What are some lesser known tricks to Arma that you know?

[Capt (Ret) Zahj]

Being the complex game it is, not everyone is aware of all the button combinations and options possible. What are some of your favorite Arma "life hacks"? 

[Sgt G. Anderson]

Separate your zoom in and hold breath keys. Way better to zoom in then hold your breath when you want to seeing as you can’t hold it long.

 

If you’re going to standing from prone, just double tap X. Going prone to crouch to stand is just as fast as straight standing up, but it uses no stamina.

 

Use ACE Interact to switch your position in a vehicle without FFV slots.

 

Separate your items into different parts of your kit. I put my meds in my uniform, all non-expendables (my microdagr, map tools + light, etc) in my vest, and all ammunition from mags to grenades to rockets in my backpack. 

 

If you have good timing, you can chain parkour with enhanced movement.

[Sgt Kanefield]

Hit delete key to turn on speed limiter in vehicle. When it is active, hold left Ctrl, and use scroll wheel to increase and decrease what the speed limiter is set to. This way, you don't need to disable it and hop you turn it on at the correct speed.

[Capt (Ret) Zahj]

33 minutes ago, Sgt G. Anderson said:

Separate your items into different parts of your kit. I put my meds in my uniform, all non-expendables (my microdagr, map tools + light, etc) in my vest, and all ammunition from mags to grenades to rockets in my backpack.

I make sure to keep the items that are the most commonly used by everyone else in my backpack, medical supplies especially. If I go down and someone that is treating me goes black on supplies, I want my medical stuff easily accessible. 

[Alonso]

Carl+ Page up or page down while in a vehicle adjusts the height of your seat.  This is especially useful when being the gunner in an attack helicopter at night , it allows you to observe using NVGs and you are able to see IR lasers and strobes on ground forces instead of relying heavily on FLIR.

Edited July 31, 2019 by LCpl Alonso

[2ndLt Buelow]

H should be a hotkey to open your medical menu or if you are looking at another person it should open up their medical menu when you press it

Edited July 31, 2019 by LCpl Buelow

[Rush]

Remapped my turret traverse keys to Q and E, so i can spin the turret around withouthaving to haul my mouse across the pad all the time.

[SSgt (Ret) E. Higgins]

7 hours ago, Sgt Zahj said:

I make sure to keep the items that are the most commonly used by everyone else in my backpack, medical supplies especially. If I go down and someone that is treating me goes black on supplies, I want my medical stuff easily accessible. 

Damn you beat me to it.

I have mags, radios, and medical in my bag

Grenades in my vest

and misc stuff in my uniform

 

all my loadouts since I started playing arma are the same in this regard so I never have to look for things

Edited August 1, 2019 by Cpl E. Higgins

[Sharon]

3 minutes ago, Cpl E. Higgins said:

Damn you beat me to it.

I have mags, radios, and medical in my bag

Grenades in my vest

and misc stuff in my uniform

 

all my loadouts since I started playing arma are the same in this regard so I never have to look for things

Just a heads up, you don't need to do this unless you want it to be accessible for others to take from your downed body to use on a different person. It will use whatever meds you have on you before it uses the person's that is treat you, so long as you have what they are attempting to use.

[SSgt (Ret) E. Higgins]

Just now, GySgt Sharon said:

Just a heads up, you don't need to do this unless you want it to be accessible for others to take from your downed body to use on a different person. It will use whatever meds you have on you before it uses the person's that is treat you, so long as you have what they are attempting to use.

Yeah, the last training I attended I was down and someone used my gear to treat someone else since they were both black on medical. I also have that stuff there so I can say "yeah sure just grab some from my bag" that way I dont have to stop what I was doing just to lend someone something

[B. Tesla]

So this is more so for the Air Crews who operate with their wonderful cameras, turn off/use the slider to disable mouse smoothing in the controls under the mouse section. It will give you a much cleaner movement when in the camera to make much more accurate strikes and be able to track vehicles better for lasing/tv guiding rockets, especially while you are moving as well.

[GySgt (Ret) Karelia]

Open up your controls and go to Configure Addons, and pull down to ACE Common. Bind yourself an easy key/combo for Take Prisoner. As long as you're looking at the target and are in range, you hit that key and you'll cuff them, no ACE nodes required. Anyone who's ever tried to catch a running civilian/VIP knows that it's impossible to ACE interact with them while they're moving.

[LCpl D. O'Connor]

CTRL + L SHIFT + T : when your screen appears to have dirt on your goggles or glasses if you hit this key bind it will wipe your glasses/goggles clean.  I believe this is an Ace keybind.

[J. Mack]

"Ctrl+ Space & Scroll Wheel" (With ACE) allows you to open doors in sections, unlike normal Arma which completely opens them. Good to use when clearing a building by yourself, as you can PIE the room more effectively.

Edited January 9, 2020 by Pvt Mack

[HMC (FMF) (Ret) T. Savage]

Tip: Rebind "G", throw grenade (which is removed during recruit training), to use spray paint. Most of GCE only needs a single color.

[2ndLt (Ret) Riggenti]

This is not lesser known among JTACs and ACE, as you use a crap ton of radios and do this already (I think).

In ITB, we taught Acre 'transmit' setup on three different keys (Capslock, Ctrl+Capslock, etc), mirroring the old TFAR setup. We did this to make it easier for new GCE joins to get up and running on two radios (Team and Squad nets).

I recently switched to using one key to transmit over the currently active radio (Capslock) and one key to cycle between active radios (Shift+Capslock).

I do recommend it as you start to use more than 2 active radios at a time. I haven't tried it on vehicle racks but I assume after you've added the vehicle rack to your active radios (via ACE interaction menu), you can incorporate it into your cycled radios.

 

You can also use Ctrl+Up/Down arrow (or set it to a different keybind) to change channels on your currently active radio, without having to open that radio. That should make quick work of setting up vehicle radios.

[Sharon]

5 minutes ago, 2ndLt (Ret) Riggenti said:

This is not lesser known among JTACs and ACE, as you use a crap ton of radios and do this already (I think).

In ITB, we taught Acre 'transmit' setup on three different keys (Capslock, Ctrl+Capslock, etc), mirroring the old TFAR setup. We did this to make it easier for new GCE joins to get up and running on two radios (Team and Squad nets).

I recently switched to using one key to transmit over the currently active radio (Capslock) and one key to cycle between active radios (Shift+Capslock).

I do recommend it as you start to use more than 2 active radios at a time. I haven't tried it on vehicle racks but I assume after you've added the vehicle rack to your active radios (via ACE interaction menu), you can incorporate it into your cycled radios.

 

You can also use Ctrl+Up/Down arrow (or set it to a different keybind) to change channels on your currently active radio, without having to open that radio. That should make quick work of setting up vehicle radios.

ACRE also has a multi-push-to-talk feature where you can bind up to 3 radios to different push-to-talk keybindings.

[GySgt (Ret) Sanderson]

Under configure>addon options>ACE Quick Mount, set the preferred seat to passenger. Then, under configure>controls>configure addons>ACE Movement>Vehicle Quick Mount set yourself a keybind.

This will allow you to walk up to a vehicle, hit the keybind, and immediately jump in without needing to scroll wheel or use the native ace interaction menu. 

This is extremely helpful when there are a gaggle of infantry trying to load into a helicopter on a hot LZ.

Edited April 9, 2020 by Sgt Sanderson

[2ndLt Buelow]

Something that I know that many people seem to not know is that when you have a teammate who is unconscious you can actually still access their inventory. What you have to do to access it is ace interact on their body and it should say "Open Inventory" or something along the lines of that and you will be able to take any item off of their body and drag it onto the ground where you can then pick it up. Extremely useful to get equipment that would otherwise be impossible to get such as an AT launcher, more magazines, or more medical supplies if it has gotten to that point. 100% removes the idea that any supplies or equipment you want available to your teammates, while unconscious, has to be in your backpack, although it is easier to grab if it is in your backpack.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Cpl Buelow

[Cpl (Ret) Kulesza]

Made this video to help those who have to tab out and risk crashing their game to turn on and off acre.

Edited May 7, 2020 by 1stLt Kulesza

[GySgt (Ret) Karelia]

On 4/8/2020 at 2:53 PM, Sgt Sanderson said:

Under configure>addon options>ACE Quick Mount, set the preferred seat to passenger. Then, under configure>controls>configure addons>ACE Movement>Vehicle Quick Mount set yourself a keybind.

This will allow you to walk up to a vehicle, hit the keybind, and immediately jump in without needing to scroll wheel or use the native ace interaction menu. 

This is extremely helpful when there are a gaggle of infantry trying to load into a helicopter on a hot LZ.

 

I would recommend caution using the ACE Quick Mount system. I used to use it around a year ago to facilitate lightning quick remounts into MSOT's MRZR buggies, but I soon thereafter started suffering a bug where my running animations would play slightly slower than normal (regardless of the combination of weapon raised/lowered, or C-running on or off), causing me to fall behind my element in a long jog. At first I blamed RHS's MRZR because my issues always seemed to revolve around them, but after suffering the bug on a vanilla vehicle I realized I was the only person having the bug, and was the only person using ACE Quick Mount. Disabling the keybind and mounting with the scroll menu or ACE interaction resolved the issue permanently.

 

It's possible the bug has been fixed by now, as this was months ago, but it's something to look out for.

[GySgt (Ret) Sanderson]

On 5/4/2020 at 5:00 AM, SSgt Karelia said:

 

I would recommend caution using the ACE Quick Mount system. I used to use it around a year ago to facilitate lightning quick remounts into MSOT's MRZR buggies, but I soon thereafter started suffering a bug where my running animations would play slightly slower than normal (regardless of the combination of weapon raised/lowered, or C-running on or off), causing me to fall behind my element in a long jog. At first I blamed RHS's MRZR because my issues always seemed to revolve around them, but after suffering the bug on a vanilla vehicle I realized I was the only person having the bug, and was the only person using ACE Quick Mount. Disabling the keybind and mounting with the scroll menu or ACE interaction resolved the issue permanently.

 

It's possible the bug has been fixed by now, as this was months ago, but it's something to look out for.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll disseminate this. 

[Capt (Ret) Oat]

1) Opening/Peeking Doors:

CBA has a function in its controls called "Open Door." You can set this button as you want, walk up to a door, press it, and the door will open or close. If you hold this button and use your scrollwheel, you can slowly open it which allows for bouncing grenades off the door into the room.

 

2) Easy Vector-DAGR Use:

The Vector 21 and Vector 21 Nite can be paired with a DAGR to use the DAGR's GPS in conjunction with the Vector's laser range/azimuth finder to give accurate 10-digit grids and altitudes for targets. However, many people have trouble hitting both the TAB and R keys at the right time to make this system work.

In ACE Equipment controls, these are cited as two different keys: Vector Azimuth and Vector Range. If you set both of these to one key (TAB in my personal case) then you can JUST hold that one button down and it will do both functions.

 

3) Graphics Memory Flush:

A hidden gem hailing from at LEAST Arma 2, the in-game function to flush your video memory. The steps are as follows:

1. Hold LEFT SHIFT and hit the NUMPAD ( - ) key.
2. Hit "F" "L" "U" "S" "H" on your keyboard (NOT typing them into chat).
3. Your screen should flash to a loading screen while it flushes.

 

4) Faster IR Pointer/Flashlight use:

The rifle-mounted IR Pointers (PEQ boxes) and Flashlights are amazing tools to use as an infantryman at night. However, leaving them on for extended periods can be distracting and detract from the ease-of-picture of the battlefield. As such the best common practice is to use the IR Pointer only when ready to engage a target to avoid the "Star Wars Lightshow" effect on a battlefield. However, reaching up to press K on the keyboard can be time consuming-- especially in a pinch.

If you have a multi-button mouse, assigning the Lights On key to one of those extraneous mouse buttons can save time and create an easier way to flick that laser or flashlight on or off.

Edited May 7, 2020 by 2ndLt Oat

[Capt (Ret) Oat]

On 5/4/2020 at 6:00 PM, SSgt Karelia said:

I would recommend caution using the ACE Quick Mount system. I used to use it around a year ago to facilitate lightning quick remounts into MSOT's MRZR buggies, but I soon thereafter started suffering a bug where my running animations would play slightly slower than normal (regardless of the combination of weapon raised/lowered, or C-running on or off), causing me to fall behind my element in a long jog.

Are you sure it wasn't excessive twinkie consumption?

[Cpl Exley]

On 7/31/2019 at 10:56 PM, SSgt Rush said:

Remapped my turret traverse keys to Q and E, so i can spin the turret around withouthaving to haul my mouse across the pad all the time.

This!