Persistent guerrilla miniop campaign

Events
1

Heya,
I have started a sort of campaign of guerrilla missions/events and successfully playtested a first mission thanks to a few guys who showed up. The idea is to have a central theme around otherwise independent miniops, with unified ruleset (see below) and persistent equipment available to players, so that raiding bases and collecting equipment and vehicles actually matters.

Some notable points:

  • each mission is single-life, meaning "respawn" happens only between missions, which can take anywhere from ~30 to ~90 minutes
  • a mission can be a base raid, convoy ambush, supply transport, etc.
  • overall amount of lives in the entire persistent campaign is also limited, if you die too much across all missions and don’t manage to make it up by liberating fellow civilians, the campaign will end, so don’t pick fights where the loss would outweigh the gain
  • no bluforce tracking, no map marker sharing, enemies can sometimes hear your radio transmissions, so prefer alternate means of synchronization (wristwatch, flares, smokes, tracers, explosions, number of shots fired, etc.)
  • …

The idea overall is very "RP" focused, meaning the GM will assist you in anything story-driven, ie. if you did a recon of an enemy base and want to wait until midnight, the GM can forward time for you. Similarly, if you want to travel across safe terrain on foot (no risk of you being discovered), the GM can just teleport you and advance time accordingly, to simulate the movement. Same goes for possible base building, etc. Like with a tabletop RPG, anything is possible (ie. doing a distraction to lure enemies away), just let the GM know about your plans, so he takes them into account (just that, it doesn’t mean your plan will go according to plan).

However even if RP isn’t your thing, don’t worry, the missions themselves are valid miniops, with actual gameplay full of tension or action.

The persistence is done by the GM (me) loading/saving certain areas of the map with assets, the big map itself is just an empty map, a "miniop template". I plan to prepare mission ad-hoc based on the demand in this thread and the opportunities available to you (based on scouting - "automatic" by other guerrilla teams or some bonus ones if you decide to scout yourself).

To give you a rough idea what is saved - as far as cargo goes:

  • any items/weapons/etc. directly on the ground (useful for ie. stash hidden in a forest)
  • any storage boxes or containers
  • any vehicle cargo (inventory)

Nested magazines and items (ie. scope on a weapon inside a backpack inside a box) will be unwrapped and restored in a "flat" format (everything directly in the box), with magazines automatically repacked. This allows you to just stuff everything in a box and not worry about stripping all weapons of accessories, magazines, emptying backpacks, etc.

In addition to that, for every vehicle, the following is saved:

  • damage to individual parts (wheels, turret, windscreen, etc.)
  • fuel
  • all ammo types for all weapons/turrets the vehicle has
  • ACE3 cargo system (only things like wheels, tracks, etc., boxes get deleted for safety reasons)
  • ACE3 remaining fuel for cisterns

I have some more unimplemented ideas about persistence (ie. saving the destruction state of every building, every tree, etc., so that the environment feels persistent and ie. destroying a fuel station really matters), but Everon isn’t the best map for that. We’ll see.

Other features include the ability to disguise as an enemy soldier given proper gear (ie. M4 as a weapon would give you away) and assuming you don’t just go bumping into everybody’s face – all this is currently WIP and will be fully automated, no GM interaction needed.

I also wanted to have some sort of "trading" system like the one from Soldiers of Anarchy (whoever played that game), that is barter-based trade of ie. a bunch of AKs for an explosive charge or two. Favour for a favour.

If I forgot to mention something, I’m sure others will fill in the details. Or I may update this in the future.

The first mission was a 90 minute engagement of 3 enemy soldiers at a lighthouse. It was well planned and organized by Berenton, ended up being a bit of a chaos, but the guys got away quick enough to bring some loot home (automatic AKs, RPGv7, binoculars and some uniforms/backpacks) with just one casualty, which isn’t bad given the starting equipment.

Some screenshots: Imgur: The magic of the Internet (pursuing enemies gave up shortly after the last screenshot)
Also thanks to Highway for hyping people up all over discord and TS. :slight_smile:

More missions to come, stay tuned.

2

Looks very cool, if you’re writing a mission to handle all that, you may want to look into antistasi for ideas if you haven’t already, it’s a similar guerilla type mission: http://www.a3antistasi.com/mod
I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, but haven’t played it and don’t know how it interacts with a GM, so if we want more control over the enemy to allow for traditional style miniops idk how it would work. If you’re making a mission that supports both GM and AI control that sounds very nice.

3

I’ll write a short post from player’s perspective. This was a great first mission to play, very cool idea. Some people said it reminded them with Commando Behind Enemy Lines type of game and I would agree.

Brothers!

We have had enough of Russian occupation and we want to fight back, reclaim what is ours and liberate our island.

We started with very very little ammo, 1 rifle and several pistols, no combat training and just the love for our motherland. Goat and Ionaru didn’t have a weapon at all! In a WW2 Partisan style, we assembled in nearby abandoned castle where we started making our initial plans - how to get more weapons and ammo. We had already gained some knowledge of our surroundings in hours before meeting. We knew about weakly guarded lighthouse southeast of our base (castle) and that was the initial target of our insurgency. The plan was simple - we had 2 elements, one armed with rifle and 2 pistols serving as base of fire, while other 3 were on bicycles prepare to loot the enemy dead bodies. First problems occurred with our navigation - we didn’t have anything but our compass and map. Goat luckily identified we were some 200m west of our initial rally point.

Around the lighthouse, there was a soldier patrolling the beach and we were afraid to make any moves because early discovery would most certainly mean death. When the soldier went over the ridge, action started. Both teams moved forward through open ground and supporting team was soon set and started firing. Action was very quick and violent. Unfortunately we lost Chypsa from the same soldier on the beach, we didn’t take security into account.

Base of fire element eliminated quickly 3 guards and we looted everything we could, withdrew in a sporadic, not very organized way due to not having much experience in combat. How could we, 2 weeks ago we were pushing pencils in the nearby village!

We rallied in our initial castle and are preparing our next moves. We heard rumors about occasional jeep patrol strolling the area but we can very likely expect increased enemy activity from now on.

Death to fascism, freedom to the people!

4

Fantastic, i’ve been wanting something like this from the beginning. I really loved the arma 3 campaign, and going scavenging for better stuff, mounting raids and retreating fast. Well GM’d this formula and would make for an excellent mp campaign. I can imagine it now, your friend getting shot carrying a bag of ammo and supplies, and having no choice but to leave him as we fade into the forest as shots whiz overhead and you hear armour rolling around nearby, and having to break the news to the other teams that we lost another nice gun which used easily obtainable 5.56, and the new recruits will have to take lee enfields for which the ammo supply is dwindling. But the good news is I knicked an RPG tube and some sherbert lemons.

The missions could be template made for most maps, with regular well guarded patrols which are risk v reward balanced, and when attacked once will be better guarded in future. Before even thinking of attacking a convoy you would need to be well armed and well prepared, knowing every twist and turn of their route, and the topography of it all, as well as the bases that would send reinforcements, who are themselves a goldmine. And if you wipe the base, don’t even dream of staying there for long, because unless you’ve taken out their artillery bases, they have your position dialed in.

It’d be cool of there were objectives that would suppress the enemy from fielding a certain unit against us, so we can gradually level the playing field and the revolution will gain innertia. The progress of everyone would be tracked with a neat visual every mission.

It’d be my pleasure to lead a resistance movement with hand-picked men, planning convoy ambushes or false-flag ambushes to assault bases, and eventually leading the fight in a lightning raid against the airport to remove their fast mover threat and cripple their heli capabilities for some time, allowing us to flex our power and assault the ammo depo unmolested, granting us fleeting access to armoured vehicles for use in devastating more and more bases.

Just wondering would it be possible for resistance cell members to disguise themselves as civilians for scouting? obviiously they can’t act too suspicious and can’t go near enemy installations.

The end goal is either growing the rebellion so much that you can sneak a journalist in and the rest of the world notices the war crimes going down, or locating and toppling the military junta without giving time for key personel to evaccuate. (extremely daring raid.) You have to get them all or shit will get worse. It’s a bet-it-all end game.

5

If you guys want we can reserve time on calendar for this to get some more attention, just throw the dates and what text you wish to be on the event.

6

(Story stuff.)

Following the strike at the lighthouse, the surrounding area has seen increased enemy patrols throughout forests and points of interest in general, including the castle. The crew stationed there managed to get an advance warning and hide all equipment underground or in nearby trees, leaving empty castle ruins to be found and left alone. Civilians in the nearby town of Saint Pierre were aggressively questioned and, in some cases, injured by gunshots. The following morning, a propaganda radio broadcast informed about the attack as a victory for the Union, noting that any similar resistance will be dealt with in a swift manner. This statement was reinforced by a gruesome display of a guerrilla-dressed body, hung on a lamp post near the center of the village.

Waiting a few days for the area to cool down, you managed to gather additional intel through careful scouting and a few civilians sympathetic to your cause.

  • Saint Pierre - the village is under oversight of an active BTR along with supporting infantry. Freeing the village would provide a temporary cheer, but could provoke an armoured counter-attack from the north. As most inhabitants commute to work away from the village during the day, this could also result in widespread arrests.
  • Cache - to support our cause, some of the civilians have gathered equipment for us and hidden it away on a forest edge. Despite being the safest area the individuals could reach without being detected, it is still covered by at least one enemy patrol, so any equipment extraction would have to be done very carefully.
  • Increased activity NE - guys on the tower reported seeing UAZs and the occasional Ural moving offroad in the general area, which is unusual given that the area is pretty void of strategic positions.
  • Unknown vehicle - sightings show an unidentified civilian vehicle flashing lights our way two days ago approx. on the marked location. Could be a meeting signal.
  • Regina - scouting reports prior to the lighthouse engagement indicated increased enemy activity, now we know why - the enemy has used the area to build an improvised shooting range (exact location not known at this time), presumably to terrorize the civilian population for unknown reasons. Liberating the village could prove very difficult, but also rewarding given there’s likely ammo near the range. Additionally, the civilian population is bound to be pretty pissed off or desperate at this point.

Maps: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Decide on your approx. plan of action here in this thread, so I can prepare the chosen scenarios in-game. Any movement, waiting, order or whatever else is up to you - the above are just points of interest you can construct missions from.

Fan art welcome. :slight_smile:

[user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/1171274/avatar/small.1413819128.jpeg” name=“Abuk”]1171274[/user] , please add an event this Sunday 20:00 into the calendar, text:

7

Done.

8

I would vote getting that cache first, as we are desperately low on supplies. If we can get the cache without engaging the patrol, great, if not then it’s a little extra ammo.

9

I agree with Goat. That "unknown vehicle flashing the lights" sounds like a trap to me. Attacking villages seems too dangerous at this time. Though at some point we will need to get brave.

The worse Union treats civilians, better for us. We will need more manpower.

10

I think the lighthouse is a good bet, but only when the firing range is in use. If we finish them off quickly nobody will think anything of it because of the sound masking, presuming there are just people at the range.

11

Firing range is in Regina, we stormed the lighthouse few days ago and eliminated 3 enemies.

12

Think you might have misread. The lighthouse raid was the first mission. The reference to it is just that it’s old intel.

13

Few things that were there from the beginning, but I forgot to mention:

  • VISCOM is in the castle tower, lowest floor, just behind the 4th wall
  • there are no medics, but I changed the modules to allow anybody to become a medic near a "medical facility" or inside a "medical vehicle", which is something I can designate from editor/zeus – this means you need to get back to some base (ie. forest-based FOB) and have the necessary medical equipment there before you can perform surgery … but, for simplicity sake, anybody can do it

I have progressed a bit in saving/loading and now save all of the map instead of specific pre-designated areas; that is, in addition to what I wrote above, I also now save

  • things put on the ground without any "container", anywhere on the map
  • corpses and their loadout - ie. in case you lose a fellow fighter in a forest firefight and want to return later for his gear
  • vehicle wrecks (just for eye candy)
  • destruction state of buildings above 40% damage - I would do the same for trees, etc., but save/restore time would be 10 minutes, not 1 second

The whole-map saving also extends to the previous functionality of boxes and vehicles, so that you can have a hidden vehicle in a group of trees as a "stash" and its cargo will persist, without having to designate it as a "saveable area" like before.

Other fixes:

  • DTK and DTK (1983) are now never saved (on weapon or not) as you get them by default on every AK, so saving would just duplicate stuff
  • backpacks which come pre-loaded with items will now be restored empty (as they should, items within them are unpacked "outside" the bag)
  • ACE vehicle cargo is no longer duplicated
  • … a lot of other stuff I don’t remember …
14

(Just a few words, map screenshots and intel will be provided by more of you guys, hopefully.)

First of all, I’m sorry there wasn’t enough action for (probably) most of you. I tried to give you some opportunities for action, but you avoided almost all of it. This campaign was, from the start, designed to be a series of one-time "operations", like a convoy ambush or something similar and we will hopefully get to that state soon-ish, it’s just the start that’s slow.

I would like to highlight that you are in a mountainous terrain and that gunshots cannot be well pinpointed over 1km and are practically inaudible across a ridge-line. To illustrate - there was sporadic gunfire near Regina, but you heard it only when you moved in really close. Thus a quick engagement (up to ~30sec) and elimination of a 4-man patrol will be really hard to pinpoint. The radios also have a very short range, so no >1km reinforcements would receive the call. Even if a distant group heard the gunshots, it will hardly be able to pinpoint them to a specific forest, much less a specific bunch of trees or something. And even then, it might be a while until somebody arrives to check up on a missing patrol.

Speaking of patrols, you might find them a bit better "equipped" from now on, as the area is somewhat hotter than it was a week ago.

I’m also sorry about the "ambush" on the castle, it wasn’t meant to be an ambush and I’d tell you that a tower watch has spotted them, but first Price and then Highway were on point and I wanted them to relay the info first hand, but they managed to make a time window just big enough for the sentry to sneak up on you and see one of you riding a bike and open fire. If the second guerrilla group followed the plan and returned home, you would have easily enough manpower to defend and maybe strike back.

Story wise, you are in a forest NE of Regina and what happens next is up to you. I’ll look over Shakan driving off and Teddy being lost (if you choose to, you two can of course continue where you left off) and allow you to re-plan if you want. I’m not going to provide any extra intel this time as you are going to continue where you left off, 03:43 AM if I remember right.

I will also try to use enemy radios more "realistically" from now on, I don’t think you’ve heard any transmissions I sent, because I used radios very rarely and you were mostly out of range.

[Album] imgur.com

PS: The bikes don’t have any cargo space, Teddy put the pistol+mags on the ground, I moved them to the shared cache as that’s what makes sense (pretending cargo space on bikes), but please account for that next time. I will also try to do something about disconnects, because Arma engine deletes the body automatically, and add autosave or something like that, etc.

15

I didn’t fire a single shot and had one of the best Arma experiences in recent months. Immersion was perfect, thank you Freghar.

However, we played far below our standards. I’m pretty sure this mini-op campaign is far harder than our regular events. We can’t use our map the same way, we have little gear, no radios, constant surveillance by the Union (radio traffic, patrols all around). But what do we do? We drop our game below our usual level and ignore basic stuff in our Tactics and Procedures. Sure, we can roleplay it and say it’s because we’re untrained guerrilla, but I don’t think we’re doing it because of that.

Few major issues:

  1. Most of the time we use no formation. Literally we go around like Fellowship of the ring (even them were resembling some kind of column formation).
  2. People who are point don’t care about pace, bikers, who is behind them, can they keep up, etc. We lost several men like that, Teddy, myself, probably few others too. Bikers are in general very slow when going uphill, they need to be waited. Employing buddy system would help too, at least someone will pay attention if private A or B is missing.
  3. Crossing large open fields resembles like charge of the Irish towards the Scots in the Braveheart. No near, no far security. No overwatch. Just hooray.
  4. Democracy. Let Berenton lead. If he asks you for opinion, fine, do it, but don’t argue so loudly that Putin in Moscow can hear you. Not only it breaks the roleplay and immersion, it increases the likelihood of being detected by the enemy patrol. When we were trying to meet our contact and have been situated around Bravo, I swapped with Teddy on guard duty. The argument around one tree was so loud that, have there been a nearby patrol, we would be dead meat. Stop ghosting us, use the whisper level, speak only when asked to, use less words, don’t argue - it is not a tactical planning training. GM can do only so much about immersion but we can undo it very easily by our actions.
16

I think we should ditch the bikes. Everon is far to mountainous and there’s barely any useable paths or trail roads for them. We need to find some quads or motorbikes.

I really like the map system we have! How we have to gather up and synchronize our markers, mark them manually and actually read them and look at landmarks to figure out where we are. I think we made a good move in adding regroup markers to various sectors on the southern peninsular, that way we have more chance of regrouping successfully, even if the original marker is compromised as there are auxiliary markers.

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^only marker I can think is missing is the hostile ambush team in the forest west of regina.

Things are a little shaky at the moment, freghar often pops in to remind us to get our shit together, perhaps he won’t need to in future, only silently listening to our briefings and building the enemy around that. There are only a couple of concerns I have…

*Loud talking, I’m used to enemies not reacting to our voice chat, if they will detect us now everyone has to take extra care what their voice setting is and gather close, and up close it’s difficult to tell what setting other people are on.

*Russian vests clip with vanilla uniforms at the back.

*No weapon quality curve? The caches had nothing much we could use offensively. A couple of mags and grenades if that… It seems as if the pistols and bolt action are all we’re going to get in terms of low quality weapons, with the bulk of our arsenal comming from high quality rifles looted from the enemy. There has to be a cache of old mosins or less than ideal weapons the civilians can get for us so we can at least arm all the recruits and fall back on if we lose rifles in the field.

17

Hey guys just a quick one for you lot to think about in reference to your map markings, don’t know if the ones you posted Price are the ones you all decided on but I have some ideas for you and in general things I noticed on the OP last night.

  1. Use reference points and mark on map accordingly for example you have two ridge lines on the southern peninsula so why use all different code words for them stick to two separate code words for them i.e. Zeus for the eastern ridge and Mars for the western ridge. Examples below.

  2. Don’t use reference markers and fall back markers that look similar i.e. if you have the reference point Alpha 1 then don’t set up your fallback as alpha 2 it can be confusing. Examples provided below.

  3. One major points I had was the multiple fall back markers but the lack of any order you are to wait at them or for how long. It can be a simple set up like so.


    [indent]Set up the waypoints for each team to follow etc and then set up your ERV nearby the objective, brief that if you get lost or separated from the squad move back to your last known waypoint for 10mins and wait for your team to pick you up because it will be their SOP to do the same if a member is lost. You keep doing this until you get back to your step off.

    You should set up an ERV for each separate element so individual teams can regroup. I would for example last night told Bravo that at 1900 we will be waiting for you at regroup 1 this gives all team a time line to follow and if comms are down or shits hits the fan you have a plan and obviously you brief if regroup 1 is comprised move to regroup 2.[/indent]

  4. All in all I would like to see the use of timings much more to coordinate things and this will allow teams to work much more independently without reliance on radio comms.

18

I think we should neglect to use the radio at all, instead using flares or shots to communicate pre-determined messages, and synchronize our watches. That way we can listen in on russian radio chatter without them reverting to code themselves.

19

I would use the markers like I have in my picture not too many but enough to know what is going on and of course you do this for each phase of the mission. I would also write on the side on map the key timings for example:

Step off: 1800

Bravo moves off wp3: 1820 (ie the commencement of the OP)

No comms with Bravo, move to regroup 1: 1845 (ie have not heard from bravo since time now 1845)

bravo or alpha does not show at regroup 1 RTB: 1900 (ie time now 1900 Bravo did not show RTB)

then it would be a case of going back out and looking for them but if your have said if this happens we will retrace you route in then bravo know that at 1900 if they have no comms and have just taken a lot longer to complete the task that alpha we move back along their route so they do the same and they meet up again.

We don’t have to think of everything but we can try to cover most of the scenarios we might have with bad comms, night ops etc.

20

I plan to run the next session next weekend (Sunday or the Monday after), but you should start planning ASAP, so I know what to prepare.

Therefore - what are you going to do? Where are you going to go? And who are you going after?