strange that can happen at all.

If you let both blufor and opfor spawn at will in the same area i imagine that you would loose quite a few profiles early on as they could spawn on top of eachother.

Yeah that really does make the most sense. For map-wide, no holds barred, long-term persistent battles, I really like to let the entire map (for the most part) be in play so any area outside of our bases has the *chance* of having an enemy presence. For these kinds of missions I just find that to be the most exciting way to set things up, to have two commanders fight over the map while I go about executing missions and watching things unfold.

To keep players engaged, I like to restrict friendly spawns to (sometimes small) medium and large objectives only, that way I can explore without too much interference, but still have ample friendly units to call to a location if needed.

If this is a conventional army vs army battle I imagine there would be a rough frontline established, maybe try and set it up so that each area only have one faction that spawns there and instead create some empty "objective only" module for where you want them to attack. If this is how you do it already just ignore me :P

This is probably a good method for creating a more precise battle over a specific city or area in a circumstance where one side has established a portion of the map for themselves before the mission even started, but what I'm imagining is creating a mission where my side's only safe zones are the areas immediately surrounding our FOB's, with the rest of the map being fought over. That's a good suggestion though and I may try something like this if I can't balance what I'm working on to my liking.

Also, if you want a better idea of where the units will spawn, you could place them manually in the editor and sync them to Virtual AI module. I tend to do this on my conventional missions so I can establish an actual ORBAT for my OPFOR and organize them a little more than ALiVE would have. After the mission starts, ALiVE does as it pleases with them.

You know, this is exactly what I actually do in my Insurgency missions. Lol. For the same reasons. Not a bad idea! It allows me to spread out the forces so the map feels well populated, but it also has the additional benefit of keeping total objectives down to a reasonable level (when I use this method, my obj modules are set to objective only). I think this goes full circle back the first part too with units spawning in close proximity to each other and killing one another immediately on mission start. I agree that battles seem to prolong themselves when you place and virtualize the profiles yourself because they're be spread out more when the mission begins. I may end up doing this so thanks for the advice.

Yesterday I guess I made a little progress. I went back in and decided to rebalance the obj modules by increasing the total profile spawns. Fortunately, increasing a module from let's say a platoon 30 to a company 100, doesn't actually seem to change the total profile spawns all that much and also seems to fill in the gaps a little bit better too.

After that I filled in some additional empty spaces (such as tiny village buildings) with some objective-only cust obj modules and I'm *more or less* getting the results I'm after. Though I need more time with it to see.

That said, I'm still not 100% thrilled with how BCR's are working out. OPCOM cycles are just aggravatingly long (I'm guessing they last over 15 minutes). There's so so much dead time where 20-30 BCR profiles are just clustered and just sitting there doing a whole lotta nothing waiting for OPCOM to give them an assignment. When you only have an hour or two to play, it's that much more painful because large swaths of the map are still empty and no OPCOM strategies really exist. You'd think when set to "constant" I wouldn't be noticing this because they should be trying to replenish in the neighborhood of when they're at 90% capacity. So far this does not seem to be anywhere near the case!

I'll likely try some of the suggestions you guys made so I can at least get a better grasp on how the inner-workings of the mode functions. For this mission specifically, it's designed to be more or less an ambient war backdrop for ALiVE auto-task mission generation anyway so it doesn't need to be perfect, but for other maps I hope to find a better method for full map conventional battles that lets OPCOM's utilize more strategies than what I'm seeing. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

This is actually how I have it setup. Well, aside from a few things I'm looking for clarification on.

I currently allow my side to not only spawn inside my bases (well, all but one because it is cramped as hell. And when I let my friendlies spawn there, sometimes a motorized or armored group spawns and they run over everyone and can't actually get out lol), but also around the map too. The first photo above is a slightly decent approximation. The 3 US flags are my bases.

Do you let friendlies spawn around the map too? Or are you restricting them to your bases areas only, and syncing your OPCOM to the enemy objectives so they eventually leave and begin attacking enemy objectives around the map?

My one problem with this method is.....

Let's say I only let my side spawn in and around my bases:

1. They don't seem to leave the base areas and go out on objectives with any real urgency. They just like to stick around the TAOR. Though this could be mitigated a bit by changing their strategy to "invasion." I guess I'd have to see to what extent.

2. Since the number of profiles that spawn are directly tied to the number of available objectives, limiting the initial spawns to my 3 FOB's, or even a general area around them, would mean the enemy would vastly outnumber me in initial profiles. Are you using Dynamic reinforcements for this then so you get a bump in friendlies as you take new objectives?

Am I making sense? Any thoughts?

Thanks Imbazil, that's all very sound and rational advice. I appreciate the effort in the responses from both of you guys. You've given some techniques to try out so thanks!

Ok so I've made some progress but I still have to wonder if Military Logistics and new profiles getting reassigned to objectives is working as intended.

Diyala is an odd map for one, just to be fair. If you place a civ placement module, and do not filter, you get about 160 objectives (way too much). If you filter out just the tiny ones, you get well under 80, and the map feels barren and empty.

I've gone in and edited it a ton, keeping it at filtering out tiny and adding a crap ton of custom objectives to get the really small houses and villages recognized as objectives again.

However, I'm still getting the same results when BCR's occur.

It's taking over 40 minutes for IND to reassign their BCR's to new objectives. And even then, the majority of the new profiles are all clustered over and around the mil obj's. They don't spread out like they do on mission start. A couple things:

1. I've removed the HQ and field HQ options in the mil obj module and they still seem to just hang out at their BCR location. Why don't they get reassigned to the smaller objectives around the map? Clearly they are important enough to spawn there on mission start.

2. I have reinforcement set to constant and still, with around 70-80 starting profiles, BCR's don't take place until the force is almost entirely wiped out. I counted over 50 profiles replenishing simultaneously at two BCR spots. Isn't constant supposed to be a "constant" trickle of BCR's at approximately 90% of initial strength? Imagine what that BCR point looks like with over half of their initial force size spawning all at once! It's a mess.

I'm thinking what's happening here is, profiles are being killed too quickly before the OPCOM cycle has a chance to cycle again and a mil obj is sufficiently held. So rather than dropping in 5 BCR groups here, and 6 BCR groups there, both sides are annihilating each other and OPCOM then has to calculate how to deal with over 50 profiles all at once.

That said, I'm using auto-tasking so I don't think a player would really notice this much if they were just going from objective to objective, because the tasks do a great job of sending you to dangerous areas (minus the one time I had a clear the town task in an active BCR location with over 30 profiles being dropped in and just sitting there for 40 minutes! Imagine stumbling upon that).

Though if I were just playing this without tasks and just trying to conquer the map, almost all of it would be uninhabited most of the time.

This makes me wonder if something is borked with OPCOM receiving and reassigning profiles to objectives right now.