[Tue] 29 October 2013 (Fist of God)

[Tigershark]

Thank you to the wonderful 33 or so fine fellows who dropped by this Folk ARPS Tuesday session! Thanks for slotting in an orderly fashion.

ArmA 2 Missions:
Ashore
Cacheola

Arma 3 Missions:
Downed Bird
Ridge line

Ashore saw the newly nicknamed "fist of god" reach and smash several fire teams before they even knew what hit em.

Great games...thanks guys.

A3 went smoothly mainly thanks to the lower numbers compared to Sunday, a nice defense despite some sneaky Topperyness and a ridge sweep for some large coopness.

[Satire]

Ashore B1 FTL

Well, the landing went smoothly. Then as we advanced we discovered the Opfor was in possession of the wrath of Zeus and most of Bravo were horribly murderized. Luckily, I avoided the wrath of angry Greek gods by being behind a small wall at the time. Once we got back on our feet I had enough left of Bravo to fold into one neat fireteam and several neat piles.

Bravo was tasked with supporting the remains of Alpha as a Bof, but we may have ended up as an assault element by mistake. By the time we reached the factory, we seemed to be about the only ones left effective. We cleared the factory, got shot a lot along the way and I met my end on the roof to a DshkM. Fortunately my team-mates avenged me!

Cacheola Insurgent Bravo AR



I don't really need to say much more than that.

Downed Bird A2/Paratrooper commando team FTL

We got the (dubious) honour of being the elite paratroop commando squad, tasked with hitting the roof and assaulting from there. I think it was mostly down to my pre-mission commando roar. It went about as well as you'd expect.



Ridge line Alpha Squad Lead

I knew we had to cover a lot of open ground as infantry, so my entire approach was to take it slow and steady in the hope of avoiding casualties. Infantry would go Ridge-line to Ridgeline, with IFV and MAT in support to kill anything nasty. In fairness i'd say it worked, since we had 8 of 12 men alive in Alpha's fireteams for the final push, as well as all supports alive. The only thing taking any serious damage was Toppo's TS, adding to the 'realism'. Who needs ACRE for spotty comms eh? I bit the bullet on the final ridge but Alpha pushed up and Tink blew the radio tower. The survivors made a break for a nice cottage in the IFV, where they indulged in a spot of celebration/murder-suicide.

Sorry if the pace of the last mission was pretty slow, fighting with infantry in those big valleys is never too action packed. I was hoping there's be more stuff for MAT to shoot up, but they couldn't get a lock on targets, or they were just puny Striders. At least we got shot up in the emplacements!

[Inverselaw]

Ashore
CO

I really wanted to CO a coop mission so I did. My first plan was to split up alpha and bravo to engage the two objectives, then when I realized that was stupid the second plan was to concentrate forces on each objective at a time. In both cases I was very worried about mortar fire and how brutal it is so I ordered the Helicopter to engage the mortar position first so we wouldn't get murdered.

So our boat captains started driving us to our pre assigned positions and and the helicopter went to its loiter position to engage the mortar position. While moving into our assault position, Helicopter engaged and killed all the troops operating the mortars, it then asked for new tasks, killed a BMP and then was ordered to do a pass at our objective and get a few targets of opportunity. Everything was going fine, then we all died. Helicopter veered to reengage whatever was at the mortar position but got shot down. I tried to salvage things, ordered alpha to assault with bravo guarding and then i got shot too.

The assault itself didn't go too bad then the fist of god struck again and killed alpha.

Since the mortar attack was scripted, killing the mortar operators wasent enough, presumably we have to kill every single soldier at the mortar site.

Cacheola
INDFOR Bravo FTL

Satire's video involves about half of all that we did, Tired hippo also got to rpg a hummer. Otherwise we just sat there and waited for an enemy that never came.

[dancemoox]

Ashore - Alpha 3 AT - IceRaiser FTL Mr Kev AR Tigershark AAR

I moved with A3 bringing up the rear of the column as my position as AT rifleman befits. Bounding past the town hall I took a wounding bullet and was patched up ready to move down forming a north south line with Alpha. With poor visibility and the pub taken over by A2 I looked for the best place to get eyes east into Cherno. I eventually found a wall that butted up against a building that was broken diagonally towards the building. I took up position and looked towards the construction site, or in the direction of it - as a large house was blocking my vision - I could see part of the road heading north towards the factory and a building destroyed and on fire towards the dock. Seconds later I was dead, I never heard the shot and was the first to die. As I scanned around the area I couldn't see how I'd died, that was until I saw the fire dweller that I couldn't see through the burning building.. As it turned out neither could other people and he managed to kill and wound quite a few and remain unburnt..

Screenshots from that mission:



My defensive position behind the wall.



Second angle showing the rest of A3



The murdering bastard fire dweller I had no chance of seeing..

Cacheola - Bluefor Platoon Medic

I saw what turned out to be enemy Toppo fire GP from a building, I fired 100 rounds into the building first to kill the chap that fired the GP and second to improve our attacking morale, I understand the building and Toppo disliked the fire I poured his way.. Also I ran over BSL Gaius who forgot the green cross code - what follows is an information film all must watch and learn from.



Downed Bird - FIA CO

We were bad men with dashing head scarves and my plan was simple. Send Waffly off to the tower and hold him. I had two fireteams a medic and MMG Bodge team.. I had Bodge set up inside the ATC his assistant guard the Waffly Dodo and A1 dispatch a man to guard the lower door. The rest of my forces I sent to aptly named 'terminal building' with orders to spread out and hold.. The enemy MMG team opened up on the building and smashed the windows in the ATC, all the better to hear Paratropper Mamba yell as he hit the ground.. I flung a few frag grenades down and saw no more of them. Eventually I pulled back everyone to the ATC apart from Bodge who was on the roof of the TB. The enemy force wasn't incoming and Bodge wanted to know how many we'd killed, I authorised a pullback outside our AO to trigger an ending, turns out I'd killed nobody but we'd won so that's all that matters!

Ridge line Maid Driver - Toppo Gunner

Me and Toppo a Marid Couple

We supported the troops from back slightly, sending 40mm and 50cal into the enemy, the Marid was loaded with our record collection and beer making it slow moving up hillsides, on the assault up to the radio tower we were giving overwatch and distracted by the tasty meatbags on the south hillside Toppo requested permission to fire, in the end we'd used all the ammo to engaged backup attack plan 'ramming speed' after an age we made it up to the top of the hill, I ran over two enemies as charges were set. Everyone loaded in, MAT got out and Toppo being protective our Marid killed him.. We sped away from the tower towards friendly lines, in a fit of 'there can be only one' I murdered everyone and retired to my grenade house..

[bojangles]

Ashore
Alpha 2 Rifleman

The landing was surprisingly uneventful, and Alpha squad easily advanced into our the city. As we advanced down the street, we were engaged by enemies mostly from the factory, but managed to return fire pretty effectively. We regrouped a bit, then started advancing towards the BOF. Which went badly. A mortar took out Homer and me, and judging from the amount of channel switches quite a few others. Like we said in Limbo afterwards, everything was going well until we all died.

Cacheola
Bravo 1 Rifleman ( I think)

We mounted our humvees and rolled in via the villa, then got out and started sweeping. After standing on a roof for a while, we approached a possible cache site only to hear massive explosions. Apparently INDFOR was very crafty in their IED placement, and effectively made things go boom. While seemingly in cover, I saw my FTL (who was about 3m away) get shot up and totally panicked, running directly into the building the shooter was in, and died feeling very foolish.

Downed Bird
Alpha 2 Paratrooper

Toppo decided that it was a good idea for us to jump out of a helicopter. It made for a fun 10 seconds, but not much else as we all bravely gave our lives and served more as clay pigeons for the guys in the tower than commandos. I am proud to proclaim that I am the only paratrooper that lasted long enough to fire his weapon, and I even got someone! It would have been pretty slick had I not died immediately after. I would love to try parachuting again though as it seems like it would have potential, perhaps with a few more people to increase the chances of surviving.

[Gaia]

Cacheola
Bravo 1 Rifleman ( I think)

We mounted our humvees and rolled in via the villa, then got out and started sweeping. After standing on a roof for a while, we approached a possible cache site only to hear massive explosions. Apparently INDFOR was very crafty in their IED placement, and effectively made things go boom. While seemingly in cover, I saw my FTL (who was about 3m away) get shot up and totally panicked, running directly into the building the shooter was in, and died feeling very foolish.

Downed Bird
Alpha 2 Paratrooper

Toppo decided that it was a good idea for us to jump out of a helicopter. It made for a fun 10 seconds, but not much else as we all bravely gave our lives and served more as clay pigeons for the guys in the tower than commandos. I am proud to proclaim that I am the only paratrooper that lasted long enough to fire his weapon, and I even got someone! It would have been pretty slick had I not died immediately after. I would love to try parachuting again though as it seems like it would have potential, perhaps with a few more people to increase the chances of surviving.

Concerning Cacheloa, is there anything you think I could have done to keep everything calm? Should I have approached the compound a bit slower?


Also, concerning the paradrop, I am seriously thinking of a mission involving a HALO drop, so I'd really like to see the video for this mission to see how useful/fun paradroping was...

[Black Mamba]

Of course you could have gone slower. Then again, considering that about half the enemy force had already died of boredom, it was probably a decent idea not to go any slower. Remember, the perfect winning plan is cool, the less-perfect-but-more-fun plan is better (which doesn't mean stupid-everybody-dies-in-a-ridiculous-fashion-immediately plan).

Regarding the paradrops, they don't present much interest, I'm afraid. The idea here was to use the fact that they had no NVGs to surprise them, but turns out that they could clearly see us anyway. You're just a big slow target, and we all got killed but one on landing (I apparently died before even touching the ground, not sure what happened here. Guess I was shot in the air). A2 had the walkable C-130 that was kinda interesting as you could create some atmospheric/cinematic HALO jumps to start a mission with, while in A3 you're basically stuck with either paradropping from a chopper or from nothing, which doesn't add anything to anything, really.
If the question was "were the 8 seconds you spent falling fun", then yes, it was fun. As fun as watching a dude fallling on a screen. If the question was "was dying immediately after, without being able to do anything about it fun", then nope. Not fun.

[Crocuta]

Ashore: B2 AT. BOOOOOOOM. Someone get on CC and request a medic. - "Isn't Gaius alive?" - Nope, I can't hear him. I bled out in the healing queue.

Cacheola: Blufor A1 AR. We began by taking the most NE location (which didn't have a cache) with A2 somehow managing to stray off on a magical misadventure, which ended with Satire's video. A1 proceeded South to help out the remnants of Bravo. Blowing that cache, we were ordered further South. I had previously heard GP and RPG fire from the far NW zones, so figured we'd find more objectives up there. Homer reported it up, CO changed plans, and then our fate was on my head.

Downed Bird: Blufor A1 Rifleman. I was the guy guarding the base of the tower. Not much to say, other than Mamba could have done some serious damage if he hadn't have said "wtf?"



Ridge line: A2 FTL. Both times I've played this, we've gone straight to the tower with little resistance, and then run out of time after running a few km.

EDIT:

I apparently died before even touching the ground, not sure what happened here. Guess I was shot in the air

It didn't seem that way to me. You span around a lot though.

[Black Mamba]

Actually it seems what happened is the chute gitched out when touching something (hence the vocal alarm) and it started spinning very fast. I guess it just sent me in a ragdoll state and I died. I was dead about at the end of the sentence anyway, before you even reported my presence.

[Tigershark]

Cacheola
Bravo 1 Rifleman ( I think)

We mounted our humvees and rolled in via the villa, then got out and started sweeping. After standing on a roof for a while, we approached a possible cache site only to hear massive explosions. Apparently INDFOR was very crafty in their IED placement, and effectively made things go boom. While seemingly in cover, I saw my FTL (who was about 3m away) get shot up and totally panicked, running directly into the building the shooter was in, and died feeling very foolish.

Downed Bird
Alpha 2 Paratrooper

Toppo decided that it was a good idea for us to jump out of a helicopter. It made for a fun 10 seconds, but not much else as we all bravely gave our lives and served more as clay pigeons for the guys in the tower than commandos. I am proud to proclaim that I am the only paratrooper that lasted long enough to fire his weapon, and I even got someone! It would have been pretty slick had I not died immediately after. I would love to try parachuting again though as it seems like it would have potential, perhaps with a few more people to increase the chances of surviving.

Concerning Cacheloa, is there anything you think I could have done to keep everything calm? Should I have approached the compound a bit slower?


Also, concerning the paradrop, I am seriously thinking of a mission involving a HALO drop, so I'd really like to see the video for this mission to see how useful/fun paradroping was...

Hi Gauis,
I was in your squad for this mission. Whilst it didn't help that your FTLs were being belligerent and giving you a hard time the biggest problem I think you face is giving clear, concise instructions. Sometimes, they are clear....sometimes concise...but rarely both. I think you would benefit from just taking a breathe, think about what you mean and just saying it without trying to use military speak.

I'll give you an example. "I need on of the M2 HUMVEES on marker X". Not a bad command...concise...but not clear. Asking your 2 FTLs to work this out real time adds to confusion. Specificying "I want B1 HUMVEE on marker X and looking SW". If you try and get all your command out in one breathe that would help as well. Getting commands piece meal only adds to confusion.

I applaud your willingness to step up and command and I think you know that for the moment your FTLing is better than your SLing, but Tuesday's are the night in which we encourage people to step up and test themselves and I am glad to see you doing that. Look to some of the other guys in game who you admire for their leadership style and ask them to slot alongside you to coach if you would like to better. The willingness and humility to want to improve here will be the path to large scale operation CO success here.

Just my 2cents.