[Sun] 26 Jul 2015 (HS;LD-APFSDS:IIa-FINAL3.pdf)

[SuicideKing]

Have a good trip madrak and Mamuto!

Sparks - you need to stop capturing the mouse pointer in your screenshots.

[Kefirz]

A1 went to clear a compound that was a bit further than the first town and apparently they all died there. Next time if you are in trouble, or even incapacitated, but not yet dead, just say something so we can help you. It doesn't matter what role you have, if your team is in a sticky situation shout in teamspeak, it's ok to do it in that situation.

Um, Kefirz, I was A1's FTL and I was yelling down teamspeak at you...
"A1 is engaged"
"Sparks is down"

and you responded to me...

Sorry then Sparks, I just don't remember it.
(I believe you, it's just that it probably wasn't a noteworthy scream )

[Sparks]

Sorry then Sparks, I just don't remember it.
(I believe you, it's just that it probably wasn't a noteworthy scream )

True, I don't Wilhelm well
And to be fair, that was one of my more charlie foxtrot of missions (in fact the entire session gave me issues because of hardware failures on my end of things. This AAR may contain foul language and suggestions for microsoft developers which are anatomically impossible).

[Xostriyad]

Sorry then Sparks, I just don't remember it.
(I believe you, it's just that it probably wasn't a noteworthy scream )

True, I don't Wilhelm well
And to be fair, that was one of my more charlie foxtrot of missions (in fact the entire session gave me issues because of hardware failures on my end of things. This AAR may contain foul language and suggestions for microsoft developers which are anatomically impossible).

Ha, if I knew we were allowed to scream over squad coms in such a situation... that would have been a good one for me. When shit went from 0 to OMG EVERYONE IS DEAD OR DIEING!

I remember the strider shooting, then explosions and I was the only one standing in A1, I picked up some guy, then Sparks... and then a door opened and more shooting and death.

[Nim]

An issue I'm having with recording these sessions is this:

OBS significantly lowers my fps, but it has a microphone gate so I can record myself.

GVR has almost no overhead, but it doesn't have a microphone gate so I cannot record myself due to background noise.

Any suggestions?

Nim

[Sparks]

An issue I'm having with recording these sessions is this:
OBS significantly lowers my fps, but it has a microphone gate so I can record myself.
GVR has almost no overhead, but it doesn't have a microphone gate so I cannot record myself due to background noise.
Any suggestions?
Nim

(a) GVR? I don't know that one.
(b) Try Equalizer APO, which lets you apply a graphic equaliser type of filter to your mic directly before it hits anything else.
(c) Try setting a microphone gate in windows (this is dependant on your sound hardware and its driver though)
(d) (and this is the best solution but you may not be able to do it) - record the game output sound and the microphone input sound on different audio tracks and edit it in post.

(d) is the best if you have that option (OBS doesn't support it yet though), because your mic and the Arma sound shouldn't just be mixed directly, your voice will be way too loud because of different recording levels from the different sources. (b) works reasonably well too, it's what I use currently.

[Kefirz]

I used to do the D thing also with shadowplay, because it only registered one key for PTT, so I recorded ingame VON in the video and the TS3 audio track right from teamspeak recording thing. And then I mashed them together.

[Nim]

I've tried option (D) but syncing up the microphone track with the video can be a pain in the ass.

Nim

[Cardova]

I had an absolute blast yet again, here were my experiences:
Rebel Alliance, Pt. 7 - Alpha 2
We advanced up the ravine and upon reaching stiff opposition, looped around south then west and provided covering fire for Bravo to assault. Right at the end two vehicles with reinforcements rolled up but we were able to deal with them without too much trouble.

Corporate Synergy
I was near the beach when fire erupted. I managed to capture a rifle. Despite holing up in a bunker, I was shot twice and spent most of my time bleeding out, but was revived both times. I ended up being one of the last few people standing, and attempted to gloriously charge upon the enemy shrine, which quickly led to my death.

MSR Delfinaki - Adversarial
AAF Alpha 2, red maneuver team, with Tommy and Grumpy
This mission was absolutely fantastic. Trucks drove us to a position West of the expected ambush locations. We swept through Ioannina, finding only a couple of FIA trucks. We circled around via the north to Delfinaki and, with the help of the Strider, took out enemy hiding in a church. Continuing through the town and then southwest we had a quick close firefight in the reeds with one FIA personnel (Mamuto). While we didn't manage to kill him he was killed shortly afterwards ending the match in a draw.

This video is the last 18 minutes of the game, with the church encounter at 1:45 and the Mamuto encounter at 14:00.


HS, LD
I died before our heli even landed, so not much action for me. It was still fun to watch the operation from above.

Rebel Alliance, Pt. 6 - Bravo 1, red team, with BormanoV and boberro
Bravo went up on the hills to the south of the enemy camp and pecked away at the enemy positions. I ended up as the Strider driver and spent a large portion of the mission sitting behind the wheel while BormanoV rained down fire on the camp.

AFTERPARTY:
Shipping Problems - Adversarial
Died, had fun regardless.

Salt riders - Adversarial
There was massive confusion about which truck was which team (both sides had a blue car?), and we pretty much ended up shooting at anything that moved.

Buzzard - Coop
We had very little idea what we were doing, although I think we needed to capture an enemy jet and escape with it. I prematurely used my one teleport action to jump directly onto the enemy airfield, which unfortunately separated me from my team members. While under fire I captured a civilian vehicle and raced down the runway to join up with my comrades. After crashing in a ravine I was just 100 meters short of meeting up and set out on foot. Right as I arrived at Igglesworth and Tom's position we took heavy fire and all died.

The Rundown - Adversarial
(Christian, Tommy, and me vs. Igglesworth, Davix, and Tom; with Ferrard watching everything in his own helicopter)
Ferrard helped us out quite a bit here setting this up, as no one really knew how to run the server. The six of us split into teams of three and had four rounds of Little Bird vs Pickup truck fights. I was on the ground based team. It is very hard to shoot from a moving car and by the end we were ditching our truck and moving from building to building on foot for cover. I was fairly successful at hitting the heli (at least I think so), and we ended up winning all four rounds.


To throw my two cents in on recording, I have been using shadowplay and simply adjust my microphone level to match the level of in-game and teamspeak audio. (Only my latest video is properly adjusted, it took me a few tries and I can't fix it in post.) I leave my mic hot all the time for the recording. (I'm using an SM58.) Shadowplay has a few issues such as being unable to record a windowed fullscreen game, pausing the recording whenever I alt-tab out, and having very few options in general. I did try OBS but it still does not have multi-track recording, and it caused a huge performance hit on my framerate.

[Sparks]

So this was a weird evening - a mix of some of the best missions yet for Folk and some of my least impressive performances, with a sprinkling of hardware and OS failures all mixed up with way too much stress and general self-disappointment and yet I'm coming back for more...

Rebel Alliance, Pt. 7
Spectator

Madrak is miffed that he missed slotting by a minute. I was there thirty seconds before him but you don't hear me complaining. Mainly because this is writing, dear reader, and if you can hear my voice, then you need to seek help from a professional. No, your plumber doesn't count. Yes, he's a professional, but ... you know what, why not, plumbers have it too easy already.

Anyway, we got to watch and natter away as BLUFOR bravely marched... right up the valley towards the bad guys instead of flanking them... and then opening up on the bad guys 300m out and not seeing the bad guys 50m in because of defilade. Alpha 1 did get into a position to hit that fireteam but were chased away by AR fire from further up the valley. Eventually someone decided "sod this for a game of soldiers", hoofed everyone over the ridge into cover and flanked the enemy. Alpha took some time lining up on the enemy base, and Limbo was wondering if Carson was grinding his teeth over the pace of the advance, and then noticed Carson break away to act as a blocking force for the reinforcements, later looping back into the town itself. We got to watch Eagle_eye lead the charge head-first again (that man's fireteam has more experience with dealing with field promotions than anyone I know...) and clear the town, then the reinforcements rolled right up on Kefirz (and damn near right over him) and were quickly massacred, as were their compatriots. And a clear victory for BLUFOR.

Ironically, this was the mission during the evening when my gaming rig behaved itself the most. Yup, the one I wasn't playing in.



Corporate Synergy
Alpha 1 Saboteur with Mamuto (FTL), Ccrasus (S), Christian (S), Tom (S) and Rooster (S)



Right, first mission of the night and we're going to be all sneaky-sneaky and shoot people in the back. Sounds about par for the course
And things started off well; we made our insertion perfectly, we approached our kick-off points and marked our targets, and then before we were quite ready to kick it off, it kicked back. There was a flurry of incoming 6.5mm fire, people were down and yelling, half the fireteam was gone, orders came in to just kill every nato target we could see and get into the relative cover of the compound. I gave up my SMG-vs-Minigun fight with the assault boat down the beach, threw a smoke grenade for cover that turned out not to be smoke, legged it into the compound, fired a few rounds, threw a grenade, tried to flank along the beach and exploded into a dozen bloody gibbets.

So... who accidentally stepped on the trigger?



MSR Delfinaki
Alpha 1 FTL with Reppyboyo (AR), Rooster (AR), Ccrasus (RAT), rober_000 (R) and Bormanov (R)



You'll note the odd-looking map here. That's because Windows 7 decided I didn't really want to play arma at this point and just after I'd slotted, killed the arma launcher, and started flickering my screen like my graphics card had died. Hmmm. I had to drop out and restart arma, and then reboot the entire machine from cold; by the time I dropped back into the game, we'd already started the mission and Kefirz had stashed his fuel truck out of sight while we cleared the road and I had to get an impromptu field briefing. I was not, however, mentally in the game yet and that got my entire fireteam killed later on

We loaded up in the trucks and headed north, pausing along the way to let reppy catch up (he'd crashed out as well and had to rejoin and dopey here hadn't ordered his AI to mount up), and dismounted at the staging area and started clearing buildings before being ordered to stop that and move south east back towards the MSR and clear those other buildings.

We followed along behind Alpha 2, watching our side of the road, and as we approached the main town to clear, paused at the ridgeline while I crept up to glass the town. Bormanov then took this opportunity to test my underwear by calling in a strider contact ten metres away. When you've not been in the briefing and don't know the ORBAT and are having to do the mission on the fly, that's sufficient to give you a good twenty seconds of Shit, they had a Strider? How the fuck did they not see us? Shit, we're ten meters from the thing! Fuck, everybody down! Ah, shit, we're all dead, aren't we? before your oh so helpful minions let you know it's a friendly contact...

Next time Tovarich, discipline will be maintained in the field by Makarov or Tokarev, depending on the whim of the FTL!

We pressed on, advancing to the town with Alpha 2 well in the lead (ever tried keeping up with a briefed Carson? It's not easy) and finding nothing except an abandoned truck which we claimed in the name of the Party, as was right and proper. Then we advanced on the gas station and cleared that, and ASL ordered us north to the next compound... and this is where my being behind the curve got everyone dead. So, as Comrade Fer teaches us that without self-criticism we cannot advance, that we need self-criticism as we need air and water, let me explain what I think I did wrong...



First off, stupidest approach line ever. Running across an open field with no cover, no smoke, and a fence we all had to stop and clamber over at the far side, as we approached hard cover that had lovely shooting ports built in? Even with the strider covering us that was unbelievably dumb-ass. Granted, there weren't any great alternatives, but there were better ones...

Secondly, when we hit contact we did the wrong thing. I don't mean the comms. You can hear on the comms we're a bit ragged, but we were talking to our SL and telling him we were engaged and had casualties and we were talking amongst ourselves. Yes, we could do more and we could do it cleaner, but thats' not the thing we did most wrong here. What we did most wrong was that we charged. That was stupid and FTL's job is to not be stupid.

What we should have done, was to leave the two ARs where we started as the base of fire, suppress the crap out of those two houses so the EI bottled up in them couldn't get out, while FTL and red team went around the back and grenaded the frak out of those buildings through the windows. That would have been a much better plan.

Alas, Alpha 1 did not have a much better FTL and so we lost half the fireteam in the first few seconds. I got to the long building but was knocked down by UGL fire, rober_000 got me back up just as the EI charged into that room, I got one with small arms fire, lobbed a grenade into the second room for the other guy, but he charged me and down I went again, and got executed as I gave out a radio call (on the wrong channel, doh) to give away his location. And that was the end of all of Alpha 1 in less than two minutes



Meanwhile, after having kicked our butts at the compound, the rest of OPFOR got more or less annihilated (and boy did I get boberro's death on camera), all save one sole driver who couldn't possibly be a threat, I mean, who worries about the driver? It'd be like worrying about the cook...



Oh, yeah. Right.

So their sole harmless driver flanks the entire MSR route right back to the fuel truck, destroys that with 50cal fire, hangs out for a minute, then goes and kills our CO, and then torments Carson's fireteam for a good five minutes while they expend ALL THE AMMO trying to kill him, and finally he falls within feet of hard cover and bigger guns than his SMG popgun - and if he'd just crawled for a bit, he'd have made it too...



Folk Sneaky Bastard Medal well-earned there : D



HS, LD
Pilot, TH3



First off, hats off to Eagle_eye. This is the hands-down, no-shit best flying mission for Folk I've seen yet. Tremendous fun, loved it to bits, wanna play it every sunday for the next year.

Second off, I'm a big fan of head-tracking, and my kit is DIY and every bit as good (actually, it's technically better) than the TrackIR setup, but none of that will help you when the fastener attaching your point tracking source to your headset comes lose and starts letting the thing flap about on its own

So loads of fun, but ruined by hardware failures

Anyway; the plan was to form up to the south of the target behind convenient terrain, then on the go, fly in formation into the marked LZs, drop our chalks and exfil. Bravo 1 would go kill their target while Bravo 2 blocked the MSR against reinforcements. I think Alpha had a similar plan further north at the other LZ.

Mostly it went according to plan. Mostly. We had a near miss or two (formation flying without pilot-to-pilot comms will do that; I keep saying it, but we need our own teamspeak channel - we do not need to talk directly to our chalk when they're not on the helo, and both the Vehicle and Direct VON channels would serve our needs if Direct actually worked, and CC would make up the rest), but happily nobody exploded; we came in fast and low and hooked around the mountain following terrain. Alpha peeled off early, then I aimed for my chosen LZ spot which was to the north of the mark on the map, behind some buildings so we'd have some cover on the ground (previously cleared with CO in the briefing) and TH4 aimed for his LZ with Bravo 2. And then my headtracker mucked me up and I missed my LZ and wound up landing a good 30m north of it, while craning my neck up at the ceiling in real life to keep my in-game viewpoint even close to level. But we got down, we didn't lose anyone (though I did take some fire), and I exfil'd safely enough.

TH4 and TH3 headed out west and landed to stay hidden, I got out and patched myself up and tried to jury-rig my headtracker, then rounds were incoming and we fled. As we fled we got the call to come back in and do the extract. I was ten seconds out, then my headtracker really fucked me and it took almost a full minute to land in the end. As I finally touched down, CO called out that he was down and to extract without him. We were drawing fire, so that's what we did and booked it back to the airfield.

But Tovarich, Folk Pilots dislike leaving people behind, so both TH3 and TH4 dropped their chalks and immediately headed back to rescue CO (TH2 was rescuing other survivors from the northernmost target apparently but I wasn't on their channel). TH4 made it back before me and was orbiting; my helo was already damaged and my headtracking was not getting better, so I opted to go land and look for Carson so Ajax could extract us if I found him. And then I stuffed the landing (you try landing when you need to dislocate your neck in real life to look forwards in the game) and disabled my helo using a wall.

But I wasn't injured ( ), so I got out and scouted about.

The one moving body I saw turned out to be an arma corpse ragdolling an "over-here" waving action. And with Carson not replying to radio calls - but with him you never know if he's just stoically bleeding out on purpose to out-hardass us all - and nothing but corpses on the ground, TH4 loitering on the LZ longer than was safe, and now with incoming enemy fire, we drew a line under our rescue attempt (we would *so* have come back in force if Carson was still alive), I got back to TH4 and rode out on the skids 20m ahead of the nearest EI as Ajax showed off his low-level headtracker-less multiple-monitor flying technique and we had a final near-miss from another unrecognised helo.

Then we got back to the airport, formed a circle and ragdolled half of command using all our remaining ammo in protest. If you fall in the AO, we'll fly back through a hail of lead to get you, but when we get you home mister, you in soooo much trouble...



Rebel Alliance, Pt. 6
Alpha 1 FTL with No_Croissants (AR), ZeCatnip (AR), Tom (RAT) and Tommy (R)



Slightly better FTLing here, with a few new faces in the fireteam, but the mission splits us between truck transport and manning a HMG strider, so as FTL you have to keep both the mechanised playbook and the infantry playbook in your head with two halves of your fireteam split across a distance. Not easy Tovarich, and can lead to you talking to yourself in a bad way...

The plan was to advance up the road to WP California, then Alpha 2 would be dismounting, and red team from Alpha 1, who were driving the truck, would dismount with them and advance north around the eastern edge of the forest (in case of roadblocks further up the road) and take cover at point A1, while the strider and blue team made their way to point A1 point 1.

Tovarich, we laugh behind Comrade Carson's shapely buttocks about his penchant for naming map features for fictional US places (no, I do not believe you about Missouri and South Carolina being real places, the universe is not that perverse). But WP California is a damn sight less confusticating over the comms than "A1 point 1" is. I'm not saying we need a rule enforced by Comrades Fer and AudioX, but maybe we need to think about this a bit more...

Anyway, Blue team missed their turnoff after the woods by about 50m or so, which put them in sight of a previously suspected roadblock and its enemy infantry. Since one of them had AT, I told our gunner to kill them, but we were ineffectual so we withdrew to A1 point 1, Wolverham Wanderers 0.

From there, we suppressed some infantry on the northern ridgeline by throwing lots of hot lead at them, but we had no decent line of fire on AP Washington, so we cleared red team to move to point A12 (yes Tovarich, it is a collective guilt we share on the naming issue), while Blue team backed up the hill a ways south of A1 point 1 Manchester United 2. We had a good line of sight from there, but the turret couldn't elevate enough to give us a firing solution, so we had to manoeuvre to flatter terrain and by the time we got there, Alpha 2 was in the buildings securing AP Washington. I sent Red team to join them and then pushed Blue team north to point 4, where we got eyes on the compound and proceeded to reduce its resale value by adding 12.7mm rounds to the structures with enemy in them.

Unfortunately, the Strider HMG is all mouth and no trousers, or at least, no pockets, and so we found ourselves without ammunition for the main gun. So we reconsolidated our fireteam at point FT2 and spent the remainder of the mission there acting as Alpha 2's base of fire, suppressing the backs of the buildings they were advancing on and clearing one or two with UGL fire.

And thus the mission ended, without losses for Alpha 1 and even with a few kills to our name. Not bad for Rookie Squad...



Afterparty



Party (Shipping Problems)

They made me keep my clothes on.
So I shot them.
Then I realised that they were us.
It was very meta.

Then we were ordered to whip out our zubers. I think Eagle_eye may have a french lisp when he's talking dirty.



Part-ay! (Salt Riders)

Lets face it, I suck at driving. Or Arma sucks at being driven by me. Not sure which. Either way, at least I got Zitron!





Overall, this was one of those evenings where you learn a lot, are embarressed by how much more you have yet to learn, but have a ton of fun learning anyway. Sooooo... sortof like that first time when you and that special someone first get all hot and bothered and bake your first loaf of bread together.

Or something. I think that might have translated badly.