Well you can also use smoke / chemlights / IR strobes, but lasing a target is pretty much just pointing a laser designator at a target and (if using ACE) left clicking.

Just a heads up for anyone after drone-based / high altitude CAS in their missions, I chucked out a script on the BI forums that lets you call in airstrikes without needing to faff around with Arma's pilot AI. May come in handy for some ALiVE mission makers out there.

Link is here .

Good idea. Thanks for all the hard work ALiVE dev team, you make Arma awesome!! Donation inbound.

The only way, as far as I know, is to virtualise them. Depending on your settings in the virtual AI module, this usually means syncing the group to the module. At least, that's the only way ALiVE will persist them.

Stable release version now up; full release on BI Forums imminent depending on how this version goes...

I haven't tested it with mods but it should work as long as the faction's gear isn't randomised with a script post-init (I know the Iraqi Syrian Mod does this, maybe Masai too?).

If you can't get it working, could you be a bit more specific about what you have in your settings and what you tried? Did you try debug mode?

Hi @Ludi - the BLUFOR limitation is gone now, so if you give the latest version from github a whirl it should work with any side as long as you've correctly specified the enemy sides (as in, east, west, independent, rather than factions) in the setup file. Does that answer your question re: factions?

The only side it can't work with at all is CIV_F. The player has to have a side (independent, east or west) to begin with and the script itself will make that player appear to be civilian to the enemy as long as he isn't being naughty (same goes for any AI members of his group too). For now, it's best to keep any players in separate groups otherwise there might be some weird stuff going on (it will interfere with persistency and simple armed tracking). Also bear in mind there is about a 20 second delay before the script fully initialises so don't spawn any enemy until after that.

@Nichols does that make sense with the civilians? So if you want your guys to function with this script, make sure they are independent in the editor and set west as an enemy side.

I'm curious to hear how you guys get on. The current build works perfectly in the testing I've done so far but as it's my script I'm bound to overlook things in the setup etc. Let me know if you have any more questions.

I hope so but it's quite a lot of data and it took a good 5 hours to get it to work properly with iniDBI2 (partly because I'm new to all this, but also partly because the encoding and decoding has its quirks)... but yes, once #120 is good then I'll find a way!

In theory, we're now at the stage where you can work as an insurgent, living off the land, scavenging gear, recruiting people as you go, using disguises (you can now change your disguise when compromised and enemies won't recognise you) mounting raids, with your group hiding their weapons and melting back into the civilian populations... for weeks on end in an ALiVE persistent campaign.

Just need someone to tell me if it works for them too now!

Just for anyone using this or considering using it, the latest version on GitHub has some pretty big fixes as well as one or two features I'm pretty excited about that could benefit from a bit of testing if anybody is up to it. I'll be releasing on the BI forums too once I know from someone other than me that this works for them too!

The biggest feature (and the one that has taken my last weekend) is:

Persistent player AI Teammates

(When ALiVE data is present).

As sort of requested by @HeroesandvillainsOS....

Requires:

• ALiVE (obvs)
• iniDBI2 to be loaded on the client and server. (A workaround until there's a fix for issue #120 ).
• Mission time persistence to be set to on (so iniDBI2 can tally it's information with ALiVE's persistent data).

This is intended for SP / Coop TADST sessions where all clients exit the server at the same time.

Brief overview:

• Saves full unit information for up to 11 AI teammates.
• No configuration required, just load the iniDBI2 mod and it will save your group state periodically (including health, loadout, skill etc.) until you save and exit the server.
• Standalone, does not require undercover or intel to be loaded (I can give instructions if anyone wants).
• To have full persistent AI teammates you need to:

(a) save and exit the server at the end of each session
(b) when loading the mission, make sure the mission time is the same as it was when you last saved and exited (if not, your persistent group won't load and the data will be overwritten)
(c) don't play the same mission in multiplayer in the meantime if persistent data hasn't loaded (this will also overwrite your saved group data)

More information (for troubleshooting etc):

• When you save and exit the server, the most recent group information will be stored in an iniDBI2 database file. Only one group is saved per client, per mission, to prevent the database file from exploding in size.
• Upon loading the mission, the DB will wait for ALiVE persistent data before loading. Then it will check if the mission time of the last group save on the database is the same as the current mission time (after ALiVE persistence) before restoring the client's last saved group.
• To put it another way, group persistence is tied to mission date / time (+/- 10 minutes). It will only load if you have a corresponding persistent ALiVE save of the same time you last exited the mission.
• For instance, if you saved and exited the server when the mission time was 1500 on the 6th May, it will only load your group if, the next time you play, the mission time is within 10 minutes of 1500 on the 6th May.

Other random features

Civilian Weapon Enhancements (for recruitment)

• User configurable concealed weapons for armed civilians
• If the civilians revolt, civilians will only pull a weapon if they already have one in their inventory
• Other cool shit

Enjoy!

Finally got round to trying to get custom data to work and no luck, even if run on the server. I'll get a bug report going but just curious, has anyone else managed to get this working?