Hey guys.

I'm an admin/mission maker for a group that averages 45-60 players. We have started switching from DAC to ALIVE, but have run into a few problems as we figure things out. I'm sorry if this has been asked before. I've searched, and most topics talking about the group limiter mention how to optimize it, and don't answer my question.

A recurring problem early on was that the default group limiter (50) used alongside civilian/cqb modules would stop profiled units from spawning and 'add them to the force pool.' I haven't made use of enemy reinforcement (yet) so that meant they were just gone. So first thing I did was remove civilians, and decrease CQB. From my tests (On local and dedicated) it seemed as though ALIVE was counting our player groups in that limit. Everything worked fine with a squad, but would break when we had two platoons loaded in.

Our current work around has been to prop the group limiter to very high numbers (150+) and this has, obviously, led to the reverse problem of too many AI.

So I have a few questions I was hoping I could get some help with.
Are player groups counted in the limit?
If not, why would units spawn at low player counts, and not at higher ones?
Do Civilians and CQB units count?

Slightly unrelated question, with the logistics module, if I set helicopters to "no" will that mean they can't use helicopters as reinforcement transports and thus be restricted to land based movement?

Thank you all for your help and the mod.

When we operate at company levels the platoons are usually within a kilometer of each other for mutual support. The issue we ran into that led me to ask some of these questions, is we encountered ALIVE active units in the early parts of the mission, but when we got closer to one of the town objectives and the CQB/civilian AI kicked in, the active units would not unprofile despite the low numbers of on-server AI.

In regards to DAC, I was personally getting tired of the formulaic nature of missions designed with DAC, and the test time required for the literal dozens of triggers needed, especially for caching/uncaching different AOs. ALIVE streamlines that beautifully, and when we've had platoon scale engagements performance has been much better. Our only real issue has been threading between two major AOs, activating all of them because our group limiter is set higher than it should, and crashing the server.

DAC AI sometimes perform better at the individual group level, especially when connected with a headless client and ASR AI, but each group acts independently and can get in each other's way. With ALIVE, the individual fire teams are at times easier to deal with, but we have gotten the sense we are fighting a consolidated enemy presence. It's an interesting change, and one I think is for the better. Once I figure things out, of course. Despite my mistakes, ALIVE has been much easier to pick up for our new editors, mostly due to the fantastic documentation and support, whereas DAC utilizes rough German translations several years out of date.

Thanks for the answers gents, I'll see what I can do in a new mission.

Thanks for the advice Friznit, I'll take a look at that.

My group largely makes use of RHS for coops. The first time we utilized military logistics, the AI commander requested resupply, which was transported by two hips with rocket pods and a hind attack/transport. Needless to say, that posed a very interesting situation. Does unit blacklisting work with military logistics?

Thanks Spyder, I'll try that script out. You guys have been great.

Current mission plan is to utilize a hybrid ALIVE/DAC system. Some DAC units patrolling a town, with ALIVE CQB supporting. A nearby ALIVE unit deployed in a small TAOR as Friznit suggested, with reinforcement.

If I put an objective module over the town and link it to the commander, will he be able to tell the town is held by OPFOR units, even if they aren't part of ALIVE? I'm assuming that the AI commander at that point would be more of a counter-attack force. I'm still feeling my way through this, so I apologize about the number of questions.

That's a fantastic idea, thank you!

My first 'hybrid' mission is set up for tonight, I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Well, testing has been interesting. I haven't gotten logistics to work, despite the fact it worked in my last coop. Even using the script call to test a logistics request. I think the mission as designed with Friznit's suggestions will work well regardless of logistics working or not. I also made use of Spyder's whitelist script, so I'm going to test it without that and see if that is the problem.

EDIT: Nope. That's not the issue. I have a military base set up on the main Altis airfield, so I'm not sure where the limitation comes from. I have the logcom module set to static and what not. Not the end of the world right now, but still potentially a problem down the line. I've gone into ghost mode and annihilated all ALIVE units on the map, and they aren't getting replaced.

Custom unit blacklisting also doesn't seem to work for me. I've used the below, as well as a version for the military placement modules. Still running into full squads of suppressor equipped CSAT forces:

ALiVE_MIL_CQB_CUSTOM_UNITBLACKLIST = ["O_recon_TL_F","O_recon_exp_F","O_recon_JTAC_F","O_recon_medic_F","O_recon_LAT_F","O_recon_M_F","O_recon_F"]; ALiVE_PLACEMENT_MIL_CQB_GROUPBLACKLIST = ["OIA_InfSquad_Weapons","OIA_InfTeam_AA","OI_reconTeam","OI_reconSentry","OI_reconPatrol"];

Playing the mission right now. All but the smallest ALIVE active groups have failed to spawn. I've been turning debug on and off. Now, when I have it on, I have debug on, each of my player groups has a "E0" icon and so forth. We have 14 groups. I also have CQB module on with a pretty large density.

In testing, things spawned fine. With high playercount... my original problem. The CQB and DAC units are fine. But No ALIVE units. No logistics. Any ideas?

Yeah, I test on both my local machine and the dedicated pre-session. The only variable that changes between working and not is player count. I'll get you the RPT tonight, as I'm at work and don't have the login info. Here's what I do have:

https://gyazo.com/120b564dbe1406b367554a018d097aab

set CUSTOM_MODS=@CBA_A3;@ace;@acre2;@ALiVE;@AllInArmaTerrainPack;@ASDG_JR;@ASR_AI3;@BourbonMapRotation;@BourbonMods;@Bovinton;@dac_hc;@DAR_HMMWV;@fallujah;@Helvantis;@hlcmods;@HueyPack;@K_MNP;@Leights_OPFOR;@mbg;@miscReskins;@Nziwasogo;@Podagorsk;@PRKZ;@RDS;@RHSAFRF;@RHSUSAF;@RH_M4;@rjj_agile_helicopters;@SAM;@SanginProvince;@sthud;@ToraBora;@3cb_baf;

Yeah, I'll get that to you ASAP. For this last mission however, all units on the field were vanilla units. BLUFOR units had uniform changes, but we're still BLU_F. Although I suppose if its a mod issue that might not matter. My current solution is to put the group limiter at a high limit, but have more custom control over the server by manually syncing the units I want and ensuring we don't exceed server killing numbers.

http://pastebin.com/5T9Tp2g4#

I did some tests with CBA and ALIVE only on one of the premade missions that came with the mod, still got that unit group icon, so I might be wrong on that end. But things still aren't loading in at high player counts, but will spawn in fine under twenty players. Very confusing.