Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

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Terox
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Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Terox »

We have been included in the PO4 Beta, I have the test mission which is on Malden
We will be running it at approximately 19:00 hrs tomorrow on the No.1 server which will be passworded.

Streaming and recording the video is allowed,
Lets use this thread to record bugs
IceBreakerMM
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by IceBreakerMM »

Looking forward to it. I'll hopefully be able to join you during the evening.
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IceBreakerMM
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by IceBreakerMM »

Alright, so far:

- Important
  • Immediately after squad found an intel, the mission "spawned" and we got immediately targetted by AA rocket (the chopper was providing air support for the squad that found the intel, hence why it was in the AO), which resulted in a chopper being shot down (blown up in the air, not on the impact on the ground), BUT the crew inside the chopper survived. Image of shot down chopper below (I was in it, when it got shot down):

    Image
- Not important
  • No base firing restriction (only important when it goes live in public).
  • Just a note, heli pilots don't need parachutes, if you get hit, you still try to salvage it in a helicopter, not jump out and leave it (even without squad onboard). - Fixable by virtual arsenal (putting backpack with toolkit on).
  • When getting in a chopper, the messege says: "Viewsettings adjusted to Sea", instead of air or helicopter or whatever (however the
    view distance setting works correctly).
Last edited by IceBreakerMM on Mon Jul 31, 2017 11:37 pm, edited 7 times in total.
“If you are in trouble anywhere in the world, an airplane can fly over and drop flowers, but a helicopter can land and save your life.”

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Dave
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Dave »

Terox and co probably know this lot already but anyway:

- Squads only have AT assistants, no AT launchers
- Very serious lag/desync issues
- Anyone spawning a vehicle causes all players to teleport about 10m
- Vehicle spawning menu accessible from all locations on the map
- Very slow to start, minimal contacts/intel etc, not clear what to do
- Vehicle spawning largely broken and causes most vehicles to explode or fly up in the air
- Full arsenal available
- No 3D HUD
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Cobra.
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Cobra. »

Arsenal available where ever I went no matter how far I went away from spawn.
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please do not swear on my christian youth server.
Dave
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Dave »

- Very difficult to talk to civs as they don't stop moving
- Too many weird "A chill is in the air" messages on command chat
- Script error when talking to a civ (screenshot)
- Difficulty and number of enemies scales badly or doesn't scale at all. Far too easy with 40-50 people, not enough to shoot at
- Not entirely convinced by Malden, map feels a bit small
- Did I mention the lag?

Image
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Jim
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Jim »

A few thoughts from the test night:

Bugs/Things:
  • Auto Slot turn off
    Respawn timer on start
    Player Spawn Radius needs increasing (so scared of offing the dude that spawns with my gun barrel inside him)!
    Can shoot in base
    Vic Depot and Arsenal available in field (plus the danger spawn catapult)
    Mark Bridge on Map with marker
    Lag: Do civvies need to despawn once a town no longer has a NATO presence
Gameplay:

Stuck around for a third game with Nojumpers as CO.

ORBAT:
CO
4 man Alpha
4 man Bravo
CAS heli
2 support choppers

Started out patrols in two separate southerly towns. Talking to civvies and and marking bearings and grids. Once enough hits on a common grid went to investigate. our 4 man squad had enough contact to make it exciting, called in a gun run. In the meantime Alpha found intel that spawned an AO on our position. This was easily completed by sniping the gunner of a quilin. Second AO spawned quickly after further North. Cleaned up remaining contact and had a hummingbird transport to next WP.

Cleaned up there, supporting and supported by alpha. CAS called and called off when civvies entered too close - (noted as enjoyable and a good game mechanic by the CAS pilot). The level of contact was manageable for the two small squads and I think was labelled by all as good clean fun and an enjoyable mission!

A third AO spawned at which point we called an ENDEX.

SO:

It feels like the ORBATS may need adjusting back to the 'mission default' OR as Nojumpers said in the debrief we give fireteams more autonomy from their squads - Not loan wolfing but the authority to push further from their SL and Medic who maybe become like a mini XO team...? This could go either way: disaster/really good... No CO wants to be worrying about Juliette and Lima Squad getting enough action while Golf has 3 men down from a Tigris contact but unless the ei scaling is turned on/up having full 40 man Alpha to Delta squad (like game 1 and 2 tonight) then PO4 isn't going to be much fun for big groups - where it really should be!

Is it possible to have more than one AO on map at once? Imagine Alpha & Bravo tasked to clear a town while Charlie is sent to capture a HVT and Delta is in a third location collecting more intel?

Or - as well as the initial search for intel stage (which 2 out of 3 times has been the slow ploding part of the mission) a persistant mission is on from the start requiring supplies to be delivered or protected - giving Support a thing to do at all times as well as a squad to get their teeth into. - Bring the villagers a crate of UN rice or flour and they rat out the baddies. CSAT want the rice really bad - repell them from a food distribution centre you set up earlier etc.

Patrol Ops needs to be functional with 6 players and 60 players which is a hard thing to achieve and I realise this is really the rough beginnings of someone else's game mode so I'm not trying to burn it down just nudge it in a direction.
NoJumpers
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by NoJumpers »

Test Date: 7/31/17

Gameplay:

- 1x CO
- 2x Infantry Squads
- 2x Support Pilots
- 1x CAS Pilots

- Mission is clearly meant to be played with full squad autonomy in mind and massive separation of squads (1 squad per town, sector, etc.) as the platoon found 3 Mission objectives within the first hour.

- Enemy does scale up with insurgents at first and then starts to scale to CSAT as platoon encountered Multiple CSAT squads and vehicles in mission AO.

- CAS cannot be used recklessly as it is possible to inflict Civilian casualties. (Unknown if there are consequences for civilian casualties. Recommend testing theory and implementing in-game consequences if there are none)

- Armory and Vehicle Depot are not necessary and recommend revamp or removal.

- Not much for command to do in the initial recon phase as command coms should be used for either Needing CAS Support, Needing Transport, or Discovery of mission Intel. (Example: "Command this is Alpha requesting Pick up at designated LZ") However things pick up a lot for command once an actual mission gets underway.

- Civilians must be brought into consideration a lot more as conducting a mission can lead to Civilian casualties if not done carefully (Example: having CAS doing a strafing run in a highly populated town).

- Seems to only have one mission AO at a time. If you collect 2 pieces of intel you must first complete the first AO and once that AO is finished the second AO will appear.

- Things (Objects, AI, wreckage, etc.) do not seem to de-spawn after players leave area (might possibly lead to the rubber banding that was happening during testing).

-Needs Rearm/Refuel station for Air and ground Vehicles.

ORBAT Suggestions:

- Recommend removal/re-tasking of Recon due to lack of tactical significance of the 4 man team in this game mode. Recommend switching Recon to an armor transport/support squad with call sign Rhino as it will be more useful to the platoon and mission as a whole.

- Recommend 10 man squads are kept but it MUST be emphasized for Squad Leads to give more power to their Team Leads and encourage Team Leads to act more independently (think of a server 2 mission).

- Recommend against uses of fixed wing aircraft for CAS support as it would almost certainty cause civilian casualties. and other than aerial interception would not have much of a use.

- Uncertain about the use of an X.O. Recommend re-tasking into proposed Rhino Squad if deemed unnecessary.

Bugs/Issues:

- Armory/Arsenal bug (Goes without saying). Recommend removal for regular Arsenal system and vehicle spawning

- Script issues when attempting to talk to Civilians.

- Crashing in Ghost Hawk and surviving (Possible invincibility glitch as some players during the mission should have died and did not. Will need further testing to find cause).

- Mission seems to cause the server to Rubber band, lag, and sometimes crash (This by far should be top priority to fix).

- Intel can be very difficult to pick up.

Final thoughts:

- So much potential with this game mode I really did love every minute of it, as it gave a much different scenario rather than the old: move into AO and kill everything missions that everyone is so used to. (As seen we tried that in this mission and it flat did not work causing a switch in tactics). It gives SL's much more freedom and use to think outside the box. The in depth thought of considering civilians when making a plan puts a good twist on things. And it is so refreshing to see support pilots having something to do rather than wait at base for 30 min to an hour. Unfortunately in the games current state there are many bugs that must be worked out especially the large lag spikes, rubber banding, and server crashes that happened way too often. The Arsenal and Depot system are completely broken and I would much rather see these systems revamped or removed for a much more reliable system. Overall I see a lot of potential in this game mode and actually has me interested in playing vanilla Arma a lot more now and despite all the bugs and server lag I had a lot of fun. I am fairly confident that once the bugs are ironed out and the mission is more refined I will be playing this mission a lot for a long time to come. I would love to have more opportunities to play test this mission and I hope this feedback message makes it's way to the team working on Patrol Ops 4.0 and hope that they continue the excellent work and make something great out of this. Thank You once again for this awesome experience.
TurokGMT
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by TurokGMT »

A good fun evening, really enjoyed the opportunity to be involved in the beta shakedown of what promises to be an excellent addition to the server mission rotation.

I believe most bugs that I encountered have already been addressed by my peers above.

To add to NoJumpers post though, I would add the following:

1. I think continuation of an XO slot is important as it can be used as an adjutant slot for trainee commanders, not to mention a buddy team member should the CO decide to take to the field. We often have issues with folks being unwilling for whatever reason to have a go at command, the XO slot is vital in my opinion to allow folks to have a go with support from a more experienced commander to fall back on if needed. Whether this was part of the original intent of the XO slot or not, it's certainly a way which I've used it in the past to encourage folks to have a go.

2. Recon - from a playstyle point of view, there was talk of QRFs and such yesterday and the need for high levels of mobility in the early stages of the mission whilst intel is being gathered. I still think that a 4-man Recon team has a place in the ORBAT, either as a mobile unit with a prowler perhaps or deployed by MH-9 to investigate the civilian indicators rather than move an entire squad in.

3. SUPPORT - I feel that this new mission offers excellent opportunities for logistical support by preparation of FOBs for resupply or patrol destinations/jump off points - the usual "Go kill shit then rtb" which suited Patrol Ops 3.1 is still quite pervasive amongst us as one would imagine and it will be interesting to see how mission commanders go about tackling this new playstle whilst aiming to ensure that all assets are being employed effectively and, importantly, having fun whilst doing so.

4. Use of the Arsenal - I'm well aware of how vehemently against use of the arsenal Terox and other individuals are, however I would echo the feelings of some of us from yesterday evening that although, yes we need to avoid the levels of dickery we got into last night with uniforms, some limited options of armament and gear might allow for some further tactical and strategic options to SLs and COs alike without having to go into the whole "20 minutes of choosing the right bandana" concerns - we already play with missions which allow gear selection on game nights, why not use Patrol Ops as the place to start encouraging a little bit of controlled versatility without going overboard?

Additional : Here are some of the testing videos from Roy86's own channel to get the debate running further as well as the thread on the BI forums:

Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ml_fw ... EgYVT89mVX

BI Thread: https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topi ... al-thread/
Terox
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Terox »

FYI:
The orbat, loadouts are all my doing and were done very quickly, I had 30 mins to change the orbat, add a very crude marker tracking system and some other minor tweaks,
I have informed Roy of the actual bugs
He was already aware of the Virtual arsenal being made available anywhere on the map, this seems to be an issue when a player uses the arsenal in base, it allows all others not in base the same functionality

This was and continues to be a BETA test and much of the functionality is currently disabled. Although he hasn't actually said anything, I believe at this moment in time we need to concentrate on the mission tasking system.

The orbat and loadouts will be something we tweak for our own style of gameplay

It is most likely I will do away with the virtual arsenal and virtual vehicle depot and replace them with a more restricted re-equip system and have respawning vehicles.

This is very much earlyn days. I would appreciate as and when you can to continue trying the mission and i will make changes to it to try and get your gameplay improved as we go.
I wont be able to make major changes to the code because I dont want to be editing a lot of scxripts again and again every time he brings out a newer test version. So the changes I will most likely make will be outside of that, such as those already detailed
Tom
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Tom »

Wondering if this would be something for the no2 server as well? Add some ACE and ACRE and it transforms the whole play set even further.

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dcvwdEWyE4


I think this setup could be an interesting way to approach the game.
Move the entire platoon to a certain position (close to several villages?) conduct patrols, with squads and recon elements around the CO.
Also use logistic forces to keep flow of vics and supplies towards HQ position, find contact, retreat to base when first harder tasks pop up and then use the main FOB as a fallout base.
TurokGMT
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by TurokGMT »

From the feature list shown on the BI thread,both ACRE and TFAR support is included as standard - the mission will populate the island with radio re-transmission towers and include radios as part of the allowed equipment if either mod is detected as present on the server.

@Terox - may I assume that we have permission as game admins to run the beta mission so long as we are there to babysit it and restart as required?
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Jim
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Jim »

TurokGMT wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:00 pm
Additional : Here are some of the testing videos from Roy86's own channel to get the debate running further as well as the thread on the BI forums:

Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3ml_fw ... EgYVT89mVX

BI Thread: https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topi ... al-thread/
Great find Turok! I'm liking his ACE style medical system in video 3 - and the pylon system in video 6 - and the fact that simply taking off creates a mission - Lots to be discovered yet!
Terox
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Terox »

There will be an updated version put on the server tonight.
My edits remain the same apart from I will add the vehicle depot back
No fix yet for the server performance
the actual dev edits by Roy 86 are as follows:

Add ability to recover vehicles at depot when pylon interaction enabled (roy86)
Virtual Depot setPos when locked moving players out of vehicles (roy86)
addAction "Toss Ropes" appears on sea and ground vehicles. (roy86)
Remove Dev console (roy86)
Zero Divisor Civilian Interaction Error (roy86)
Players are not dying due to init order (roy86)
Add marker to indicate bridge so players are aware of its existence (roy86)
Auto assign task (roy86)
3D Icons are not displaying in MP making intel difficult to find (roy86)
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Jim
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Re: Patrol Ops 4 beta is here

Post by Jim »

Terox wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2017 4:29 pm There will be an updated version put on the server tonight.
Nan and I can confirm that player deaths are a thing. Not sure if you need to be a medic with a medical kit or just a player with a medical kit to revive fallen players.

Western end of bridge - Left hand side concrete barrier is floating above road surface

Some issues (may be us not doing it right) loading Blackfoot ammo on heli depot pad
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