UNder Pressure
B2 - AR
Bravo 2 was on a roll. First Stoner disappears because he mistook B2 Engineer for Engineer team. Then InverseLaw decides to take a nap in a T34. Then Aquarius? decides to join BSL's fireteam on a whim. So there i am, the entirety of B2. Whereafter i'm told to join the engineer team. Where i discover that two other members of B2 are already present.
Two notes on that.
1. If you're AR/AAR/AT don't act directly on teamspeak orders. Your FTL will tell you when to move out, and he tends to like to have you where -he- wants to as opposed to where you think command wants you. If you want to decide when to move out feel free to promote yourself to FTL during slotting comrade.
2. If FTL dies don't go rambo. AR is new FTL. Ask him what happens now. Don't run off into the great big yonder.
On the mission as a whole. I CO'd this last time we played, so it was quite interesting to sit back and see what TigerShark came up with. Of course, i'll never know since he keeps his briefings secret, but i can't be bothered to do more than to be snarky about that any longer.
So, based on the Ouija-board scrapings it seems we were to clear the western side of the road whilst alpha took the village west of them. Same procedure as last time, but with one more GONG for funtimes.
So, we did as we always do, decide to play ultimate chicken and dismount at the starting point. Dismount and slog, as i like to call it. It wasn't as if the mission briefing indicated us being in a hurry or anything..... Nope.
But seriously. We -always- do this. If there is a red line we dismount -outside- of the red line. If there is a village, we dismount in the forest a kilometre away from the village. Etc, etc, etc. I can understand that being blown up in transit is hella not fun (having been there), but dismount and slog as SOP is so darn unimaginative.
Basically, we're scared to death of everything that might be there, and we spend way too much time combing the countryside for that lone SPG gunman who probably won't hit us anyway if we just drive fast enough.
How we fix? Personally, i think a lot of the missions that involve us in vehicles could well do with helicopter recon support. That way we have a scout that can give us intel on -major- enemy positions, enabling us to take any minor positions in stride. There might be a valid reason why we don't do that, but i ain't heard it yet.
Downed Bird
FIA CO
The good things first :
Apparently, dancemoox has discovered that yes, most of the adversarials we have for a3 are poorly suited for our player numbers. (At least on tuesdays.) To see an adversarial that is focused on such a small environment is therefore quite nice. We end up avoiding the "sprawl" and lone gunmanship that some of the larger city adversarials tend to devolve to.
Hostages are always nice.
The bad things :
As FIA CO you're basically told to hunker down in one building. The extent of tactical options are limited to perhaps sending a fireteam out south to the houses there. Other than that what you have to deal with is open ground, lots of it. Which means that this ends up as an exercise in "send individial soldiers here and there". (Which i'd like to try again, but wasn't wholly prepared for.)
So basically, we get to sit tight. Perhaps send our MG's up on the roof, and wait to be GP'd to kingdom come. Then whomever of us aren't taken out by long range GP get to play chaotic close quarters combat.
Also, no mission failure if the hostages die?
So basically, the indoors environment is, if i remember correctly: (Large, open first floor (suicide), staircase room (yum, grenade), then two rooms in the second floor (eat GP death like a man, comrade.)) * 2 . That does not really open for much ambiguity as to the location of FIA, and means that the mission feels very, very locked down from the get go.
What this mission really needs is at least mission failure on death of hostages. Preferably mission loss, depending on who shot the hostages.