[Sun] 03 Feb 2013 (Soviet Bowl)

[Mamuto]

Internecine II
Opfor/Attacking Bravo FTL
Mamuto, Joe, Cuddlefish, Syn
During the planning phase, everything looked good. I liked the vector of attack, we had a flanking element, everything should have gone much better than it did. We attacked from the East but most of the force never made it to the village. A brilliant move by the defense to put a fireteam out by the hill/oil derrick, that one decision alone meant victory for you guys. However, the CO never really gave us an order to move into the village, so we were under fire from them way longer than we should have been. That didn't help. My AR opening fire on friendlies before getting domed also did not help. After hearing that Delta was cut down, I told Cuddle and Syn to pull back North out of engagement with the oil derrick fireteam while I ran up to Bodge to try to heal him. Sadly, his legs were broken, so I left him and his 1 man fireteam behind. So sorry guys

My three man fireteam made our way to the Northern part of town (somehow not coming under fire... hmm... why didn't we do this to start with??) By then command was dead, Alpha was dead, so it was on me to lead.. all of 5 people, two of them bleeding out. I tried to make some maneuvers happen inside the village with just Bravo left by it was pretty hopeless. I grenaded one guy, tried bounding over, and then all of us were gunned down.

What could have gone better: Better communication from CO to the main assault team and the flanking team. Main assault team not being bogged down outside of town. Ferrard not being on the enemy team
Good job, defense.


Fighting Withdraw
Bravo 2 FTL
Mamuto, Joe, Crocuta, Mr-Link
Bravo really didn't get to do much for a majority of this mission. Shooting at guys 700m+ out gets old quick. We did pick up a PKM, increasing our effective range, which Joe put to good use. Vodniks and BMP did most of the work for us. It's definitely a bit frustrating sitting around while listening to Charlie getting slaughtered on comms. So frustrating that I decided to get on eating a bullet towards the end. I'm not even mad though because I got to watch Cuddlefish manning a grenade launcher on a jeep to maximum efficiency

What could have gone better: I'm really not sure. I think the pacing of this mission needs to be slightly adjusted. The AO is HUGE, our dinky ak's can only hit so far effectively. I feel like the ambush site is a good idea/well set up, we just did not approach it correctly (one squad at a time) Plus there was confusion as to whether the forces were friendly or not. Ferrard, good leading though


Do NOT look at the ship! NOOooo
Looks at ship - 5fps, looks away from ship - 30fps, looks at the ship - 5fps OH GOD WHY IS EVERYONE LOSING CONNECTI- "arma has stopped responding" oh.


Rolling Matryoshka II
Bravo 2 FTL
Mamuto, Joe, Zitron, Cuddlefish
Followed Bodge (BSL) around; told my guys that my mission was to not get any of them killed. That worked almost well, considering the odds: we attacked uphill, against the sun, into a fortified woody area. By this point, Charlie was gone, but thankfully Steenkist rolled up in the tank and put highly effective fire into the bunkers. Next, Bravo managed to bound North into the next copse of trees, and here's where shit really hit the fan. I told my guys to watch North and Northeast and to stay in cover. I noticed a Dishka about 400m out with it's sights trained right on Bravo. I relayed the contact and opened fire, thankfully taking it out before it killed anyone. However, Joe somehow ended up getting shot in the head again (Seriously man, stop getting insta-killed every single round!)

Bravo was told to attack the next set of bunkers Northwest, with Bravo 3 on point. Predictably, the moment they got to the bunker pretty much all of them got shot down. Bravo 2 was to follow after them. Well, orders are orders, so Zitron, Cuddlefish, and I sprinted in under fire, went prone, being instantly suppressed. Smokes went out, both Cuddle and Zitron took bullets and started bleeding out. I crawled around a sandbag, opened fire on some guys to our West, watched the tank drive waaaaay too far forward and eat 2 rockets, blowing up in the process. I patched up one of my guys and we got the order to fall back. We full sprinted back East still taking fire, but somehow managing to disengage successfully. As we ran towards the rest of Bravo, I noticed two enemies not even 50 meters to their right in open terrain shooting at them. We gunned them down, ran past the now suppressed Bravo to the road and started moving down it. As we reached the gas station we came under more fire, but before we could do anything the mission was called. Good job Bravo 2, you guys are awesome at dodging bullets!

What could have gone better:Guys, can we please stop doing tactically unsound things like attacking uphill, into the sun, into a fortified position? Thaaaaanks. On a related note, I think I would like to Command this mission the next time we play, but I'm a bit apprehensive.. Don't really know what to expect. All you veteran Commanders out there, any tips on how to take the next step? I really like being a Fireteam Lead but I'm guessing CO is ten times harder. I read the thread on here about leading, but..


Fuel Utopia (afterparty)
This was a great mission, a few things were a bit of a hiccup, like the fact that telling friend from foe is pretty much impossible. Steenkist was shot by Ferrard, and before I could heal him up, Wilbo ran in and TK'd him, barely missing me
Later, I was next to command when Wilson ran up on a neighboring rooftop and shot up both, killing me
Otherwise, I like the idea of this mission. Also, GOTCHA, FERRARD! *maniacal cackle*


See you guys next week!

[Cuddlefish]

Workshop - I was the first planner in the CO exercise, which was really cool, though I was laid low by the ancient enemy - "Map Scale". What's a few kilometers between friends, huh? I strongly recommend that anyone who is interested in being a CO in future try and get involved in these.

Internicine II - Redfor Bravo, under Mamuto.

While we were at the very head of the main advance to begin with, our fireteam was quickly bogged down engaging hostiles near an Oil Derrick south of town. By the time we had disengaged from that battle, there were less than ten minutes remaining on the clock. We then got a little stretched out as we entered the town - I was holed up for awhile in an archway, dumping the mags I'd recovered from Joe's corpse into a second story window whose occupant had come this close to getting me with their opening barrage. Just before the end, I moved up to rejoin Mamuto and Syn? and was hit by fire from an unknown angle - I was crawling towards them when the mission ended.

Fighting Withdrawal - Bravo 3 FTL

This was my first fire-team lead position in an actual game; which wasn't a thing I was planning on but no-one else was taking the slot so hey. There were a few times I got a bit disoriented keeping up with the map and direction changes, probably because I'm so used to just following whatever my FTL is doing rather than keeping track of the markers myself. However, we stayed pretty much intact until that awkward moment when all of Bravo got mowed in the space of a minute thirty; after which we crawled from vehicle to vehicle and fired the weapons of assorted technicals in a futile display of defiance. The main point where I actually accomplished something was as Bravo was ascending... uh, the first hill we went up with hostiles. Tennessee, maybe? In any case, I saw a guy at less than thirty yards, lying in wait on the opposite side of a ridge that one of the other teams was just about to crest, which would have been bloody. I and another member of my team (don't recall who) were able to get effective fire on him before he got a shot off, so that was good. Also, a special shout-out to Black Mamba's spotting, which kept both us and the larger squad out of quite a lot of trouble.

There was no third mission.

Rolling Matryoshka - Bravo 2 with Mamuto

We did a lot of running through woods trying to see what the hell was going on. I don't actually remember that much else about this one. The experience of being locked down in cover a stone's throw from a T-72 as it unloads on the enemy was pretty impressive, though.

Fuetopia - Raider Bravo 2 w/ Mamuto

The ride up to the town was beyond glorious, trucks and motorbikes and communist bloc helicopters racing across the dunes. Once we got there... Holy fratricide, batman. At least two, possibly three (It wasn't clear from the radio chatter afterward if Mamuto's death was also FF, though I nearly got caught in that one as well) of our four men were killed by our own side. I never fired a round or saw the enemy before eating a second friendly burst at less than ten yards, and then bled to death despite the best medical efforts of my accidental assailant. Now, the appearances of both sides were pretty damned similar (Giving the Raiders civilian appearances after making it clear we'd be fighting Civilians probably was asking for this, hindsightwise.) and in the second situation I was moving alone in completely unsecured territory, but damn was that a frustrating way to end the session.

[Black Mamba]

Opened a Feedback thread for Fuel Utopia here. Feel free to express yourself.

Well, here's an idea. I could throw in some music at the start.

[fer]

There was no third mission.

Later that week, comrade Cuddlefish noted that his food ration had increased; he even found a small bottle of vodka in his modest apartment (though there was no sign of forced entry). Afterwards, he wondered if there was a link between this situation and his public statements about events that may, or may not, have occurred on Sunday 03 February, 2013. Living in the Socialist Agrarian Utopia could be a strange experience.

[fer]

Note: If anyone's interested, I've uploaded plenty of images - as usual, mostly screenshots of the map mid-mission - to the gallery. I have some video, which I'll try to post snippets from later in the week. As ever, thank you to everyone who made it to the session - it was a pleasure to host.



Internecine II

Fox FTL: Fer

With sufficient numbers to post extra-village elements as lookouts or ambush forces, I found myself dispatched to a little single storey house some 50m north of the village, there to act as a lookout.

Unfortunately, the lack of useful north-facing windows rather diminished the utility of this structure, so with the CO's permission I struck out for some rocks far, far to the north of our village. Whilst the lack of optics or binoculars meant I would be spotting for pixels, the rocks I eventually sheltered by afforded me a view of the eastern approach to the village, the western hillside, and might well have put me to the rear of any northern force too. I wouldn't have been effective with my AK, but I could spot for a long while and then, perhaps, creep in for a kill or two.

Sure enough, my patience was rewarded when the enemy began to stream in from the east and western hillside. I concentrated on the eastern enemies, who were coming in through the little meadow with stone walls and scattered trees. Between them and me I could also see an isolated enemy figure, picking his way towards the little structure where I had been sent earlier. With the battle very much underway, I resolved to go over to the attack and began to creep down towards what I hoped would be the enemy CO.

Halfway to the house, whilst advancing along a line of shrubs and small trees, I came under fire. I received a harsh reminder in the lessons of player persistence, and the difference between cover and concealment. Afterwards, I was reminded, also, of the value of better communication: I had failed to adequately warn my comrades that I was coming back in towards the village - it had been one of them that shot me.

Host's Note: Time-boxing this adversarial seemed to work pretty well, so we might see the approach adopted again.

Fighting Withdraw

Engineers Lead: Wilson
|- E: Fer

For the first hour I think all comrade Wilson and I did was drive our repair truck, and a UAZ I'd liberated, from point to point behind the platoon. It wasn't wildly exciting, but it was mostly safe aside from that time in the first town where something very large began firing at Wilson's truck from the top of a mountain. At one point, we even found time to do a bit of photography, and passers-by may even have heard me saying: "Work it baby ... Yeah ... That's great, but give me more aggression ... Yeah, that's right."

Later, whilst parked in the mountain pass, I urged Wilson to job up with a combat unit and see the action he'd signed up for. I would watch over his truck, and not at all sit in the back eating his food and watching pornography on my laptop. We discussed the movie trope of the character who yearns for a combat role all film long, gets his wish granted in the final act, then has his death reported during the epilogue (points for the comrade who can name the WWII naval film with that exact plot). Anyway, Wilson talked to comrade CO Ferrard Carson, then went off up the hill to join Alpha, rifle in hand. I don't know what became of him.

My meal and pornography plans were cut short when it became clear that Charlie had come to a horrible end near a bunker to our north-west. Survivors were mewling for rescue, but the rest of the platoon was far away. I volunteered my services as a mini-cab driver, offering to evacuate them in my UAZ. Carson greenlit my mission; at once I flew up the hillside and along a ridge, until at last I came upon a little band of stragglers with friendly faces. They piled in quickly, of which I was glad because the vehicle was getting peppered by small arms fire, then we set off down into the pass and towards the relative safety of a little gully. A fireteam-sized Charlie clambered out, patched me up, and went on their merry way. I went back to the truck to see if I'd left the DVD on pause.

"Now what?!?!" I didn't say, when reports came in that a man had been left behind at the bunker. Halop was alive and talking on the radio, so a second rescue attempt was authorised. This time I reached the bunker at more or less the same time as the CO's element, and the scene we found was gruesome. There were bodies everywhere, in all varieties of uniform. I thought to myself: "Don't these people understand that warm greens and cool greens shouldn't be worn together this season?" Then, whilst looking for Halop, I came upon an enemy SPG-9 gunner and shot him in the head, though only after a very noticeable pause (which illustrated perfectly the confusion that Charlie must have experienced earlier). I didn't find Halop, but someone else did and he was saved. For a while we scampered about the position, but heavy calibre weapons on the hillside to our west soon opened up on us. The enemy was in bunkers level with ours, firing everything they had horizontally at us - I was wounded and patched up at least once during the exchange. Then, just as I thought I'd joined a combat unit, I was ordered to recover the pair truck and make it to Alpha's position, where comrade YouTube Hero SuperU's BTR-60 was reported to be fixable.

The UAZ flew down into the pass, screeched to a halt next to the repair truck, and I was off again in a flash, clanking and crashing my way across a series of spurs towards Alpha. It was like my own private roller-coaster, and each time I descended into a dip at full speed I has to trust that my course up the other side of the hill would be free of rocks - so poor was the visibility from my cab.

Upon reaching the BTR-60, it soon became apparent that it was beyond repair. Around about this time we heard that the Scud-B launcher had been located, in the deep pass between Charlie's grave and the enemy's western bunkers. A glorious charge had been ordered by the Party. Comrade YouTube Hero SuperU offered to join up with me, and at once we knew what to do. I drove like a man possessed down the road towards the pass, with SuperU to my right in the cab, narrowly failing the run over an enemy machinegunner along the way. I stopped a stone's throw from the launcher vehicle, hopefully placing our truck between SuperU's dismount point and the enemies to our west. The tactic worked, but as my heroic comrade leapt from the cab to fulfil the Party's wishes with his RPG-7, the led side of the cab - and my body - was riddled with bullets.

Maybe it was my death that would get reported in the epilogue, but at least it would have been in the context of a story of how brave soldiers successfully prevented a ballistic missile system falling into the hands of our enemies!

And died in the process.

Host's Note: I agree with the comments Ferrard and others have made about this mission's pacing and weapon selections, especially in the context of Takistan's wide open spaces. I also think this demonstrates rather perfectly the challenge of creating a mission that allows infantry and armoured vehicle crews to get equal enjoyment - it's not impossible, but it doesn't come easily. However, I'd hate for comrade Kaleovile, the mission maker, to be discouraged; I certainly had a fun time - even as a lowly truck driver - and would like to play future iterations of this mission. Perhaps it could be broken into sub-missions, or shortened so that the platoon begins at the first (eastern) pass?

Rolling Matryoshka II

C2 FTL: Lazer
|- AR: Tink
|- RPG: Fer

After bailing out of the air cows (how I love those air cows!), we headed to the east of the valley, and took up positions in a treeline just over the hill. The squad was oriented west, and one of our fireteams was checking out a gas station to our north. Then we were contacted by the enemy, his infantry hitting us in the flank, through the trees.

We were getting chewed up, and quickly; comrade Lazer took us downslope, northwards, into the trees to try and support the rest of Charlie. Just before he bought it, Lazer asked me to cover him and comrade Tink ... I have to confess I couldn't see the enemy at all. I fired wildly, ineffectively. My FTL went down, and I was shot. Only Tink was still okay, but together we were crawling upslope, hoping we'd slip away unnoticed - I was telling him not to worry abut patching me up until we'd reached the safety of the hilltop.

Tink did patch me up, but when we moved forward to check the Tunguska (the crew was dead, the vehicle mostly wrecked), the enemy bounced us again. We didn't survive.

Fuel Utopia

Civilian: Fer

Then mission's play through wasn't particularly remarkable for me, although it did culminate in one of those wonderful moments of doubt and delay when I encountered an enemy on a stairwell and we both paused before firing. His friends came and finished me off. However, I though comrade Black Mamba nailed the atmosphere in the mission, and look forward to future iterations.

[Dogface]

Internecine II

Draakon(?) moved our FT up into the South of the village using some beautiful bounding maneuvers, but sadly were were cut to shreds almost as soon as we got into firing range.

Fighting Withdraw

A pretty epic mission, although for some reason many of us were beset by frame-rate issues, with myself sitting at an almost-unplayable 5 FPS for most of the time. Still, as.. Bravo(?) SL, I did my best!

We were tasked with clearing enemies out of a series of valleys in Takistan. As the SL I was assigned to drive the squad 2XPKT Vodnik, with our medic working the gun(s). Sadly, he soon died in a tragic vehicle-related accident that had nothing whatsoever to do with me, honest.

We ended up mostly concentrating on clearing the hilltops on the west side of the attack, with another squad (Alpha?) staying up on the east peaks, and I guess Charlie moving along the valley floor to clear out enemy positions there. This was quite nice for me as squad-leader, as the terrain made it fairly easy to park the Vodnik at one peak, covering the next with the PKT, as the squad moved over mostly open terrain to flank them, and myself able to observe them the whole time. Unfortunately this didn't leave too much leeway for tactical movement, cover, or effective fire from the infantry's rifles until reaching close range, but we still managed to avoid most casualties until the assault on the strongholds near the SCUD.

After clearing out a series of small hillside fortifications and MG nests, we received the order: "See the markers up on the hillside where Charlie all just died? Your job is to do better." I bundled the squad into the vodnik and we hurtled down one side of the valley; before we could try out our "charge madly" tactic, we were re-tasked to cross the Ridgeline Of Death and assault the other stronghold. Upon doing this, things became highly bullet-ridden, with all teams pinned and wounded by intense automatic fire from the target stronghold. After trying to rally the survivors at the vodnik as I moved it through some woods, I at this point took a bullet and got to watch the last few troops struggle towards it and blast away with the last few boxes of PKT ammo, then do the same with a ruined enemy DShK UAZ, before being valiantly mowed down.

Rolling Matryoshka II

A1(?) FTL. The CO here wisely took the high-ground route, and although this did leave us crossing a rather large open field to get to the first set of AA fortifications, that part was relatively pain-free compared to how this mission usually goes. However, pressing the assault soon became the comfortingly familiar hilltop massacre, with the first stronghold falling relatively quickly only to become a killing ground, with shilka(?) fire demolishing my fireteam, and enemy flanking troops going unnoticed for long enough to inflict devastating casualties. The helicopter did a lazy, peaceful flyover with a distinct absence of rockets and killing, and things started to go crazy with people teleporting all over the place due to a map bug. Still, this was as amusingly chaotic and brutal as ever.

[Black Mamba]

Does anybody remember/has dumped the player count when we tested Fuel Utopia?

[Anvilfolk]

I think it was 15 IndFor and 18 OpFor or something like this?