Mission Design: Ensuring Fun and Quality - Kieranator/BadArma GitHub Wiki

#Table of contents#

#Mission Design: Ensuring Fun and Quality#

Regardless of mission content a mission needs to be designed with the enjoyment of the players in mind. This guide intends to provide hints, pointers and a general mind set that can assist with creating fun and challenging missions.

Keep it simple, don't be overly ambitious

A common mistake by especially new mission makers is a tendency to create overly complex missions that either surpass their own skill levels or simply do not play aswell in practice as they do on paper. Overly complicated missions can lead to multiple problems, a few examples of which would be:

  1. Severe performance loss - This can be caused by unoptimized scripting or simply too much scripting or enemies

  2. Misinformation, general confusion amongst players on how things should work

  3. Mission going on far too long and due to above problems, unenjoyable for everyone involved.

Keep focused, keep it simple. Boil your mission idea into a handful of concepts instead of a pile of them and instead spread the ideas across multiple mission types so you can get a feel for what works and what doesn't. If you're just starting as a mission maker keep your idea as simple as possible, it's hard to do this as everyone wants to make their magnum opus but starting with an overly complex mission will only lead to anguish, burn out and probably a broken mission.

You are the enemy commander, you are the dungeon master, the curator.

An extremely helpful technique for mission making is to put yourself in the shoes of the enemy commander. When making a mission you establish rules for the players to abide by in the form of limiting their equipment and at the same time you need to establish rules for the enemy.

Decide on the enemies equipment, numbers and experience early and put yourself in the shoes of the commander. What is the enemies objective? Are they defending a position? How can they use the terrain to their advantage? Are they aware that the players are attacking? What equipment, support or reinforcements are nearby?

A common mistake in mission making is something that can be attributed to (but not necessarily) laziness where the enemy is haphazardly scattered around the AO with absolutely no regard for what they're actually supposed to be doing there. A mission where the enemy is formless, random and nonsensical is a bad mission as all it does is discourage those commanding the mission as they cannot plan for enemy movements. Similarly spawning enemies inside the AO (especially in places where the players have already moved through and cleared) is possibly the worst idea in existence.

Good missions require you to hand place and hand design many elements of it. Do not rely purely on scripted AI solutions. In a 'patrol/clear' a town mission, teleporting yourself to the town itself and running through it looking for places where you would set up a machine gun or set up an over watch position is a very simple way of improving a mission. Similar to regular AI placement, placing such assets in pointless or random spots will either defeat the purpose of the assets deployment.

Place enemies to provide a compelling and interesting engagement while at the same time do not 'meta-game' your own mission in an attempt to fuck over the players. You are creating a mission to be played not to get-off at the displeasure and suffering of others.

Static Emplacements, Enemy Vehicles, Special Assets

Static Emplacements

Apply some basic logic when deciding on what weapons are available to the enemy and how they employ them. Nobody (including insurgents) are dumb enough to stick two HMG right next to each other in a completely exposed position, nor would they put any other kind of static asset (such as an ATGM) near it. Such assets are extremely valuable and need to be spread across the area of operations not piled in front of a single avenue of attack.

Enemy Vehicles

Enemy vehicles are hard to balance, a singular vehicle could lead to an entire mission being wiped out while in another play-through could be destroyed ten times over without incident.

When considering the inclusion of an enemy vehicle you must have an understanding of the vehicles strengths and weaknesses. If you decide on the vehicles inclusion by saying 'wouldn't it be cool if...' then you are adding it for the wrong reasons. Adding in a roaming patrol of Apache Gunships when the players are dirt farmers driving a pick up truck with bald tires is not a situation anyone can hope to succeed in except by sheer luck and/or stupidity on the AIs part. Do not at any point think because a vehicle is 'old' that it cannot absolutely wreck shit. A T-34 is just as fearsome against infantry as an T-72 would be.

Players need multiple ways of dealing with enemy vehicles just as they have multiple ways of dealing with enemy infantry. Relying purely on say a player vehicle (IE a tank or IFV) to deal with enemy vehicles is a big mistake. Because once that vehicle dies suddenly the players have no means of defeating the enemy and having a mission hinge purely on a single asset is bad design. If you absolutely need to have your mission work this way, just force the players to retreat at this point instead of having an unwinnable situation drag out.

Approach these kind of design decisions as a (good) RTS would where units 'hard' counters and 'soft' counters. An example would be an enemy helicopter gunship, a hard counter of which would be a Jet as it's extremely unlikely for a helicopter to survive being strafed by a jet and even more unlikely that the helicopter could shoot it down (unless it's flown by Liquid Snake). MANPADs or dedicated anti-air equipment is also another hard counter but can be easily dispatched by a helicopter. Soft counters would be static HMGs and failing that, small arms possessed by infantry (AR, Rifles, clutch RPG-7 shots etc). If your mission is relying purely on soft counters make sure you realize the difficulty involved and adjust the mission accordingly.

Special Assets

Special Assets include assets that don't necessarily fall under the previous two categories. For example, a jet or mortar would be considered a special asset as typically the player has no way of directly dealing with them (except for killing the mortar crew). Special assets need to be strictly limited, while a mission maker might be tempted to create a brilliant Michael Bay-esque light show of explosions and gore it can get old very fast and drag a mission out as people are continually wounded. Employ such assets sparingly

Shooting down even a low-flying jet is very difficult even with dedicated AA weaponry, do not presume that the players will be able to achieve such a feat.

Scope of the AO, the mission, the enemy and if the mission is realistically achievable

Keep in mind that even if the players have helicopters or fast transports available to them, a mission AO spanning across 5km is going to make for a long mission. Keep this in mind when designing your objectives or deciding on your mission content. An average mission should only last around an hour and a half, if your mission is lasting longer than that (unless caused by a failing of the players) consider redesigning it.

Similar to previous sections, ensure that the player and enemy are using equipment appropriate for their mission. Infantry Fighting Vehicles were designed to be used in open field warfare alongside mechanized infantry, so are suitable for fighting in such areas. If your mission is based around close quarter fighting in a city and you have given the player an IFV or Tank please consider reading up on the Chechen war and why this is a bad idea. This does not mean you CAN'T make these scenarios but you need to grasp the difficulty for the players to succeed and balance your mission accordingly.

A mission can be designed as a 'last act of desperation' in mind but the mission needs to feel that way for the players. They need to feel that they almost had the enemy, they were just barely out of reach of achieving their goal. They never should feel that they've been 'cheated' or 'stomped into a pulp'. A mission should be created with achievable goals, if your mission concept is so ridiculous that any sane person would immediately desert instead of taking part in it, you need to rethink the concept.

A few examples of missions that would be thrown out and the officer responsible fragged are:

  1. Infantry Platoon Vs. Tank Battalion in an open field, in Germany.

  2. Dirt Farmers Vs. 500 people in a single building

  3. The Little Hind That Could Vs. A Thousand Shilkas

  4. Combined Arms in Ambush Alley where everyone has an RPG

Performance

Let's make one thing clear, ARMA runs like a dog. The game has a lot of crap going on in the background that causes a lot of CPU overhead but performance in ARMA is a tricky beast and a lot of performance problems are caused by poorly optimized missions. It's extremely common in the ARMA community to blame the engine for multiple mission design problems.

A very common problem is too many enemies in a small area - You can have 600 enemies on the map moving around and the game will run perfectly fine, but if you jam 300 of them into a 1km squared urban area shit is gonna run REAL bad. This is due to the CPU intensive nature of AI in combat and while Bohemia have made a lot of improvements in this area, it's still really bad and should be avoided whenever possible. Usually mission makers have these sort of enemy numbers in order to increase the difficulty of the mission but ironically when performance drops from this, it has the tendency to do the complete opposite as if the mission is performing badly on clients chances are is running like shit on the server aswell and the worse the server performs, the worse the AI performs. This makes them dumber, slower to react as the game tries to keep up.

Another common problem is poorly optimized scripting. Scripts as a mission maker are both your best friend and your worst enemy, you need to know when and how to employ them and try to avoid using them if they're not needed. Without going into too much detail, ARMA has two scripting 'engines' that have their own purpose and understanding this purpose is important for both basic and advanced scripting(but especially for the latter). The two engines are Non-scheduled (Called) and Scheduled (Spawned), the main difference between the two is Called scripts have the highest priority and subsequently run the best but are linked directly to the games simulation. What this means in lame-man terms is that if you're running a poorly optimized script in a non-scheduled environment it can and will cause micro-stutters where the entire game will lock up. Regardless, whenever possible you should be scripting in a non-scheduled environment as when done properly it will have the lowest impact on performance.

Scheduled scripts run on their own thread independent of the games simulation, despite this they actually have the more noticeable performance problems of the two. Poorly optimized scheduled scripts can lead to serious frame rate loss and also cause 'script lag' as all scripts that run in a scheduled environment will run slower from the performance loss. This was a significant issue for mods like ACE2 for ARMA 2 where poorly optimized scripts in a scheduled environment could lead to their wound system completely breaking as it would be stuck in time dilation and was part of the reason ACE3 moved to a completely non-scheduled system.

The best way to avoid these problems is to avoid using an excessive number of loops, this includes 'while' and 'waituntil' loops. Trigger conditions are also loops and so are addactions. This isn't to say you should remove all loops from your mission but rather you need to optimize them and understand that unless you set it to run otherwise, the condition will be checked every frame. There's multiple tricks to simplify condition checks and optimize them (Lazy evaluation is one of the best) but the very best way is to understand the performance cost. Stuff like 'nearestobject' etc is extremely costly and should never be run every frame.

Expect Competency, don't expect miracles

Expect that the players will be competent, expect that prior to the mission adequate recon of the area was done and design the mission around that. This is discussed in detail in how to write a briefing: https://github.com/Kieranator/BadArma/wiki/How-to-write-a-Briefing

This is an extension of what was previously discussed in regards to 'hard counters' in the static weapon section of this guide. While it's very much possible for a player to shoot down a helicopter with their automatic rifle or with a lucky AT rocket it's not a common thing, it's a 'miracle'. These are probably one off things that happened due to sheer luck and should not be treated as something people can actually achieve reliably. Balance your mission with this in mind.

Never rush a mission, check, check and check again

Something that comes up a lot is missions get rushed, people want to get their mission out as soon as possible and due to lack of time or over-enthusiasm, put the cart before the horse and end up with a broken mission that could have been avoided if testing was done on it prior to going live.

If you are relying on complex scripts, please test your mission thoroughly prior to the actual session. Testing it in the editor is not enough, test it on a dedicated server.

Gimmick Missions Vs. 'Real' missions

This has become more of an issue in Arma 3 than it was in Arma 2 but it seems gimmick missions are not being held to the same standards as a real missions are, and I don't mean by the players.

Gimmick missions are not supposed to be taken too seriously, so when a mission maker makes it balls to the wall harder than a typical 'real' mission it's not going to be fun for anyone involved. Just because the players are going to relax and take it easy doesn't mean the mission maker can make stupid mistakes that lead to an unfun, unenjoyable mission.

Expect the players to be less organized so the difficulty should be adjusted accordingly.

#Example basic mission types#

Note that various elements can be combined together to get unique combinations of objectives and such.

  • Patrol

    • Maintain security, protect against infiltrators. Infiltrators

      could be:

      • Enemy recon units

      • Enemy saboteurs

      • Enemy sniper teams, anti-tank, or anti-air.

      • Enemy agents disguised as civilians or friendly units

    • Can take place over very large areas, with significant distance

      between squads, IOT cover more ground in a presumed lower-threat (ie, insurgent) theater

  • Movement to contact

    • Enemy is known to be in a given area, plan is simply to move

      into that area until their location can be determined. At that point, typical course of action is to fight.

  • Recon patrol

    • Scout out enemy assets without making contact. Generally an ARG

      concept for lower playercounts.

  • Recon in force

    • Same as recon, except with much larger units, intent is to

      acquire intel and do general recon tasks, with the bonus that direct action can be taken if the situation permits. If a weakness is found, it can be immediately exploited.

  • Attack fortified position

    • Deliberate attack against a known and guarded enemy location.

    • Enemy has emplaced weapons, sandbags, bunkers, wire, etc. 

    • Friendlies have more AT assets than typical, such as SMAW teams,

      IOT destroy bunkers and make breaches.

    • Friendlies also have demolitions to breach walls and demolish

      structures

  • Ambush

    • Destroy enemy personnel, vehicles, equipment, etc

    • Generally behind enemy lines

    • Infiltrate to ambush point, conduct ambush, exploit or withdraw

    • May gather intel from ambushed troops. Maps, journals, etc.

    • Can use a recon team to draw enemies away from their position

      and into a prepared killzone consisting of the platoon

  • Defending

    • Defend own unit

    • Defend specific structures/areas

    • Defend personnel/civilians

    • Special features:

      • Deployable defenses

      • Deployable mines, flares, motion sensors, etc

  • Blocking/Delaying

    • Prevent enemy from passing through friendly position and onto a

      specific area.

    • Delaying:

      • Time is a factor. The more time the enemy is delayed, the

        higher the chance for success.

        • Ex: If a town is being evacuated, must delay until that

          is complete, else casualties occur

      • May be able to trade ground for time. ie, fall back to

        secondary and tertiary positions.

    • Special features:

      • Deployable defenses

      • Deployable mines, flares, motion sensors, etc

  • Raid

    • Destroy or capture enemy personnel, equipment, installations,

      etc

    • Free friendly POWs

    • Concluded by disengagement and withdrawal

  • Demolition/sabotage

    • Destroy or sabotage key enemy facility/asset.

    • Targets can include:

      • Bridge

      • Vehicles

        • Supply vehicles. Ammo, food, fuel, etc.

        • Grounded aircraft.

        • Other vehicles.

      • Air defense assets

        • Radar installations

        • Anti-aircraft artillery

        • SAM sites

      • Artillery assets

        • Artillery batteries

        • Mortar positions

        • Firefinding radars

        • Arty/mortar ammo supply

      • Communication facilities

        • Radio installation

        • Radio relays

        • Enemy wire

      • Supply facilities

        • Ammo dumps

        • Fuel station/dumps

        • IED factory (counterinsurgency)

        • Chemical facility

        • Nuclear facility

      • Power station

      • Police station or government building (insurgents)

    • Sabotage can include:

      • Tapping communications

      • Planting time-delay explosives

      • Contaminating fuel

      • Poisoning food

      • Lowering radar performance

  • Tactical recovery of aircraft & personnel (TRAP)

    • Basically, USMC Combat Search & Rescue. Happens whenever an

      aircraft goes down.

    • Process is roughly:

      • Determine crash site

      • Land TRAP team

      • Post security

      • Recover and treat casualties

        • May not be in immediate vicinity of crash site

        • May need to use emergency beacons to track down

          casualties in nearby hiding areas

        • Enemy may have acquired a beacon to use to lure TRAP

          personnel into a...... trap. Oh sweet irony!

      • Evacuate casualties

      • Demolish or recover aircraft remains

    • CH-53 would be great for this

  • Time-sensitive capture

    • Secure an objective within a certain amount of time, else

      enemies will destroy objective to prevent capture

      • Alternatively, the objective could be a person or vehicle

        that will only be in an area for a specific amount of time. If too slow, it leaves the area.

    • Examples are the same as in "Demolition". Typical example from

      historical perspective would be a bridge capture.

    • Hostage rescue also falls into this category

    • For insurgent-based missions, recovery of

      counter-insurgent-forces ("Good guys") gear could be part of this. ie:

      • Captured MANPADs

      • Captured uniforms, weapons

      • Captured vehicles

      • Captured personnel

      • Nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons

  • Withdrawal

    • Movement to the rear while bringing all supplies, vehicles,

      personnel, casualties, etc with

    • Can be time-sensitive. ie, enemy forces on the way, their point

      elements arrive partway into it, fighting starts, heavier elements start showing up, etc.

    • May need to fight to a position IOT withdraw people there, such

      as civilians or an encircled unit. May need to improvise transport of such civilians, ie with local vehicles. 

  • Breakout

    • Surrounded unit must pick a direction to breakout, attack that

      direction, and fight free of their encirclement, bringing along as many supplies, casualties, etc as possible.

  • Escort

    • Protect specific units, vehicles, etc, while they move somewhere

    • Examples of things to protect:

      • Supply convoy

      • Refugees

      • VIP (tribal leader, religious leader, key military

        figure, etc)

##Getting there##

  • Footmobile

    • Boots & utes

    • Generally the smallest mission scope due to difficulty in

      transiting large areas in a reasonable period of time. "Smallest" can still cover several KM of terrain, however.

    • Resupply of ammunition and medical gear becomes a factor

  • Motorized

    • Vehicles include:

      • HMMWVs

      • MTVRs

    • Allows broader mission scope due to increased mobility.

    • Allows for heavier opposition due to mounted CSWs

    • Require special care to ensure that the mission remains

      challenging despite their relative power

    • Special features -

      • Ability to repair vehicles that have become disabled due to

        blown tires etc

      • Scripting to prevent immediate catastrophic kills from IEDs

        and other hits

  • Mechanized

    • Vehicles include:

      • LAVs

        • Can be used to allow for a LAR mission style - light

          armored recon - with attached scouts and such.

      • AAVs

        • Can be used to give great mobility and firepower to

          infantry

    • Similar scope to motorized missions, with the additional

      possibility of traversing bodies of water due to amphib nature of AAVs and LAVs

    • Even heavier opposition can be encountered thanks to greater

      arms and armor

    • Require extra special care to ensure that the mission remains

      challenging despite their power

    • Special features -

      • Ability to repair vehicles that have become disabled due to

        blown tires etc

      • Scripting to prevent immediate catastrophic kills from IEDs

        and other hits (zx/kevb0)

  • Seaborne

    • Boats include:

      • CRCCs

        • Used in recon role, infiltration, sabotage, etc. 

      • RHIBs

        • Protect other boats, and can provide a better defensive

          capability when moving into hot waters

      • Civilian boats

        • Infiltration purposes

      • AAVs

        • Ship-to-shore combat movements.

        • CAS and NGF used to provide cover during transition.

    • Similar mission scope to footmobile if using single

      landing point. With multiple coastal objectives, scope can become larger. Same if AAVs are used.

  • Heliborne

    • Broadest possible scope, can take place all over a

      large terrain.

    • Troops can be landed in a variety of different LZ approaches, as

      described in TTP2

    • Introduces the possibility of:

      • Light CAS provided by helo door guns

      • Resupply via helo

      • Reinforce via helo

      • CASEVAC

      • CSAR aspect if a helo goes down

  • Airborne

    • Parachute, HALO or standard, into enemy territory IOT conduct

      a mission. Similar mission scope to footmobile, with the caveat that the drop zone can end up very broad, such that the initial positioning of forces is broader

    • General end-state is with airborne troops having secured

      objectives and assumed a defensive posture while other friendly forces push up to relieve them.

    • Possible sub-missions:

      • Demolition

      • Attack fortified position

      • Time-sensitive capture

      • Lay mines

      • Airfield capture

      • Bridge capture

      • Ambush

      • Block/delay

      • Sow confusion

##Overarching story##

  • Counter-insurgency operations

    • Gathering intel on insurgent activities, locations, future

      plans, etc

    • Acting on intel via raids, attacks, etc

    • Protecting assets from insurgent attack

      • Key local infrastructure

      • Friendly FOBs, outposts, etc

    • Hearts & Minds with the local population

      • Relief operations such as food/water delivery

      • Medical aid to locals

      • EOD of UXO in civilian areas

      • Acting on civilian intel

      • Collateral damage a big concern

  • Full-scale war

    • Aaaanything

    • Can be themed as modern war, near-future, or past wars, with

      corresponding influences on weapons, mission types, comm structures, etc. 

      • Modern war:

        • Standard ST comms

        • Unit tracking

        • Modern weapons with modern optics

      • Past war:

        • Restricted comms (radioman only)

        • Restricted or non-existent unit tracking

        • Older weapons, less ammo/magcount, ironsights

        • Different platoon structures

  • Insurgency operations

    • SF-type stuff, but without the training, budget, or support

    • Capturing supplies

    • Kidnapping personnel

    • Destroying infrastructure

    • Hit-and-run attacks

    • Ambushes

##Spice objectives##

  • Find intel

    • Map board

      • Take some time to 'recover' it

    • Computer

      • Take time to download data

    • Mass graves

      • Take time to collect evidence

    • Map showing troop dispositions

      • Must check enemy inventory to find

  • Take a POW

    • Field interrogation could result in new objectives

  • Search for friendly MIA

    • Downed aircraft

    • Compromised SF

    • Captured/abducted

      • If recovered, could give intel on enemy

  • Search for enemy officer or person of interest

    • Capture or kill

      • If kill, recover 'proof', or take body back

      • If capture, extract from area alive

  • Destroy enemy supplies

    • Alternatively, sabotage them

  • Interfere with enemy communications

    • Destroy comm gear

    • Place jamming devices within range of enemy comm gear

    • Tap comms and give false orders through them

      • Divert a patrol

      • Get a camp to send their reserve guards to the wrong side,

        opposite of where they are about to be attacked/infiltrated

  • Capture enemy gear

    • Vehicle

    • Weapon system

    • Supplies

##Surprises/Complications##

  • Bad intel resulting in:

    • Enemies in positions other than expected

    • Enemies have heavier assets than anticipated

    • Heavy enemy reinforcements

    • Gas attacks

  • Updated intel mid-mission.

    • Reveals new objective, requiring quick action to exploit

      opportunity, such as:

      • Weakness in enemy positions

      • Enemy unit withdrawing from their positions

      • Enemy unit attempting to reinforce a defensive position

      • Supply convoy underway

      • Sudden discovery of AA asset where it was thought clear

        prior (MANPADs, Zu23s, etc)

    • Reveals new hostile forces, requiring a change of plans to

      account for things like:

      • Mech unit rolling into the area

      • Motor unit bringing up reinforcements

      • Footmobiles entering AO

    • Gives new assets, such as:

      • Artillery

      • Resupply

      • UAV support

      • Satellite support (ie, DB infrared)

    • Takes away asset, or places restrictions on it. Examples:

      • Artillery limited to what it can do, due to needing to

        conserve ammo or due to priority targets elsewhere (ie, other plt in contact or similar)

      • CAS has an issue preventing it from being optimal:

        • Takeoff delay for whatever reason (arming, incident at

          airfield, etc)

        • Loiter time reduced by fuel (simulating an a/c having a

          long flight time to a given area). ie, 20 mins of loiter before RTB.

      • ROE changed to where heavy assets cannot be employed in a

        given area due to collateral concerns

      • Movements required take unit out of artillery coverage fan

  • Adjacent units require urgent assistance, requiring change of plans

    (ie, QRF). Could be a sister platoon needing help, or a downed aircraft, or civilians in danger, etc.

  • Urgent need to get an intel item to "higher HQ", requiring command

    to detach a group to take the intel to an LZ, or drive vehicles back to a FOB, etc. Intel could reveal new objective or otherwise change how the remainder of the mission plays out. 

  • Enemy attack behind friendly lines

    • Unexpected development forces friendlies to fight in multiple

      directions

    • Could be airborne, footmobile, mech/motor, etc

  • Civilians are mixed into an area, collateral damage a concern

  • Restricted ROEs due to concerns about civilian property damage

  • Synchronization necessary to accomplish a task. Failure results in

    harder task, but generally not mission failure.

    • Multiple objectives must be hit within a given period, or

      simultaneously, else the enemy will be alerted

    • Complementary effects - ie, infantry must take out AT assets to

      allow supporting armor to assist, or AA assets to get air support

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