Overview
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Long Ranged Realistic Combat (LRRC)
LRRC stands for Long Ranged Realistic Combat, and is a style of AW3 map I developed shortly after the introduction of prefab creation. LRRC maps are designed around A.I that can engage the player at realistic ranges, and are procedural in nature. Usually they are composed 100% of prefabs.
LRRC maps make the most of AW3’s A.I, as they perform better at longer ranges and are more threatening to the player. LRRC maps also emulate the more grounded first person shooters currently on the market, such as the ARMA and Battlefield series.
They are very easy to make, with most of the work taking place in the prefab creator. Below are examples of LRRC maps.
Getting Started
So the first thing you’re going to want to do is subscribe to my AW3 Insurgency Battlefield in a Box workshop collection, found in the link below. You may need to restart your game for all the items to show up.
[link]The AW3 Insurgency Battlefield in a Box collection has all of the prefabs I use in my AW3 Insurgency series, and will give you a strong foundation on which to build. For now however it will serve as all you need to complete this tutorial.
Once you’ve subbed and restarted AW3, boot it back up and go to “Custom Battle.”
AW3INS Template
AW3INS Template is a template conquest map specifically designed for my AW3 Insurgency map series. It features 5 conquest flags already placed down in a symmetrical and measured format; I have found this flag pattern to work best with AW3’s current A.I build (at the time of writing!).
From the map editor, go to the in-game workshop.
Once in the in-game workshop browser, change the filter to “subscribed” and select the map titled “AW3Ins Template”.
You’ll then be confronted by the map’s preview page. Hit “Load Map” located below the preview picture.
And now you should be looking at the AW3INS Template:
Step 1) Add the Vehicle Road
Most of my LRRC maps feature a fully functional A.I controlled vehicle. To achieve this, I use a road with a width of “6”. Before I do anything else, I always put this road down first. It should run from north to south (from the Blue spawn ribbon to the Red spawn ribbon), although other patterns work. You can always experiment later.
Again, it’s very important the road is “6” wide otherwise the vehicle wont be able to travel down it.
Step 2) Decorate Flag Areas
So now we decorate the flag areas with objects. These can trees and rocks, buildings and modular structures or just some random objects – the choice is yours. I try to make them points of interest that would make sense for two forces to fight over. In this tutorial, we’re simply going to place down the Afghan Hamlets that came with the Insurgency Collection. Use both variants and place them around each of the flags as shown below:
Step 3) Add Tall Hills
Now that the flags are decorated, we can start changing the terrain around them. Open up your environment editor and select the “raise height” tool on maximum brush size. Then raise 5-6 areas of the map, but not too steeply or the A.I wont be able to walk over them. This will break up the landscape and provide vantage points for the player/A.I during the battle, as well creating line of sight blockers to keep the player guessing as to the enemy’s movements.
And now you should select the “Insurgency Trees” prefab and cover the hills with trees. The goal is not to put too many trees on the hill, just enough to cover them, otherwise you’ll encounter performance issues. Do this for all of the tall hills like so:
Step 4) Fill in the Blanks!
So with our hills done and superbly decorated, we’re going to fill in the open areas outside of the towns and hills. We’ll do this using “Insurgency Wilderness A”, and place it randomly across the empty spaces as shown below:
And then using “Insurgency Wilderness B” fill in the gaps between each of the placed “Insurgency Wilderness A”, so that the ground is more or less decorated for 100% of the map. You should end up with something like this:
Step 5) Adding the Road Borders
Road borders are important if you want your map’s vehicle to function correctly. They effectively fence it in and force it to stick to the road, therefore allowing it to advance across the map and engage enemies without becoming stuck or doing other silly things.
Take “Insurgency Border A” and place it along both sides of the road in zig-zag fashion as shown:
When placing the borders, it’s important you leave a little gap between the road and the border otherwise your vehicle may become stuck. Once you’ve finished placing down the A variant, switch to “Insurgency Border B” and do the same but filling in the gaps, leaving you with a fully bordered road as shown below:
Step 6) Finishing Touches
Almost there! Now all we need to do is break the flat terrain between the hills and the towns to give the map a more natural feel. Get your “raise height” tool and set the radius to “90” or there abouts. Then gently run it over the open flat areas. You don’t want the hills too high, just enough so that the terrain takes on a natural look. See below:
Do this until all the flat areas have been raised. Your map should now be looking something vaguely like this:
Your map is more or less complete at this point, now all that remains is to add your vehicle. Place it a little bit ahead of the Blue spawn ribbon, choose the camo and leave the A.I behaviour as default – very important this last part.
Finally, don’t forget to switch fog back on! Fog gives your map a nice professional finish.
Congratulations, you just made your first Mammoth-Style map! See how easy that was? 😀
Designing Units for LRRC
Units that work well in LRRC should have an attack AND follow range of 120 for rifles, assault rifles, SMGs and pistols. This is to give the A.I a realistic attack range. Basically I believe that if the player can hit something at long range with a pistol, so should the A.I.
I also leave the HP at 100, although this could be lowered if you want hyper realism.
I normally use 30 units per side in my conquest battles. These 30 are broken into 3 squads, usually based on real life squad compositions. So my typical Insurgency NATO squad looks like this:
7 x Riflemen
2 x Machinegunners
1 x Heavy Weapon (Bazooka/Sniper)
Times these by 3 to get your 30 soldiers, so your conquest line up for the NATO side would look like this:
21 x Riflemen
6 x Machinegunners
3 x Heavy Weapon