What extra bits and pieces do you find yourself always adding to your missions?
Here's a few I keep coming back to after building many many missions.

Obviously VCOM AI some prefer ASR AI but personally after watching VCOM driven units in Zeus for longer than I care to admit, it's hard to go past VCOM for AI improvements.

I use rafael09ed's Survivable crashes script in just about every one of my missions. Getting shot down behind enemy lines, or seeing one of your pilots go down and knowing that it's actually worth sending an element to rescue them adds a lot to a mission.

I also use phronk's Simple IED Script . I've found ALiVE's insurgency takes a while before IED's become a factor, so using phronks script just to sprinkle a few across the map keeps the players on their toes from the start of deployment.

If you're not using musucra's Guilt and Remembrance mod (requires ACE) then I really think you're missing out. Designed with ALiVE in mind it creates a mechanic around the death of civilians. As well as the loss of rep you get from ALiVE, Guilt and Remembrance can be set up to allow you to return that dead body to the deceased family or simply bury the body outside of town to reduce the effects of your civilian slaying. Event handlers allow you to customize the effects your actions have, and any punishments you want to dish out for potential war crimes.

Finally this one might not appeal to everyone but I put off using it for ages and regret doing so, and that's Jokoho482 and LAxemann's Suppress mod. No more can your players just stand there and go toe to toe with the enemy, the suppression effects while "gamey" do a great job, and will have your players looking to break contact and find cover rather than trying to rambo assault the enemy.

Has anyone else got any scripts or mods they always find themselves adding to missions?

Dear @JD_Wang , I have to admit that I didn't know about Guilt and Remembrance and I just downloaded it!

About some other mods that I tend to use almost always (I suck at scripting so, I tend to... let's say avoid them) are the following:

Align from LAxemann and joko - don't ask me anything as his (LAxemann's) Mount which actually is not on Steam Workshop (but I can provide a link if you want to try it out!) (and I would like to say here that I do not use non-Steam Workshop mods cause on workshop is super easy to download and set them up! It is just a button!)

Then is Immerse from LAxemann and joko - don't ask me anything

Also dzn Extended Jamming from Buzzil which in my opinion adds a lot to the actions you take to clear a jammed weapon and I do not refer only on the actions to clear the actual jam but to the actions that you take BEFORE you start clearing a jam on a weapon!

Magazine Simulation A3 from Gokmen and Bullet Casings from Hortzy.

MRHMilSimTools from Mr H. which is a small mod that can give you some really nice options like having the map as an inventory item and not placable in special slot (like what ACRE2 does to radios!) so like this you can open a map in front of you and every one will be able to see your map (something like RL!) and other small things like this!

LRG Fundamentals from Mokka and MitchJC is another mod that adds some choices for the mission maker like "only characters designated as pilots can fly a chopper or plane!" or they have integrated some scripts like the one that allows every player to "flip" back to normal the vehicles (because... ArmA sometimes is ArmA!!) and other things like these!

KAT - Advanced Medical from Katalam. Since I found this mod, I integrated in EVERY mission. It gives ACE's already amazing advanced medical system even more depth!

ADV - ACE Splint from [SeL] Belbo is a really good and usefull (imho) mod that makes it possible to avoid the ACE's PAKs every time that someone has damaged one of his limbs (arms or legs!) with the possibility (depends on the settings that you will choose) to make the splint either permanent or to last only for a while!!!!

Diwako's ACE Ragdolling from diwako gives also a nice touch to the way enemies and player characters react when they get hit!

Cinematic Lens Flare from AveryTheKitty gives a nice touch too to the lights!

Breaching Charge from Ampersand is one my favorites especially on the part that we clear towns from enemies from an AI commander and CQB module!

I won't even bother to say "ACE", "Enchanced Movement" and other so... Classic that I believe that 99% of ArmA community use these days! Or I won't refer to "Communication Mods"... (I LOVE ACRE2!!)

(Although I can go on for some 10-15 more mods) You probably can tell by now that I LOVE small mods that gives just a small bit of immersion on its own but all together makes the virtual battlefield and the way you operate (on personal level... not on team level) more intresting and more reallistic (an excelent example is the one that I mention about "extended jamming mod"!). I also love mods that enhance sound and effects like expolions, weapon sounds and soundscapes!

Hope I didn't get you boring and I gave some things to look for or some "food" for talks!

Love this thread...most of the mods we use are already added...would love to see more though!

Guilt and rememberance really added a lot to our Kunduz scenario, appreciate the heads-up @JD_Wang !

Really tempted to check out the jamming mod too, would be hell during some of the firefights we get into lol

Engima's Traffic Script is another really great script for providing ambient civilian traffic. There's also an example in that thread where you can have a small percentage of the traffic be OPFOR, which is great if you want more patrolling technicals etc

I also use KP Fuel Consumption to make fuel consumption actually a thing and make refuelling something the players need to consider.

I also like to use the tpw_air script from TPW mods While tpw doesn't support multiplayer I've found the tpw_air script runs fine separately and will provide you with some ambient flybys of whichever aircraft you choose.

I'll be sure to check out all three of those! Do you notice and particular performance hits with the extra AI from the traffic / ambient flight?

I generally have the traffic set to spawn between 3-5 vehicles and the ambient flyovers are I think set to about every 10-30 mins or something like that so it's very negligible.

It's just nice to see the odd chopper or jet fly over, although if I'm honest the jets are a little underwhelming because they fly too slow. I might have to have a look and see if I can't fix that at some stage.

@JD_Wang ououfff... All 3 you mentioned are scripts and I cannot script (and it is really hard for me to understand scripting) further than a simple addAction BUT... I will definatelly try the traffic script! Thanks and please keep posting guys...

You really don't need any real scripting knowledge to use those.
Most of them should come with simple instructions. eg the fuel script says

Example for initPlayerLocal.sqf: player addEventHandler ["GetInMan", {[ _this select 2] execVM "scripts\kp_fuel_consumption.sqf";}];

So you simply copy and paste that line into your initPlayer.sqf (and if you don't have one of those just make a new file in your mission folder and name it initPlayerLocal.sqf) save and you're done.

INCON's Undercover script is absolutely brilliant, would definitely recommend if you want to do some recon without getting noticed.

Absolutely agree with INCON's undercover we've used it recently in a non ALiVE mission with great success

Checked out and added the cinematic flare, advanced jamming and guilt and rememberance...it definitely adds a lot to the mission for sure!

@UncreatedLemon91 mate, I LOVE extended jamming... Hope we help a bit with our suggestions... What do you have to suggest?

I have been using lambs danger, suppression, and tactical link x instead of VCOM, seems to perform better than VCOM

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/221659-tactical-combat-link-typex/
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197962792796/myworkshopfiles/?appid=107410

And for the missions that have diving I fixed up an old script trindisplay
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GAYnP8-rN32crCdoXKrDnBeRC3w0MOPY/view?usp=sharing

and Mrh' milsim tools, and satellite
https://steamcommunity.com/id/wizardofodds/myworkshopfiles/?appid=107410

And finally Adv medical, and kat advance medical

I really like MRH' mods (both of em!) and I also use ADV Medical and KAT advnace medical!

I also liked a lot the LRG Fundamentals from Mokka and MitchJC (I have already posted it here but for our convinience I re-posting it). Among others, I asked them to add a function that locks 1st person camera when you are on vehicles. (I play 3rd person which I know may be considered corner cheating (but I do not do it... I just like seeing my avatar, not cheating. I change a lot between 1st and 3rd) but in vehicles, it is SUPER cheating and I just wanted to have the fun but the vehicle 3rd person was too much.) and they actually did it in less than an hour!

You know, one mod i've been looking for, is an ambient wildlife mod.

I know Spyder had it in, but I could never get it to work (The animals would just be shadows if it was hosted on a dedicated server).

Anyone know of such scripts / mods?

Yeah ambient wildlife would be great. It'd be even better if you could spawn say a herd of goats with a goat herder

I had the opposite issue with the ambient wildlife, 1000's upon 1000's of goats they were a plague sweeping across the land.

@YonV I had the opposite issue with the ambient wildlife, 1000's upon 1000's of goats they were a plague sweeping across the land.

So majestic!

@JD_Wang Yeah ambient wildlife would be great. It'd be even better if you could spawn say a herd of goats with a goat herder

I'll continue to dig around and look for something...maybe I'll see if I can make a small script for that...I always appreciate some more immersion where possible

Bringing this thread back from the dead as we've changed a few things over time and I'm always interested in what others add to their missions.

We dropped VCOM and now roll with a combination of LAMBS_danger.fsm (already mentioned in this thread and in my opinion the #1 AI mod currently) and CF_BAI which is a really cool AI mod focused mainly on the AI vision. Now when it's dark or foggy (or we're in a forest) it's much easier to stay low, concealed and avoid contact. AI also seem to engage from longer ranges which can lead to some nice long firefights. It also has a suppression mechanic which allows you to drop the accuracy etc of the AI when they're suppressed. So far it's proven to be a good combo.

Simplex Support Services I use this in just about every mission, be it an ALiVE mission, Zeus or simple objective based missions. Originally I started using it for ALiVE for CAS aircraft on maps with no airfields but now I've replaced ALiVE's supports with Simplex. You have a basic mode were supports are called via map click, and then you have "milsim" mode which requires a 10 digit grid to call in that airstrike or artillery. Interestingly you can assign any vehicle as a transport, meaning you could technically set up a taxi to drive you around. It's easy to set up and very flexible when it comes to who can/can't call supports. One idea I had which Sceptre was cool enough to implement for me was the ability to blacklist support areas. Eg you can place markers 100m wide over all the mosques on the map and then set it up so players can't call arty/airstrikes into that area.

Finally KP Ranks > We don't use this as much as we used to but it's a cool ranking system that can be setup so the admin awards ranks or (in my opinion the better option) you can set it to automagically award points towards rank up for playtime, kills etc while subtracting points for civilian and BLUFOR kills. Notifications pop up when a player ranks up and the mod will also change your sleeve insignia to show that rank.
For a while I use this mod to limit arsenal gear based on rank, eg you couldn't use a marksman or sniper rifle until you hit a certain rank. This in conjunction with a huge penalty for civ kills suddenly had my playerbase being a lot more careful PID'ing their targets :)
I would also add a small passive bonus to certain underplayed roles such as TL or medic which incentivised their use.

@JD_Wang Thanks for the update JD, much appreciated. Always looking for new toys to plug into my Alive campaigns!

I'm very interested in SSS mod, I'm going to try it out later today. I'm currently in the middle of a Lythium ALive insurgency campaign, and I play solo with 9 AI squad members; is it compatible with solo play or ALive support is better option (I play solo in MP mode, if that makes difference)? Also, is there any conflict with ALive support, can they run together?

KP ranks sounds interesting just in the point system for tracking kills. I have Alive setup to show scores for me and AI, but it seems messed up and not tracking kills and deaths properly.

I use all the Lambs mods, they are pretty awesome! Just works and I noticed the enemy AI will now setup and fire mortars and start raining thunder down on blufor - so cool to see, even if I'm on the receiving side.

Had a nice mission clearing villages in the north western area of Lythium this morning, all is well, no AI deaths and plenty of ISIS kills and insurgency locations dismantled. I take my squad over a hill, not noticing the mortar team on top of a house about 500 meters out. All of a sudden I hear the pops, and the incoming...wiped us out, the whole team, five-times over before we could get out of the zone and kill the team. I was like WTF - was not expecting that at all. It's awful and wonderful at the same time! Got to pay attention constantly now days I guess.

Anywho, I also use All in One mod, which really helps with AI management, along with C2, ACE, ect. I run JSRS and a few other sound mods and such, tactical position, ect...basically personal preference type stuff, adding immersion where possible.

I'm eagerly waiting for the one guy working on Super AI mod. That just may redefine the AI by the time he is done. Looks very promising.

Anyhow, thanks for the heads up on those two mods, gonna try it out.

Good day!
DrDetroit