Dateyourgame: Attila’s community blog about Video Game – Walkthrough – Gameplay – Reviews – Tips and Tricks

Arma Combat Operation is one of the rare game where it is the community content that is the main interest of the game. The game give the users all the tool necessary to create their own missions on a 250km2 island. So the diversity of missions that comes out of the community is alway amazing. But one of them comes out of all those as being one of the most popular. It’s the mission Evolution. This missions is very well design and terribly addictive.

For those who have never experienced it, the core of if is to liberate all the major city in this island one by one and as you advance in the fight you gain experience and rank. The rank you have allow you to use more advanced equipment ranging from better gun, rifle, machinegun to better vehicle, helicopter, plane. This leveling up process is really addictive and rewarding. Now this guide aim to explain how to level up faster by respecting the rules.

(I specify the rules here because there is exploit, hack, cheat, that allow certain idiots also call hacker to rune the game by using undeserved weapons and vehicle in very ineffective way privating the players that had earned their rank the access to the those same vehicle they should be able to use.)

How to gain rank in Evolution?
The most simple answer is by fighting… killing a soldier is 1 point, a uaz is 3 point and etc. Now that the clear way. The other ways is to be in the city when it’s cleared it give you some point. Destroying the radio towers gives you points. Capturing soldiers (when they surrender) give you 5 point, capturing the officer gives you 20 points. So those are the basic way to gain rank and by experience it’s the longest way. But still a necessary way.

So here is how I play the main missions.
Your main goal when you start playing is to reach the corporal level. If you join the game at the start this should not be hard to fight enemies, if you join the game later a good way to rank up without fighting is to be an engineer and take a repair truck around and fixing all the broken stuff the other player left behind.

when your are finally a corporal you take a M2 Humvee with a .50 machinegun. find yourself a hill near the objectives and gun down the enemies from a far. This is a very easy way to gain rank and with the .50 machine gun you will also be able to destroy armored vehicle and even tanks.

The next level you need to reach is Captain. When you are finally are a captain you can use the Vulcan tank this vehicle is even more destructive then the Humvee due to the ammo and fire rate of the Vulcan Cannon. You should be able to level up very fast with such a vehicle up to Colonel.

Once you are a Colonel… well you can use all the toys around… But if you are an engineer remember that your duty is to fix stuff so even with all the cool toys remember to repair the broken stuff!

Doing group missions the other way to make points
To do missions you must be at least two players. There is different kind of missions, the easiest are the water patrols where you can go to the nearest dock and take a gunboat. You will have to hunt down 3 enemies boat. Depending how good is the gunner the enemies ship should destroy very fast and once the missions is successful you will gain many point even if you killed nothing.

Ambush is probably the most fun kind of missions, you need to destroy a 5 vehicle convoy. In general there is two escort vehicle, one transport vehicle and some other truck. This mean you can disable most of the convoy without using rocket. But what make this missions fun is that the convoy move around forcing you to evade the cities and if you move in an helicopter you will also have to evade shilka (anti air defense). So those mission can become very challenging for the team and will require some coordination.

The mission that will make you gain the most rank is Destroy. In those missions you will need to blow up 3 or 4 armored tanks ranging from the Brdm to the T72. So that kind of mission require anti tank weapons. Those mission are not as hard as they seem since the enemies won’t move unless you engaged them. So basically if you have a 4 soldiers groups you can take the enemies down in one well coordinated fire barrage and by doing so reducing to none the risk of being shoot back.

There is of course other type of missions, but from experience you most likely won’t make it alive unless you are in a big group.

By experience if you are good group, by the time the rest of the player in the game get to Cayo (as the blue force), all the player in the groups will be colonel and most likely won’t have die more then 10 time unless they take risk for nothing.

The impact of leveling up in missions.
One of the main Challenge when you level up in missions is that as you gain rank the missions will get far as you gain point from them. And the longer and dangerous the helicopter ride to it become. So here are some path I recommend to evade Anti Air cover to reach the missions.

Trick to destroy the tower
One of the most challenging aspect is to destroy the towers in the cities. If you do not destroy that tower the city will endlessly receive reinforcement making your fight point less. So there is different way to achieve that objective. The first way, is a little risky. It’s to rush to it in a humvee and get lucky. If you are fast only one squad will defend it, if you take care of them fast you should be able to put two charge and blow it up before getting kill by overwhelming force. That strategy is a little suicidar… but it does work sometime.

The second way is to send either a chemical attack, or a nuke and then charging into the void left by the destruction. But it’s important to hurry since the enemies tend to reinforce the place fast. Nuke also have the after effect of leaving an open ground where you are very easy to kill. That’s why i tend to favorite a chemical strike followed by anti tank vehicle attack. Such combination of arm should allow you to reach the tower and blow it up.

the third way is a risked approach in an armor with a skilled gunner that will cover you. That mean sneaking in the city with a Stryker or APC and disembarking near the tower, hoping no tanks are arround and that your gunner didn’t missed a single enemies. It does work sometime.

Now the ultimate plan is to have real teamwork. Some player should go secure the road from where the city is reinforced and destroy all the reinforcing vehicle and other group should insure an anti air superiority against the reinforcement drop from helicopter. The rest of the team should advance carefully toward the tower in vehicles and take position to cover the area around the tower. As one of the team member put charge to blow it up.

This guide isn’t complete, but since it’s good so far I make it available, until my next strike of inspiration :)