Mission Design & Zeus

Overview

The general purpose of this page is to give guidance to those who are looking to produce missions at the platoon level, but could just as easily be adapted to fit smaller or larger groups.

Principles & Doctrine

In the first section of this guide we are going to talk about some of the theorectical concepts and explain a little bit more about the mission making doctrine that we’d like all our content creators to follow. While mission makers are allowed certain creative liberties, conforming to a broad doctrine and approach keeps our missions running smoothly.

Concept Creation

Ultimately before we can commence down the path of mission creation we must first think of a basic concept and ascertain exactly what it is that we are trying to achieve. You should consider some of the following:

• Is this a one-shot mission, or part of a longer campaign? - This is a key question that you need to answer before you put any real work in to your design, as it will impose limitations on the available assets, maps, and units at your disposal. If you’re designing a series of missions as part of a wider campaign then you have a lot greater freedom when it comes to the creation of a modpack, allowing you to pick addons that might add otherwise missing equipment. If you’re designing a one-shot mission, then you’ll need to stick to using base-game assets and maps, as trying to have players download a collection of 20+ mods for one single event will be met with a very quick and decisive ‘no’.

• Is this going to require a huge modpack? - Assuming that we are producing a series of missions for a longer campaign, it still does not give you license to browse the steam workshop and just add every single mod that vaguely fits your concept. Modpacks should be vetted thoroughly, and you should make sure not to have overlapping content or too many larger mods. You need to remember that the bigger the modpack, the more unstable the experience can be for everyone else. Modpacks at around 35+ mods will likely be rejected, and ideally you should be aiming for as close to 20 as you can get. If you can remove a mod without completely breaking the experience - then you should be doing that.

• Is this actually going to be an enjoyable concept? - Remember, you’re designing a mission for around 30 players to have fun. Imagine you are in their shoes having to play the mission. While on paper, playing as a guerilla force against a vasty better equipped enemy might sound fun - The reality is likely to be a few hours of players getting destroyed by assets that they have no real way of dealing with. That’s not fun for anyone. Insurgency missions often have the same problem in reverse, as there are a lack of enemy force multipliers, the only real option available to significantly increase the intensity is with the addition of more infantry units.

• Steer towards conventional warfare - Conventional warfare can be thought of as a conflict using conventional weapons, equipment and tactics by two or more organised military forces in open confrontation. This type of force-on-force gameplay is something that the ArmA series is incredibly good at implementing, and allows players to conduct intense and highly kinetic maneuvers against their opposition. The other side of this coin is that of Asymmetric warfare (also known as Guerilla warfare), whereby players are facing off against a small but well coordinated opposition force who are able to blend in with the civilian population. Combating this type of warfare often requires a slow methodical approach, dominating the ground with regular foot patrols and attempting to win the hearts and minds of the population. In terms of player engagement, getting these slow and methodical operations to be interesting often requires huge amounts of ambience and suspense, something that is particularly tough to implement, and even harder to implement well. As such, these types of missions are highly discouraged within our community.

• Don’t use stealth as a base concept - Stealth can serve as a useful tool, allowing players to infilitrate into enemy lines before conducting more overt military action. The use, or expectation of stealth, however, should be limited to the initial setup phase of the operation - don’t expect your players to maintain stealth past this phase. As a concept, these stealth-heavy missions favour smaller, more independent teams, and don’t scale well to the larger scale platoon operations that we prefer to conduct.

• Beware of night operations - Night operations certainly have their place in terms of real life military engagements, as for ArmA however, they can easily become dull if not implemented correctly. More tenured members of the community will know that we play for four to five hours in a single session, and spending this amount of time looking at the monochromatic green of night vision goggles can become grating when subjected to it for a long period of time. Instead of this, you can aim to incoporate varied lighting levels by having your mission take place at dusk or dawn. This maintains the presence of a night aspect to your mission, but ensures that players don’t spend the entire session looking at a green-tinted monitor.

World Building

A bit of world building in your mission can go a long way to increasing player engagement. It allows them to see progression in the story and can provide some context to their objectives and actions.

Time Period

You’ll likely have already decided this during your concept creation, but a key point to bear in mind is around balancing realism with gameplay. Our approach has always been ‘gameplay over realism’ and what this means from a mission perspective is not to make things overly realistic if it might negatively impact gameplay. An example of this might be something like only giving squad leaders a section-level radio during a WW2 campaign. Sure, that’s realistic, only select personnel carried radios during that time, but if it completely hinders a rifle sections ability to actually operate, as they are unable to stay within direct voice range, then it’s overall effect on the operation is negative.

Ultimately it’s up to the creator to impart their own style or limitations on an operation - but you must carefully consider any limitations put in place and the knock-on effect they could have.

Terrain

Terrain is certainly one of the most important aspects of a campaign, if not perhaps the most important. The map you choose ultimately sets the tone for type of assets you can use and encounter. There is no point attempting to use jets on a 5km x 5km map - it’s just not going to work.

Try not to fall into the trap of selecting maps with extremely high object density. Take RHSPKL for example, the map itself is an environmental masterpeice - a lush jungle environment with integrated trench systems and some good looking towns. On the other hand however, the object density was so high that we were forced to cap the view distance at 500m to get above 15 FPS and the player experience overall wasn’t too good because of it.

Storyline

As stated earlier, world building provides background and context to the actions of the player. It provides a purpose to the mission instead of just stating

“Go to town X and kill all of the enemies”

Try to come up with a bit of a back story, what happened up to this point? Why are we taking the current action? What might be the impact of failing to succeed with the mission? Try and think about the sort of question you’d ask if the tables were turned.

Enemy Forces

Enemy Faction

When it comes to choosing an enemy faction in ArmA, you’re absolutely spoiled for choice. You can either use an existing fictional nation like CSAT or the AAF, taking advantage of their existing backstory, use a community addon like CUP or RHS - or even just make up an entirely fictional faction to match your needs! The potential is almost limitless.

However - there are a couple of ‘gotchas’ that are absolutely essential that you look out for.

• Players and enemies should be from the same modpack or mod developers - Unfortunately there is no enforced standard when it comes to configuring a weapons damage values, or the armour protection values of vest and uniforms, leaving mod developers to use data from other sources, or simply make their best guess at what it should be. This can have quite troubling implications. The most common symptom of this is generally unbalanced gameplay - with either the AI being too easy to kill because their armour values are drastically below where they should be, or the complete reverse where enemies become almost impossible to kill because their unreasonably high armour values means that your weapon can’t even put a dent in them. Some examples of safe combinations might include things like NATO vs CSAT - with both factions being from the base game, they are designed to be balanced with each other and have been tested thoroughly. Another example includes RHS US Armed Forces vs RHS Russian Armed Forces, while technically two seperate mods, they are designed by the same team with the idea in mind that they will be used in conjunction with one another. This make it a safe bet that they will have been configured with balance in mind.

• The mod must be ACE compatible - The ACE mod is always present in our gameplay, in fact it’s not really possible for us to play without it. The ACE ballistics system reconfigures the damage values for different types of ammunition - meaning they differ from the standard damage values that you’d find in vanilla. The key point here is that whatever faction mod is used must recognise the ACE damage system. Any addon that does not recognise this will suffer from units that take a significant amount of rounds in order to be knocked unconcious or killed - making life unnecessarily hard for the players as well as causing some extreme aggravation.

Unit Placement & Equipment

Here are some things to consider when building your mission and placing your enemy forces:

• Avoid massing enemy infantry - Not only does an infantry-only opposition get very stale, very quickly, it also causes significant FPS drops. As a mission maker you need to recognise that more objects on the map almost directly correlates with less FPS. It’s a very easy trap to fall into when trying to increase the difficulty of a mission, to simply increase the amount of enemies. Instead, consider the use of force multipliers like static turrets, entrenched enemy positions, technicals, armoured vehicles and QRFs. All of these things present additional challenges to the players on the ground, all without drastically increasing the number of objects on the map at any one time.

• Utilise QRFs to contest areas - It’s unlikely that the opposition in a force vs force settings is just going to roll over and let you seize a strategically important objective. It’s highly likely that you’d be looking at having enemies bringing stronger assets to bear and attempting flank your position. On a technical level this can be implemented in a number of ways, either by utilising existing BI solutions like the Guard Waypoint or by leveraging functions contained within mods like Zeus Enhanced. This is an incredibly engaging from a player perspective as it provides the feeling that enemy forces are being proactive in reacting to the actions of the players.

• Avoid single points of failure - Only place enemy force multipliers that can be tackled by more than one element within the mission. To expand on this, consider the following example - In our mission we might have provided the players with a supporting jet that is capable of attacking tanks and heavily armoured vehicles. Now this is fine, provided that the infantry on the ground also have a counter to this threat. Now you might be thinking: “but they’ve got the jet - why would the infantry need AT too?". The answer is quite simple. Never assume that all of the assets or slots available to the players will be filled. While our attendance numbers are fairly regular, there are a myriad of other problems that could unexpectedly occur:

  • You might find that nobody wants to take that jet slot - We don’t mandate that people have to play certain roles, this means that in some cases we can end up in a situation where the asset doesn’t get crewed, simply because nobody wants to play it. If the asset is absolutely essential for the mission, we end up backed into a situation whereby either; Someone has to volunteer for the role, they get voluntold, or the Zeus is required to rework the mission on the fly.
  • The crew might be having connection problems or had to go AFK - Unfortunately, real life exists and internet connections aren’t always that reliable. Whatever the reason, sometimes unexpected circumstances can render support assets temporarily unavailable. If the rest of the platoon also have a way to tackle a particular threat, then everyone else can continue playing, unaffected by issues that the support asset might be having. If the threat cannot be countered any other way, then we reach the nightmare scenario, where the operation grinds to a halt until the support asset becomes available again, or an alternative solution is achieved.

• Garrison urban areas intelligently - If you were defending a town, would you spread your forces out and put a single soldier in each building? No of course not - So why would the enemy? When building up forces within a urban area you should ensure that you place units utilising defense-in-depth, and have positions mutually supporting one another (whereby you couldn’t take one without taking fire from the other). This greatly enhances gameplay as you can use less AI to produce a nice challenge for the players, forcing them to use supression and cover when approaching and assaulting garrisoned buildings.

• Avoid auto-cannons or Grenade Machine Guns (GMGs) - Vehicles with cannon systems or other rapid explosive armaments like the AFV-4 Gorgon will quickly make mince-meat out of players and should be avoided for the most part. While a player might use this weapon system for other purposes like area suppression, breaching and controlled bursts, the AI are absolutely lethal when it comes to operating these systems and will often use them with deadly accuracy. While they should for the most part be avoided, these types of vehicles can be used to spice up an operation provided that they are placed intelligently. When placed in a position with a narrow field of view they can make something like crossing a street extremely dangerous, without allowing them to simply rinse players crossing open ground from any direction.

• If players have armoured assets, remove the majority of AT equipped soldiers - This takes into account our balancing gameplay with realism principle that we talked about earlier. While it’s realistic that a modern conventional armed force would have an abundance of anti-tank weaponry, consider that if every single infantry squad has at least a single AT specialist, with at least two rockets per person, and our players will encounter at minimum 3 squads in a single engagement, friendly armour will find itself quickly overwhelmed with a barrage of rockets - ultimately destroying the vehicle and it’s crew, negatively impacting the experience of the crew themselves and the players relying on that asset. As an alternative to the ‘volume’ approach of anti-tank, focus instead on utilising powerful, well positioned, anti-armour assets like static AT launchers. These prevent the player’s armour from operating with impunity, without subjecting them to a withering hailstorm of rockets the second they are engaged by opposition forces.

Player Equipment

Small Arms & Personal Kit

In this section of the guide we are going to explore some of the principles around deciding what equipment should be used by your players and some of the more subtle aspects of mission making that might catch you out. This section will likely come across as cynical, but it’s written with an aim to be realistic and reflect some of the actual points that you need to deal with as a mission maker.

• Don’t ever make an arsenal available to players - This is just an absolute train wreck waiting to happen. It suffers from a number of issues not least of which is the unfortunate fact that players cannot be trusted to only pick up specific kit and all but guarantees your mission will commence with ninety minutes of your players playing dress-up, followed by someone whipping out their golden desert eagle and tinfoil hat mid-platoon assault. Just avoid it like it’s the plague.

• Don’t use a specific machine gun if their ammo can also be utilised by the standard rifle - It’s rare that machine guns fall into this trap, but it’s certainly something to watch out for. Weapon systems like the RPK use 75 round extended magazines - there’s one catch however - and that is the fact that AK variants of the same calibre can also equip those magazines. While your rifleman might start with the assigned 30 round magazines, you’ll quickly notice that the second they get their hands on a resupply crate, everyone will be running round with these extended magazines.

• Give players basic weapon optics - Handicapping the players by providing them with non-magnified weapon sights, or even iron sights, allows you to get an even greater challenge out of your mission without having to increase the intensity of the AI. Unfortunately, magnified optics can highlight some of the game’s limitations, your players will see things like floating objects and units. Another advantage of more basic weapon sights is that it forces the players into a position where they’ll need to attempt things like flanking, closing to contact, masking with terrain and suppressive fire - a lot of these things are often missing when the players have powerful optics at their disposal, because they can quite easily hit targets from at least 800 metres away.

• Empty vehicle inventories - It’s a safe bet that you’ve probably supplied your players with some vehicles, and you’ll often find that these vehicles have some guns and equipment in their inventory to start with. If you don’t want your players to use these items, make sure to clear out the inventories.

There is a common theme throughout some of these points that is quite important that you think about, and that is: If you don’t want your players to do something, or use certain bits of equipment - Don’t give them that choice! While you can ask your players not to pick up certain bits of equipment, and some players might even follow that rule, a great deal of players will pick up and use kit not suited to their role if given the option to do so.

Special Assets

While there is nothing wrong with creating an infantry-centric mission, you’ll likely want to take advantage of some of ArmA’s combined arms potential by giving the players some big guns to play around with. When deciding what assets to give your players, you should consider some of the following principles:

• What is the geographical layout of your mission? - Specialist assets need to be suited to the objectives that players will be facing in the mission. Consider the tasks that will be put to the players and where these may take place. Are the objectives primarily in towns and urban areas? Are civilians present? If the answer is yes, indirect fire assets like mortars and artillery probably aren’t a good idea - as the potential for collateral damage is high. Instead consider something that is able to aim with slightly more precision and positively identify targets, like an armoured support vehicle.

• Do your special assets require bespoke mod-specific knowledge? - You might also want to take into account the applicability of the asset based on the community skill sets available. Does the asset require mod-specific or specialist training outside of the specialisms that already exist? For example, aircraft like Firewill’s Aircraft might have bespoke weapon systems unique to that mod and as such, do not make them a good choice as it requires the players to break away from known working and practiced procedures.

• We are an infantry-focused unit - We welcome all aspects of combined arms warfare, but at our core we focus primarily on that of infantry gameplay. With this in mind, a combination of infantry with heavier assets like mechanised infantry is a possibility, but we don’t support a format whereby the infantry elements are a minority, like playing as an armoured company.

• Avoid fan service - When designing a mission for the community, you’ll probably receive requests to include certain assets (maybe specific planes or other vehicles). When this happens, you can do your best to accommodate the requests, but don’t include them if the plot or objective layout doesn’t suit.

• Steer clear of highly equipped assets - What do we mean when we talk about a highly equipped asset? Traditional rotary attack helicopters like the Apache are good examples of this. These platforms often have high powered optics with robust weapon systems allowing them to single handedly control the battlefield, not requiring them to cooperate with other elements as they hover kilometers away and soak the enemy positions with explosive rounds and rockets. As an alternative to these assets, you should instead look towards solutions like helicopters with fixed forward-facing guns and fixed wing aircraft. These assets promote a greater level of cooperation between players since they require an appreciable amount of coordination to talk on to target. It’s worth stating for clarity, that we don’t outright ban the presence of such assets in missions, but this should serve as a warning that their usage should be very carefully considered, and having more the one of them is almost certainly an absolute non-starter.

Zeus

Zeus is a fantastic tool that allows you to add a touch of humanity to the movement, placement and reactions of AI forces - as well as giving you a backup plan in the event that things need to be changed around in your mission. It is, however, a dangerous tool, and one that in the hands of someone inexperienced with mission design, can quickly turn them into a crazed power hungry maniac.

In an ideal situation the mission should be pre-designed, and the Zeus' role should simply be to monitor, correct any errors and provide some of the more dynamic engagements like role-playing NPCs.

Principles

When playing as a Zeus, either supporting a pre-made mission, or producing a dynamic mission - try and stick to some of the following principles:

• You’re creating the problem, not the solution - This concept relates not only to the role of a Zeus but to mission design as a whole. This will vary from community to community, but we significantly prefer a sandbox approach to our missions, whereby the players are presented with a problem, given their tools, and then asked to fix it how they see fit. It’s the responsibility of the creator to give players the information and equipment (within reason) needed to complete their tasking, but it’s not their job to provide operational control on the ground. It might be your mission, but you’re not in charge.

• Player enjoyment is the ultimate goal - This is important to remember. While it’s certainly beneficial for a Zeus to have fun during an operation, your happiness is not the priority. Try and think from the perspective of the players, would this mission be fun to play if I was the one on the ground right now? Nobody enjoys feeling like the game master is doing nothing but trying to make their lives difficult for a few hours, and making players face impossible odds simply because it’s fun to watch them be killed, will quickly have your players distracting themselves with other things like teamkilling, blowing up spawn or just sitting around chatting - and rightly so…

• Make your mindset cooperative, not adversarial - This ties in closely with the first point, and relates specifically to how the game master views the players. You must remember that you’re not there to ‘win’, your objective isn’t to beat your players but ensure that they have a good time. If your players are storming through objectives because they are using good tactics and procedures - don’t punish them for that fact. Don’t send massive enemy QRFs, repeatedly strike them with artillery, or get on the radio and start telling them ‘they did the objective wrong’. Like most other aspects in multiplayer ArmA, it’s all about the teamwork - so work with your players to create that enjoyable environment.

• All things in moderation, especially enemy infantry - An unfortunate side effect of being a Zeus can sometimes manifest itself as a complete lack of control when it comes to managing the numbers of enemies in a location. Remember, a laggy objective, no matter how well designed and intricate, is absolute garbage if the players are forced to experience it at 5 FPS. Keep AI numbers under control and remember to use force multipliers in the place of massed enemy infantry.

• Avoid remote controlling units in combat - Remote controlled AI units can be a useful tool, but more often that not you’ll see it abused in order to take advantage of information that would not actually be available to a real enemy on the ground. Consider the following example: Players are currently sneaking around an objective, getting ready to spring an ambush. They are currently out of sight of the enemy, and their presence is not known. A Zeus decides that it might be ‘funny’ or ‘interesting’ to jump into an AI machine gunner, run up to where the players are, and start spraying them with bullets. This might not be apparent from the Zeus perspective, but you’ve immediately negatively effected the quality of the mission. Generally speaking, ArmA gameplay rewards teamwork, coordination, and realistic tactics (though not always) - and if players aren’t going to be rewarded for using coordination and tactical thinking - then why bother? This is just one example of where remote controlling units can be problematic, and this is because it takes advantage of information that the enemy have not organically acquired. With this in mind however, let’s look at some of the better sides of remote controlled AI:

  • It can make for a more active and engaging enemy - While AI modifications like LAMBS can improve the AIs general responsiveness, there is only so far you can go before it hits it’s engine limitations. A Zeus taking control of enemy units can make them more active and engaging, for example, in a CQB environment you can make enemy units pop in and out of cover, requiring players to carefully consider the use of cover themselves. There are some caveats to this. When remote controlling units, seek to suppress and injure players - rather than just immediately killing them. Remember the first point, player enjoyment is the ultimate goal. Your players aren’t having fun getting sniped the second they pop out of cover and then repeatedly having to be reinserted to the battlefield.

  • They can be used for world building and story telling - Remember that remote controlled units can be used to add some atmosphere. If roleplaying is your thing, then there is a whole heap of ways this functionality could be used. You could perhaps play as an informant that the players must locate and speak to in order to gain vital information, alternatively you could play the role of a curious civilian, attempting to talk to the players and seeing how they react to a non-confrontational interaction.

• Don’t abuse fire support modules - The fire support modules are tools that must be wielded with precision and consideration in equal measure. Something that is key to remember, is that players have no way to counter artillery being dropped directly on their heads and so should be avoided at all costs. In addition to this, artillery from the fire support modules causes significant freezes and FPS drops when used in a series of consecutive strikes, or when volley of strikes are placed in one go. If you’d like the threat of indirect fire to be present, a good workaround for this problem is to leverage LAMBS artillery and have the AI actually coordinate the strikes themselves. This gives the players an actual tangible and counterable threat that they can deal with.

• Stay in contact with platoon command - Part of the Zeus' responsibilities is to fix the inevitable cases of ‘ArmA being ArmA’. This could be anything from vehicles exploding due to desync, or players requiring a teleport back into the game after crashing out or disconnecting. This means you’ll need to make yourself available on the ‘Command Net’ and be contactable by the command team at all times. As you’ll be listening on the main command frequency, all of your communications with command will be audible to other commanders on the network - this means you need to be using proper voice procedure, and avoiding breaking RP.

• Don’t spawn in sight of the player - There is nothing more painful and aggravating to players than seeing the enemy spawn directly in front of them. If you find yourself spawning in groups of enemy units, first drop down to eye-level and ensure that the units are being masked by terrain or buildings so the player won’t be able to immediately see them.

• Don’t cave to the players every request - This links quite closely to the earlier remarks about giving players more basic equipment. To put it frankly, a great deal of players don’t like it when they can’t have IR lasers, night vision and an 8x magnified scope. The consequence of this is that as a mission maker you’ll almost immediately be hit with players asking for all of the gucci equipment that they can get their hands on. While you should be working with the players as much as possible for an enjoyable experience, you’ll need to draw a line in the sand and say “Nope, this is the equipment you’ve got, get on with it”.

The Campaign Lifecycle

So, you’ve decided that you want to make a campaign, the next thought that will probably spring to mind is how we turn that idea into a reality. With that in mind, we’re going to spend some time talking about the campaign lifecycle.

1. Settle on your concept - The first step is to have a good idea what it is that you’re aiming to create. What are the factions involved? What sort of map do you need?
2. Modpack Creation - Now that you’ve settled on the basis for your creative vision, you need to gather up the tools in order to build it. When it comes to ArmA, these ‘tools’ are usually community modifications from the steam workshop. The aim of this step is to gather the building blocks from which you will create your missions. The key with any modpack is to ensure that it’s as small as it can possibly be. If you can remove a mod without negatively affecting the gameplay, then you should probably do that. You want to include only mods that you need in order to make this campaign viable, avoid chucking in additional gimmick mods because ‘you might be able to find a use for it’ or ‘it looks kinda cool’. You’ll then need to pass your modpack along in order to be approved.
3. Start building! - Once you’ve gathered all of your tools, and you mind is firmly set on your vision, there is nothing left to do but start crafting away!

Scheduling

For experienced mission makers, who have proved that they can be trusted with a deadline, you’ll be given a great deal of freedom to schedule a campaign as you see fit.

For newer or inexperienced mission makers, we’ll require a greater deal of preparation to be demonstrated before a campaign can be scheduled. We’ll want to see that things like loadouts have all been checked and approved, with most of the missions having been built well ahead of time.

Technical Specifications

Up until this point we’ve talked about more general concepts and principles, rather than hard-and-fast rules. The upcoming segment will talk in greater detail about some of the nitty-gritty details around configuring and building your mission.

Player Configuration

In this section of the guide we’ll be taking a look at the configuration and layout of the playable units within the mission itself.

Player Slots

Setting up the correct ORBAT and structure for our player fighting force is a key aspect of a successful mission. We need to ensure that our players have the kit and equipment necessary to defeat the threats they will face, while also ensuring that these teams are configured in a way that equipment can be most optimally deployed and operated.

It’s important that there is a cohesion between leadership and mission designers here, since there is no point implementing a player layout so wonderful and unique that our command team have no idea how to implement it correctly. We don’t expect our commanders to have a perfect knowledge of how different troop configurations were implemented during different eras and by different countries, which means you’ll need to take a pragmatic approach. With that in mind, we have a couple of standardised orbats that you can use as a basis for your player roles.

We aim for 25-35 playable slots, with the last five being supporting and supplementary roles like Platoon Medic and copilots.

To avoid duplicating content here, please refer to Group Organisation page for information about the design and layouts of the different platoon and section types.

Playable Units & Group Configuration

Placing Units

When placing down your playable units on the map, make sure to only use default NATO, CSAT or AAF units. Do not place modded units. The reason for this is due to the fact that many modded units also have randomisation scripts that will trigger during the init phase, modifying the loadout that you’ve created and adding and removing key bits of kit among other things.

Additionally, don’t be tempted to fall into the trap of placing a generic rifleman unit and just copying it. Different types of units inherit basic configuration that is required to perform certain roles. A good example of this is that the default ‘Combat Life Saver’ is already configured to be an ACE medic, and therefore requires no additional configuration in order to fulfil that role correctly.

Remember that units are displayed on the role selection screen in the order in which they are placed, and that changing this setup later on can be troublesome. With this in mind, place your units in the order that you want them to be displayed on the role selection screen. Start with platoon command, then work your way on to the infantry sections and other roles. Simply pick the default unit that sounds the most like the type of unit you’d want, for example a section commander should be a ‘Squad Leader’ and a section 2IC should be a ‘Team Leader’.

In order to save you some of this work, we have some pre-made compositions available on the steam workshop here.

Unit Naming

For all playable units on the map, we need to configure the Role Description attribute to the appropriate name for the role. You can find a list of supported names here. Please stick to only the supported names listed in the linked document.

Group Leaders

For group leaders, we need to configure the callsign and role selection screen group name that will be shown to players.

Firstly, to configure the callsign that is shown on the Blue Force Tracking system, modify the ‘callsign’ attribute of the group. A quick note on the formatting of this callsign; all callsigns do not contain any spaces and therefore should look like:

Reaper-1-1

and not:

Reaper 1-1

The second thing for use to do is to configure the group leader to display the correct name on the role selection screen, something which is not possible in the base game and therefore requires us to leverage the CBA systems. To achieve this, we append the group callsign to the role description of the unit like so:

Section Commander@Reaper-1-1

Like the callsign configuration above, this should not contain spaces and should not look like the following:

Section Commander @Reaper-1-1

IMPORTANT: We have an automatic post-init function that configures the insignia of the unit based on the role description. It is imperative that ONLY the group leader contains the @Reaper-1-1 appendage, as the function will not operate correctly if it is present on other units that are not the group leader.

Support Assets

Picking Support Assets

To compliment our player forces, we will often want to include some types of force multipliers in order to boost our firepower without requiring lots more boots on the ground. We have a couple of tried and tested support assets:

• Artillery Battery (Recommended 155mm)
• Mortar Team
• Armoured Support (Tank, IFV, APC)
• Close Air Support (CAS - either rotary or fixed wing)

Tasking Assets

It’s important that these supporting assets have their own role to play within the operation that compliments the wider effort of the task force. Having these high-firepower assets focussing their attention solely on the main objectives of the mission is likely to detract from the experience of the infantry, as they’ll often be able to wipe out the bulk of the contact with very little effort, leaving little contact for the infantry. While from a tactical standpoint this is superb, an apache wipes out the garrisoned troops from a distance, and the infantry swoop in and mop up the survivors. From a gameplay standpoint however, this is rubbish, and the infantry will quickly get bored going from place to place to tackle one or two of the remaining infantry before having to go somewhere else.

A fun tasking to give to supporting assets is the role of force protection. You can utilising Marauding Vehicles to provide a constant flow of enemy vehicles in the AO. This is useful for a number of reasons. The first being that the supporting asset is actively contributing to the efforts of the platoon, by protecting them from a flow of incoming vehicles that would otherwise deal them some significant damage, the second is that while providing this role, they aren’t taking out contact contained within the main platoon objective. This means that the infantry will still have a fight on their hands and we can hope therefore, won’t get bored!

The above tactic for Marauding vehicles is useful to occupy tanks or aircraft, but probably won’t work effectively for indirect fire elements like mortar and artillery. For these assets you could instead implement a system of drip-fed known enemy battery positions, providing the team with a location on which to launch counter battery fire. This is useful because it gives the gunnery teams something to target during downtime between supporting infantry units.

Equipment

We’ve covered a lot of the principles of player kit and equipment during the first section of the guide, so in this section we’ll cover some more specific rules to stick to.

A solution for every threat

When it comes to our infantry teams, regardless of what other assets are in play, you should ensure that they have at least a fighting chance of defeating any assets that they might come across during the mission. This means that if your mission contains armoured vehicles and technicals, your infantry teams must have at least one anti-tank launcher among them. The same applies for if enemy aircraft is expected to be present.

If your mission contains specialist assets like tanks and aircraft, don’t fall into the trap of assuming that they will always be on hand to help - and certainly don’t use this an excuse to not give your infantry teams at least basic tools to deal with enemy force multipliers.

First Aid & Medical

As the contents of a medics loadout can be subject to regular change based on review of existing processes and procedures, I’ve opted not to make a definitive list here - instead check on the ‘Additional Resources’ section for a more up-to-date version of that documentation.

HQ Design

When designing an operation, you’ll need to provide a static location from which several critical functions will be carried out. These critical functions include things like providing a base of operations for our logistical elements, as well as an area to conduct our briefing and debriefing. A well organised and clean HQ is key to getting your mission off to a successful start. We’ll now take some time to talk about all of the components that make up a quality HQ location.

Briefing Area

The first, and probably most important area, is that of the briefing zone. To create a briefing zone, you need to place three billboards which can be found under Signs > Blanks > Billboard 1 (Blank). You’ll want to place these three boards side by side. You’ll then want to modify the attributes of the signs and configure the following textures from left to right:

• reapercrew_common\data\general_communications.paa
• reapercrew_common\data\general_briefingzone.paa
• reapercrew_common\data\billboard_zero.paa

Next, you’ll need to place the chairs. We’d recommend using Furniture > Camping > Chair (Plastic) as they work reliably with the ACEX sitting feature. Make sure to place at least 40 chairs and keep them neat and tidy, with sufficient space between each row to allow players to get to them without having to vault over other objects. Leave a gap between each column of chairs otherwise it causes issues with the sitting system. You’ll then need to configure the init field of every chair with the following:

[this, false, [0, 3, 1], 10] call ace_dragging_fnc_setCarryable;
[this, false, [3, -2, 2], 20] call ace_dragging_fnc_setDraggable;

This will disable the ability for these chairs to be dragged or carried with ACE. While you can configure this from the object attributes, we’ve found that it’s not always reliable and so it’s recommend just to use the above functions instead.

Your completed briefing zone should then look a little something like this:

To make life easier, the briefing area already exists on the workshop as a composition which can be found here.

Squad Areas

Now that you’ve completed your briefing zone, you’ll need to setup some areas for the squads to gather before the start of the mission. We have these separated areas in order to prevent large crowds gathering, as this can quickly result in disorder. The level of detail that you put into these areas is entirely up to you, but at minimum you must have a billboard with the callsign and radio frequency, and they must have decent spacing between each area so that squads cannot hear each other talking. Avoid going overboard in the design of these areas. This is because they play a very small role in the mission and the less objects on the map, the better.

You can find all of the paths for the various billboard textures here

You can use the following image as a reference for what a squad area could look like:

BCR Muster Point

As standard in all of our missions, we have something that is known as the ‘BCR Muster Point’. This is the point at which all respawned players should gather to be picked up and transported back into the mission. This sign should be placed near the working area of the logistical teams. For example, if your mission is utilising helicopters for logistical support, then this sign should be prominently displayed near the helipads. You do also need to ensure however that this sign is easily visible to players have have respawned.

For this sign you can use the texture: reapercrew_common\data\general_bcrMusterPoint.paa.

Channels Board

Somewhere near the briefing area, you should also setup another billboard to show information on all of the callsigns and their respective short range channels. While this information is usually available on the billboards at the squad areas, it can be useful in the event that an unplanned asset is created due to have excess players. You can utilise the following texture: reapercrew_common\data\general_channels_all.paa

Resupply Setup

You’ll need to setup a resupply area in order for players to get supplies that can then be transported into the field. While you could just place a series of crates that you’ve filled with sufficient ammunition, we instead have an editor module to take care of that for us. You can find the documentation for configuring that editor module here.

Mission Configuration

In this section we’ll cover the general mission configuration options that you’ll need to set in order to get your mission working properly.

Respawns

During our missions we usually have dead players respawn at the ‘HQ’ location that we created earlier, who can then be transported back into the fight by whatever assets are handling our logistics for that mission.

To setup this respawn, simply place down a map marker at the HQ location and populate the variable name with:

respawn_<factionname>

The faction name that you use will depend on the faction of the playable units. If the players are playing BLUFOR then you should use:

respawn_west

Alternatively, for opfor players you should use:

respawn_east

The text and icon of this marker can be whatever you’d like, with the only important detail being the variable name.

Once you’ve placed the marker, you’ll need to go into the mission settings to enable respawns. You’ll find these settings at Attributes > Multiplayer under the Respawn tab. Set the respawn type to Respawn on Custom position, and the delay to around 15 seconds:

Vehicle Respawns

If your mission contains vehicles, you should configure a ‘Vehicle Respawn’ module. These are found under Systems (F5) > Multiplayer > Vehicle Respawn. You’ll need to add this module for every vehicle that you’d like to have respawn.

Briefing Tab

We use a standard Situation, Mission, Execution, Signals briefing for all of our operations.

Situation

This section of the briefing aims to provide the players with a general overview of the environment, the forces operating in the area (both friendly and enemy) as well as a general idea of why we are present. You can make this section as detailed as you like.

Example:

Situation
It's now day five of the invasion, and the logistical routes from the UK are now beginning to flow steadily, bringing copious amounts of supplies and equipment. In the final hours of last night, we received an assortment of Warrior IFVs and several platoons from 1st Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Our logistical and engineering teams have been working through the night in order to unpack and prepare the IFVs for combat operations. 

In the small hours of this morning, the IFVs and their crew were cleared for service. 

After the fitting of the new air filtration systems, our aircraft are now operational again. In addition to this, we've been supplied with 2 x Anti-Tank Lynx aircraft by the Army Air Corp in order to counter the threat posed by enemy armour. 

Enemy Forces  
Our opposition is the Takistani Armed Forces who are currently occupying the province.   
 
Enemy Disposition
The opposition have deployed a number of armoured infantry battalions to the region, and as such we're expecting a force composition consisting mostly of infantry, mechanised support and some heavy armour.   
  
Enemy Appearance and Equipment
The enemy forces can be identified by their olive-green uniform and a mixture of soviet and outdated western equipment.    
  
Friendly Forces  
Friendly forces will be playing as soldiers of the British Army   
  
Friendly Disposition
Due to terrain and equipment considerations, the task force has opted to initially deploy airborne forces to secure a foothold in the region from which to launch more ground-heavy operations.   
  
Friendly Appearance and Equipment  
Friendly forces can be identified by their mix of DPM and DDPM camouflage and their 5.56mm NATO L85 rifles.   

Mission

The mission briefing aims to cover the overall goals and objectives of this specific mission. You’ll want to lay out the various objectives and their significance.

Example:

Mission

After defeating the Takistani forces at Maku, and while they are licking their wounds, we are going to exploit our momentum by conducting further kinetic action in the south of the province. The commander's intent for this operation is to capture the towns of Gorqan (alpha) and Qalander (bravo). 

Once captured, press this advantage further, by clearing out the small enemy garrisons at points Copper, Iron and Steel. 

More pressingly, however, we've received notification that one of our helicopters carrying a UKSF team from Task Force Black has gone dark during an HvT extraction mission. Their last known position was in the town of Mian (079029). The current working hypothesis is that their helicopter has suffered some sort of catastrophic failure, resulting in damage to their communications equipment. Command is very keen that we find out what happened to this aircraft. You are to move to the town immediately, locate the SF team and download the contents of the flight recorder.

Execution

This provides a broad plan or structure for the players to follow. As we usually play at the platoon level, the execution should lay out the ‘Commander’s intent’ for the operation, which is ultimately what we want to have completed by the end of the mission. A key distinction here is that you need to spell out what you want to have achieved, not how to achieve it, as the specific implementation is up to the platoon leader to decide.

Example:

Execution

For the opening phase of the operation, the platoon will embark into their armoured fighting vehicles and progress rapidly down south to the site of the suspected downed helicopter. The platoon will then secure the area while the SF team are extracted, and the contents of the flight recorder are downloaded. 

Once completed, the platoon will progress westward towards the primary platoon objectives, securing them and dealing with enemy presence. It is highly advised to deploy some units on overwatch, as it's likely that the enemy will have reserve units capable of flanking to envelop our troops on the ground. 

When it comes to dealing with the points of Copper, Iron and Steel, sections can be dispatched individually to take care of these locations. 

Throughout the duration of the operation, the Phantom callsigns should provide continuos air cover against armoured vehicles and technicals operating in the area.

Signals

Here we should note down the various callsigns that are available to the players and their associated radio channels. This helps the platoon command team determine what assets they will have available to them.

Example:

Command and Signals

If fully populated, the ORBAT should consist of the following callsigns:
* Zero - Platoon Command 
* Reaper-1-1,2,3 - Infantry Sections
* Sentinel-1,2 - Warrior IFVs
* Phantom-1,2 - Lynx AT Helicopters 
* Ugly-1 - Transport Helicopter

Garbage Collection

We play with fairly aggressive garbage collection settings in order to save on framerate as much as possible. You can configure these values under Attributes > Performance and use the below image as a reference:

These settings are absolutely non-negotiable as poor garbage collection leads to laggy operations.

Dynamic Simulation

Dynamic simulation ensures that AI not currently within range of the players are effectively ‘paused’, drastically reducing their CPU load on the server while they are not in use. You can read more about dynamic simulation here.

This section won’t cover the process of enabling dynamic simulation on units and groups, just the recommended configuration values that can be found under Attributes > Performance. You may need to tweak the settings to match your mission, but you can use the below image as a reference:

Essential Scripts

There are couple of essential scripts that must be present within your mission file. These scripts perform the role of restoring a players loadout to fresh once they have respawned. They utilise the built-in Event Scripts.

initPlayerLocal.sqf

// Remove facewear
removeGoggles player;

// Save Loadout
_loadout = [player] call acre_api_fnc_filterUnitLoadout;
[] call reapercrew_player_management_fnc_setUnitInsigniaLocal;
player setVariable["Saved_Loadout",getUnitLoadout player];

[] spawn {
	sleep 30;
	setTerrainGrid 3.125;
};

onPlayerRespawn.sqf

// Setup Loadouts
player setUnitLoadout(player getVariable["Saved_Loadout",[]]);
_loadout = [player] call acre_api_fnc_filterUnitLoadout;
[] call reapercrew_player_management_fnc_setPersonalACRESettingsLocal;

Headless Clients

Headless clients are a way of increasing mission performance by allowing us to offload some AI calculations to a different process. At least three headless client slots should be implemented for a standard operation. To create a headless client, locate the virtual entity at: Systems (F5) > Logic Entities > Virtual Entities > Headless Client. Then, modify the attributes of the unit and set the Variable Name and the Role Description to HC1. Make sure the ‘Playable’ button is ticked.

You can use the following image as a reference:

You can then simply increment this naming convention for as many headless clients as you’d like, for example; HC1, HC2, HC3, etc.

Quality Control & Testing

This is perhaps the most important phase of the mission development lifecycle. During this phase we need to check that everything we have created and configured actually functions as we’d expect it to. It’s worth noting that this testing MUST be done on one of our dedicated servers. Any testing done locally cannot be considered valid due to a difference between how certain mechanics act on a dedicated server vs a locally hosted session.

This testing phase is long and should certainly not be underestimated. Expect to catch several things that you missed and have to go back and fix them.

Testing Checklist

Specifically what needs testing will vary from mission to mission, but the below list should help as a general guide for things to check if you’re unsure.

Player Kit & Equipment

• Have the loadouts been double checked by other people?
• Do playable units appear in the correct order on the role selection screen?
• Do all roles have the correct name configured (and spelt correctly)?
• Do the correct callsigns display on the role selection screen?
• Do the correct callsigns display on Blue Force Tracking?
• Do all units have radios? (provided they are meant to have radios)
• Do vehicle respawns work?

HQ & Logistics

• Has a resupply point been created?
• Have the logistics variables for the resupply point been set?
• Can the chairs in the briefing zone be dragged or carried?
• Do player respawns work?
• Do squad areas exist for all of the planned teams?

Mission Configuration

• Is Garbage Collection configured correctly?
• Is Dynamic Simulation configured correctly?
• Is Dynamic Simulation enabled for as many units as possible?
• Is the name of the mission set correctly?

Briefing Tab

• Is the briefing correctly formatted and free from spelling errors?

Map & Markers

• Are objectives clearly marked on the map?
• Are markers sized correctly?

Objectives & Enemy Positions

• Is the contact on the objective proportional to the expected player numbers?
• Do QRFs function as expected?
• Does the objective contain a varied contact type?
• Does the objective perform sufficiently in terms of FPS?

Additional Resources

If you’re interested in learning more about mission building, you may want to check out some of the following information sources:

In-House Documentation

• Rhys' Laws of Mission Making
• Rhys' Quality Checklist
• Baiter’s Required Equipment List

Design & Principles

• ArmA 3 Is Not Real Life (Video Essay) by Rimmy
• How to Make an Arma 3 Operation & Avoid a Fustercluck by Rimmy
• Zeus DLC - Dslyecxi’s Arma 3 Guides by Dslyecxi

How-tos & Guides

• How to implement marauding vehicles
• How to use our reinforcements modules