[Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

How we died
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SuperU
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[Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by SuperU »

This Tuesday saw 27 of us comrades enter the meat grinder, alas only a few got through unscathed!

Run order was as follows :
  • Cratesistance - I killed so many this mission, will upload a vid
  • Roundabout - This saw us all cram into a valley and in turn get murdered, in hindsight we should have put a squad on the high ground
  • Coastal Road - Satires epic new campaign saw the folk arps platoon sweep up a foggy dark coast side, we made it through with moderate casultys!

    After Party A3
  • Air raiders - Hunters charge up the runway, the surviving opfor CO has a showdown against me his blufor counterpart .
  • Exothermic reaction - We made a get away, still died.
  • Builders Dispute - The folk arps tactical advancement team discovered this amazing new tactic called "Line battles", opfor won due to having the superior line!

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SuperU
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by SuperU »


sux2bblufor

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Satire
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Satire »

Cratesistance - Blufor A2 AR.

Well, the big flank move went great, right up until we became subjects of a big flank move ourselves. I'm the one in Super's video telling the rest of my team that I'm in a good position. :oops:

At least I took an AI with me.

Roundabout - Bravo Squad Lead with Toppometer B1, Michael B2 and Fer B3.

Bravo's first task was to secure the compound that would act as a base of fire for the rest of the attack. Unfortunately, once we started taking contact it quickly turned into a deathtrap. The problem with the place is that whilst it's the best hard cover in the valley, it's visibility is pretty poor with good spots for maybe one fireteam so everyone else is just waiting around clogging stairwells and catching stray bullets. The vegetation to the north also blocks the view to the edge of town and enemies were still active around the wire barries that most of my FT's had trouble seeing. Too add to that, enemies on the ridges can add plunging fire into the courtyard, making for very few safe places and having Alpha share the compound with us made things even worse. In the ideal world I could have put one of my teams in the rocks out front and maybe spread on out on the right side of the road, but we took heavy contact before I got the chance and they would have been chewed up in seconds.

Toppo and Fer put down some good markers for airstrikes, which Mamba lit up, but Bravo were pretty much stuck sat around being whittled down until we were about five effectives left. Alpha's push went out just as the Kord on the edge of town was re-crewed, which explains my frantic yelling on CC for airstrikes and bullets, so we went out on a glory charge to pick up what was left of them and soften up the defences for the next platoon. The charge petered out with everyone left alive being wounded, so I asked command to remember our names and send in the bombers to finish things.

Coastal Road - Alpha Medic

Well, I made this so I felt it was only fair to pick up those who got blown apart by it. Sadly the first casualty, our SL Fer, died without even a scream to alert me and I only figured out when I noticed my StHud was gone. Still, I healed up kev, helped myself to our fallen comrade-leader's GPS (Someone beat me to the rangefinders dammit!) and soldiered on. Somehow my healing/killing hands made it to the end of this mess!

I'm not going to write too much since I'm rendering the video to upload tonight, but safe to so say I had a great time. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated, especially since it's my first co-op, both of this scale and for A2. I'd also love to see us try it in the daytime and with the AAV's in support, although the foggy night atmosphere was excellent. The idea was to have AAV's near for resupply and satchels and since Alpha was looting enemy weapons by the end it would probably help out. I'll disable the GMG's for v2 so it's not too powerful. Plus the clear visibility will let all the fixed positions and enemy counter-attacks we all blundered past even the score somewhat!

Also, I'd love to know whether Tigershark was killed by the SPG he ran past, the infantry he ran past, the DshkM he ran past or the BMP 2 he ran towards :laugh:

Air raiders - Blufor Bobcat Driver

Well, this was pretty imbalanced from the start, so we were told to bail from the Bobcat and continue on foot. I hopped out, ran up a tower and killed the occupant, went for a search for more enemies and became the second victim of the minefield out front. Turns out the whole field goes off at once when you step on it.

This gave me a front row seat for the duel between the two commanders to settle affairs.



Exothermic reaction - Blufor A1 FTL

Teleport in from the north, attack via way points sneaky sneaky, sneaky sneaky sneaky, go in the side door while Ice takes the rear (hehe) and blow stuff up. Our foresight in bringing a minefield with us proved useful, since it clutched us the win.

Builders Dispute - Altisfor Builder

COMPANY! FORM LINE! :hist101:

Stratisfor won this one due to ungentlemanly tactics employed by their line infantry, some of whom suddenly became light infantry and ran up our flank. :argh:

On another note, this actually works with clothes if you lock the server so nobody can JIP. One side is in Black and Green and the other is in Green and Black so it's still chaos, but it's intentional now.
Mr-Link wrote: 7) SATIRE OP plz NERF.

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Thirith
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Thirith »

Cratesistance was symptomatic for most Folk ARPS sessions I've played so far: incredibly tense prep, sneaking up on a position, being alive to every movement and every sound, feeling that we're all moving as part of one large, efficient, deadly organism... and then shooting starts, I get a bullet in the head and sit there for the rest of the mission thinking, "God, this game is great..." as the adrenaline slowly wears off. :D

Roundabout was a bit less about sudden death for me; I was Satire's medic, choosing that slot because I've played a couple of smaller co-op sessions with him and a few others recently. I did catch one of the first bullets, but I didn't die, being revived instead by one of the good men of Bravo. For the next 15 minutes I alternated between healing up fallen comrades and adding another bullet hole to my collection. It all felt a lot like childhood games of Cowboys vs. Indians, where pacifist little me always wanted to play the Doc so I could heal rather than kill, except more scary and more exhilarating. And with more occasional bouts of stupidity on my part, such as crawling too far ahead on the final charge, realising that there were people at the back dying, so I got up, turned my back to the enemy and ran towards my fallen comrades. Turns out that's not very sound strategy, even for a charge.


Quick question: I'm still fairly new to MP, VON and Teamspeak. At the beginning I apparently had a hot mic (or however you call it). Did I get that correctly? I'm mainly asking because I did set TS3 to press-to-play, so I'm not quite sure what happened there. Also, in-game, was anyone able to hear me when I talked? I responded to people (Draakon, for instance) a few times, but they didn't seem to hear me. Finally, total newb question, because I'm failing to find coherent info on the Teamspeak site: the circle next to my name changed from blue to orange at some point. Can anyone tell me what this meant and whether I should've reacted to it in some way? (I'm still somewhat at a loss with respect to when to use Arma's VON and when to use Teamspeak; in a non-leadership position I stick to the former, right?)
"Until now we scraped along the ground like rats, but from now on, we soar. Like eagles. Yeah. LIKE EAGLES... ON... POGO STICKS." - Grim Fandango

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Tigershark
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Tigershark »

Satire wrote:
Also, I'd love to know whether Tigershark was killed by the SPG he ran past, the infantry he ran past, the DshkM he ran past or the BMP 2 he ran towards :laugh:

In fact...I was killed by our own grenades launched at me by none other than Wolfenswan.
Image
Sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken.

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wolfenswan
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by wolfenswan »

In fact...I was killed by our own grenades launched at me by none other than Wolfenswan.
In my book a CO that's 100m ahead of everyone else and is apparently ignored by enemy AI can safely be considered a traitor and thus hostile.

And no one knew whether you were wounded and alive or dead already. Ice ordered us to "get to CO if you can avoid dying while doing it", so obviously we did not :P

Coastal Road
IFV Commander w. Draakon & SuperÜ.

I expected the LAV to last about 10 minutes, which I think was accurate. Suprisingly making the IFV the lead vehicle with visibility of about 200m didn't really work out and we got exploderized by an angry tank (which might or might not have been spotted earlier but never got passed to us via CC). The patched IFV team proceeded to catch up with Alpha but lost its newest member - ENG1 Robbie - to AI along the way. Sorry Robbie, hope it wasn't to confusing of a first (?) session for you. Apparently the other squads hadn't been too careful and we kept picking off enemy stragglers on the flanks as we went along.

Ultimately we cought up, killed a shilka, killed a T-72 and killed a BMP-2 by jumping into a nearly destroyed Shilka and using it's turret. Bosses we were, plenty of dudes were killed as well. Now, CO (miracilously still alive despite being rather gung-ho and utilizing enemy weapons without telling anyone) didn't seem to appreciate our murder-beast aptitude and we were at first designated to a AGS-UAZ, then to taxi services. While fetching the AAV we also met plenty of EI in formerly cleared areas but thanks to Five's one-hit-wonder we knew what to do and just kept on moving.

Coming back (meeting more dudes on the way) we followed CO (gone fully mad by now) in a safe distance and got ambushed by militiants he had obviously bribed to ignore him, considering he just had passed a minute ago within 10m distance. More exploderizing happened and one of our little happy packages probably took out wounded Tigershark. But considering the aforementioned and him being, you know, Tigershark, we weren't exactly stressed out about that.

Bravo cought up with us and we followed behind their liberated UAZ. Turns out that despite this precaution whatever lay ahead still prefered to target our own UAZ and after a short and sudden burst of BRRRRRRRT I found myself disembodied and watching the comrades die from above.

Notes on the mission
All in all a very fun mission. With the fog as it is the IFV doesn't have much of a purpose and maybe focusing more on enemy infantry might be the way to go. 1-2 SMAW teams for the players are well equipped to deal with the odd BMP/T-34/Shilka as the fog provides great cover. I'd also consider removing NVGs from the players (I think the CHDZK doesn't have any by default). I forgot I had them for most of the mission and must say it's a lot more atmospheric and tense without them.

Without the fog/at day I expect the LAV to kill everything in sight until taken out by a hidden SPG or running out of ammo. As the road's rather plain the infantry can just focus on protecting one flank (up-hill) and would probably spot most stuff waiting along the way, bar any AI reinforcements coming the north.

I'm not sure how crucial the targets on the island are but I think we managed fine without using the AAVs. Removing them could help clear up confusion during briefing and make it less of a logistical challenge.

That said, this all is based on tuesday. I'd hold off major changes until we've played the mission with ~40 players.

Black Mamba
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Black Mamba »

Thirith wrote:Quick question: I'm still fairly new to MP, VON and Teamspeak. At the beginning I apparently had a hot mic (or however you call it). Did I get that correctly? I'm mainly asking because I did set TS3 to press-to-play, so I'm not quite sure what happened there. Also, in-game, was anyone able to hear me when I talked? I responded to people (Draakon, for instance) a few times, but they didn't seem to hear me. Finally, total newb question, because I'm failing to find coherent info on the Teamspeak site: the circle next to my name changed from blue to orange at some point. Can anyone tell me what this meant and whether I should've reacted to it in some way? (I'm still somewhat at a loss with respect to when to use Arma's VON and when to use Teamspeak; in a non-leadership position I stick to the former, right?)
You got it. Thos hot mic issues are most of the time random, at least for me. Seems both VON and sometimes TS get stuck in broadcasting mode, usually alt-tabbing in and out or tapping the ptt key a few times fixes it. Anyway, that's no big deal as you did fix that pretty quick.
If the circle changed to orange, it means that you activated the Command Channel (which is the one we use for Squad Leaders and Command elements. You can hop out of it by pressing the key combination you set up for it again. It's no big deal if it happens accidentaly either, you just expose yourself to a lot of banter that probably doesn't interest you.

Regarding the use of TS, the basic rule of thumb is indeed that if not in a leading slot, you should refrain from using teamspeak, but the absence of a real direct channel means that you can be forced to use it as times, either to communicate with that one wounded guy from another fireteam (frequent if you're a medic), or for contact reports (let's say you see that enemy squad just on the flank of Bravo 2 ft, you don't have time to have that contact report go through your FTL, be transmitted to the SL and swing back to B2, so you can use TS to report it immediately).

Cratesistance
A2 FTL, CDF

So the plan was to use that massive hill and its tree cover to set up a base of fire and move into town. During the briefing, I wanted to inform Fer that I was pretty sure they would set up at least two scouts on the south slope of that hill, but for some reason I decided not to, seeing as I didn't take a CO slot.

We got up to our BOF position without really checking out that south slope. I was watching our backs until Satire called targets in the village to our south west. My attention shifted, I heard footsteps behind me, turned around and found myself looking at super insulting me and shooting me in the face (that's strange, btw, as I did turn around completely to look at you, which doesn't seem to happen from your perspective).
Good thing I didn't write that post about FTL initiative as I intended to, because I did lack any semblant of it on that mission.

Roundabout
Lone Shark Pilot

First time flying fixed wings in FA ever (even in Folk and ARPS)! That was cool.
So it turns out the Albatros doesn't have much of a loadout. Tons of rockets, and 150 rounds for the gun.
I started orbiting south of the AO, and making rocket runs whenever I'd be called, until at some point two Mi8s showed their nose and I tried to take them down. Well, I riddled one with about 75 rounds of cannon, but as it turns out, that cannon not only lacks ammo, it also lacks punch, and the chopper, smoking heavily, went about and landed anyway. Unloaded the rest of my ammo on the second, only to have it turn around and land somewhere. On the airfield.

I had a fair few rockets left, but I was granted authorization to land and rearm. I was still pushing on the brakes, on the runway, when I started to get shot at by enemies who had overrun the airfield. Full throttle, take off (that was a close one: I took off about ten meters before that fence to the north).

So, no rearming. Hmmm. I went for a few more rocket runs, could hear the situation turning to shit on CC, and decided at the very end to take out a few reamining bunkers. On my very last run, I took a bullet to the face and my head started wiggling around the cockpit. As I had just expanded my ammo, I figured I could land back at the airfield anyway, see what was up.
Well, apparently in arma, if you're wounded, you can handle comms, a stick and the throttle, but you cannot get the gear down. I went for a (pretty nice) belly landing, but arma gods wouldn't have that.

Coastal Road
Bravo Medic with Dabbo as SL

We did pretty well initially, but there were a lot of mishaps though. First of them, I was reporting contacts on that island for ten minutes before somebody suddenly decided to pay attention.
Then I was reminding people that those guns on that other island were the objective and should be destroyed. Nobody ever paid any attention.
(by the way, the not reading the briefing thing is starting to be a pain: people wind up in command positions and have no idea what to do).
Then Dabbo died at some point, and there was no chain of command in bravo anymore. Ever.
Bravo got slow as a snail, and extended on about two hundred meters, which would eventually caused the death of a full fireteam.
I spotted that enemy inside a tree, shot him point blank, only to have him turn around and shoot me back. Called it, that dude won't die forget him, and saw at least four people get wounded by him.
It was fun, though. Confused, but fun.

Basically, the only thing that I thought was not going so well, was people loose focus pretty quickly between engagements and tend to not move up as fast as they should, be it to stop and loot that corpse, or find that one piece of cover and refuse to get out of it, or even get slightly wounded and decide moving up is not an option. Spread out is one thing, overextended is whole another story. Pick up the pace could be my new motto.

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Thirith
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Thirith »

Thanks for the answers, Black Mamba!

Edit: Oh, and great flying and bombing of bunkers!
"Until now we scraped along the ground like rats, but from now on, we soar. Like eagles. Yeah. LIKE EAGLES... ON... POGO STICKS." - Grim Fandango

Ardyvee
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Ardyvee »

In roundabout we (me and my ftl) died quite fast. Apparently a bullet to the head is lethal.

Coastal Road: It has been one of the best missions I've had so far. After expending our ammo on a fixed thank, I was eventually led to a RPG-7V, which was then used on a light vehicle. Although my fireteam was mostly disorganized (that is we kind of just followed FTL while listening from orders from above and paying attention around us), it was fun and I'd do it again with the same people. Toppo lost his things, after deciding that you can swim in land too. And thanks to that, we found a way to bring a UAZ to the mainland!

Of note in Coastal Road was: the LAV got shot. I hear it. "shit". I run towards it. Get out the wounded. Move them one away from it in case it decides to blow up again. Apply first aid while hoping he doesn't die on me. Everyone arrived in the mean time and are aiding the other crew. It was one of the most beautiful moments I've seen in Arma.
There was also the last AT round I fired that mission: a light vehicle was approaching from the west. Bravo Command doesn't see it. I run towards the west. Meet up with whoever else was there and prepare the RPG. Two shots hit the vehicle at the same time, once it's visible and started moving towards us. It was pretty nice to see AT members working together against a threat.

Overall, Coastal road is a fine mission. The settings were indeed very atmospheric, although I eventually settled for using NVG. It would have been nice if we had a way to resupply instead of depending on fallen soldiers (enemy or ally alike), but that's mostly the way the missions was directed. All in all, I'm ready to take a ride again in a foggy night.

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Kefirz
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Re: [Tue] 03 Dec 2013 (Unto a meat grinder)

Post by Kefirz »

SuperŪ, I'm pretty sure that you had to give an oath as a medic not to do harm to people,
or were they all suffering from massive leg trauma and you just shot them so you could revive them?

But seriously, those were some good moves man :D too bad you couldn't execute that 1 guy with a makarov :D
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