![Coolbert :coolbert:](./images/smilies/emot-c00lbert.gif)
PBO is here.
It's pretty simple: as a spetsnaz team, you have to work your way down a long, winding, narrow valley (no road, lots of rocks), past or through a series of increasingly large mujahideen camps. At the end of the valley is a small town that you have to clear out. The idea is to encourage (but not require) stealth, and the terrain offers a lot of cover for advancing covertly up to the camps. As you advance, you encounter more troops, more hilltop patrols, and more emplaced weapons. The whole thing shouldn't take more than 30-40 minutes if the team keeps moving.
I've tested it on my own and it seems to be working fine -- there's not really anything in the way of complicated scripting or triggers. Since it's my first mission I'd be happy for any feedback that strikes you, especially if you could have a look at the mission files themselves and see if there's anything I'm doing wrong. I also have a few specific things I'd love some feedback on:
a) It's intended as a night mission. I've carefully chosen the in-game time, date and weather so that there's a bright full moon shining straight down the valley, so (at least on my rig) it's very easy to see, but with some areas of deep shadow. 20-30 minutes after mission start, dawn starts to break. I've given CO/DC/SLs and FTLs night-vision and flares. Given all that, is it okay to leave the rest of the troops without NVG, or is that too annoying? I also disabled the mission time/date/weather parameters as other settings would be less effective I think -- is that too presumptuous?
b) If you go high up into the hills it's possible to avoid seeing most of the enemies, even with the fairly tight boundaries I've placed. On the other hand I don't want to discourage sending up a few scouts/spotters, or trying to potentially sneak around the first one or two camps without fighting. Can I trust players to be sensible about this? I did put a note in the 'execution' briefing: "A stealthy approach along the valley floor is recommended."
c) I've changed the loadout somewhat to emphasise stealth. Element leaders (inc FTLs) have AK-74-GLs with flares and a Makarov SD. "Operators" have ironsight AK-74s. "Operator SD"'s have suppressed AKS-74 Kobras. "Scouts" have suppressed Bizons. The attachments are two normal MMG teams and a marksman team: ghillies, VSS Vintorez with 30 rounds, spotter has NVGs. All reasonable? There are also 10 JIP slots starting near the rest of the team. However, I can't seem to get their gear to work: I tried to give them "operator" kit but they only get the default rifle and ammo, nothing else. Nevertheless, I disabled gear-selection to avoid people picking OP/counterthematic loadouts. If players scrounge bodies they'll get AK ammo, RPGs, machineguns, and an SVD or two. Thoughts?
c2) There are 52 slots plus 10 JIP/extra slots (+ 1 civ journalist). Any suggestions on what else to add in order to have enough slots for a full session?
d) There are about 250 AI in total, most of which should be encountered by the team, though if they stealth properly, they'll be able to get the drop on a lot of them. No armour, but a few technicals and emplacements. Is that a good number?
e) In order to improve performance (a bug-bear of mine since I have a crap PC) I included the cB AI Unit Caching script by Wolffy.au. It's very simple to set up and seems to work fine, although I have seen the AI's spawn in on a couple of occasions when I rushed, or spawned nearby. It improves the performance a lot for me though. Thoughts? It seems to have been designed for MP Coop, but I'm only assuming it'll actually work...
I'd love a little testing sesh sometime where we took FTL slots and dragged some AI through the valley just to ensure it is actually possible to get to the end.
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