I have setup an Arma Server running the Exile mod, 24/7. We have been discussing it on the discord app for SimHQ, and a few of us are enjoying it. Thought some of you guys might be interested in having it available to hop on and play a bit in between SimHQ Arma sessions.
I am still at the point where the SimHQ sessions don’t fit my schedule at all. I will try to pop on with you guys when I can. I have always enjoyed the sessions when I do.
Excerpt from the guide: It is the year 2039. After the resource depleting conflict in Greece, Europe suffers from a new deflation crisis, leading the crime rate to a new peak in history. Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Security Council are forced to react. Being a desperate alternative to overcrowded and prohibitive prisons, offenders are now being sent to EXILE.
It is meant primarily as a PvP mod, but we are using it as a PvE mod. I have added several addons to make the island a little more ‘alive’ and give you some options for missions you want to try. I have tweaked the AI quite a bit to make engagements more survivable.
There is a currency and respect system that allows you to buy gear as you gain each.
You will start on the server with 5000 poptabs (currency) in your locker which can be found at any trader. Traders are the poptabs icon on the map. We have been spawning in at the ‘Terminal’ location.
The current rules on the server are: - No PvP – We might look at changing this if lots join and are interested. - Don’t take other people’s vehicles or gear unless you are given permission. - Use the SimHQ TS server for comms. We generally join the Mechwarrior Online 2 channel, but will sometimes make a temp channel.
Please hop on and give it a try and let me know if you have any questions, problems or suggestions. Mod Details: - Running Exile 1.0.1 - Running addons: o DMS Mission system o A3_vemf o Exile Occupation (roaming AI and more) o Towing – Must have rope in your inventory or the vehicle towing’s inventory o Advanced Vehicle System (installed soon) – allows refuelling and rearming of vehicles
To connect, setup a profile, with only the Exile mod enabled, downloadable at the Exile Mod website above. More detailed instructions here: Exile Mod Installation Doc
Server direct address: 71.17.3.180 Server name (may show up in Arma Server browser): Crimson Guard Arma 3 Exile (1.0.1|1.62) Password: SimHQ
NOTE: There is a bug that happens from time to time where Arma will crash completely shortly after entering in the server password. This is because it is trying to download a new mission file. If this happens: Start Arma, Connect to the server, immediately after entering the password, alt-tab out of Arma and wait a minute or two (long enough for the mission file to download). You should then be able to alt-tab back and it should work.
Of note: All you need is the Exile mod. No other requirements. If you don't have the DLC, you simply won't be able to use that equipment. You can still play.
Vehicles like Quads can now be loaded into other vehicles like Urals. Sweet!
Also, there are now more roaming AI soldiers with different skill levels... watch out for those Arma 2 style sharpshooters, and helicopters can come in every now and then and they may or may not engage with you. Very neat.
Can you do me a favour and check whether the live feed from the UAV's camera is working on your server.
By 'Live Feed' I mean the UAV feature you see at around 6.00 of the following footage :-
The clip is only a little over 6 minutes long but chock full of great tips to maximize the UAV ability to enhanced situational awareness especially if you are playing alone.
I can get it to work on Singleplayer and when using the Eden Editor with Exile loaded but the live feed is just not working on server. Default key for live feed is 'Tab' or 2x Tab to toggle it.
I Haven't played with this much yet, but I think I might have to learn some of the features.
Hop on the server sometime.
I have just added Tarupods (modular pods for the Taru transport) available at the aircraft trader. They look pretty cool.
EDIT: Harry, I didn't watch the video before, so I didn't test what you wanted me to. I will do that tonight. That video actually explains some of the functionality really well.
I Haven't played with this much yet, but I think I might have to learn some of the features.
Hop on the server sometime.
I have just added Tarupods (modular pods for the Taru transport) available at the aircraft trader. They look pretty cool.
EDIT: Harry, I didn't watch the video before, so I didn't test what you wanted me to. I will do that tonight. That video actually explains some of the functionality really well.
You misunderstood my post.
What you showed me was the camera feed you get when you are controlling/flying the UAV.
The Live Feed I was referring to (and the one which is shown in 6:00 mark of the youtube link I posted) is the UAV's Camera feed superimposed on your player screen when you are controlling your player character. In other words, while you go about your chores as a player, the UAV is remotely providing a live bird's eye view of your area of operations without your direct input. You can have the UAV's camera lock on your character so the camera pans automatically to keep you in view.
Now obviously the feature works for the guy in that Exile youtube video. Somehow it does not work on the Exile server which I am currently playing so it maybe due to some setting we did that inadvertently disabled the live feed.
Do yourself a favour and check out the video. It's only a little over 6 minutes long and full of tips with the UAV which I wasn't even aware of until now. The tactical potential of that little AR2 Darter is more than you imagine.. Most folks just fly it from A to B, look around with the cam, leave the UAV on station andthen disconnect from the camera feed as you revert to character.
What the live feed does is you still have the bird's eye view after you revert to your character.
I am going to post the connection information here. If there ends up being issues with griefing or anything, I will change the password and deal with it then. Hopefully this will get a few more players online.
Server direct address: rowlinson.ddns.net Server name (may show up in Arma Server browser): Crimson Guard Arma 3 Exile (1.0.1|1.62) Password: SimHQ
Reminder to just have the Exile client mod (currently 1.0.1) enabled only. I haven't yet enabled any client-side mods yet, but will take suggestions if people want some that don't affect gameplay.
There is a post on the Exile forums asking the same thing so I will try to get some answers there on how to enable it.
Hop on the server in the meantime and give it a spin!
Cheers!
I'm currently invested on Snakeeyes's Tanoa server running Exile Mod with Occupation AI and Ryan's Zombies.
It's strange that the Live Feed is also not working on your server. It will be a great tool for enhanced situational awareness particularly with the fast runners from Ryan's zombies. Those things will sprint up to you without announcing themselves and, more often than not, when you have your head hunkered down in the inventory organizing loot. Couple of hits and you are done, and if you are infected, there's no cure. 5
So that is what Snaekeyes is spending all of his time in Arma on
It looks like it isn't just us for the video not working. Hopefully I will get an answer soon and I will let you know what needs to be changed on the server.
I was thinking about adding the zombies but just have focused on more human AI, random patrols and town/base occupations.
We might be dropping in your server sometime to check it out. At the moment, I'm away on business and Snake is in the midst of building his new rig and moving server.
The last time we played Altis, we basically clobbered the AI and zeds so badly at the Domes (I thin South of the largest airfield) that we were just swimming in cash and gear. I had a large base nearby called, of all things, the 'Penis Palace'.
But that was nearly 6 months ago and Exile has since changed the levelling system drastically with the respect mechanic. That said, we still managed to get a foothold at Tanoa albeit at a greater challenge and much slower progression pace. Still, after much tribulations, Snake is at 25000+ respect and I'm at something like 43000+. We managed to buy 2 ATVs and a Hunter at any point in time, before AI blew the Hunter to bits with an attack chopper, along with countless ATVs which we somehow managed to replace. So now we are back to 2 ATV's, 1 Hunter, a small cozy base, and a town we loot farm. Nearing enough cash reserves to get an armed Strider. That chopper is still a distant dream away though
We did scale back the rep needed for each level. I think we half'ed the numbers. You can get decent cash by selling found vehicles now. It might be a little bit on easy mode right now, but we were just trying to strike a balance where it wasn't too much of a grind so people could play casually and still have fun.
I would appreciate any feedback from you guys based upon you experience with Exile on other servers.
I know Altis is a bit overplayed for lots of people, but again, I wanted to make the server more accessible.
Maybe version 2 will be Tanoa if enough people have it, or another good 3rd party map.
Snake's server can be a bit too hardcore for most folks, especially new spawns, but we have it this way right now because it is still essentially a private passworded server and personal stomping grounds with just two human players vs the environment. I guess we will open it to the public at some stage but people better be prepared to rough it out.
One thing we did change was to increase the para jump height to 2,000. The default just didn't have enough glide height to cover any reasonable distance. Most of the time, when we get killed, a 2,000 jump height is just enough for us to get back to our bodies and attempt to recover the gear before it despawns. But that's about all the handholding we allow ourselves. Successfully recovering the gear is quite another matter. Often, the AI likes to camp dead bodies, not to mention the zeds running constant interference. We learn long ago that if we got killed by an AI chopper, you can pretty much kiss all your gear goodbye. Those things will hose us down from standoff with 30mm explosive rounds long before we get anywhere near the corpse.
But Altis is a way larger map than Tanoa. It's easier in the sense that it is arid Mediterranean and relatively open with sparse vegetation and foilage. You can see them coming at you from across the plains. Tanoa is just thick jungles and urban combat and things can get interesting when the engagement range is shorter. Also AI can see through trees. They tested this conclusively on Youtube. They cannot see through buildings or even bush thickets but trees do not negate their line of sight.
I think that, since we never change the default Exile respect system, losing respect is easier for new spawns because they don't have much to lose when starting out. It's when you get to the mid-levels (8,000 and above respect) that NPC induced deaths become painful because Exile deduct 5% of your total respect if you died from an NPC. So, at that level we are losing 400 per combat death as opposed to gaining 100 for every NPC killed. You can have a bad beat of a couple of deaths and all the hard earned respect you rake in one session could disappear in a flash.
Your tweaked Altis sounds a lot like our old Altis 6 months earlier, which is enjoyable too without the difficulty being way too anal for new people.
I never thought about changing the jump height, I will look into that.
One big change somewhat related to that is we added a spawn point at the central airfield (Terminal). This is pretty much our operating base the we work out of for now. We have started an actual base just NW of the airfield but haven't really located to their yet.
The default respect losses can be painful sometimes. One of the reasons that we cut down the amounts to increase in level.
If you are going to change the jump height to get a useful glide distance, Altis will require a corresponding higher value than Tanoa because of its size but everything will also depend on whether you have added extra spawn points or how much handholding you want to give the players.
There's one factor you cannot control no matter what and that is the presence of headwind or tailwind which will drastically decrease or increase your glide distance. You won't know whether its one or the other until you open the chute.
I cannot remember exactly the value we used for Altis, but I think it was 5,000 or soemthing like that. If we needed all that height to glide to a destination, we will pop the chute as soon as we spawn. If the LZ is much nearer, we will HALO it in to lose some height before opening the chute at lower altitudes so that we are not stuck hanging on the straps for more time than necessary.
I downloaded Exile and entered your server info and password and I get a message that I need to restart the all ready running game so needed things can be uploaded and unneeded things will be unloaded. It then goes thru the restart but just hangs on "loading map" and never loads. Any ideas?
JG26, can you try again and do the workaround I posted in the first post.
Connect to the server. When it asks for the password, type it in, then alt-tab out, wait for 1-2 minutes, alt-tab back in and let me know if there is any difference?
There is a chance the server was also just restarting then, it is scheduled to restart every 5 hours.