Thread: A Tour of Arma 3 Missions

So I figured I'd do a little writeup on some of the Non-Wasteland missions that are out there right now for Arma 3 that hold a good amount of players. I will add to the list with more missions and notes as I find them. I will mostly include large scale missions(e.g. If it's less than 20-30 players then it likely won't be mentioned here) and update with further notes as I go. Let me know if you want to know anything specific or more about any of the ones I mention and I will try to answer with the best of my ability.


Ahoy World Invade and Annex
Overview: Similar to the Domination missions of Arma 2, a large red area with a radio tower will spawn on the island and act as a spawn point for enemies until cleared. One does this by assaulting it, destroying the radio tower and clearing the majority of enemy forces from inside the red zone. Natively 40 slots. Side missions will also spawn that give access to additional choppers or armored vehicles, such as destroying enemy mortar teams or smuggled goods.
Teamplay Value:Moderate to High - Only medics can revive, with 1 medic per squad. Quite lovely if you have coordination within squads, but there isn't the leadership in most servers to coordinate a squad assault. Mostly it ends up as people forming impromptu groups based on where the chopper pilots dropped them off.
Polish: Good - Generally works pretty well. Some issues with side missions spawning in water and sometimes needing to go over the area of operations carefully to take out the last squad of enemy infantry.
Additional Notes: A well done mission with multiple full servers. Probably the most popular non-wasteland mission out there.
Update: 10/1/13 It seems that most recent versions of the mission also come with the ability to leave, join and create squads on the fly. An excellent addition, although currently underused. Resolves some of the issues formed by the nature of reinforcements being a mix of various squads that have sustained casualties. Now they can form their own squad once on the ground and coordinate as a group.

Insurgency Occupation
Overview: Similar to Arma 2 Insurgency. Red squares will spawn enemies on the map, clear these by killing the spawned enemies and destroying any weapons caches present. Once clear the area will turn green and enemies will stop spawning. Also enemies may spawn at campfires nearby with ammo caches
Teamplay Value: Very High - Anyone can revive downed members, and there are options to spawn on squad members ala BF2. Meaning that fireteams will find lots of value to sticking together and not getting wiped out.
Polish: Poor - Squares will often not turn green once cleared, and you may have to re approach them to get a new group of enemies to spawn in order to clear it. Downed members revive with default weapon loadouts instead of what they were carrying before they went down.
Additional Notes: A really fun mission that just needs to be have some bugfixes and a bit of polish to be a classic.

Hostile Takeover King of the Hill
Overview: Simple King of the Hill mission with 3 teams. At each spawn players can customize their loadouts with money earned by being in the "capture zone" of the hill. Players also earn ranks that give access to better equipment. As well as spawn vehicles or choppers and purchase specializations(e.g. Medic, AT, or the ability to drop an ammo crate). A truck provides a mobile respawn point that people can teleport to for each side, and is a priority target for the other teams to cut off enemy reinforcement.
Teamplay Value: Low to Moderate - No ability to revive, but one can respawn on either the truck or a teammate with the appropriate specialization. While you can work with others on your team, especially in moving and protecting the respawn truck, it offers only slight advantage over a team that is full of people who just rambo in.
Polish: Moderate - I often got extra add action buttons, perhaps as a result of the original mission being made in Spanish and translated. There is no real indication of how close one team is to controlling the capture zone, which is supposed to change color to the team that has the most members in it. And money/ranks are saved server side so often it will not record your latest exploits.
Additional Notes: Fun, instant or near instant PvP combat, but at its heart it's still just a big deathmatch over contested ground.

Combat Patrol Generator by Tier 1 Ops
Overview: Generates a random patrol area with somewhat random objectives. Interrogate civilians to gain additional information on possible enemy forces in the area, and then clear the area. Often destroying a small FOB, eliminating an enemy special forces team or clearing a village of enemies.
Teamplay Value: Excellent. - The team selection is fireteam based, and includes a squad leadership group with squad medic. There is even a platoon command group. Very similar to how ShackTac bases their groupings. Only medics can revive although anyone can stabilize their downed comrades, thus enforcing a very tight squad level coordination. Only fireteam leaders, squad leaders, and platoon leaders show up on the map, adding to immersion. Choppers can drop in additional ammo.
Polish: Low to Moderate - The tasks registered as clear on screen, but would often not register when looking at the task list. The medic revive ability takes a good 30+ seconds and often 60+(a design decision, but with only 1 medic per squad, means that often a team will be overwhelmed with casualties with about 1 medic to about 12 troops). An inability to change one's loadout and gear is another design decision but very frustrating as often default gear includes iron sights and not nearly enough smoke grenades or ammunition. The mission also does not end automatically, and requires an admit to reset it once everything is cleared.
Additional Notes: I really enjoyed this mission, how the squad selection is set up really enforces teamplay. There are additional custom VOIP channels so one can talk to all of the Platoon, or just the 3 fireteams and command elements of Alpha or Bravo squads. To be a TPG mission, the time needed for medics to revive needs to be shortened, and the mission itself needs another layer of polish(actually finishing without requiring an admin is probably the priority). Additionally it would solve a lot of headaches to add in a virtual ammo box so people can customize their loadout. Going into battle with cruddy iron sights and too few smoke grenades is a pain.
Edit: 9/29/13 - Has been updated to work on both Islands, however the larger island no longer has civilians in order to improve performance. Additional missions and side missions have been added such as destroying AT emplacements, suppressing Mortar sites, and investigating war crimes. As well as integrating Armored support positions.

Blitzkrieg - 2 Ways to Air Station Mike
Overview: An advance and secure map in which one team tries to capture successive zones nearing the other team's base. Offers two possible advance and secure routes, a north side and a south side. At spawn one may choose a kit from a number of roles, including officer which allows others to respawn onto them(akin to BF2 although with a time limit X seconds per person). Limited assets are available, including light armored transports and choppers. Features a minimap on the HUD to help identify friendlies. One must sit in each successive capture zone in order to turn it, with a count of blufor and opfor soldiers in the zone.
Teamplay Value: Moderate - The server I played on was set to hardcore mode, with no nametags on scroll over, but did have a minimap that identified friendlies. Visual identification of targets is key, and coordinating fire on an unseen or far enemy was a high priority as most kits don't spawn with high powered optics. An unwary team could be blindsided if they commit all their forces to one front and neglect the other. On the other hand, teamwork is not especially REQUIRED, especially if the other team isn't coordinated either, and with open vistas it is a possibility that certain individuals may end up sitting back and sniping instead of pushing objectives.
Polish: Good - A very simple mission, but with good potential for teamplay and near instant firefights.
Additional Notes: Fun but limited. The addition of attack and secure objectives raises it a step above a big team deathmatch in teamplay value, but it encourages small engagements and skirmishes rather than larger combined arms firefights.

Counter Insurgency
Overview: Based off the insurgency type game mode, red squares spawn enemy AI. They must be killed and cleared for Blufor to progress. This is impeded by the player controlled independents which have a mission to defeat Blufor at every turn. Features the Virtual ammobox system
Teamplay Value: Low to Moderate - While it is fun to group up and clear squares tactically or snipe blufor as they attempted to do so, it felt very unbalanced. One AO very close to the Blufor base had no less than 3 attack choppers spawned in around it. In addition, the availability of various transport methods(including HALO right onto the AO) made sticking with one's squad to ensure revives a non-issue.
Polish: Moderate - The versions of the mission I played in had numerous issues. Including death upon paradrop and respawn cameras that should have allowed one to respawn on teammates, but just didn't work.
Additional Notes: By using the Virtual Ammo Box and allowing Independents a full base with vehicles, it really failed to capture the spirit of the Insurgency mode. With a technologically inferior force defending against a technologically superior force. The games I played usually involved lots of heavy armor and snipers and very little coordination. Given my experience with well done Arma 2 insurgency missions, I found it to be lacking.

Dynamic Universal War System
Overview: Creates a randomly generated series of objectives with the option of having initial friendly and enemy base placed deliberately or procedurally. As one progresses, additional assets are unlocked, such as the ability to create fobs, drop supplies, or recruit additional allied AI units.
Teamplay Value: High - Good teamplay value as individuals are rewarded for accomplishing objectives in order and together. Value is given to ensuring that objectives are taken with few casualties by limiting spawn locations.
Polish: Moderate* - There are AI bugs inherent to Arma that often come forward in this since you have allied AI units. Also, there are reports of it getting laggy after a few hours of playing. There is also what I consider a deal breaking bug that will preclude it from TPG.
Additional Notes: *This mission cannot be played in multiplayer from a dedicated server, only a listen type server. Aside from that, it is a fun mission and if that is fixed I would certainly recommend it as part of the TPG lineup. The only major issue I found is a lack of revive system which meant that dead players had a long way to get back into the action.

Military Operations: Insurgency
Overview: Another Insurgency type map, however it has some similarities to Domination. One can look at the other Insurgency writeups for a more comprehensive writeup. The major difference is that there are only 2 slots for insurgents out of 35 and that instead of clearing red map grid squares, circular AOs appear like Domination, however they appear all at once through the entire map.
Teamplay Value: High - Squads are encouraged to stick together by only medics being able to revive and limited ability to move to the front without getting a ride. Good cooperation and coordination are definitely rewarded with less time at base waiting for a ride and more time in the firefight. Without coordination effort may be split between multiple AOs and cause a halt to progress.
Polish: Good - I found no major bugs in my play through. That does not mean that there are no bugs, just that I didn't encounter any.
Additional Notes: I would recommend this as one that TPG could run "off the shelf" so to say.

Just as there was more to Arma 2 than DayZ and Wasteland, there is more to Arma 3 than just Wasteland. I think that it would be a shame if our TPG groups didn't get to experience all of the rest out there.

Thanks for this Talkos, will read tomorrow.

Let me know when you play and I'd love to try a mission!

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I''m usually on around 7pm or later eastern. Won't be on much the next few days, but will be playing end of the week(thus/friday likely). Will be great to have more TPGers to pal around with.

Also thinking about putting up ratings and reviews of smaller missions, perhaps in a separate thread, would that be something anyone is interested in?

I have only really ever played Wasteland. I maybe had an hour into a coop mission when I first started but since then it has all been Wasteland. I think some other types would be cool to try but it always comes down to communication and teamwork. Lacking that and it ruins the experience.

I saw some pretty epic videos of ACE/ACRE mod for Arma 2. I think it would be awesome to try when it makes it to 3. (There are a bunch of ground troops but this focuses on their air support). ShackTac - Strike from the sky, brothers! - YouTube