[Sun] 27 Sep 2015 (Goodbye, Tigershark)

[Mabbott]

Well goodbye Tiger. Best of luck in Oz.

My footage of Bees for perusal.

[madrak_the_red]

Sad I had to miss it. Stupid university with it's 'term times'.

Farewell, brave tigershark, may the drop bears be gentle

[Aqarius]

This is pretty much as perfect summary of FA as I could have hoped for


End of an era, ladies and gentlemen.

[Ralian]

So, as a note, I will be changing up the way I do AARs from now on to maximize my time and maximize what you all get out of my footage. What you will find in my AARs will be explanatory text somewhat like sparks does but not as cool, as well as the unlisted, uncut source of each mission. I feel like I shouldn't have to cut a video to put it in here, and if I take my time on producing clips for the public rather than rushing to put them in my AARs I will have better quality content all around. You can also expect my AARs in the future (sorry about this one!) to be up the day after the session. So without further delay, here you go.


"Ralian, we're counting on you." -Netkev, 13:25

Bees: TH3 Pilot
Most interesting run-through of Bees I've seen in the brief time I've been here. 5:20 for the departure. Had a fun time chatting with A2, getting to know them before they died. The infiltration was very long and cinematic, look out for a public video I'll be putting out sometime next week. In formation I got a great view of kissing off TH2 (12:20), and TH1 peeling off for a different approach as I moved in to drop A2 (13:20) even though command sure needed the exercise of running up the hill anyways.

A few things happened during the air ops break period. I got bored and decided to land my bird on a roof (giving pilots free time in the middle of an operation is dangerous. ) and then went to hang out with all the other pilots at what was a functional TH5. PSA: if you realize you forget to pull your gear down as you touch down, lift off immediately rather than settling down (especially in the ghost hawk.) helicopters are fine landing without gear, but the way they settle may make them irrecoverable. "It's like a beached whale." -Ralian, 20:55

Ah well, nothing to lose sleep over. It wouldn't be a Folk ARPS mission if we didn't lose a heli. Or two. Sparks ended up drifting into a tree at 26:20. From the looks of it, he parked his heli on a slight incline resulting in him whacking a tree when he spun up while only looking at the map.

We proceeded using some questionable methods to try and knock the tree down such that we could repair and lift off without the main rotor hitting a tree and breaking itself (eerily similar to what happened with TH5, but with the ground there). We started by trying kind words with the tree. That didn't work. So we switched to grenades, of which there was an abundance in the heli inventory. That didn't work either.

So we.. well, uh... just watch at 28:25. Maybe not the best idea but it did end up doing a job for us that a UAV would have been used for later. "Sparks, are you on the way?" "Yeah, uh... I don't think that's going to happen."

Great job everyone. Good coordination down the chain of command, and we managed to keep our losses and lost helicopters in good proportion such that sparks was the only one that had to be left behind.


"No one makes it out of war. Even the survivors." -Gaius at 21:53 (and probably someone else, but whatever)

Pancho TE: A1 FTL
|-- Tigershark (AR)
|-- Reppy (AR)
|-- Sparks (AT)
|-- Gaius (R)
\- Grumpy (R)

Oh boy, this started out with a bang. Skip to about 20:00 to see my fireteam's rude introduction to war in the form of autocannon (?) rounds presumably firing at a vehicle behind us. We decided it was best to stay down for the moment, then charged it down the gulley for the nearest building. We continued to press up from cover to cover and gulley to gulley for a time that seemed lengthened for me as a FTL by the constant threat of statics and the presence of AA vehicles.

Pancho is one of those missions that is not just a corridor shooter - not just a flat area with plenty of cover - but a valley shooter, one where you have enemy threats bearing down on you from all sides. We pressed up, continuously getting pinned - or at least, I was - until the unthinkable happened. This, comrades, 39:10, is why we don't bunch up, especially in missions like this! Urban combat: bunching up okay in some circumstances. Bunching up in valley shooters: BAD! And to think I was just about to run over there with them!

Ignoring the FUBAR heap of bodies that used to be my fireteam, I hooked up with SuicideKing (or rather, I was hit and Suicide bravely charged for me) and we stuck it out with Bravo for the rest of the mission. At one point we almost both died thanks to my failure to check our flanks (when Suicide went down in the charge around 1:07:30) but once again my GL (specifically my GL smoke) saved my ass. In any case we survived to have some fun clearing buildings and eventually take part in the family photo.

Man, the quote I took from Gaius completely summed up the experience for myself and Suicide. We may have miraculously lived through the battle (there are perks to being alone with a medic!), but we can't say we truly survived.

Speaking of quotes from Gaius, and true to Tigershark style "Tigershark watch out, I'm going underneath you!" - Gaius, around 27:00


Operator as always, Folks.

HSLD: TH4 Pilot, also the formation leader (but not in command?) for some reason.
Fun and terrifying as always when I have a helicopter under my control (A great truism is that my flights are terrifying for my passengers and myself.) Not too much to say on the mission itself - loading and unloading was rather painless, and we got in and out fast (just like Tigershark ). Jump to 7:00 for that fast insertion and 14:50 for that even faster extraction. Oh baby.

Suggestion however: Can we use Chalk Leaders giving the salute in front of the aircraft as an all clear signal ("you're unloaded" or "I'm the last one in") since it's very hard to get people to respond in direct in Folk ARPS? They use hand signals in real life. It would just require a bit of coordination on the chalk leaders' ends (something we seem to be a bit lacking at)


Woo! I feel so alive!

Never done so well in Karts. Usually I just get hit and get launched 4 or 500 meters (no, that actually happened before.) Watch the scuffle at 10:30 until the ending. How'd that work out for you, Fer? I assure you, all the allegations of me coming in third and being listed as second are false.

"Noone was watching, so I say I came in second." -Ralian, 12:10.

Thank you hosts and thank you Tigershark for a great evening.

---

Tigershark, we will miss you. But we hope to see you around - please stay in contact. And maybe the time difference is such that if you want to play insurgency with some FA yanks and mounties we could make it happen.

[boberro]

"Ralian, we're counting on you." -Netkev, 13:25

[Soviet]

And so the Tigershark went, in the manner to which he was accustomed: Amidst confusion, gunfire, and a veritable storm of exploding Folk transports. Godspeed sir

Bees
Bravo One FTL
Where I was sacrificed to the IFV

This was my first time playing Bees, and the mission ticks off a lot of my favorite boxes
-Pre-battle cinematic helicopter ride
-Blowing shit up
-Quick Reaction Forces
-Major altitude changes

The whole op was smooth as silk, even recovering Bravo 2 looked very clean from my perch up in heaven after the QRF liberated my face. And right before my death I even called it - Bravo 1 was behind the ridge of the mountain and Kasmeister, my RAT, and myself were looking for the armor's position.

"Alright everybody but me 'n Kas stay down below the ridge, we're gonna look for the IFV and it'll probably be-oh shit!"

But Kas avenged me immediately afterwards so I'll totally take it

Pancho TE
Alpha Vic Gunner, And Bravo Vic Gunner, and also Juliet AR
Where we were sacrificed in the IFV

Ralian's right - I think my favorite thing about this mission is the terrain it takes place in. The hills to either side, the valley approach to a very vertical town, it's one of the most map-staring-heavy attacks I think I've played, which is definitely to its benefit.

But dear lord do I hate Titan launchers. Dark and Boar were being so careful in both vics, and I'll accept us losing out to the Tigris due to it suddenly deciding to haul ass out of my line of fire and then shred us, but man, coming up to a covered point, looking, looking, looking, then boom from the Titan on the opposite end of the engagement zone, that's a heartbreaker every time. That's war I suppose, and I've had my dome popped as a crunchy plenty of times, but with those AT positions anything lighter than an MBT is basically rolling the dice every time they move.

After our second tin can popped I jumped behind Peasant like a good boy and managed to squeak by until the photo op, thank goodness. Third time's the charm.

HS:LD
Bravo 1 FTL
Where I get confused but Bravo Gets Shit Done

Suggestion however: Can we use Chalk Leaders giving the salute in front of the aircraft as an all clear signal ("you're unloaded" or "I'm the last one in") since it's very hard to get people to respond in direct in Folk ARPS? They use hand signals in real life. It would just require a bit of coordination on the chalk leaders' ends (something we seem to be a bit lacking at)

This should always be a thing, and I do my best to make it happen when I can, though from the video I see that I gave you like a .2 second signal that time..

Okay, so it turns out that due to some kind of alt-tab devilry, I was apparently hitting shift as far as steam was concerned, so every time I transmitted, I immediately turned off CC again Apologies for the chaos! Watching Ralian's video, at least now I understand that I was the loopy one, since I thought was repeatedly telling him to lift off but from his perspective I was staring blankly at the cockpit while he fervently tried to get me to respond. As did command! So it certainly made things interesting, at least.

Thankfully, besides the total breakdown of FTL-command relations, I think we took Tiger for a hell of a last drop. Peasant, the intel you guys were sending about the trucks was a godsend I'd say, we completely re-oriented ourselves to face them as you called out their positions and that let us wipe the floor with I think three of them total? All I know is I got to launch a grenade directly through the last one's windshield while everyone else in the fireteam lit it up until it exploded There was some possible IR-marker related friendly fire in the middle but let the official record dictate that the incident was never confirmed.... right Tiger?

Hope we took you on a good last ride buddy, every time someone makes the mistake of giving me satchels I'll use em in your name

[Tigershark]

Gentlemen,

Greetings from Dubai....first step on the slow journey back to Australia. It's been balls to the wall since the Sunday session so I haven't had a chance to reply to all the awesome posts here.

Thanks for attending my send off and even more so, thanks for making it such a great event. The videos and screenshots posted are awesome and I really appreciate your well wishes and humourlessous posts.

Thanks again gents. I will start a new thread called "The Many Adventures of Tigershark and Photo Journal of Various SE Asian Jail Cells" to keep you abreast (*grunt* I said breast) of my progress back to Australia.

For now I have an appointment with the Dubai authorities for taking photos in my underwear a la Sparks.

[Sparks]

Forgive the lateness of the AAR Comrades, I have been preoccupied with manly weeping and the drinking of vodka to toast our late comrade Tigershark, for surely in the land where even the capitalist-damned trees are poisonous and the dropbears all have chlamydia, he cannot survive his exile for long. Dasvidaniya tovarisch, take as many of those fiendish dropbears with you as you can...
howling sobbing noises drowned only by the sweet relief of harsh vodka

First Comrades, there was the warmup, which surely presaged what was to come as once more a church came between me and free-flowing fun...


Bees
Pilot, TH1




Bees is one of those missions I love to fly in - there's lots of scope for close formation flying before we get to a hot zone so the videos look cool, but then when it's time to get your game face on, you can wind up trying to land in an LZ that's made hot by autocannon fire, which is the best kind of hot. This time though, despite some truly awesome views for the guys behind me (let's face it, my ass is my best side), my final approach got all confusticated. We'd been trying to figure out with Comrade Tigershark what team was in what helo and who was landing whom where; all the alternative ideas being bounced about confused me and I wound up almost flying to the wrong one, having to wave off at the last minute to put Comrade Tigershark in a safer location from which to shoot people in the face with big bullets.

Then we were at a bit of a loose end for a while. Comrade Ralian showed total disregard for expensive Party property and civilian housing, Comrade Dabbo had an unfortunate accident when he forgot that you need to put the wheels down before you land, I ferried him over to TH5 to act as gunner for the remainder of the mission, and then on returning to the helo waiting point, made the tactical error of landing on the actual helo hold point on the map instead of using that as a rough guide and putting down in the open field 100m south of it. The end result of which was that when Comrade Tigershark called for the helos to spin up and head in, I spun up, went to mark my destination on the map and the helo took that opportunity to go light on the skids and drifted sideways into a tree trunk.

Sadly comrades, while we carry an infinite number of thirty foot long rotor blades in our backpack toolkits, they are inefficient at chopping down trees, and the party for some reason had not provided us with felling axes for this purpose. Or saws. Or even a hatchet. So, in time-honour Folk tradition, we tried high explosives. This proved equally ineffective, so we tried far more high explosives. Unfortunately, while this did remove the troublesome tree, it also removed the helicopter.

So I joined Comrade Ralian to evacuate Alpha. It was a rather pleasantly cinematic experience:



However, when we got to pick up Alpha, I thought there might be a need for an extra seat. Also, I was wondering if Arma would let me repair the burnt-out hulk of the helo (if we can have infinite rotor blades, why not?) so I hopped out and started the long run back to TH1's smouldering corpse while TH2,3 and 5 pulled all the rest of our comrades out of the fire and returned them to base. Sadly, I never made it back to TH1 to test my theory; before I could get there, TH2 stalked me along a beach for a pickup and command called the mission there. Oh well.



Pancho TE
RAT with Alpha 1 then Juliet Squad Leader




I realise that many comrades enjoyed this mission and found it exciting and interesting. I can only conclude they were cowering in a totally different bush that the one I spent most of the first part of this mission in Alpha 1 pushed up off the beach with red team in the lead, straight into a bush in a gully, and we stayed in that bush with more callouts of danger close enemy machine guns than I've ever heard before (apparently comrades, we were surrounded on all sides, including behind us, by heavy machine guns that were within ten metres of us. I have no idea how that happened). Eventually we broke out of the gully, took a house, shot at some people with rifles, I stole a Katiba with a grenade launcher and shot at some more people with 40mm grenades, then we dove out of the house and back into a bush, where I remained trying to sneak up on more people for the next few minutes until an anti-aircraft gun saw a fellow comrade run into the bush near me and blew us both into small airborne chunks and a fine mist.

After a while, I reincarnated as Juliet Squad lead, and after we had killed an AI that had decided to swim from Altis to Stratis, we pushed up north trying to catch up to Charlie squad. We hit the town's eastern edge and pushed through clearing buildings with rifles while command cleared the ridges with mortars. We finally linked up with Charlie and took point over from them, but moments later we called the mission to take our final naked group photo with Comrade Tigershark (apparently not everyone got the naked memo, Party officials are investigating).



HSLD
Pilot, TH1





If Bees is good, HSLD is better, more condensed, more intense. And this was one of our best runs yet. TH4 led us in because their LZ was further in than ours and we wanted to hit the LZs simultaenously. We had a little confusion at the FUP, but resolved it and we all hit the LZs within seconds of each other. I confess Comrades, I was rather surprised when two enemy AIs turned out to be standing right where I had planned to land, but my chalk dispatched them within seconds of landing and TH1 was off and clear in moments, as were TH2, 3 and 4. Something in the town was annoyed at me and TH2 and tried to shoot at us, but their ideologically inferior skills proved no match for Party training and equipment.

The four helos orbited the AO, calling out sightings of trucks and reinforcements and guiding in AR fire on occasion to evil dissidents who thought they had remained hidden; our brave comrades found the troublemakers and executed them in the field most expediently (their families will be billed for the operational costs). There was some confusion on the extract; our Party training shone through and ensured we were to hand when needed, and we extracted all our comrades under fire from hot LZs. TH1 made it back to base first and started to return in case another helo was needed, but no such problem arose and TH1 was able to escort the other helos in and park neatly in the aircraft hanger.

Rumours of Comrade Netkev's demise are unfounded allegations comrades; the mission was a success and that is all that matters.



AFTERPARTY


RaceThunder XL (after-party)

I should not drive in this game comrades, I think we all know that by now.



Alas, even the promise of nitrous oxide and a total lack of safety equipment was not enough to overcome our sadness in this mission and so afterparty was short on this occasion comrades, so that we could return once more to the Banya and our vodka and our manly weeping and the comfort of the frozen river...

[SuicideKing]

I don't have a fancy Tigershark farewell video, because 10 fps videos aren't fun. Instead I have this:



Bees
A2 FTL with Fer, Netkev, Boarnoah and TIEfox

A2 didn't really have much to do throughout, with two close contacts after being dropped off by Ralian being the most exciting thing that happened all along. We were simply holding position near our briefing objective, and then were ordered into the village after A1 closed in on one of the tanks. I misread the map as usual and embarrassingly missed the "small gully to the north" for a fairly wide gully quite far away.

Anyway, we were soon asked to extract, and TIEfox took an afk Fer's "just stick with me and you'll be fine" a bit too literally.

That said, leaving Bees with an intact fire team isn't too bad! :p

Pancho Te
Alpha Medic accompanying ASL jayjoe

When I'm a medic I usually try not to get shot. But in time Glorious ASL died when a building collapsed on him (iirc), then eventually A2 got decimated somehow, and to my horror I discovered that the only thing remaining out of A1 was Ralian. We had MMG and MAT too, who were running from building to shrub as each building was decimated by something unknown and scary.

Eventually I charged in front, to get to MAT or something, I can't remember. Or maybe they were dead at this point, Ralian was figuring out a safe route some distance behind me. I was shot through some tin sheets at a construction site, but divine glitchy intervention meant that I didn't die. Following this, I killed three very confused AI, who couldn't comprehend why this dead man was walking.

I made my way through flashing red to Ralian, who "revived" me. Eventually, reinforcements caught up to our two-man squad in the form of Bravo. After some time dodging MMG fire, I decided to ask Bravo Medic (Gaius) if he wanted more FAKs, because the 17-odd that I had were a bit excessive for two people.

Except Gaius kept running away.

Anyway, eventually it was determined that Bravo has enough FAKs and I don't need to give a FAK (hah!), so I returned to Ralian.

We spearheaded the attack on the town ( ), almost getting killed but eventually clearing block or so, when we were called for the photo-op.

HSLD
Alpha Medic accompanying ASL jayjoe

Probably did a stupid thing and went alone into a building to clear it, got one ei and got shot by the another. Some people came to get me, but another got shot by the AI. Finally, one comrade decided to frag the enemy, but the throw got ARMA-ed and fell on us instead. At least the AI died too!


Reminded me of War of the Worlds.

------------

See you Tigershark! Do play Insurgency and/or Wargame with us! And join the Skype chat, stop being hipster.

[Ralian]

Sparks, I wish to offer a correction. The gratuitous amount of ACME high explosives we used to attempt to "remove" the pesky tree was enough to destroy TH1, but unlike you stated it was not enough to so much as trim the tree it was placed below as far as I can see from my video. Guess that's arma for you.