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Customs Faces Return

croggles — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 15:02:45 +0000

Hey everyone,

As the discussions about custom faces flared up again, the moderation team sat together to brainstorm.
The result was, we will be allowing custom faces again. There however will be rules to that, which will be detailed later. We also talked about a curated custom faces mod, which was also discussed a few times. The result there was, we might explore that in the future to create custom faces which the vanilla custom face feature cannot cover.

Now the rules, you are allowed to use a custom face if the face does match all of the following rules:
- Does not contain hate group symbols, cropped ones also not allowed
- Does not contain shock images, cropped ones also not allowed
- Does not contain extreme political statements, from any political view
- Does not contain pornographic content, cropped also not allowed
- Does not contain obscene content, such as gore
- Does not contain targeted harassment at one or more of our members

In short, the rules are “Don’t be a dick” and “Don’t be stupid”.
Moderation will enforce these rules. They will also hold the right to determine if a face is unfit at a later date. Players can report people with faces violating these rules via discord DM or directly in-game with the whisper menu. Violators of these rules will be banned, permanently. However, you can appeal once and only once.

This will be a trial period to see the how the community can handle this and hopefully not devolve into complete anarchy. The trial period will end after the OP on the 7th February.

Please note if you are creating a custom face, there is a hard 100kb limit. You cannot connect to the server with a face file larger than that.

-diwako

Half-Duplex, Sunday Requirements, Mission Testing, & More

croggles — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:03:40 +0000

Hey everyone,

Corresponding with the major updates we're rolling out, we're also implementing some changes regarding server settings and requirements for Sunday, as well as further clarifications regarding some things.

Due to complaints about radio protocols and conduct, we are defaulting to half-duplex on ACRE. Mission makers will be allowed to config full-duplex radios if they so desire but we recommend you stick to half-duplex.

The requirements for Sunday main missions have been updated. The minimum structure is as follows:
* x1 platoon team with at least PLT and 2IC
* x2 rifle squads with min. 6 and max. 8 infantrymen, with 1 SQL equipped with a UHF radio. Rifle squads should all be identical no matter the amount of rifle squads
* at least one medic
* 343 PR Radio is now optional
Additional units may be whatever is required by the mission maker. Even if it's a 20 man seabob magnum water shadow 730 froggers unit
It is also important to clarify that only sunday 19:00 UTC is reserved for main operations. This serves to permit maximum attendance and quality for the mainline weekly events. Outside of that time slot you may run any blended mission you would like.

We are also introducing the @mission-tester role on the official discord, as well as the #mission_testing channel. It's a restricted channel where only MM's, MT's, and the admin team have access. This channel exists to make quality control of missions more organized, transparent and extensive. Beware of long commentary lists and spoilers galore. We are also figuring out the workflow but don't worry about that too much.
You cannot get the @mission-tester role on your own, you have to request access for it from the mod team. The reason behind this is that mission testing is srs bzns and we want people that absolutely feel like they're up for the task of digging through people's missions.

The changes above will take effect starting on the week of Monday 18th.

- Cro

January 2021 Major Update & Bad News About IFA

croggles — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 18:54:19 +0000

hi guys, the repo updates are finally complete! Mission Makers are finally able to be sure of what content is final, and players can play with the finalized new content now.

While we're very excited to be announcing this, there is also a grand disappointment for some of you with this announcement. Please read diwako's write-up about it here, it concerns all of the community.[docs.google.com]

- Exabit

2021 Open Group Feedback

croggles — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 17:42:53 +0000

This announcement serves as a sort of extension of the prior one. For proper discussion, please consider joining the official group discord and post in the #2021-feedback-channel or contacting one of the moderators if you would like to talk about it in private.

With that out of the way, I'd like to talk to everyone about things not related to the modpack. Namely, pointers which were sent to us via repo shuffle surveys. The moderator team all felt that they're necessary to talk about and I'd like to hear more feedback & debate regarding them. As such, I've prepared a brief summary of each:

1) Promoting the group. The player numbers are somewhat stagnant, and we are relying exclusively on word of mouth and sharing of hot twitch clips. But we don't want to force people into doing that, so the question is, should we - and how would we - have to promote FPA online?

2) Reforming player staff. Simply put, a lot of moderators and Staff don't do anything, so revising the roles and maybe finding one more active moderator would help us immensely.

3) Curbing the shitters. Generally there appears to be an atmosphere of lax moderation where we're assumed to be allowing certain "bad actors" to be detrimental to the group, even on Sundays.

4) Radio etiquette. The 148 radios have been a mess of bad comms, arguing, and occasional harassment. We think that a way of fixing that would be spawning admins and moderators with a 148 radio, use half-duplex, and making a comms guide.

5) More downtime missions. Prep missions, TVTs, and light coop missions like Domination and Antistasi.

6) Team building, AKA activities outside of ops & discord. The idea is to encourage social events outside of Arma. A short list of potential games has already been sent to me and I may share them later.

7) Mission Making Seminars 2: The Return. AKA I teach you how to make not bloated missions.

8) Relaxing Sunday requirements. We want to: allow squads to have between 6 to 8 players and a SL with radio, optional 343s and squad medics, and a requirement of only 2 squads and 1 medic per mission. This basically kills the template, except in preserving consistent squad sizes and NATO callsigns.

9) Stop treating FPA like a dictatorship. :helicopterman:

10) Remove Kerama. Discuss.

FPA End-of-2020 Shuffle Results & More!

croggles — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:26:32 +0000

Hey everyone,

The Moderation Team and by extension The Staff and Big Boss Cuel Himself would like to wish everyone who is a part of this group a happy 2021. We are super thankful that you participated in all the operations which took place throughout 2020 and that we were able to keep you all entertained and invested in various insane military scenarios we threw at you over the course of the year.

Of course, that's not to say that things were all that well. The pandemic and all the miserable events that happened this year definitely took a toll on people. From a more relevant side of things, player burnout and Arma being Arma generally afflicted our playercount. Times are a changin', and so must we.

But more on policy in a while, lets talk about what you've all been waiting for: the repo shuffle.

First of all, i'd like everyone to welcome the Lingor, Ruegen and Virolahti terrains, as well as AH1 Cobra, Chest Rig Backpacks, RNT Trenches, SSh-68 Helmets, PLP Fences, IDF helmets, Merkava UGV, and the TB68M battle rifle mods to the Main repo. This represents an overall 3GB shift from Main to Blended.

However, I would like to explicitly set a point by saying that we've had to carefully manage and cut down on content size from the suggestions you've sent us. Unfortunately, not everything could make it in for a variety of reasons, often due to limited use cases, duplicates, problematic behavior, compatibility, etc. This has significantly narrowed our available content.

However we hope that you will be satisfied with what we've got lined up for you. Here's a very, very limited glimpses of newly added assets. thankfully we've had just enough room to include the Seabob™️ Magnum©️ Water Shadow 730™️ and the Titus APC MRAP thing. As a result, we've increased the total size requirement for all of our mods by 16GB.

Oh yeah and IFA made it in. Here's a very brief glimpse of the content that has been added, as well as a table of content.[cdn.discordapp.com]

Here is the full changelist.[cdn.discordapp.com]

Other tidbits:

IFA Lite & Flying Legends added. Enjoy forever WW2 missions in Blended.
CLAFGHAN IS BACK BABY!!!!
HELVANTIS IS BACK BABY!!!!!!
THIRSK IS BACK BABY!!!!!!
ALIABAD IS BACK BABY!!!!!!
Celle is back I guess. Also MBG Buildings 3 is added in as a dependency.
Also Rosche. Rosche is back.
There's also a new set of maps added in. Notable ones are Krasnorus, GOS N'Ziwasogo, Tria, Wake Island, and MULL OF KINTYRE WITH WW2 BAGPIPE MUSIC FOR IFA SCOTLAND FOREVERRR
Service & Supply, a cold war US army gear mod is being added.
YueMod is having all of its gear added into Blended.
You can now fire missiles while prone.
You can now have a partial map.
You swim faster.
You can see planes farther.
You can now punch people.
The AC130 is added so you can disintegrate unsuspecting insurgents.
The Seabob™️ Magnum©️ Water Shadow 730™️
We have went out of our way to fix the Unimog, Clafghan, map errors, LAGO melee, ACE3 animations, and the redundancies in S&S and IFA.

We're aiming to release this update sometime in January, when the stars are right, we have free time, and there aren't any earthquakes.

December 2020 Repo Shuffle VOTE

croggles — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 17:54:17 +0000

Here is part 3 of the mod shuffle voting. This is the last one, so make your vote count![forms.gle]

We also made a preview page for all suggested mods up for voting! Use it to get some context what a suggested mod is about and find its workshop link![46.4.72.34]

Tuesday Thicc Update, Part 1

croggles — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 19:23:53 +0000

Main repo updated!

Updated 3cb Factions to version 3.0.2.

THIS IS A LARGE 3.65 GB UPDATE! THANK OBFUSCATION!
Do not come crying that you did not update in time right before OP!

January 2020 Repo Shuffle

croggles — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 19:58:05 +0000

Hey guys.

It's that time of the year where we're rolling out another major content update. A bunch of stuff has been added, pushed around, removed, and replaced. Thankfully size wise both Main and Blended will stay roughly the same so your storage won't cry tears.

It is also necessary to manually delete several folders as a space-saving measure and ensure that they are not loaded in the repo.

The mod folders that you have to delete manually are as follows:
@summa
@Island_Panthera
@pbw_bkk

We also regret to inform you that CRBN and Apalon are not making the cut due to egregious config errors within the mods. Kerama and the beards also have config errors but they're not critical.

And now for some changelogs.

New content by FPA modders:
CSLeader:
- Add new officer textures for Desert, Woodland, and Oceanic BDUs.
- Add new BDU variants of Desert, Woodland, and Oceanic camos.
- Add Desert, Woodland, and Oceanic variants of the Type-15 Vest Series.
- Add BDU uniforms for Default and Desert Camos
- Add Sniper Uniform for JSDF

Simkas added:
- Soviet M69 uniform (unif_sov_m69)
- Soviet leather webbing (vest_sov_webgear)
- Soviet chestrig (vest_sov_chestrig)
- Soviet officer belt (vest_sov_holster)
- updated PPSh

Gordon added several uniforms:
- Polish Pantera
- Czech Vz95
- Croatian desert CROPAT
- Ukrainian woodland MM-14
- German Flecktarn (in summer, autumn and desert)
Rahim skin tweak is slight detail improvement
- removed the loader bullshit from Abrams tanks. The loader slot is still there, but you always reload at full speed.

Some major content notes:
* Say goodbye to Bundeswehr, Summa, and Panthera. They will be missed.
* Inhanthala, Vinjesvingen, and Kujari are now added to Main. Viva Temppa
* RHSPKL stays in Blended for the time being due to big chonk
* Russia 2035 is nuked (RIP Putin)
* Napf is also dead (good riddance)
* Budenovka and other Blended junk is being removed.
* A bunch of blended content is also being moved to Main. Expect a lot of player gear, quality of life improvements(un-flipping and fast ladders), and a new landing boat, the Mk5.
* Blended has received several new maps and lost several old maps. FALLUJAH IS BACK BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!! (also Fapovo, Abramia, Ruegen, Bozcaada, Virolahti, and Keraama)
* Blended has also received a slew of new vehicles and equipment. Boats, Planes, Mechs, the whole kitchen sink.
* 800MB of missions has been backed up and will be available to you™️ for archiving
You can find the full details on what's being added and removed on the discord.

The update is available NOW, so get to downloading thru swifty.

Experimental Roster Survey Results

croggles — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 17:19:07 +0000

Hello everyone! I'd like to inform you that your 2019 ROSTER SURVEY results have been processed.

So lets get down to business right away. The obvious squad layout that will be used onward shall be Seven-man, two-team leader Squad, or 2TL for short. This was decided by a 57% majority, which isn't phenomenal. This is why the implementation of 2TL will accommodate more flexibility and avenues of variety for Sunday missions. You will be informed on these details as soon as possible, perhaps in a week or two.

Besides this, I have some other interesting tidbits to relay to you about the survey.

Around 50% of the group takes on some form of a leadership position on an occasional basis. Only 13% of respondents took on platoon leading.
Despite this rather low number, both Squad Leaders and Platoon Leader are graded decently by their peers. NCOs scored highest in July with a GPA of 3.75, while Officers beat out NCOs in August with a GPA of 3.67. This means that the general perception of Squad Leaders and Platoon Leaders is positive, in spite of friction and problems that happen in the field.
People's interest in leadership positions however is not particularly energetic. The respondents grade their desire to lead at an overall 3.07. The impact of the mission making seminar was also not phenomenal; its impact on performance is graded an average 3.00.
While a small number of surveyed players attended NCO and Mission Maker seminars, a massive interest around 75% of users is demonstrated in the case of attending a potential sequel seminar in both cases.
However, some complaints were raised about particular incompetencies in both fields. We will attempt to correct this in Leadership Seminar 2: Operational Boogaloo, as well as whenever we have a new mission maker seminar.
Many respondents insist on better leadership training in regards to combined arms warfare, as well as guides on how to integrate squads into combined arms forces in a way that's adequate for Sundays. Due to this, we will adjust how Sunday ops are structured sligthly to account for this desire for flexibility.

Several creative suggestions have been fancied by members of the moderation team, and commentary on the fine parts of conduct in operations, as well as overall suggestions on improving the group, namely bettering mission variety, will be very important for us to nudge people towards in 2020.

That's more or less it for now. Be prepared to be informed on the matter rather soon. Below you'll find a link to a condensed infographic summary that lays out most of the data listed. If you would like to raise any questions about the survey results, please bring them up in #general at https://discord.me/fparma. Thank you for your time.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/258530805138194442/627886994390777885/survey_2019.png

FPA Experimental Roster Survey

croggles — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 21:20:24 +0000

Hey gang, we've got a big September update for you.

With the start of September and the slow end of August we're slowly transitioning some things about the way FPA's inner workings function. Several decisions are still in place and underway, but we'd like you to take part in a yet another google survey that is more specifically related to recent events within Sunday missions, particularly regarding the experimental infantry group rosters.

You can access the survey through the official discord available at https://discord.me/fparma

With this announcement I am also glad to say that we are officially ending the moratorium on seasoned Squad Leaders taking leadership positions that was put in place in July. I'm sure you've all had a great summer break not being in a position of authority but we're entering the zone in which we'll be back to the regular burnout.

Thank you very much for your attention, and feel free to discuss this announcement in the Discord.