Arma: Bad Company

What it is

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in Arma 3. Conquest and Rush on Altis, Malden or Stratis: your squad (solo or up to 8 friends) fights next to an allied AI army against an enemy AI army — NATO against CSAT, or any armies the host picks — both with tanks, APCs, attack helicopters and jets that come back at their bases after they're lost. Bigger island, bigger battle.

Pick the armies. In the lobby the host picks each side's army: NATO against CSAT as in BC2, or any faction of Arma 3 and its DLC — AAF, FIA, Syndikat, NATO / CSAT Pacific, LDF, Spetsnaz and more. Soldiers, crews, tanks, APCs, AA, helicopters, jets, artillery and your four kits all come from the faction you pick; a faction without tanks or jets fights with what it has. Any faction can fight on either side.

From your own Battlefield: Bad Company 2, if you have it (optional: read from your install on the first Play; BC2 is never started or changed — without it you play the same battles with Arma's own sounds and voices):

• BC2's weapon, explosion and HUD sounds — Arma's guns, cannons, grenades, rockets and bombs sound like BC2.
• BC2's voice-over: soldiers shout "Grenade!", "Medic!", "Reloading!", spot tanks and helicopters, the announcer calls flags taken and lost, M-COMs armed and destroyed — in English or Russian; the enemy shouts in BC2's Russian.
• BC2's music in the lobby and its victory / defeat music at the end of the round.
• BC2's art and names: the four kits, 51 ranks with their insignia, 26 pins, loading-screen art; BC2's own texts for points, ranks and pins.

BC2's rules:

• Conquest: stand at a flag to raise yours (the flag pole really rises); hold more flags and the enemy's tickets bleed; every death costs a ticket. Each side starts with its home flag.
• Rush: you attack. Hold the action at an M-COM station to arm it; it blows after 30 seconds unless the defenders disarm it. Both M-COMs down and the front moves to the next sector with fresh tickets.
• Kits: Assault ([7] ammo bag), Engineer (AT launcher and mines, [7] repair tool), Medic (machine gun, [7] medic bag, the only one who revives the downed), Recon (marksman or sniper rifle, [7] mortar strike where you look, [8] motion sensor). With NATO they carry BC2's loadouts (MX 3GL, RPG, Mk200, LRR); with another army, that army's grenadier, AT soldier, machine gunner and marksman. [9] spots the enemy you aim at for the whole team.
• Deploy screen like BC2: spawn at your HQ, a flag you hold, next to a squad mate, next to the allied squad at the front, straight into a tank or helicopter at a base — or into a jet already in the air.
• BC2 points pop up for kills, headshots, assists, revives, flags, M-COMs, repairs; they add up to BC2's ranks across rounds; the end-of-round screen shows the pins you earned with BC2's own images.
• Armour and artillery from the first minutes (Conquest on Malden and Altis): the flag each side holds at the start is its forward base with tanks, APCs and an attack helicopter, and each HQ has an artillery battery that shells the enemies its side has spotted at the flags ("INCOMING ARTILLERY!" warns you). The first fight starts about two minutes into the round.
• The enemy hunts you: enemy squads near you come after you, and your gunfire draws them in.
• Warm, saturated colours instead of a grey noon. English and Russian.

Playing together

One player presses Play and hosts; the host picks Conquest or Rush, the island, the battle size and the armies, and starts the round. The lobby has an invite code (COPY INVITE CODE); friends copy it (or the host's address from this page) and press Play: the launcher asks whether to join that game. Up to 8 players, through Steam's relay — no port forwarding.

Needs

Arma 3 (base game; Malden is the free DLC that comes with it) and Steam (the mod starts it for you if it is closed). No Arma DLC is needed (the DLC factions are there for those who own them). Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Steam or EA) is optional: with it the first Play reads its sounds, voices, music and art (about a minute, ~150 MB in your local app data).

The same game without the launcher and BC2 is also on the Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3819118287 — there it also takes factions from your other mods (RHS, CUP, ...).

Credits

Made by VolkMicro with AI assistance (Claude). Code and scripts: MIT. Voice-over decoding: vgmstream (bundled, with its notices). Arma 3 © Bohemia Interactive; Battlefield: Bad Company 2 © Electronic Arts — no game files are shipped.