Hey guys, long time lurker here! Been learning a lot from the conversations and missions posted (special thanks to HeroesandvillainsOS and AUTigerGrad, been playing/studying your missions and tweaking them for myself and my roommate for a while now, learned a ton!)

I'm starting work on my own mission, building it from the ground up, really trying to take my time, build it clean, and test it methodically. Hopefully I can use you guys as a resource here as I go along.

Anywho, my first question! I've had this idea about being able to build FOBs, OPs, camps, etc. during a persistent campaign.

• Has anybody done something like this before?
• Are there any mods to look into that add this kind of functionality?
• Should I just rely on some kind of implementation of Zeus here?
• How do I begin to go about making sure that these player-built fortifications are persistent?

I did a little searching last night and didn't find too much on the topic, outside of some old mods. I'm open to any implementation of the concept, although I suppose less mods is the cleaner way to go.

Possibly a future ALiVE feature? :D

Huge duh moment. ALiVE already has this built in. Just tested it, does everything I need. Am I correct in understanding that the fortifications built will be persistent?

Been progressing with the mission a bit. The main concept is a conflict between 2 conventional forces set on invasion, about equal in size. However, each side has a force multiplier. The player BLUFOR side, having an MACC and plenty of air power via carrier and airfields, while the enemy OPFOR has a friendly insurgency on its side.

The concept essentially has the players playing as a small SOF or PMC team helping a friendly nation in a complicated conflict that moves through phases, calling in air strikes, directing battles, and performing counterinsurgency actions. It would begin with a decent amount of open warfare and would then transition into more of an insurgency in the aftermath as the player's side defeats the enemy.

So far so good, got all the basics and the deployment and balance between all the sides working with Vanilla well enough.

I have noticed sometimes when reinforcements come in via helo there's a lot of crashing into each other or long periods of hovering before they head off and despawn. That normal?

Also, what is the best way to set up respawning for my aircraft controlled by the MACC, can I just use the BIS vehicle respawn module?

Any plans integrating player combat support with MACC? As in sending the MACC requests for CAS or strikes? I've only had mixed success with fixed wing CAS, often they kinda just wander around after a while and most of the time don't seem to be able to land when I order them to RTB. The MACC functions, however, seem to have sidestepped those issues, seems like it would be a logical next step for the MACC.

Fair enough, I usually don't have too much of a problem getting fixed-wing CAS to hit things via CS, it's the other behaviors that get a bit wonky, like RTB and such. Especially if the aircraft has to respawn, oftentimes it just ignores me after that and doesn't move. It just looks like MACC controlled craft tend not to have those issues.

Can't wait to try the new release out, I've been reading through the GitHub and there's some really exciting stuff coming down. Very interested to learn more about the module-integrated C2ISTAR tasks.

Also, I ran my mission on the server overnight, to see how the AI would play out over a long period of time. The conventional forces seem fine enough, although it seems they do settle into a stagnant position after a while, with neither side really attacking. I've upped the amount of units being placed at the beginning as maybe it's a case of not enough units to both hold the objectives on the map and also attack (it is Altis, pretty big AO).

The insurgency, however, seems pretty toothless. When I debug, I see a couple insurgent groups moving about and no IED's. It just doesn't seem like any recruitment is happening. Any tips on getting the insurgency to kick into gear? I've double checked the modules, and it all seems fine to my eye. I've gone in and adjusted the civilian hostility level and changed installations to high to see if that helps things out a bit. Going to run the new version while I'm at work today and see how it develops by the time I get back. I can also post up the mission later today if anybody feels like helping a dude out and checking my work.

Plenty of civilians around, I have their roles selected as western, and I saw several recruitment centers when I checked the OPCOM installations debug.

Also, another quirk, I have 2 markers set up on the eastern side of the island blacklisting the placement modules. The idea is I want the main, conventional conflict happening on the western part of Altis, while the eastern part is where the heart of the insurgency grows. Except only one marker actually seems to make it into the mission when I start it. The other one straight up disappears.

Ah, ok. Right now I have the blacklist as such -

A01,A02

Separated by a comma and no spaces. Is that correct?

Ah, well, renamed the markers and it seemed to fix it. Just started another test, gonna let it cook throughout the day and hopefully I'll be looking at a potent insurgency when I come home later.

A few more things I've noticed -

MACC aircraft on "strike" sorties seem to be bombing empty buildings and such (double checked, they are not insurgent installations). What's the logic behind assigning strike missions to MACC aircraft?

Also, while on these strike missions, oftentimes the aircraft flys in very low and ends up bombing itself with the splash. Any ideas how to deal with that?

Hey guys, thanks for the help so far, everything's running pretty smoothly. Next step, get a headless client running!

I have noticed an odd thing about the mission though. It seems that after a certain amount of time, lots of AI profiled units start moving off the map and into the great beyond. I looked around at similar issues, and the best reasoning I read out there is that it has something to do with the map index. I'm playing on Altis, however...

Any thoughts?

Also, may or may not be appropriate because it's a dev version question, but I was super interested in the strategic tasking, so I downloaded the latest test build and gave it a whirl. It doesn't seem that I'm receiving any tasking, however. I double checked my C2ISTAR module and made sure it's set to automatically generate tasks for me and that it's set to strategic, that my factions are correct (just leaving them vanilla, BLU_F friendly, OPF_F enemy), but no dice. Am I missing something?

Hm, well I played for for most of the night last night, never got a single tasking, not even an assault task. Server was running and player was logged in for more than a couple hours

Good to know the profiles jumping ship is being looked at. Doesn’t quite kill the mission, but definitely leads to a drop in intensity

Quick update, I did a quick experiment trying to use just custom objective modules, no mil or civ placement. Also fewer units placed overall, was just trying to gain a little more control over the flow of forces across the map, being selective about which custom objective modules got synced and such. Started it this morning and let it cook throughout the day, came home from work and my units did not seem to have moved off the map.

Before, when the groups were moving off-map, I had free scanning civ and mil placement modules, meaning no specified TAORs or blacklisted areas. No idea if that's the cause, though, just a correlation.

But I also couldn't really find that many insurgency units. I have civilians being spawned, their roles selected and such. I did see some new installations though. This all sparked a few questions concerning the details about how an asymmetrical commander goes about things -

What does a civilian being recruited actually look like? If I were to follow one as it happened, what would I see? I know the insurgency doesn't use the normal reinforcement methods of the occupation or invasion commanders, that they replenish their ranks via recruitment. But do all recruited civilians just become single civilian insurgents as indicated in the wiki? And if so, how does the insurgency gain new actual fighting groups and not just civilian insurgents?

Got another issue here, although not quite an ALiVE issue.

I'm trying to set up a headless client, but my headless client just will not load the necessary mods. My pathing looks correct, I've removed spaces in mod names, replaced them with underscores, but I still get missing mod errors when the HC starts up and tries to connect. In particular, I see missing ACE and ALiVE errors.

Here's my HC .bat file, I'm probably making some sort of obvious mistake. Any help would be appreciated!

https://pastebin.com/bCWzYjnZ

Also, if anybody has any insight into how insurgent armed cells are actually generated or reinforced, please let me know. I've got a decent thing going in the mission, just curious about what's happening behind the curtain.