What is Arma 3 milsim?
Milsim is Arma 3 played as a team, with a plan, in a unit that keeps the same people week to week. If you've only played public servers, it's a different game. Here's what to expect before you sign up anywhere.
How strict does it get?
It varies enormously. Some groups are co-op with no ranks and no attendance. At the other extreme are units with mandatory drill, saluting, and hour-long briefings. Most sit in between, ours included: chain of command and radio discipline while the op is running, ordinary conversation either side of it. Work out where a unit sits before you apply — too loose and ops fall apart, too rigid and it stops being fun.
What an operation looks like
The unit forms up and gets a briefing: situation, mission, how it's going to run. Then you step off in squads and fire teams. You hold your sector, your team leader talks on squad radio, platoon coordinates between elements, and if the unit has pilots, they're overhead moving you and dropping ordnance. The plan lasts until first contact. Two to three hours later you're arguing about what happened in Discord.
Roles
Everyone starts as a rifleman, which is also the best place to learn. After that: marksman, corpsman, machine gunner, engineer, armor crew, JTAC, and pilots if the unit flies its own aircraft. In a decent unit these are qualifications you earn on a course, not roles you pick off a list.
What you need
Arma 3 on PC, a microphone, and whatever modpack the unit runs. You don't need experience or special hardware. Any unit worth joining teaches recruits from scratch — if one expects you to turn up already knowing everything, that tells you how they treat new players.
How to pick one
Five things worth checking:
- How long it's been running. Most units fold inside a year. Five or ten means the leadership and the schedule hold up.
- The time slot.Ops run at a fixed hour in a fixed timezone. If that's 3AM where you live, nothing else about the unit matters.
- Whether progression is tracked. Ask where ranks and course completions live. If the answer is “Discord roles,” adjust expectations.
- Signs of life. Recent videos, screenshots, a Discord with traffic in it. No recent media usually means no recent ops.
- The people.Sit in their Discord for a week before applying. That's what you're actually joining.
How joining usually works
Most units follow the same pattern: application, a conversation with a recruiter, a training course, then your first op in a rifle squad. Reckon on one to two weeks. Here's how ours works, with the questions people usually ask.
Ten years in. Come see how we run it.