Hi everyone. It looks like a lot of these factions got beat up pretty bad over the last few official BIS updates. As it stands now, is CAF Aggressors the only Middle Eastern faction (that contains OPFOR and civilians) currently working with ALiVE right now? I see CAF hasn't been updated in forever so is that genuinely still working either?

I've played a few missions that included CAF since 1.54 but I've been having so many issues with ARMA in general recently I figured it would just be safer to ask the experts before banging my head against a wall testing.

From what I can tell, Leights and Sub Insurgents don't work super well with ALiVE and I don't think Massi's Middle Eastern Warfare has been tested enough with ALiVE to make a determination one way or the other.

Is CAF it and is it still the only "officially" working faction even though it hasn't been updated in ages?

Leights is almost certainly not working right with ALiVE. That kinda leaves CAF if we're talking about an OPFOR that includes a civilian faction, unless I'm missing something (hence the thread).

Does anyone know offhand if CAF includes units that have a chance to spawn in vehicles? I'm hoping not to have to mix and match insurgency factions from several mods. Surely there has to be one that includes civilians, insurgents and insurgent inside vehicle (with weapons mounted on vehicles) factions. I'm looking at CAF classnames and none of them obviously imply vehicles are included.

I hear it still has issues with ALiVE. Over on BIS forums the last two posts mentioned classname errors.

Not only that, but I can't tell what the difference between the vehicles and non-vehicles versions are. The non-vehicles version looks like it has vehicles anyway so which version is more ALiVE insurgency friendly? I'm looking for something with mostly foot infantry with a small (but possible) chance of enemy vehicle spawns.

Yeah it's weird. I haven't tried MEC yet but even with CAF Ag, I can't really tell if vehicles spawn organically either. I can definitely manually place them as the vehicle class shows in the editor.

The only one I know for sure does is Leights, but before his update yesterday, has problems with ALiVE.

Boy. Every once in a while I still search the forums and Google but there really aren't many choices out there. Is anyone having any luck with Massi's Middle East Conflict? I've heard from a few people it causes issues with ALiVE. As does Leights.

I guess I'm not having any obvious issues with CAF Aggressors, it's just that it's so old I'd prefer to switch to one being currently maintained.

There's CAF (old. No longer maintained).
Leights (has issues with ALiVE apparently)
MEC (said to have issues with ALiVE)
IWAR (no civilians)
Eric J's Taliban units (no civilians and no weapons)
Sub Insurgents (old. No longer maintained)

Surly there's got to be an ALiVE working, currently maintained middle eastern faction out there with a civilian class. Am I missing anything?

Hey thanks for chiming in! See, I think we discussed mixing factions before. But one thing kind of still confuses me. You know how some civilians can be carrying weapons on them in Assymetric missions? If I were to use CAF civs and Iraq Syrian OPFOR, how would the civs arm themselves? Would the CAF civs pull weapons from the Iraq Syrian weapons class?

Oh. And with Iraqi-Syrian, are you having any issues with ISIS vehicle damage? Do you need to use the Real Armor mod in conjunction with this or was it fixed when Massi and RHS updated their damage values recently? Just curious since you use it if there's anything I should be aware of.

Quote from Autigergrad from their BIS thread from back in Nov:

Just FYI for anyone using this pack... I just spent a couple of hours playtesting the different weapons packs against the Iraq Syrian vehicles. The "hodge podge" of some Massi vehicles, some RHS vehicles is definitely causing issues. For example...some of the ISIS tanks are impenetrable to CUP or RHS launchers but others blow up fine.

Obviously..this can cause some pretty big issues in game when using different launchers against different vehicles.

The fix I would recommend is to always use the Real Armor mod in conjunction with this mod. As soon as I restarted with RAM activated....the RHS launchers and CUP launchers were able to destroy all ISIS vehicles.

I figured some other folks who want to start using this pack should know that. Great pack and I'm glad I found a fix."

Only a few civilian factions are supported in terms of using native weapons. But, the weapons are specified by the civilian faction itself, not the asymmetric faction. If a faction doesn't have any weapons defined, you can define them yourself as well.

You can refer to a post I made in this thread for more info on self-defining civilian weapons
http://alivemod.com/forum/1451-hostile-civilian-weapons

Ok. I think I get now why I see that staticdata.sqf file in all of Autigergrads's CAF Aggressors missions. LOL! He must be giving the the civilian class access to guns or weapons of some kind. Or at least without looking it would seem that way. Makes sense.

How can I tell which civilian classes have weapons natively? I'd like to confirm that this is necessary or not necessary with CAF. I just assumed all civ factions had no guns (hence, then being civilians) and pulled their gear automatically from OPFOR.

Learn something new every day!

CIV
CIV_F
mas_afr_civ
caf_ag_afr_civ
caf_ag_me_civ
dirregularsC

Are covered

.. Full set of data
http://pastebin.com/raw/zg7fPv1c

Ok! Thanks. So no need for me to add the staticdata.sqf for caf_ag_me_civ then (unless I want to change the specific weapons)? Assymetric mode and the faction itself will handle all that automatically I take it?

Yep

Thanks Reiser. So is MEC foot infantry only without the vehicles?

Incontinenetia, sorry to bug you but I figured I'd ask. I see you're using a combination of Leights civs and Iraq-Syrian OPFOR, correct? I think I know the answer but perhaps you could clarify?

Is there a reason you don't just use Leight's since you already have it enabled? I'm thinking the answer is related to Leight's having horrible configs and unit spawn numbers that don't mesh well with ALiVE. As well as the vehicle override not working properly. Is Iraq-Syrian wonderfully configured for ALiVE and I'm just not aware of it? I see it doesn't get much or any support so just wanted to pick your brain.

Thanks for the explaination. I think I've committed to going "all-in" on Afghan maps with Leights AM and TAK civs but every moment I second guess myself. Especially because I already know that unit sizes are very large and that doesn't even account for what I hear are his poor configurations and too many vehicle spawns. But for trying to recreate the war in the Afghanistan region, I like his mod. I just constantly hear bad thing when it comes to ALiVE, though Brawler shared some workarounds with me.

Next up is me patiently awaiting CUP Taliban and/or Warefare Thai to update their issues with their Taliban insurgents. Thanks for the detailed reply.

Yeah, if Leights fails and the others I mentioned aren't out (or updated) yet, I'll give Massi's a try. I'm sure his civ shorts are only equally as odd as Leight's civ baseball caps (Leights, why???). :)

Sub Insurgents is OLD! I like the mod though. Just decided it's better to use factions currently being supported from now on.

LOL! Yeah like I said earlier I misinterpreted well known BIS error spam as an issue with CAF itself. I'll switch back if I need to.

I just hate that O'Hally doesn't update it anymore. Makes me paranoid and makes me wonder if it causes crashes. Please update me in a few days if everything is stable and thanks for the feedback. CAF is definitely my favorite it's just old and makes me paranoid due to that fact.

Good to know CAF AG still works OK

CAF is still my favorite Taliban faction. Works great, squad sizes are great. No issues whatsoever.

The man himself. Thanks buddy. You've swayed me. :)

Leight's unit spawn sizes are just awful. As much as I love his mod his configurations are infuriating.

@incontinenetia I just wish CAF AG had the weapon sounds of RHS..

If you use RHS as well, there is probably a weapon swap configuration mod out there somewhere

Is anyone else getting a message about a missing RPG texture with CAF? I don't think it causes crashes or anything but just wondering. I'll get the exact error the next time I see it (I think you only see it in the editor but I'm not sure).

Hmmm. Regardless of the map I keep getting this error message on screen with CAF: "Cannot load texture ca\weapons\data\rpg7_rockets_co.paa"

It seems to my untrained eye like the game can't find the RPG texture for the CAF OPFOR units.

Not sure if this is a fatal error or not. It doesn't crash single player but I have a feeling it might cause issues in MP.

Would anyone know of a workaround for this (perhaps using a weapons mod will force the RPG infantry to use a different RPG?)?

Yep, not a fatal error at all. Unfortunately with mods that haven't been updated in awhile there tends to be small script errors like this all over the place.

Good to know. Back to work I go. :)