ArmA 3 Campaign Hub

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Snake Man
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ArmA 3 Campaign Hub

Post by Snake Man » 2022-06-10 22:22:44

ArmA 3 Campaign Hub

2022-06-10T09:51:00Z

ArmA 3 campaign hub, is a mission from where you launch other missions. A base where you hang out, rearm and go patrolling / scouting.

On bis East Wind campaign there are missions called "Camp Maxwell" (I think the name is actually just "Maxwell" hmm), "Bomos" (spelling?), Gori and Topolia (spelling?), all these missions are campaign hub's.

Below are my thoughts quickly wrote down today to get this topic started. If you have any suggestions for campaign hub activities, objects, new mission types launched from the hub etc, please reply.


The Hub Mission

The actual campaign hub mission, you have a airfield / base / camp / FOB whatever location suits your terrain and story line situation, then default ammo boxes with saveVar, medic tent so soldiers can heal.

Then... well dunno, decorations like randomly placed AI characters who are animated, just like they were in bis east wind campaign, so that the hub feels like living breathing thing.

Overall it has to have functionality, ammo boxes, medic tent etc, plus the decor so it feels cozy and suited for your campaign situation.

Any weapons/gear player selected will be carried over to launched missions, that's the whole point of ammo boxes and rearming. Ammo boxes will be persistent between missions, what weapons/gear you take out are gone, what you put in will stay until you pick it up again.


Patrol

Patrol mission is free roaming go everywhere you like (except blocked areas of upcoming missions heh), kill bad guys and scavenge weapons. Patrol mission includes optional "side" mission locations. In bis east wind campaigns altis campaign hub's patrol missions were called scouting.

Player goes out alone or with a (small?) team depending on your campaign scope. Enemies are created randomly in such numbers that it makes sense in current campaign state.

Upcoming mission areas will be blocked off unfortunately, you cant have player roaming around in a city which is mostly empty in patrol mission but later down the line when the normal story line mission comes then its filled to the brim with bad guys, makes no sense so it must be blocked off, player cannot go to that area.

This blocking off areas/locations is problematic due arma3's long viewDistance, if player cranks up some crazy viewDistance he can use binoculars to see this blocked off area being completely empty, that would be quite immersion killer for most people.

Also larger the terrain and more units you need to create, luckily with dynamic simulation you can do 2,500 characters without any lag (PMC youtube video) so that should not be a problem :)

In PMC Powder Bat campaign patrol mission from FOB Eagle region had what I recall about 200-250 enemies, and it felt completely and utterly EMPTY hehe!

In fact with wizard scripting you could populate all upcoming mission areas with crazy numbers of enemies just so player has to stay away from there, maybe.

Any weapons/gear player scavenged during the mission will be carried over to the hub mission.


Defend

Enemy is attacking your hub location, defend it at all costs.

No idea how defend mission would be selected, if its random then there must be a safety feature to check that player is not currently rearming at ammo box, he cant lose scavenged weapons.

Or maybe defend mission would not be randomly selected when on patrol or any other mission where player might be carrying precious scavenged gear.

Maybe defend mission would be randomly selected when player is just chilling in hub mission, so that he haven't got any precious scavenged weapons currently. Although he might have already picked up a new set of gear from the boxes hmm.

Of course you'll saveStatus before launching defend mission from a hub, but still the whole point is not to just instantly without a warning launch a mission as player might be testing some weapons etc and end up with completely undesired loadout.

Maybe the defend mission would be selected and player given "intel alert" that some enemy short wave radio traffic has been intercepted and they are planning on launching an attack, get ready as attack is expected within 30 minutes. Half an hour should be plenty of time for player to finish his weapons/gear selection at the ammo box.

Also defend mission obviously cant be launched when player is on patrol or any other mission. But maybe it could be randomly launched when he returns from one, so instead of going back to the hub... he would be thrown into defend mission maybe through some cutscene or something that informs player of approaching enemies.

I really like the idea that enemy would attack hub at time of their choosing, so you could be just chilling with your squad and then hub goes to alert that bad guys are on their way.

One thing is really important though, these randomly selected defend missions cannot be too frequent, in fact they should be somewhat rare and there absolutely need to be a cool down period that after enemy's attack there must be at least dunno what, in-game 12hrs period when no attack can be launched.

More intelligent "background war sim" would also be cool, if enemy is on the run or demoralized then no attack can be started, but how would something like that be tracked, no idea ;)

Hmm maybe some check that if player has not been patrolling actively enough, it would bolden the enemy's morale and they would launch an attack, so player would have to patrol to maintain peace and order in the region heh. Dunno, there are many possibilities.


Normal Missions

A normal mission, heh. Main campaign story line missions, to make real progress, which are their own individual mission directories created in mission editor.

After normal mission have been completed player returns to campaign hub.

Any weapons/gear player scavenged during the mission will be carried over to the hub mission.


Side Missions

Optional so called "side" missions appear only in patrol missions, patrol is a free roaming mission with... yep, side mission locations.

Well dunno, the side missions in east wind were pretty weak in general terms, I could easily make randomly generated side missions frigging 24/7 into campaign hub haha.

If the side missions are too silly, then players would not want to do them. But yeah they definitely should be randomly generated so I and everyone else could enjoy them many times over, as in theory there are no identical side missions (location and details wise), even the task/mission name would be randomly chosen out of huge number of seed words.

Simple stuff like locals reported shady looking military camouflaged men in the woods <BEARING> of <CITY>.

Intel would be playing a big part on this. Lets say if player searches killed enemy squad leaders corpse he could find intel, like "ammo cache is located in 1234-5678 coordinates".

Any weapons/gear player scavenged during the mission will be carried over to the hub mission.


Exit

Campaign hub exit, how one campaign hub operations are concluded and player moves to a next one, I mean you do plan on adding more than one hub, right? Heh.

In PMC Powder Bat campaign this is still very much work in progress and there is a simple debug action menu to proceed into the next normal mission. Latest thinking was that perhaps the campaign hub exit would trigger once player inflicts enough enemy KIAs in the region, or something like that.

In bis east wind campaign campaign hub exit happened after number of missions completed, I recall in Camp Maxwell it was three missions and then the overall "exit from stratis" campaign phase started.

Exit is very important to keep the campaign progressing, of course everything is possible your whole campaign could be a story around a single small FOB in a war zone where player never moves on to a next hub, once all missions are done the whole campaign ends. As said there are many possibilities. However if you have two or more hub's, then exit from one to the next is very important. Exit methods should be scripted/configured before any playable content mission wise is created.


Feedback

Please send your campaign hub ideas and feedback about what I wrote above. I bet many of us have thought some cool campaign designs or for example that "Camp Maxwell hub would have been so great if <SOMETHING>" :)

Feel free to post any ideas no matter how silly or complex they are, who knows maybe your idea could end up being used in PMC ArmA 3 Campaigns.
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Re: ArmA 3 Campaign Hub

Post by ARG_Afb » 2022-06-11 14:03:55

The idea sounds great!! I think this is what ARMA3 needs most, something to keep you catched with it, and this can be that thing :D
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Snake Man
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Re: ArmA 3 Campaign Hub

Post by Snake Man » 2022-06-18 04:54:37

Been thinking about how to start a patrol mission, right now its scripted so that if player walks far away from the campaign hub mission location, it ends campaign hub and starts a patrol mission.

For the sake of simplicity it just begins at hardcoded point now, there is no "bearing selector" in between the missions.

Patrol mission ends the usual way when you walk back close enough to campaign hub location.

One option to start patrol mission would be from action menu on some object, being it vehicle or a building.

Let me know what method would you prefer, what would feel the most natural way of start a patrol mission?
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