[Tue] 28 May 2013 (Trees with teeth)

[Pr3sario]

popping smoke I carried one of my guys back behind a wall for some healing hand action.

Enjoy this Moon Moon!

[Black Mamba]

Awesome clip, Pr3sario! With the dudes coming out of the smoke in the background, this looks nothing short of epic. By the way, seeing Toppo taking one in the face was pretty magic too.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing some longer clips from that mission, to have a better idea of what was actually going on.

I myself was one of the pupeteers, tasked with Kale to protect the cache directly north of Zelenogorsk. I set up my OP in a treeline north of the cache, slightly above it, giving me a perfect angle on anything in my southern arc, from west to east.
After watching helos and the A10 for a while, and hearing the fight going on in the background, to the north, I witnessed one of your squads attacking us from the west, 150m from me. I had my three dudes set up slightly below, south of my position, hiding in bushes, and each of them was under orders not to open fire, at any cost. So when I first saw that one fireteam, advancing through the woods, I let one of them fire a short burst, before returning him to a "hold fire" pattern, shooting myself a dude in the leg, just for shit and giggles. Shoot to wound, and be regaled by the ensuing chaos.
Sadly one AI fireteam, to my southwest, decided this was the signal for an all out firefight and lit up the whole forest. After the initial firefight toned down, I started taking wounding shots again (had great fun landing a smoke GP on the top of a fireteam), and letting my subordinates drop a round or two from time to time. One of your dudes, probably escaping the other AIs fire, moved east to find some rest in a conforting pinetree. Sadly, this was too close to my position for me to just watch him. Like, less than 15 meters. Shot him in the leg, then put a few rounds above him, thinking he'd be going to crawl away. Nope. The bastard actually looked at me and had me dead in his sights! Well, anyway, I did what had to be done. I'm sorry. Rest in peace, brother.

After a little while, the enemy squad had pulled back north or northwest, I think, and I had my fireteam move up behind them in a nice bounding movement (man, does the AI look cool when you actually take the time to make them perform proper stuff!). At this point I noticed two brits running on my left, from a low stonewall. What the hell were those two dudes doing, alone, behind that wall? Must have been Tigershark. I sent a few bullets their way, then I don't really remember if the AI started firing or not, if they made it out or not.
Left two of my guys at my new position, the third would move find a tree to the south, around that wall, and I would start moving back east to find a sneaky position. Soon, though, they began firing on their own (which leads me to believe you guys might have actually stepped on their toes) and died one after another.

Then my memory is confused, but I higgledy-piggledy remember shooting at that chopper, have my remaining dude shoot the pilot ("2, SCRATCH ONE"), noticing the sound of a truck door really close to me, raging at the downed chopper's engine noise, realizing those dudes in the cache area are wearing multicam, blowing the shit outta them with mah boomsticks, tripping on a handgrenade and almost blowing myself up in the process, sadistically finish a wounded dude (but he was so close to the cache! I'm so sorry.) Then I proceeded to boobytrap his body with the largest IED I found in there, and retreated. And got dead.

All in all a great mission, very nice to see from "the other side", but I still think it needs a tad less "free" AI, as well as, maybe, more puppets, as they really are killing machines in those woods.

edit: that being said, the high mortality rate of the Chernarussian forests is not just an AI issue. My theory is that the evironment being tighter, and so the vision to the front being more difficult, we have trouble actually maintaining a proper 360 security in the woods. Chernarussian workshop, comrade Carson? Being less than 200 meters on the flank of a squad for several minutes, and only being shot at on three occasions in the whole mission, is kind of striking in that aspect. I guess there is actually a high educational potential in playing against the full FA platoon.

Also, my memory's all fucked up because I was under influence, but that's alright, I didn't drive anything during the session.

[dancemoox]

popping smoke I carried one of my guys back behind a wall for some healing hand action.

Enjoy this Moon Moon!

I deeply enjoyed that, a little known fact saying 'moon moon to the rescue' makes you impervious to small arms fire for a short time. It also strikes fear in the hearts of the enemy and makes 19th century ladies swoon..

[Kefirz]

All in all a great mission, very nice to see from "the other side", but I still think it needs a tad less "free" AI, as well as, maybe, more puppets, as they really are killing machines in those woods.

edit: that being said, the high mortality rate of the Chernarussian forests is not just an AI issue. My theory is that the evironment being tighter, and so the vision to the front being more difficult, we have trouble actually maintaining a proper 360 security in the woods. Chernarussian workshop, comrade Carson? Being less than 200 meters on the flank of a squad for several minutes, and only being shot at on three occasions in the whole mission, is kind of striking in that aspect. I guess there is actually a high educational potential in playing against the full FA platoon.

Also, my memory's all fucked up because I was under influence, but that's alright, I didn't drive anything during the session.

That might be true, but I felt that our desert camo in Chernarus was really shit.
I remember BAF having a woodland camo, we could have used that.

[Phoenix49]

As always, a night filled with fun and death. Lots of death. Mostly fun, though!!!

I don't have much to add to the AAR that the previous comrades posted, but I would like to thank mission-makers and commanders that take the time to script/use helicopters, airplanes, HMVs and other support assets in missions.

I personally love to fly, and giving me the opportunity to insert entire squads by heli is actually something I love to do, even if it means spending the rest of the mission hovering above the AO on standby. I know that there has been some frustration in the past (helicopters crashing and ending the mission prematurely) and that not everyone loves to have their lives put in someone else's hands just to get a cool insertion. So I'm not going to start a "omg put more heloz plx thx" post, I would just like to thank the people that allow for such opportunities to happen, whenever they are appropriate.

I think that Wideola was representative of the way I think ArmA is most fun with a big gaming group: tons of infantry, supported by flying assets and specialized fireteams (mortars, heavy mgs, yes, even sniper teams!!). Diversity, diversity, diversity!

Also, I learned that there is a difference between a BTR and a BMP...I have to admit whenever I hear something about an enemy vehicle I usually take cover and pray, so being asked to specifically target one of the two during Bend as an AT guy meant I shot at the wrong target. Ah, the thrill of letting everyone in your squad down

[Black Mamba]

That might be true, but I felt that our desert camo in Chernarus was really shit.
I remember BAF having a woodland camo, we could have used that.

Well, the BAF platoon comes in Multicam, Woodland, and desert. I guess what happened for the F2 guys is they made a compromise and decided to use the multicam for the Folk Platoon. It can be changed when making the mission, but the Arma editor makes it extremely cumbersome to change the whole platoon to woodland (I know, I did it once).
Then again, you have to remember that you could wear pink skirts, the AI wouldn't see you any better. The only clothes that actually make a difference for them are the ghillie suits.
The pupeteers would have a bit more trouble, but we were almost negligible regarding the amounts of death provided by indyfor during the mission.

edit: actual figures: Kale got 8 of yous because he's mean, but all the other pupeteers killed 9 players total. (although that is not counting the players killed by puppets. Mine must have killed about a fireteam worth, maybe one or two more.)

[Sek]

Unfortunately I was only able to do bend and wideola this time, but it was a great session

Bend
-Bones
-Pr3sario
-(I've forgotten who- sorry!, something to do with a turtle maybe?
As A1 (or maybe A2?) FTL, we were ordered to TP in on top of the hill to the north, and find some rocks to hide in. We hid there for a few minutes, getting more and more nervous about the reports of (seemingly) tens of tanks, BDRMS and BNPs. We saw the convoy came to a stop, and start gettting nuked by Charlie, so we followed suit- I managed to fire all of my GP's off within about 30 seconds (surprisingly I think most of them hit! ) After getting thoroughly pinned down and laughing at MMG getting chased by a rogue BTR (I think) I was left only with one of my squad mates left- and then we heard those orders from Draakon "Run down there and grab yourself an RPG and lets take them out!(along those lines) so I started sprinting, dodging around, but I was cut off mid sentence by a single HMG shot. I only made it about four metres.

Wideola
along with madtoaster, I made a very confused and injury prone MMG- after a long-ish hike south through the woods, we were told to cover Bravo's assault into the westernmost part of town, by covering their southern flank, and any spare people we could pick off in town. I managed to get a few people, marking down enemy positions etc, but then I got injured, and this process repeated itself over and over again - the trees were too skinny, and we were too fat, so they could get us from two sides at once By then, most of the squad had been annihilated, and It was me and two others, as mad had been gunned down, maybe bled to death by the end. We popped smoke and made a mad dash for the other end of the forest, pursued by a heck of a lot of AK and RPK shots. we all got injured once more at least, but unfortunately one of my fine comrades passed away, possibly when I was healing the acting SL of the three of us... we then made another mad dash, but he got gunned down too, leaving me very confused as to where I was- I had a look at the map, but the MMG sign was over where madtoaster had departed this world so I eventually worked out where I was by my bearing to the tower on Green mountain. I then ran over to O4, where I spotted to my south what could have been the remains of Alpha- after reviving Guus, I stuck with them, but unfortunately cant remember what happened next- I dont think I lived all too long after that, though

[Kefirz]

Mamba, yes there might be some clicking involved, but it doesn't take that long, I have myself made similar mistakes like this one where it just hurts your eyes when you see people who should be in a more desert, or at least urban environment than Chernarus, although I fixed them in the end.

Sure the AI might have no difference in what clothes you have, but if you stick out like a sore thumb from a 800-900m (it's true, no exaggeration) then even the player can see them and adjust his troops accordingly and communicate with other comrades about enemy movements.

As for my perspective, I felt like we were on a plate for OPFOR for the whole mission, I didn't see any enemies, besides those few that ski-lined a hill.
But I sure felt and heard them all the time along the mission, bullets whizzing past your head, some of them even ending up in that special place where your legs originate, all that good stuff basically.

So to conclude, there is a reason British army isn't called Red coats anymore, hiding yourself and not having a big bulls-eye painted on you, can and will pay off.
Camouflage is a capricious mistress and a soldiers best friend.

[Bodge]

The camo makes little difference in wideola tbh. We had a location on most of you, most of the time and that would probably be the case even if you had woodland camo but as you are aware the point of an AIxx isn't the same as a straight up adv.

In short appropriate camo is probably better but made little difference in that instance, I was stalking the woods to the North and fed a fair bit of info on troop movements down to the guys holding to my South.