King of the Hill - Road to be the King

A guide to quickly start Koth and learn some tips. Everything you need to know to finally see your enemy!

What is Koth?

Where to play:


Use in game browser/steam browser to find a server and join King of the Hill by Sa-Matra or Community King of the Hill. The first one are official servers, the rest are supported by community members (an individual or a clan).

When using the game browser, use filter to ease your search. Click on Filter and fill the "Mission" text box with king of so that only king of the hill servers are visible.

A server will be Hardcore/HC if 3rd person is desactivated plus some other help. No matter if you play on EU/US servers, your stats will be saved across the whole lot.

You don't need to install/download anything, not even in workshop, just join & play.


Game

King of the Hill is an "advanced" King of the Hill mission where 3 teams (Blufor/Opfor/independent) are fighting for an area. You'll fight on Altis, the area will change every round so you won't fight the same place!

The team with the most players in the area gain points every 30s, first team to 100 win. The winning team earns a bonus proportional to the experience made by the entire team during the round.

Your character earns money and experience as your perform certain actions that would be described below. Money is required to buy anything from weapons/launcher/vehicles/perk slots. Experience unlocks what you are able to buy. You're quite limited at the beginning of your character and that makes leveling very interesting!

It's more rewarding and a lot easier to play in group since you get more experience!

Why Koth?

Koth proposes players to quickly join a mission and step in to action quickly. Don't expect ultra realistic approaches (feel free to show us though), it's kinda arcade for Arma 3!

Before you join!

You just installed Arma 3 and feel ready to join the battle? Just don't, you won't have fun as you'll get slaughtered and your experience could be rather negative.

Before you join, get in touch with the game itself. Bohemia's Interactive team has made a great job with bootcamp update so you'll know everything you need in there. Players are helpful in Koth but you need to know the basics because you'll get few answers asking how to crouch or select your pistol.

Here is what you need to know to be efficient in battle:

- Movement (especially lean, position using left control, fall damage management)

- Inventory (what goes where, how to drop a gun fast, how to pick up gears fast)

- Map (ability to read it efficiently - especially distances, use of markers)

- Weapons (caliber & penetration, zeroing, scopes, launcher knowhow)

- Vehicles (roles, ammo, thermal vision, locking target)

- Chopper & Planes (practise landing, flares use, locking target)

At Base

Your first game:

Select which side you wanna join (balance!), your color will be different and your spawn location. You'll spawn at base where you are invulnerable and can:



- Personalize your appearance:

Get close to the character where the text "personalize your appearance" is displayed, use the wheelmouse to select "personnalize your appearance" and press space/middlemouse button. You just enter a menu.

This does not only change your appearance but also your armor. Here is a website where you can check the different stats by yourself: http://wiki.7thcavalry.us/wiki/ARMA_3_Backpacks_and_Vests

The best skins in terms of armor is the first one! You got a helmet and one of the best vest. Just remember this fancy armor will not protect you much against heavy caliber but you can take more shots of 9mm & 5.56mm for sure! Launcher & bags will protect you as well.

You automatically get a bag according to the weight of your inventory. The biggest bag is the carryall backpack. Try different loading to see which bag you have.

- Refill Ammo:

Get close to the crates and Press space

- Buy Gears:

The shop! Not much is available when you start the game. You got a free TRG-21 (5.56mm) with ironsight.
You need to level up to unlock new weapons and scopes. You need to buy a scope per gun, meaning that even if you buy an SOS scope on your TRG-21, you'll have to buy another one for a katiba.
Also, you can see that it's possible to buy once or buy permanently. Since buying permanently is very expensive, buying once let you access advance stuff for cheap. Consider a buying plan because you can't buy everything fast & easy in Koth.


- Select Perk

Perks give your character permanent advantages as it is selected. You can select up to three perks. Second Perk is cheap but the third one requires a certain amount of playtime to be unlocked (100 000$). You want to unlock the second perk asap.

In order to get cash & xp quickly, select EXPLOSIVE. That'd give this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ TRG an underslung grenade launcher, more hand grenade and a satchel charge. By doing so, you'll be able to grind level by killing any vehicles left over the road (empty humminbird, pick up..) which give substantial xp&cash at the beginning.

The fatigue perk is probably the most selected perk since you'll get too tired very fast and no one wants to lay down to rest in the middle of a fight!

Try to choose your perk homogeneously. Exemple: Explosives/Launcher/Fatigue, Ammo/Medic/Fatigue, Ammo/Marksman/LaserDesignator...


- Buy Vehicles/Chopper/Planes

Vehicles can only be bought once. After buying it, it will appear near basement except for planes where you start immediately in the air.

XP & Cash

You get different amount of cash & xp according to what you do. You mainly earn less cash than xp.

Earn cash & xp doing those actions:

- Stay in the area (100xp-100$ according to a time cycle)

- Your team has the area and you are in the area (100xp-100$ according to a time cycle)

- Assist a group (20xp)

- Kill an ennemy (100xp-100$) / Assist (50xp-50$)

- Revive someone (100xp-100$)

- Transport Troops: Paradrop (x * ) - Landing (x * )
> x is a coefficient that is calculated with ennemy presence in the area. More ennemies means x is higher.

- Destroy a Vehicle (xp-$) / Assist (xp-$) (I.E ATV, JEEP)

- Destroy an Armed Vehicle / Assist (I.E, Ifrit HMG, Stryder GMG)

- Destroy a Tank / Assist (I.E Cheetah)

- Destroy a Plane / Assist in Killing a Plane

Infantry Guide

Insertion

Insertion is made by using ground or air. Using a jeep and driving fair is about as fast as a chopper (from take off to landing).
Your first game may be a pain in the ass to get yourself inserted to the area, remember those few advices:

. The chopper must be above 100 meters before attempting to jump. Your parachute won't open otherwise.

. When falling with open parachute, you can approximately decide where you want to land, but remember that you're just a flying chicken for anybody looking at the blue Altis sky. Get to the ground as soon as possible using mouse, ZQSQ, Maj & W as it is considered a Plane/Chopper!

. If you've landed on a roof, check around. If it's a house, try to look for a balcony or smthg that might shorten your fall. You can take damage & heal, or even kill yourself in the fall & get revived by a team mate. It's faster than revive & travel again, also less frustrating.

. A good landing spot is somewhere where you can get to cover very fast

. A pilot would sometimes accept to drop you to a nice spot being a sniper and even more compliant with dropping an AT tank unit near that annoying AA tank, just mark the map & ask!

. Concerning ground insertion: Avoid roads as you approach the area (IED), park your vehicle in a yard, behind a building etc... not in the midlde of the road! If you feel ballzy and know the area well, it can also be a good tactic to drive through the ennemy lines & attack them from where they don't expect you!



On the ground

Try to join your comrades, more people means more angles covered! Plus they can revive you, power in numbers! Other simple rules to optimize your survival:

. Move only from cover to cover

. Never stay in the open

. Windows are treacherous (apply 3s rule, look 3s & cover)

. You're receiving shots... you don't know where the shooter is? MOVE

. Opening fire means danger. Open fire & move quickly

. Use smoke

. In close quarter combat (like in buildings), it's not always necessary to ready your gun, shoot first.


Where is the ennemy

Before any attack, you have to know where is the ennemy. Look at the bottom right of your screen. Above each faction flag (where you can see points for each team) there are little dots that represents how much ennemy are in the area. 8 dots with a plus sign means more than 8 ennemies of this team are in the area.
To quickly know where they mostly are, simply check your map and look where your team mates aren't, there is a high chance that the ennemy is in this part of the area.
Check windows, doors step, ruins: The ennemy is not in the streets most of the time.
Your map will also show fallen comrades waiting for a revive. You'd be wise to be cautious when reaching them as the area can be considered "hot".
When playing marksman, you're going to love laser designator with thermal vision.


Managing Fatigue

The new fatigue system brings a sort of game in the game. If you plan to reach an area, you'll have to consider if your fatigue level (the bar the fills, center bottom) is not too high. Failure to comply would result in walking in the middle of the street!
An overloaded soldier would have to rest more often than his comrades. Go easy on your equipment and consider resting safely when moving from a cover to another. The best position to rest is the "highest" prone position since your gun has fair elevation (almost luck ducking) and you can turn easily.


Fighting

I got no advice for this since it is your play style that would lead you to learn your own way to fight. Aggressivity, stealth, defensive stance, play the way you want and show us! If you feel that you're not doing it right, be patient, move slowly and get yourself a cover!



Role & Perk

Perks are from perk 1 to 3 (means that 3rd perk is less important/optional since many players don't have access to it)

Riflemen: AMMO/FATIGUE/SILENCER. Equip with a rifle/smg and go to battle. Simple & efficient, a riflemen would be best travelling inside the area to hunt down the ennemies. Using a silencer would greatly improve your stealth.

Demolition EXPLOSIVE/AMMO/FATIGUE. Only equip with a rifle to get the grenade launcher (works with TRG/MK20/MX/KATIBA). Grenade launcher can poorly destroy vehicles but are deadly against hard reachable target and groups. The satchel is good against light vehicle or as IED. Demolition is a fast way to get money & XP, you'll be polyvalent and grenade launcher does not require that much aim (but good zeroing).

Medic MEDIC/FATIGUE/AMMO. As a medic you want to jump from an injured player to another asap. Grab as many smoke as you can on the battlefield as it is a primary source of cover for open field rescue operation. A fallen comrade means danger around, always clear the whole house before reviving someone. You may want to equip an smg to move faster and react quickly.

Sniper MARKSMAN/AMMO/SILENCER. A talkative sniper would bring essential information to the team. If you're shy mark the map! The laser designator is DA tool for a marksman, giving you the range to shoot your target as well as providing a thermal optic vision. A good sniper is stealthy and always move after he shot. You can unlock several situation having a high position on the battlefield.
Low budget marksman may want to use the discount perk to save on those expensive optics & snipers!

Engineer ENGINEER/FATIGUE/AMMO. You can now lockpick vehicles left over by ennemies. Most of the time, those vehicles would be damaged and you want to be the engineer that'd fixed that chopper and fly away with it! Since you're a full support unit. Consider having a 3rd perk with ammo to bring some to partners. Fixing vehicles does not bring any points and this class is purely a philantropist one!

Anti Tank LAUNCHER/EXPLOSIVE/FATIGUE. You can equip a rifle to get the underslung grenade launcher but you may end up having a load problem. The explosive Perk would give you an additional rocket to the launcher of your choice. The key to play an anti tank is to have good communication with chopper pilots that would tell you where to find what thanks to their radar. Even taking a chopper yourself and hunt for a valuable tank is an option (no base rape though!)

RPG is a common choice since you can manually target both Air and Ground. Even infantry if you'd like to. Use your map to approximately evaluate your target distance (small square = 100m) and aim using the optics marker.
Other launcher requires you to lock target (default T) and shoot. PCML needs you to shoot and continually aim for the target (you control the rocket in indirect way)
AT = Antitank HE = Antipersonal

Anti Air LAUNCHER/EXPLOSIVE/FATIGUE. Same as anti tank concerning equipement. Anti air is tricky and need some experiences. You'll have to learn which path a chopper pilot is using and end up right under it. His flares won't be of any use if the distance between him & you is short.

Machine Gunner AMMO/FATIGUE/SILENCER. Machine gunner are now very slow and that fits perfectly to what they are expected to do: provide extensive suppresive fire, covering fire etc... A silent MX light machine gun is an extremely powerful weapon. You should not play Machine Gunner alone as you can't react that fast in close quarter fightings.

Vehicle Guide

Vehicle Purpose & Problems:

Each vehicle you can buy in KOTH has a primary role, and is more or less efficient in doing it. Your vehicle selection would be a compromize between: What you want to have, what the ennemy have, how much you can put into it.
It's not very wise to spend all your money into this wonderful tank because you'd end with 2 rockets in your face sooner or later.
A vehicle should be considered an investment: you have to cover your investment and, if possible,gain profit out of it. A strider can be covered in 1 trip transporting fellow soldiers while a Marshall would take several killings to be refund.
You will see some players going inside the Area with a GMG fighting vehicle, or HMG, do not reproduce except if you want to waste money as your life expectancy would be a question of minutes. You are a primary target for any vehicle/AT unit/ Plane/chopper as you are valuable and a real pain in the ass for your ennemies.

All vehicles can be repaired using the engineer perk or going into the repair Area and select the correct action.

Buying a Vehicle, trick the troll

A new bought vehicle will be "locked". Use wheel mouse and select unlock. From this moment your vehicle is accessible by anyone so be quick about it. Unlock, enter & lock. You'll gain assist if someone if your gunner, but you don't want to end up with an "unwanted" passenger. I got 2 tips for you to lure thieves:

- Buy when there is nobody in the basement
- If someone want to rob you and knows you're the owner. Feint to leave the area in the team chopper (he may get in too or just give up), once chopper leave, jump above the basement (you're invincible here), take your vehicle and leave.


Position:

So except if you're the Rambo Style-IGOTTOOMUCHCASH you want to set up a good firing position around the area:

. Look for a position where you can see without being too obvious (corner of a house, yard, behind rocks).
. Avoid being in trees or bushes because some ammunitions can be stuck in branches (Gmg for exemple) and hurt you.
. After firing, you want to change position quickly, having 2-3 positions to switch between is a good combinaison.
. Don't refill having 0 ammunition left, you never know if someone is tracking you.
. After refilling, don't go to the last place you've been
. If you're locked by an AT rocket there are 2 things to do: Missile is not fired :Flee until lock stops . the warning message will dissapear. Missile is fired: Determine where it's coming from (red M on the radar) and take it with the front of your vehicle (works better with armored vehicle).
. It's much better to have a friend with you otherwise you'll have to switch between gunner and driver all the time

Role

The Field manual would give you a brief description about what vehicles does etc... Please consider trying those vehicles in the editor as you don't want to buy this 4000$ Marshall without knowing what a Gorgon is!
Again, each vehicle is intented to be play differentely! Position yourself in consequence and know your armor!

Chopper Guide

Buy a Chopper - Trick the troll

How to buy & get in your chopper: as for vehicles, you have to unlock your chopper before getting in. Again some players could try to steal it. It's easier to prevent this with chopper as you only want to be the pilot. Just wait for all those kids to gather around & wait around 20s. Choose a random time to unlock & get in asap. They can't know when you'll unlock it, you'll have 1-2s to get in.

You can easily recognize chopper thieves as they will stay close to the front part of the chopper, other are just guys waiting to get in as passengers.


Fly a Chopper

If you can't finish the Showcase with the Gunship Mission, don't even try to fly, the custom-user mission Close Air Support is also a nice training. I insist, do not fly if you have no practise, you'll crash, it's hard.

Fighting with a Chopper

I'm using a joystick to fight with chopper but i don't think it's necessary, just easier with it and funnier.
You can fly with a keyboard but you'll have trouble turning with arrow and pedals (a & e keys) and throttling precisely as we don't have enough fingers on 1 hand.
I'll talk here about Orca/Humminbird/Hellcat. The two other choppers require you to have a gunner to properly target and shoot something. Ghosthawk is not an attack chopper.

DAR missiles are HE based, that means it's extremely good against... infantry. It does 0 damage to armor (I.E Cheetah, Varsuk...). It's possible to take down Stryder, Ifrit and even Marshall or Gorgon with direct hit (try to get the rear). Area of effect would mostly damage wheel. Dar is extremely good against other chopper (and even plane of you can hit it), since it's HE based damage, the pilot won't resist a direct hit to the cockpit.

Minigun sounds quite hard to reach with this but remember this simple rule might improve your AIM. Stabilize your chopper ( try to be flat!).
> if the target is above you, your crosshair should be a little above it
> If the target is at the same altitude, keep it flat and shoot
> if the target is under you, your crosshair should be a little below

MInigun is useful at Gunship fighting and shooting a landing area.


It is more than possible to save your damaged chopper from destruction. As said earlier, always take the engineer perk when buying a vehicle/chopper/plane.
Sometimes everything turns red (top left of the screen) and it's already too late. But i've seen player with a back rotor fail crashing their chopper not trying to land or go back to base.
You can manage a back rotor in red using adequate throttling. When you cut the gas, you chopper will stop spinning like crazy so you can head toward the direction you want, but you'll get down and deccelerate. Throttle enough to stay high and move toward the desired direction, you'll spin again but it's manoeuvrable!
If you've forgot your engineer perk, you can still land your chopper, lock it, respawn, and get back to it to fix it and fly away..

Which one?

Orca is the chopper you want to avoid, it's heavy and its minigun is a real piece of crap.

Humminbird is great and manoeuverable. It has no flares and it's the weakest point of this chopper. Nonetheless it's very hard to spot & aim it being an AA unit, you can even avoid missiles if you're a fair pilot. Minigun is efficient against other chopper and light armor

Hellcat is the best before the fancy choppers. It's very fast and hard to control if you're turning while speeding but damn those guns are good.

Radar

Your radar can be tricky, sometimes an ennemy appears in green and a friendly chopper would appear in red. It's not really a bug, it's just that as blufor you can fly an orca which is an opfor chopper and the game sometimes mess up with the radar. According to this information you should always check whatever triangle is heading toward you and confirm it's not an ennemy or friendly.



Your mission

. Intercept transport helicopter
. Intercept Gunship
. Provide Air support (check your map, send dar where your team mates are not, you'll be suprised how many kills you can do with "random" dar bombing). Tell your team you're providing such options, some may mark targets on your map.
. Transport People: A chopper is an investment like vehicle. It would be a bad idea to land that Hellcat but when you go to refill ammunition & fuel, consider taking passengers to earn some more XP&Cash.

Your worst Ennemy

Planes, other choppers, hidden AA unit (fly high!)

Planes Guide

Fighting with a jet:

Cannons- use it for firing at the main tower, disabling wheels on tanks and killing infantry.
Bombs- Dive bomb is the best strategy for new people, use it to bomb tanks, APC. (rarely use it for infantry)
AA-Use it to blow up light ground vehicles, and all air vehicles.

Radar:

This is really good when you know how it works:
- triangles are Air Targets and Squares are Ground Targets (Do not consider colors are they are meant to be, a green icon is not always a friendly one, better check the faction icon or your map)
Grey triangle/squares means the vehicle is empty. As a matter of fact, you better look around for someone repairing it. Sometimes it can be a friendly vehicle, ask your team if someone left his property on the field.

Your mission:

Destroy tanks, other jets, choppers. Keep the main tower under threat. (using HE cannons)
Your worst ennemies:
AA tanks, planes and AA Infantry.


Hints-

When a AA is launched at you, look at your radar straight away and when it gets close (inner circle of the radar), flares and pull hard left or right up and down will not work. In fact, the missile is trying to follow your movement so if you get behind a hill, it might crash on the ground.

Get a mate with a sniper good view range and let him mark out all the air and ground vehicles and you do the rest.

When landing at an airfield try to go about 250m or lower and land less runway you use the better it is taking off, easy and faster. Also make sure none is following you to the runway or you will regret it.

Thanks & Support

Thank you for reading this guide, feel free for any comment!

If you've liked King of the hill, consider supporting the map for the Make Arma Not War Contest!

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/C9vZrWbS5X

[charlie]

based king of the hill

[Stenk]

@ Regular Howton

It's automatic, the more you take the bigger the backpack,

Example: Take Ammo & Explosive Perk, you'll have a small backpack.

[Endy]

how to get a backpack

[Bingo]

How can I get Khaki on my appearance?

[Stenk]

I need to collect some experience on V10 version, the meta has probably changed, this guide was produced before Apex! If you want to contribute, i'll gladly add your text to the guide and add you as a contributor.

[GodsDonBleed]

Will you be updating this since v10 is now out?

[Dragno]

Made 2014 a lot change has happened.

[Chrysippus]

Just press the lock/kick players out button lol

[Chrysippus]

Heli thieves arnt a thing...

[Stove]

be on the independent side

@nick