[Sun] 13 Jan 2013 (Slippery Holy Rabbits)

[Black Mamba]

Also note that ingame VON is kinda badly optimized in arma, and is heavily dependant on the server load/bandwidth. Usually big numbers will mess up VON (yesterday, at the beginning of Running Rabbit, I couldn't hear a word Strang was saying, it got better as the mission went on), and if you happen to have a lower connection than other users at a given moment, your VON won't be rendered, or not correctly.
This is well seen in choppers, when the server already has trouble updating the position of everybody moving that fast (hence the stuttering), if many people try to use the vehicle channel, it usually causes lag/cutting in the voices.

Hopefully this will be better in the 1.63 patch (from what I hear, it is already a lot better in the latest beta patches).

[mort]

Also note that ingame VON is kinda badly optimized in arma, and is heavily dependant on the server load/bandwidth. Usually big numbers will mess up VON (yesterday, at the beginning of Running Rabbit, I couldn't hear a word Strang was saying, it got better as the mission went on), and if you happen to have a lower connection than other users at a given moment, your VON won't be rendered, or not correctly.
This is well seen in choppers, when the server already has trouble updating the position of everybody moving that fast (hence the stuttering), if many people try to use the vehicle channel, it usually causes lag/cutting in the voices.

Hopefully this will be better in the 1.63 patch (from what I hear, it is already a lot better in the latest beta patches).

Thx for the info on that .As it seems to be a recurring problem for me I will stick to taking the no 4 slot in fireteams as I seem to be able to hear other team members on VON but cant talk back/give orders.

[Halop]

Did anyone else have a really weird start to this mission? At the spawn point I found that everyone including myself was buried up to their waists in the ground (in the spectator view as well). I have never seen that before.

Had no trouble at spawn, maybe because I started in a vehicle.

Running Rabbit
ASL
I though that last time Alpha had a pretty good plan in this mission, so I stole Macaco's Alpha squad's plan from the previous time we played Running Rabbit.
Alpha advanced in a line, A1 closest to the road, A3 - furthest, and the attachments were free to do their own thing. Compared to the other squads, we were advancing very quickly, so we spent some time just waiting around.

We were on the high ground the whole time during the whole mission, so we were really good at spotting stuff. Most AGS'es and SPG's were neutralized before they became a threat thanks to our valiant MMG1, having the MG team was an excellent idea, as firing at targets 800 meters out is too much for our rifles. The technicals were also very quickly dispatched, at first I ordered Alpha to not engage them, but we were already firing, it went well either way.

The T-55's were quite a surprise, I think there were 5 of them, by the time we spotted them, they were to our backs. CO ordered Alpha to engage the tanks, so I told Alpha to turn around and destroy them. Lots of wasted rockets later, we killed them and moved on.

The BMP's were not a real threat, MAT engaged them before they had a chance to spot us.

In the final minutes of the mission, we were flanked by some enemies to the north. I crested the hill to spot them, saw a few guys prone by some trees - I shot one, but the second one killed me.

I think this went very well for Alpha, I think in total we had only a few casualties, we neutralized every threat we saw. But I could not always communicate with the squad, as there was constant CC chatter, a lot of contact reports and requests for orders were missed by me because of that, if it wasn't for the TS3 CC plugin, I would have gone mad from all the cross-chatter though.

Holy Stones
Aziz

This mission would have gone a lot smoother if it were not for the confusion at the beginning the vagueness of the plan and lack of communication coupled with some iffy fireteam movement meant that Alpha never really got running until it was too late.

Yes, my mistake. I drew up a rough plan, I thought we needed to get to the market as fast as possible, faster than the enemy. I didn't have CC enabled at mission start, so that was horrible by me, I imagine the frustration of the SL's . Anyway, because of my lack of communication at start, we arrived later than the enemy, and I was the first to die along with my medic Skabooga. We still won though, no thanks to my failings

Slippery Eel
Blufor
Alpha 1 AAR

I was gunning the humvee, Ebass in command. I was standing there, at our roadblock point, and trying to find out who the hell was constantly shooting at me, someone was trying really hard to kill me. We started to move out towards the mosque. We spotted a black SUV, I started firing at it and then we won.

Slippery Eel take two
Blufor
Alpha 1 AR

A1 again, this time I was AR, and Danny was in command. We disembarked, and took cover in some buildings. Ferrard shot some enemy guys on the roofs. I climbed down to get a better look and got shot myself. Ferrard climbed down to help me up but got shot too. At this moment I was screaming for someone to pop smoke, I crawled my way to safety, but neither Danny of Ferrard survived the engagement. Last order from Danny was to take the humvee to safety. I did just that, told SL of our situation, command ordered us to drive towards the airfield to cut off Azim. I drove there, parked the humvee and the mission ended with our success.

[Black Mamba]

Running Rabbit
MMG1 Assistant Gunner (attached to Alpha Squad)

Strang was the gunner. Right from the beginning, we were told to abandon the vehicles and start hiking uphills to occupy the left flank of the platoon. This was a bit of a hassle at first but we finally met the rest of the squad and started acting as spotters/Long range firetool for the squad. There was way too much chatter on TS though, and passing info to the Squad Lead was a pain (Guys, we have contacts on that rooftop, 400m, SE. Ten minutes later, we'd receive something along the lines of Guys, we have contact on that rooftop, 400m, SE. No shit). Luckily I was just a humble assistant and let Strang deal with all that, I only flooded our own group comms with contact reports, range infos and bitching about this or that.
At some point we spotted a group of technicals coming from the left. We started engaging it and soon received the support of seemingly the whole squad. For an average of about two hundred rounds in each car, they didn't bother us that much. After what Strang received a phone call and went afk, so we let the squad move up and took position in the middle of nowhere. I used that downtime to roll a cigarette, and about halfway into the process spotted one single latecome technical that was coming right for us. With much profanity shouted at my screen I threw the whole stuff all over the place, grabbed my mouse in a hurry and riddled the damn thing with bullets while comrade Strang's virtual alter-ego was admiring the Takistani wilderness.
When he finally came back, we moved up, only to discover that now, it was a tank platoon coming from our back. I'll spare you the nuisance of 6 minutes of contacts reports on TS (for two T-55s total) and the 6 or 7 bunny-killing rockets. So we decided to move up again and take point position for the squad, so we wouldn't have to witness that circus any longer. I was then very welcoming towards m0ntag. And a few minutes after that, we came under fire for the first time, and while I was hiding behind a bush like the coward I am, Strang died.
Damn it, now, I have to find ammo, handle the TS frenzy and act as my own spotter. Finding ammo took me some time, as I refused myself the right to pick up an enemy PKM knowing there was an ammo truck somewhere (But oh boy, somewhere is a large place, filled with uncommunicative people. My VON was totally messed up at that point).
Finally found the truck, engaged a few more enmy static positions and got to the smurf base.

Holy Stones
Squad Medic (in Toppo's squad, Azoz's army)

Much confusion, some guys popped exactly on superU's position, so when looking at them, my cursor would indicate his name. Then they shot me in the face. Turns out it was Strang and Ferrard, and they killed super too.

Slippery Eel
Azim Guard, RPK wielding

This was going alright. We spotted one, then two enemy M2 mounted trucks when getting to the mosque. I stayed back to cover the team while they were crossing the street, and moved upstairs cause there was no way I could cross that street without getting murderized. Was about to shoot the gunner in the most forward humvee from the top when Azim got killed.

Slippery Eel, Electric Boogaloo
Opfor dude.

I immediately went for the northernmost cache, knowing that I wouldn't find anything in the one inside the mosque. The second I picked up my AK, I saw Fer's fireteam's humvee driving directly to me, 25 meters ahead. I tried to take a few potshots at it (and missed. That was a granted kill and I still missed). I then saw another dude come from behind it and quickly retreated behind the closest building.
Now, I had two options: get in the building, and wait for them to try and clear it (they knew I was there), or try and move as quick as possible away from there, hide my AK and try and find a good position.
I went for the second option. Little did I know there was another fireteam on the other side of said building. I shot two dudes down, one of them killed me too. And according to the score, one of them didn't die by my hand.

A few remarks:

It was pretty cool to get such numbers again, but (there always is a but):
- Slotting was really awful. People kept slotting into stuff before it was called, or not slotting at all (and I did once, so I'm not all white on that).
- There was waaay too much banter during the slotting and planning phases.
- There was way too much people using TS instead of group VON. I know that VON was somehow unpractical due to some kind of lag, but please let the leaders only use TS while ingame. 6 people on TS in a squad with two attachments is already huge, but it really gets unbearable when that number goes up to twelve.
- Chernolo could maybe use a wider area (after all, the factory is huge, why not let the cops occupy it all?)
- Slippery Eel (and I know I said that already) really needs some strict ROEs to be enforced imo. Like no shooting unarmed civies, even if you know for a fact they are players, unless you just saw them hiding a weapon.

[head]

Running Rabbit
Tank Commander, Spent time in tank , ordered superU in swedish and stuff nothing much else.
Saw waffly crash into the town.

Holy Stones
FTL - A1
Killed enemy CO, died from gunmen , rest of my sqaud got wiped out by grenades
suggestion:Remove grenade launchers
Slippery Eel
Shot some blufor ran away,aziz died
Slippery Eel Electric Boogaloo
Blufor shot me as a unarmed civie and serveral more.


Edit: forgot to say, That mission needs a civvie death counter.

[fer]

Rabbit Run

But truth be told, I think the mission went substandardly because of Fer's excellent handling of Charlie and command and control in general.

Charlie SL: Fer
|- M: Soviet Sandwich

Oh dear, Darktatka is being kind, because IIRC poor Charlie and its attachments, HMG and MMG2, were treated to grumpy Fer the Napoleonic squad leader, who marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again. And then marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again. And again, and again, and again and again. Only sometimes, with added overwatch.

Kudos to my FTLs and attachment leads, who didn't have sense of humour failures, and gamely implemented by movement plans whilst keeping a lookout for enemy hill patrols. There was a logic to my approach: since the rest of the platoon was too far away / low down in the valley to effectively support us, Charlie had to provide its own cover. Accordingly, I often split the squad in half, using one set of elements to cover the rest as they moved to the next ridge. With hindsight, I should have given the elements some kind of fixed red/blue style grouping, as it would have simplified comms.

Until the second town things seemed to go pretty smoothly: on my left (and occasionally roaming about our frontage) MMG2 and HMG were engaging targets in the valley (with Darktatka's C2 for security); in the middle, Lord Penney's C1 ploughed ahead, whilst far out to my right the eagle-eyed Kaleovil (C3) was spotting hill patrols ahead of us and coordinating deadly fires. If Charlie was moving a little slower than the rest of the platoon, I'm afraid that was down to me and my Duke of York ambitions, so apologies to our CO, comrade Tigershark.

Eventually we found ourselves in a series of commanding position looking down on the second town, and here the MMG2 and HMG teams went to serious work, chewing up an enemy SPG-9 installation and various other insurgent types. At the second of these positions the CSWs and FTLs were all working together, shooting and spotting at enemy positions nearly a kilometre ahead of the platoon. CSWs FTW.

To our left, in the valley, the rest of the platoon cleared the last town, and before we knew it we had been leap-frogged, CO and DC bounding ahead of us to a little hilltop to our east, from where Garmasar was almost visible through the trees. Gathering up my squad we moved as one, for once discarding the overwatch element - so keen was I to get us into positions around the CO and DC markers. As we reached the valley floor a contact report suggested a BMP down the road to our south - crossing would have left is horribly exposed, so we pulled up just shy of the road, in some dead ground. Tigershark was exhorting me to get my men to his position, which only made the task of getting our RPG gunners forward seem to take longer (despite the fact that everyone reacted super quickly).

At the last moment Delta informed us that the BMP was de-crewed, so we ran like crazy for the CO's marker and took up what would be our last defensive position, oriented east with the fireteams covering north, east and south. Command seemed to have passed from Tigershark, so I listened as a new voice gave me objective markers to the east and then pushed off with the whole squad. As we moved, we were informed that the enemy was withdrawing and seemingly moments later we broke out of the woods and saw the base ahead. Success!



Holy Stones

A1 FTL: Fer
|- AR: Sian
|- AAR: Dan (?)
|- RPG: McDigby

Comrade Bodge, our ASL, promised that we would ride into battle in the technical, and dominate the western edge of the marketplace district whilst the rest of the platoon murderised the enemy. None of these things happened.



The CO rode off in the technical, so instead of being the tip of the spear, A1 was the rearguard, rumbling up to the RV in Yarum inside a creaky old Land Rover. We had lost one of our number because he'd mounted another team's vehicle, but were reunited at the roadside near the city, where he waved us down like an AK-toting hitchhiker (please note that, in general, the Party does NOT advise the picking up of hitchhikers if they appear to be armed).

We ran the last few hundred metres into Zargabad proper, and almost immediately found ourselves holed up in a building, exchanging fire with enemies to our north-west (outside the 'red zone'). Charlie, a two-man element, was in a building north of us, and soon Bodge ordered us to move up and alongside them such that we now became the western-most element.

From inside a shop with a glass frontage I could see the Mosque to our north, but it was apparent that the enemy was to our north-west, and we would have to engage them at close range. Splitting my fireteam into red/blue elements we did some crossing and covering, making it to a building where Charlie was also active. Assuming Charlie was clearing it we set up to move north, across the street.

I sent Dan and McDigby first, and almost immediately they were shot and wounded. At first I thought their attackers were to our east, down the road, or in the compound they had sheltered next to once over the road. I threw smokes and hand grenades before realising that the enemy was probably next to me, on my side of the street, on the other side of the wall against which I sheltered. It was a bit chilling, really.

Certain that I couldn't help my men until the threat was eliminated, I scurried around trying to find a way into the mini-compound, eventually opting to get up onto the building and see if I couldn't shoot down at them. On the roof I came face to face with an enemy but we both mistook each other for friendlies and the opportunity to kill him passed. I ducked into a room and spent a few seconds frantically calling out to see if he - and some men I could now see in the tiny yard below me - were friendlies.

By now other parts of Alpha were in or around the building and it was getting hopelessly confusing. I saw a man on the ground, crawling, so I kept asking if any of our guys were crawling. No answer, so I shot him. Then it sounded like I'd FF'd a comrade, and so I ran down to give aid. Down into the path of an enemy bullet.

Those guys in the yard below me? They were not my friends.



Question for Ferrard Carson: does the mission, like Internecine, have the name tags enabled? When I wrote the Internecine missions I certainly wanted there to be confusion about targets at a distance, but the name tags feature helps simulate the fact that, up close, you'd probably recognise your pals.

++

Also: Just picking up in comrade Bodge's points, I'd like to ask - as politely, but as strongly as I can - for everyone's help with supporting the session host and mission COs during the slotting and planning phases. Having high playercounts is awesome, and opens up all sorts of combined arms and adversarial mission options for us, but it does make getting people into slots and plans communicated a little more challenging. Those are great problems to have, and ones we're very happy to deal with as hosts; but they mean that respecting FA's approach to slotting, chat etc. become critical if we're to maximise the amount of time we all spend shooting people / being shot at. A high playercount can be a fragile thing, and everyone's time is precious - if we allow sessions to become disorganised some people will drift away; so we ask for everyone's help here (and genuinely appreciate the support we already get). All this stuff about the threat of indefinite detention / execution has been blow completely out of proportion.

[DarkTatka]

Regarding Slippery Eel ROE, it might be solved with enforcing civilian casualty limit on blufor. For example 5 civilians dead - blufor failure.
Maybe not making it mission critical and allowing the fight to continue would be best. Just a big message on the screen "Now look what you've done". SAnd a different ending when civilian death limit was reached.
So the mission could end in many ways -
Blufor caught Azim
Blufor caught Azim, but at the price of PR disaster
Azim escaped
Azim escaped and blufor are bloody murderers (aka epic fail)
???
Profit.

It should be possible to distinguish if civilians were killed by blufor or indfor, right?

[Black Mamba]

It should be possible to distinguish if civilians were killed by blufor or indfor, right?

Easily. But the problem is, at some point it becomes fairly obvious who is a player and who's not (mostly, at least, sometimes there might be a bit of confusion). And then you see BluFor shooting down unarmed players, quietly walking down the streets. And that doesn't make any sense.
Preventing Blufor from killing unarmed pplayers can be done script-wise, but I think we can trust everybody to just abide by some simple ROE. Don't shoot unless you see a weapon.

Now, I'm a pretty big fan of the multiple endings stuff, though, and I've been trying to implement that in a few adversarials. The way I'm doing it for now, is to assign a score to some events (complete an objective, die, kill an enemy, kill a civilian, allow an enemy to complete an objective, capture an enemy, get arrested and so on.) In the end the server calculates each team's score and decides who won. So you can complete all your objectives and still lose the match if you messed up the ROEs and/or took too many casualties. It can also be a way to make it more interesting for players to surrender and get captured than killed, for example.
The system works pretty well as is, all it needs is quite a lot of balancing effort on each mission.
By the way, if anybody wants to implement such a system in a mission they're making, don't hesitate to call for help here.

[Syn]

The multiple ending option for slippery eel is a great one, its quickly getting to be my favorite adversarial. Can't wait to try it out. Is it sunday already?

[DarkTatka]

As advesarials go (and I don't like advesarials) Slippery Eel is my favourite one. The paranoia of Blufor is priceless . Reminds me sometimes of Spec Ops: The Line.