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**Dick** · **Jan 20, 2025, 01:27 AM**

What have we been up to?

Since LimeLight's CityRP has been closed for the past three and a half years, Ares Defence Services has been working and playing together respectively over that time period. As a team and manager, I have made mistakes but we have learnt from them through the years and have brought many new members to the community. Below is a summary of the last four years, things we have developed and continue to work on in our fifth year as a Partner at LimeLight Gaming.

If you are interested in joining some of our content, please feel free to let us know as we are more than happy to help those who are invested in creating a good environment for our community.

Year 1 and 2: First and Second Anniversary

We didn't do a lot in Year 1 & 2 except for continued operations, content changes and server setting alterations. We added the ability for players to add clientside mods to their clients and use them during operations. Most of the things we added, changed or pushed were altered in later years with feedback, experience and learning from previous mistakes.

Statistics of Year 2 (2022)
The most populated operation was Operation: Christmas Miricle by Cpt. Dick with an outstanding 26 operators.
The second most populated was Operation: Feline Reclamation, Part 4 by Sgt. Overlewd with an impressive 20 operators.

As a group, we have spent 4837 hours as a whole together with around 250 hours each in total operating time.
Last year, we had spent only 1897 hours as a whole together with around 120 hours each in total operating time.
That is almost 2.5x more than last year!

In 2022, we found 69 recruits to come and play with us with 20 recruits still playing with us today!
In 2021, we found 60 recruits to come and play with us. We got 9 recruits more this year!

The community voted MVP for 2022 is Sgt. Pedro!
The community voted MVP for 2022 runner-up is Sgt. Erik.

Here are the class awards for year 2:
For Most Operations, Cpt. Internet takes the lead with 118 operations with Sgt. Pedro taking second place with 116 operations.
For Most Activity, Sgt. Pedro takes the lead with 301 hours total with Cpt. Internet taking second place with 294 hours.
For Field Leadership, Cpt. Internet takes the lead with 132 hours with Cpt. Dick taking second place with 92 hours.
For Core Infantry, Pfc. AlexCS takes the lead with 126 hours with Sgt. Pedro taking second place with 121 hours.
For Field Medical, Cpl. Wolfe takes the lead with 170 hours with Sgt. Pedro taking second place with 122 hours.
For Marksmanship, Spc. Ramirez takes the lead with 34 hours with Pfc. Leonard taking second place with 29 hours
For Communication, Sgt. Jenna takes the lead with 7 hours with Sgt. Panzer taking second place with 3 hours.
For Combat Support, Spc. Bundock takes the lead with 37 hours with Spc. Negoitator taking second place with 25 hours.
For Cavalry, Spc. Bundock takes the lead with 11 hours with Cpt. Internet taking second place with 9 hours.
For Aerial, Sgt. Jenna takes the lead with 12 hours with Pvt. Seawolf taking second place with 9 hours.
For Mission Support, _dick takes the lead with 127 hours with overlewd taking second place with 71 hours.

Year 3: Third Anniversary

In year 3, we created a brand new website (https://aresdefenceservices.net/) with a store for players and retired our old wiki-trello-style website and Patreon. Users could support the server costs by either giving single-time donations or subscriptions. After a threshold, they'd receive personalized vests and backpacks that mimic medium armour. These could be removed by mission makers if they don't want them in the mission (but should require permission and reason). We created the Veteran's Initiative. This is similar to CityRP's veteran system where previous contributors can receive a separate role to highlight their past deeds such as contribution or moderation.

We introduced Tactical Operations, which were little squad operations of six to eight people for a small operation to either tell story or to fight. These were intended to replace one of the main operations to help keep a backlog of missions for future dates as we begun struggling to keep missions continuously going. We also introduced a new role, separating one of the previous. The Combat Life Saver would have a parent role called Squad Medic which had more medical permissions.

We updated our discord service to introduce channels such as discussions, gaming and politics. Some were removed due to some community-related issues but, it was widely accepted. We had changed our operation times and days at this point to where it was more fitting for the community. We only had 4 mission makers active at this point and had to lower the amount of operations we could make and choose the best date for our operations were to be placed on Sunday with Saturday as a backfill if there were no mission makers ready. We also opened the base community up, allowing new players to get into discussions and conversations with members and have additional perms for members joining from joint-operation units.

Statistics of Year 3 (2023)

The most populated operation was Operation: Grimsky by Cpt. Dick and Sgt. Overlewd with an outstanding 31 operators!
The second most populated was Operation: Crumbling Castle by Cpt. Dick with an impressive 23 operators.

As a group, we have spent 3113 hours together with around 99 hours each average in total operating time.
Last year, we had spent 4837 hours together with around 250 hours each in total operating time. (More operations had occurred)

In 2023, we found 55 recruits to come and play with us with 14 recruits still playing with us today!
In 2022, we found 69 recruits to come and play with us.
In 2021, we found 60 recruits to come and play with us.

The community voted MVP for 2023 is Sgt. Pedro for a SECOND YEAR!
The community voted MVP for 2023 runner-up is Sgt. Erik for a SECOND YEAR!
Along with Cpl. Wolfe and Sgt. Panzer tied for third... but we don't give out prizes for third place. Smile

Here are the class awards for year 3:
For Most Operations, Cpl Overlewd takes the lead with 54 operations with Sgt. Panzer taking second place with 53 operations.
For Most Activity, Cpl. Overlewd takes the lead with 173 hours total with Sgt. Panzer taking second place with 170 hours.
For Field Leadership, Sgt. Jenna takes the lead with 69 hours with Sgt. Panzer taking second place with 60 hours.
For Core Infantry, Sgt. Erik takes the lead with 86 hours with MSpc. Project taking second place with 82 hours.
For Field Medical, Sgt. Pedro takes the lead with 63 hours with Pfc. Fisher taking second place with 36 hours.
For Marksmanship, Spc Ramirez takes the lead with 62 hours with Sgt. Overlewd taking second place with 24 hours
For Communication, nobody takes lead as there was no operations that used this role.
For Combat Support, Spc. Negoitator takes the lead with 30 hours with Spc. Bundock taking second place with 25 hours.
For Cavalry, MSpc. Project takes the lead with 11 hours with Spc. Ramirez second place with 7 hours.
For Aerial, Sgt. Jenna takes the lead with 9 hours with Spc. Negoitator taking second place with 8 hours.
For Mission Support, Sgt. Overlewd takes the lead with 55 hours with Cpt. Dick taking second place with 51 hours.

Year 4: Fourth Anniversary

By the end of this year, we received many talented mission makers increasing our total number to 7. We also separated Server Admins (not to be confused with our NCO team) and mission makers. This allowed us to communicate to mission makers without letting them see the internal works of ADS that they didn't have access to such as the server panel.

In June 2024, we upgraded our physical servers to a much better server for running Arma 3. Provided by OVH, using a Game-2 Dedicated Server. Some hardware includes: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X - 8c/16t - 3.8 GHz/4.7 GHz, 64 GB ECC 2666 MHz, 2×960 GB SSD NVMe Soft RAID.

During this year, we added a asked for a feedback survey which players filled out and we answered questions the Arma 3 community was asking. We introduced a new raffle policy to prevent the same players from receiving role raffles several times in a row. We supplied additional ADS-related activities such as TTT, Minecraft, Project Zomboid and Terraria game servers as additional playing points throughout the week. Some of these have been rotated throughout the year, to keep the games less stale and more enjoyable goals to work as a community.

This year, we also changed our activity requirements. We increased from one operation every sixty days to one operation every ninety days and even still, If you go past the ninety-day threshold, you still have access to join operations will limited choice of role and will be ejected if the operation is filled. This was to allow people to have the ability to return at a later date if they had some issues within their life which prevented them from attending our operations. We also introduced our Arma 3 Preset Generator. This allowed people to create their versions of presets including approved clientside mods whist also download the core and additional mods required on a per operational basis.

Statistics of Year 4 (2024)
The most populated operation was Operation: Blood Sacrifice by Cpt. Dick and Cpt. Internet with an outstanding 22 operators!
The second most populated was Operation: Black Gold by Pfc. Logan with an impressive 21 operators.

As a group, we have spent 2160 hours together with around 72 hours each average in total operating time.
Last year, we had spent 3113 hours together with around 99 hours each in total operating time.

In 2024, we found 26 new recruits to join the unit with 5 recruits still playing with us today!
In 2023, we found 55 new recruits to join the unit.
In 2022, we found 69 new recruits to join the unit.
In 2021, we found 60 new recruits to join the unit.

Here are the class awards for year 4:
For Community-Voted MVP, Sgt. Pedro takes the lead with 4 votes with Sgt. Erik and MSpc. Project taking second place with 3 votes each!
For Most Operations, Cpl. Wolfe takes the lead with 49 operations and Sgt. Pedro taking second place with 48 operations!
For Most Activity, Cpl. Wolfe takes the lead with 144:55:00 hours and Sgt. Pedro taking second place with 144:31:00 hours!
For Field Leadership, Sgt. Jenna takes the lead with 53:11:00 hours and Cpt. Dick taking second place with 50:05:00 hours!
For Core Infantry, Sgt. Erik takes the lead with 84:54:00 hours and Pfc. Gran taking second place with 48:30:00 hours!
For Field Medical, Pfc. Logan takes the lead with 77:26:00 hours and Sgt. Pedro taking second place with 35:35:00 hours!
For Marksmanship, Spc. Ramirez takes the lead with 61:46:00 hours and Cpl. Wolfe taking second place with 42:29:00 hours!
For Communication, Cpt. Internet takes the lead with 3:30:00 hours and Pfc. sm0ukr taking second place with 3:15:00 hours!
For Combat Support, Sgt. Pedro takes the lead with 42:40:00 hours and Pfc. Paprik taking second place with 29:10:00 hours!
For Cavalry, Sgt. Overlewd takes the lead with 6:50:00 hours and Pfc. Smoker taking second place with 6:40:00 hours!
For Aerial, Pfc. Snikers takes the lead with 16:55:00 hours and Spc. Ramirez taking second place with 8:35:00 hours!
For Mission Support, Cpt. Dick takes the lead with 41:50:00 hours and Sgt. Panzer taking second place with 41:30:00 hours!

Ares Defence Services - Community Content

Myself and other ARES players have posted our operations online.
You can find some content here if you wish to watch them.