The Blue Sun Mod

[Kyle]

and all the good things of 7.62 are gone.

Wow. That's very sad to hear.

Looks like I'm giving up buying the thing. It would be interesting to hear how the production went so poorly...

Thank you R@S for the installation instructions. I'm going to wait on implementing it now, as I started a new game, and won't be needing it till I build up enough money to recruit beyond six.

[ZK2112]

Hi, I have a question about BSM.

OK one of the main things that puts me off about 7.62 is your allies going hostile from accidental damage especially since they don't mind grenading or outright shooting my guys in the back. I've used GuineaPig's ini which gives you some leeway on harming civilians but has anything been done in BSM to keep your allies from going berserk from a single grenade fragment?

[Kyle]

It's funny that you bring this up when you did, because last night I escorted Miguel to prison, and we then get ambushed by 8 smugglers. Since there's only one entrance point to the prison, I set my three men up to triangulate and concentrate their fire on the single doorway.

During the course of the battle, the smugglers threw three grenades at the prison, none of which cleared the wall. One exploded immediately in front of/slightly below the guard tower, another detonated right near the exterior entrance of the gate control booth, and the third sounded like it exploded right up against the base of the wall, where two guards were no more than 7 m. away.

One would expect the prison guards to start unleashing righteous lead on the smugglers assaulting their prison, right? Wrong!

Instead, they just kept on calmly doing their sentry duties. That is until I sent Pquito up top in the guard tower, he was easily 2 m. to the side of the guard, and every time he opened up on a smuggler, all of the prison personnel became hostile to my men, even though no one was directing rounds their direction!

When I exited the prison, I discovered that one of the guards by the gate control booth was bleeding out, and doubtless due to receiving shrapnel from a smuggler's frag.

I can understand why guards native to an area would have to be "immune" to the incoming rounds of enemies, so that it would prevent the Player from gaming the system by deliberately placing men immediately behind guards to use them as human shields and in the hopes of provoking them to align themselves to the Player's cause, but what happened last night was ridiculous. Two grenades should be more than enough to compel the sentries to respond.

Is there any way to make adjustments to the neutral armed AI that are more reasonable?

[R@S]

Originally Posted by ZK2112

I've used GuineaPig's ini which gives you some leeway on harming civilians but has anything been done in BSM to keep your allies from going berserk from a single grenade fragment?

Sure, it can be done, and I already have the code ready for testing. The problem is that there might be some unforeseen consequences, and it could be used as an exploit. I think the exploit can be circumvented by having the friendly fire count at 2 or 3, so if the testing goes well I will simply add an on/off switch in the ini. I always forget how much guinneapig's work is part of the foundation of BSM, so I'll take this opportunity to give big ups to him for his contributions.

[ZK2112]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not qualified to comment on potential technical issues

As for exploits that's up to the player. I mean in the base game you can select easy money and buy guns from the sporting goods dealer and then sell them for a profit to the bartender. Worse you can follow the rebels attacking towns and spectate from someplace safe and then scoop up all the guns, armor, grenades and other goodies.

[R@S]

Originally Posted by ZK2112

As for exploits that's up to the player. I mean in the base game you can select easy money and buy guns from the sporting goods dealer and then sell them for a profit to the bartender. Worse you can follow the rebels attacking towns and spectate from someplace safe and then scoop up all the guns, armor, grenades and other goodies.

I know you are right and that I should relax my sphincter when it comes to what other players might do with their game, but... I like having a tight one

But yeah, not being forced to avoid friendlies when they happen to occupy a good spot will actually increase the tactical possibilities. So it will be part of the test version and hopefully it will work well and not cause any other problems with group relationships.

[Veilrider]

R@S,

If there is no possibilty of new maps would it be possible to recylce some of the old/reloaded ones into additional scenarios?

I had a crazy thought that maybe you could take Santa Maria, remove all the civilians from it (AKA Organ Donars - Collatoral just doesn't describe them) and turn it into something like the golden turtle mission from E5?
- A large prize defended by Immortal's - Maybe a cache of unique guns, or a helicopter for Skyrider. A proper use all your ammo, resort to pistols, grenades etc type of battle. (Maybe with a dose of the old NHS free health service at the end of it!)

(- Maybe it could even start by springing the Shaman from El Vertigo al la Tanya.)

Another idea meandering across my brain is some hostage rescue missions, set in the existing towns, but with all the hostiles and victim in a CQB setting. (All the lovely CQB weapons in BSM, and nowhere to play with them!) Putting less-armoured targets in these settings would keep the player using pistols and sub-machine guns into the high CGLs as they would have a benefit in these types of mission.

Just my tuppence worth, it's easy to think of the ideas, far harder to implement them.

[R@S]

I have played with the recycle idea and there has been one thing holding me back. The boxes on those maps are shared, so no matter what you do, if it's in the box in Santa-Maria, it will be in the new one as well.

But since we have no map editor, it might be the only way to add "new" ones. And like you, I really like the CQB fights you get in cities. I have added a few such missions, the Paco ones, to the game, but those are fairly early on and you don't have a very big selection of weapons. Well, you actually do now that there is a lot of WW2 stuff added, but it would still be fun with more of those type of battles.

Adding a few scenarios with some of the city maps where all the normal people are removed, is a good idea. It would have to be at a fairly high CGL, but it would be fun. I'll see what I can throw together when I have time. I have a pretty full work-load ATM, with the new shop inventory to go though, and updating most of the enemy load-outs. But the latter needs to wait until I have added all the weapons I plan to for the 2.0 release, so I might be able to squeeze something together in-between.

And don't be afraid of throwing out ideas, even if they prove to be impossible, more often than not do they at least lead to new ideas that are possible.