I have a lot of advice and it will take me awhile to write. I only ever play alone (sometimes seldomly in a small group but usually alone) but I think some of the principals I use would work for you all. I'll pop back in tomorrow and write you something which is probably too long. :)

First things first, bare in mind I'm the most active idiot on the forums. :) Second things second I use and adore TADST so here's a link to a post I compiled for how to get yourself setup. https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/159708-alive-advanced-light-infantry-virtual-environment/page-342#entry2937748

SP is not recommended if you want to use the full ALiVE suite. TADST is a dedicated server tool which will allow you to enable persistence in your mission(s) and save your progress to ALiVE's War Room. This ensures good performance and the ability to "save" and "load" while using multiplayer. For me, persistence is key. I hate the idea of my mission progress not saving so this alone is brilliant for my needs. When I'm done for the night I "server save and exit" and the next day I can continue my mission again. It's awesome.

When I first got into ALiVE, Autigergrad (mission maker. All around good dude. He has some missions here and on BIS and Workshop) turned me on to Assymetrical insurgency missions. You can learn more about Assymetrical missions here: http://alivemod.com/wiki/index.php/Insurgency

So this is really all I can speak to. It's my favorite mission type and really the only thing I play. It's also excellent for solo players and small groups because there's more to do than just kill dudes. What I try to do is replicate the war in Afghanistan circa 2009(ish). Good guys versus the Taliban. Also excellent for small groups because they really shouldn't be overpowering you unless they overwhelm you with numbers.

What I like to do when I make my missions (I have one in the mission template thread. Two more coming soon) is to group 5-6 "playable" units to me. These are generally my AI teammates, but I leave them on "playable" in the event I make some friends someday that want to play with me. :) But it also ensures I am never out there alone. I also use SpyderAddons in all my missions, not only because it adds so much life to ALiVE (ambience, conversation trees with civs, etc), but because it also allows me to have an AI spawner in the event I need more warm bodies to tackle an objective and also a vehicle spawner too: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=579263829

Sorry if the next bit of stuff is a little inside baseball. What I like to do when making my missions is to place a "safe zone" around my base. A decent size TAOR so when I get going initially I'm not immediately inundated with OPFOR. Generally I'll place the opposing Assymetric side's Military Commander module pretty far away from my base so the insurgency starts as far away from my base as possible. When the mission starts my "job" is to go around interrogating civilians in the nearby towns, trying to get a leg up on where OPFOR is doing its dirty work.

For my side's Military Commander I like to have more units than the OPFOR side to start. So I start out a little more powerful. OPFOR will recruit more units from the civilian population as things get going (Civilian Population and Civilian Placement Modules are required for this. I usually place several Civilian Placement modules so the missions are jam packed with civs. OPFOR can recruit a ton of you're not careful).

Once the basics of the mission is made, I then like to manually add some more enemies (syncing them to the virtual AI module) as far away from my base as possible too. This simulates a 'the further from base you go, the more dangerous the game gets' kind of thing. I then like to pair that with a high priority custom objective module on the other end of the map too. This increases the likelihood of OPFOR being numerous on the opposite end of the map.

After placing all the modules and having a basic functioning mission going, the first thing I do is debug the virtual AI module. I then enter the mission and look at the map. Areas populated by BLUFOR and OPFOR will start lighting up. I take note of the empty areas. I then exit out and do this a few more times. If certain areas of the map never get populated by OPFOR, I'll generally place some custom objectives over these dead areas. Or, if the dead areas are only in the hills/valleys, I'll place markers over those spots, add another military objective module for OPFOR, set "random camps to medium, whitelist the module to only populate enemies in those areas. This means any area on the map *can* be dangerous.

Because I'm usually playing alone, and also because I'm trying to replicate a very specific kind of real life terrorism mission, I don't generally like to let either side use a ton of air vehicles or tanks or what have you. I keep it mostly infantry and light vehicle based. I'm also not a particularly good player. Lately I've been messing around with more conventional all-out-warfare missions too so I hope in the future I'll be able to balance those to a more SP/small group oriented experience as well. But for now, setting that kind of thing up is a little out of my league.

I have a lot more I could say and many more proncipals I could share but I don't want to overwhelm or confuse you. If you have any specific questions let me know and I'll do my best to help.

Oh regarding your question about what happens in a conventional battle when an area is clear, I think the area just becomes cleared and it's up to you to reinforce it with troops (you can change the waypoints of a nearby squad under the "operations" tab or request troops to travel there via the logistics module and setting them to "reinforce.")

I'm not sure about any color changes or what have you.

In an Assymetric mission the area generally just gets more populated by civs and becomes peaceful.

I usually just place ALiVE custom markers on the map and make a note about the time I cleared the area.

And yes, you can definitely make a FOB of sorts. Though I'm not sure if you have access to base building material from the ALiVE tablet. Would be cool if you could though!

When ALiVE updates again, I plan on taking Spyder's Operation Landlord and tinkering it a bit to suit my style. It's a conventional battle on Altis and is pretty fun. I'll finish up my own Assymetric missions and move onto that. I should have a better grasp on those kinds of conventional missions then.

I'm not particularly fond of the steam launcher. I do use it though and here is what I do.

I launch the game through Steam with only the required mods for the mission enabled in the launcher. However, this should be painless enough because you can create different mod lists for all the different missions you play. Take a look at the top right corner of the launcher itself. Notice how you can save presets. I have several saved. One for each of the missions I play.

I then start the TADST server.

When the mission is done or I want to stop, I close the game, close the server, go back to the launcher, select the saved mod list for the mission I want to play. Launch the game and rinse and repeat.

It is never good practice to launch the game with mods you don't plan on using. There are exceptions to this for mission making making and editing but generally, you should never ever launch with mods you won't be using.

The dedicated server (the server) and the launcher (the client) should run the exact same mods in the exact same order and nothing else, with the exception of any mods that are only supposed to be run on the client (ex. ShacktackUI, Dragonfyre, etc). The only exception being @aliveserver which needs to be run on the server only (and placed last in the load order!) if you want to use persistence.

Seriously, don't run mods on either the client or server the the mission itself is not using.

Don't be surprised if persistence is actually not working! A new error caused by CBA 2.3.1 is causing issue with persistence and also causing the initial load time length to be significantly longer.

Logistics will use vanilla assets by default. There is a workaround for this here if you so choose: http://alivemod.com/forum/1746-player-resupply-custom-insertion-vehicle

I'm not sure why your paradrop didn't come. I'll try it myself in Op Landlord later if I think of it but as far as I know it should be working. EDIT: What's a standwall?

Oh. Speaking of Operation Landlord, I'll be editing it slightly for myself at some point. I plan on adding in ambient civilians and SpyderAddons for ambient animals and stuff, and also catering it a bit for SP (in MP) play. I can share it with you if you want when I'm done. No ETA yet but it's happening.

Load order should be:

1. Game changing mods (CBA always first, then ALiVE, ACE, etc).
2. Mods that require those game changing mods (such as Spyder Addons)
3. Non-required client-side only mods (like Shacktack UI, Full Screen Night Vision, Dragonfyre, etc)
4. Unit packs
5. Maps

Apparently the CBA fix is already done in-house. Alive devs fixed it. We just have to wait for the release. I wouldn't get too too excited for a drastically better load time on Op Landlord after the patch, but it should be much more bareable.

Careful building your first base. That's how it starts. Your friends and family will never see you again. You've been warned :)

1.) Changing the profile speed in the virtual AI from 25% to 100% (what does this setting do? I set it to 25% initially as that's what some of the demo missions have)

This setting controls the speed profiles move at. It is broken in the current build, will be fixed with the next release.

2.) Changing my rank to captain. I just dropped a random player down at the end which was a private. Does rank have any affect on it?

This mostly just controls who the AI prefer to follow, but it should never really cause any problems.

The only issue I ran into was Player Combat Logistics. When I was calling for airdrops/convoys/etc it was very unreliable and slow. At one point I had 4x going for 5 minutes and the drop never came. Is this something that is possibly and issue with the CBA stuff?

It's a known issue. Sometimes it occurs very quickly, other times not so much.

I'd say in this case, if you're leading an AI squad, make sure you rank higher than your teammates. Pretty sure not doing this was causing me to lose control over my guys when I was dying thanks to the "hidden" points system.

I'd also love to learn more about how to properly call in and assemble base building material. Would be cool to build an FOB so if you figure it out Woody, please post the solution back here.

It's been around for a long time and is very erratic so I'm afraid I can't offer much of work around. If we find what's causing it we'll fix it, but it's a strange one.

As for EDEN attributes, I haven't actually tried them yet. I do all of my work in the description.ext

They both need to run on all players as well as the server (ALiVE too). The reason being that both mods need to run functions on clients as well as the server.