Very cool!

When I load up a mission with the FFAA terrorist or civilian units, I get an error message about a missing texture:

"ffaa_et\arma\data\us_soldier_wound2_smdi.paa"

Does anyone else see this?

Yes, I was waiting to see if anyone got that, I did. I was waiting to post on the BIS forum about it.

I was looking at this earlier and complaining to Klar how much it would suck to have to dump out of ArmA and reload a different shortcut when changing to a desert map, to load up your arid camo replacement units.

But I forgot that a lot of these unit packs add them as extra placeable (and playable) units - it's only the actual replacement packs that would change the default USMC uniforms.

The USMC infantry pack referenced above claims to add the extra placeable units as opposed to being a local-only replacement kit.

For vehicles, something like this would do the trick: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=8140. It just adds new classes of vehicles to the editor with arid schemes. That pack and the MARPAT pack Dec linked to are about 20mb a piece.

The downside is that players would need to have these arid camo units in order to play the missions, but the experience player-side would allow for seamless transitions between the forest maps like Chernarus, Utes, and Sbrodj, and arid maps like this one.

Isla Duala looks good from the screenshots. Should be good. I miss playing on the Tonal island for OFP.

Fatty, I loaded all the addons you listed. I was able to build a fully desert camo USMC infantry and vehicle group that looks pretty good (these aren't the reskins, but new units), and had the FFAA units as enemies.

The downside is that the list of addon requirements runs to 5 at that point just for this new map. Weighing in around 200MB.

Something else to consider with all the addon units, is how they will interact with ACE2, should we use it in the future.

That's not too too bad, although a lot of work/resources to just enable use of one small island; I haven't looked at the island yet so I'm not sure if it's worth it.

If it comes down to it though, we can try to obtain permission to redistribute the files ourselves, make a "@SimHQ" addon package, and I can mirror it on my site.

I don't think you have to get permission to do that as long as you leave the credits in the readme for each addon. The addons usually state they are free to DL and redistribute. After all most people who dl them put them in different named files. I have several addons in a common named folder.

I say it would be worth it to collect a few skin mods and different
vehicle camo mods and have them be a standard for play.
Would give more options for missions, and make it easier to add more maps at a later date.
IE once we have a desert unit and camo picked out and in the SimHQ addons, then we can use just about
any desert map pretty easily.

Plus this would give added variety
Something we always need.

Unfortunately, I've found a deal breaker with the desert units. They appear to not be recognized by ACE2. Things like the special ACE2 kit materials aren't loaded for some elements, such as the SMAW spotting scope special ammunition pack.

This could mean big time kit hard coding to make ACE2 work as expected, which is no-go, especially when documentation for mission makers is sometimes spotty.

Now I realize that might sound like a confirmation that we're using ACE2. I CAN'T confirm it yet, but it's looking VERY good. I'm going to see what things are like after patch v1.05 before making a decision.

And yes, an "@SimHQ" addon package is already being considered.