[Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

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wolfenswan
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[Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by wolfenswan »

39 comrades showed for tonight's session, which proved only one thing: the superiority of the Altis Armed Forces. The AAF managed an effortless hattrick by winning all missions played, even the one where they were only AI!

Playlist
  • Countersweep
  • Cratesistance
  • Surfin

blen2r
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Re: [Sun] 27 April (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by blen2r »

This was my first time playing with FA, it was great fun! Thanks a lot!

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: [Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Countersweep
Deployed as Charlie 2 Fireteam Lead

I've been here before >.>... But the terrain was read and the terrain was used! I'm sure Alpha and Bravo had a much less pleasant experience than we, for Charlie Squad is Special Squad!

Command bid us to take and hold the western ridgeline, the most accessible high-ground from our small hideaway. Breaking out of the valley and onto the hilltop, we were greeted with the sound of gunfire to our rear as Alpha and Bravo made their screaming entrance into the Valley of Death. In the meantime, Comrade Charlie Squad Lead IceRaiser commanded that Charlie 1 take a secondary peak to our east while Charlie 2 ensconced ourselves atop the highest of the nearby hills.

Charlie 1 crested first and began engaging a bunch of dudes sporadically from about 200 meters distant, and within seconds lost their FTL, AAR, and RAT. Shortly after we in Charlie 2 murderized their attackers from the flank and avenged their deaths, then IceRaiser consolidated Charlie 1's AR Blen2r (who was obviously a traumatized wreck underneath a visage caked with the blood of his comrades) into Charlie 2. Teaming him with my RAT Tired Hippo, they became the yin to Lynche (AR) and Dabbo's (AAR) yang.

We made our way North, pausing to murderize 3/4ths of an enemy fireteam, with the witless enemy AT rifleman wandering off behind the ridgeline in an absolute daze. Upon attaining our next vantage point, we discovered that he had, in fact, done the Blen2r thing and folded himself into an 8-man squad patrolling the western side of the ridge. IceRaiser's instincts demanded that we attack, and a fair amount of mine did the same, but I piped up.

"Comrade 'Raiser, given our 6:9 numerical disadvantage against this squad, the presence of an undisturbed Gorgon to our West, and the beautiful horrifying sight of an angry, angry Wildcat strafing our Alpha and Bravo comrades in the valley, wouldn't it be better more Patriotic to conserve our fighting strength for the final push against the town?"

He promptly responded with, "A most... Capital, idea, Comrade Carson. We should move at haste to assault the village. You first!"

We then charged helter-skelter down a gulley into the valley below only to be ambushed from behind by an entire fire-team of AAF who proceeded to mow us down like a farming combine set loose on a coven of chickens. The remnants of Alpha and Bravo were pinned by the chopper and slain by the infantry next to the ruined hulk of an AAF Warrior and a suspiciously tactical-looking shack.

<<Placeholder for Video>>

Cratesistance
Deployed as Alpha 2 Fireteam Lead

One good leadership turn deserves another! I come to at the wheel of Baby's First Lorry, floor it, and stop the entire parade of one vehicle atop a coverless plateau some 100m wide. Alpha 2 was tasked with watching to our south while Alpha 3 wandered about to the north. All was quiet.

And then AAF detonated Cache #5 without nary a warning aside from some gunfire that I was too far away to hear. Then they drove a truck straight into our field of fire, and Alpha 2 let loose with a furious cavalcade of small-arms fire... only for it to be utterly ineffectual at some 400-500m. We poured it on, and they poured it on, and property values in the small city of Charkia plummeted as stray rounds inundated every shack, 2-story home, and nursery school within city limits. AAF pulled a beautiful disengagement, throwing smoke to obscure our sight while piling back into their truck.

Despite the best efforts of Dannysaysnooo, Alpha 2's AR, the greenbacks managed to escape, only to pile out of their truck a mere 300 meters away and engage us anew almost atop Cache #2. Unfortunately, Alpha 1 was busy securing a blown cache a klick to our east, and Alpha 2 was desperately trying to relocate to where we could support Alpha 3 as they were felled one by one. In a fit of desperation, I sent my two riflemen down into the town itself to attempt a flank whilst me and Danny helped Alpha 3 hold the line.

The line was not held, however. I wasted my UGL grenades lobbing them into the AAF's forest-bound Base of Fire element, and the maneuvering greenbacks (specifically Dabbo) shot me through the head from a range of about 50 meters. Danny followed me soon thereafter, and we watched from the afterlife as the remnants of A3 were obliterated by weight of Green. The flanking Alpha 2 riflemen did their best, but were ultimately unable to stop AAF from blowing the 3rd and final cache to win the mission.

CRATESISTANCE MISSION NOTES:

The caches are placed waaay too far apart for a "destroy half of them" objective, and AAF is given the numerical advantage too often and too heavily, in my opinion. Most A2 runs of Cratesistance typically featured close to 1:1 force ratios, A2 weapons were more accurate at longer ranges, and A2 soldiers ran a little bit faster and longer than their A3 brethren.

The current meta for this mission is that FIA is forced to spread itself incredibly thin, usually writing off one or two caches as "indefensible" from the very get-go. In stark contrast, AAF typically balls up into one giant fist, assuming (correctly) that it can engage FIA's piecemeal FT's and casually obliterate each in turn. The only playthrough where FIA had a realistic chance of winning was the one from last Sunday (the one where I vaulted unceremoniously out of a window four stories up from the ground).

In it, FIA and AAF performed a force-on-force engagement with AAF coming out on the losing end due to... actually I'm not really sure how it happened, it doesn't make much sense to me. Regardless, FIA had written off one entire cache in that one as well, and still lost in the end because they couldn't both 1) win the engagement and 2) chase down the AAF squirters as they slipped past the engagement zone.

I'd recommend tightening the cache locations so that one squad can potentially cover all of them, or simply requiring nearly all caches be blown or something like that. Enough that it requires AAF to actually move into the AO proper in order to complete the mission, allowing FIA time for proper guerrilla tactics. As it is, if FIA attempts guerrilla tactics, AAF blows the fringe caches with complete freedom of action, then caps it off with one more with relative impunity.

:clint: ~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

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Kefirz
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Re: [Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by Kefirz »

Ferrard, were you the guys in the rocks and all of you were shooting at the only building at that barren field? I was giving you the yellow streams and I guess Danny was doing the same :D did I even hit you guys? Because you didn't hit me (some of them landed awful close though).

Anyone has a video of that engagement? because for me it was tense as fuck. :D


Regarding the cache placement, usually the host marks off the caches that shouldn't be defended, and AttackFOR, and DefendFOR just focus on those 3 that are left.
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Aqarius
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Re: [Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by Aqarius »

Countersweep
BLU C1 FTL
Charlie got the flanking route. This is gonna be an interesting missi-HOW THE HELL AM I ALREADY DEAD?!?

Cratesistance
BLU ASL
We were a fireteam short. At the very least, a fireteam short. Not for combat, simply to cover the area we were defending! The far (and i mean FAR) north and south caches were written off fight off the bat among other reasons for being dumped smack in the middle of a road. INDFOR could've won just by driving into them. 6 and 2 on the hill towards the coast were with A2 and A3, A1 and SL set up in the storage yard, hoping to overlook 5 and 3, but failing on both, 5 due to geometry and 3 due to a huge rock completely blocking the view of everything except the camo roof. Seriously, if i didn't know better I't think it was a prank or something.
The plan was simple (like my brother-in-law Phil, etc.) The hope was INDFOR would either take 1 or 4 first, and then try to plow through us to get to 3 or 5. Either way, the cache guards would warn us and we'd redeploy. Gunfire from 5 sunk that idea :argh: . A3 moved on the overlook on cache 2, A2 was moved north, and CO and A1 took the hill over 5, hoping to skirmish with enemies en route to 1 or at least figure out what exactly is there. Two trucks moving on 4, and a subsequent guy shot on 5 gave us the info we needed. A2 was sent back south, and opened up with a truly dazzling storm of lead on the dismounting trucks. A1, meanwhile, raced off into the town, to either flank or support. In the end, A3 and half of A2 died valiantly defending cache 2, while A1 stormed the compound the enemy had just vacated. I got to the top of the hill just in time to lay a burst on whoever was lying next to the cache when the charges detonated.
THIS close! :bang:

Surfin
IND B3 FTL
It was all going fine (except for that one dead guy) until BSL sent us to take a house on the salient hill towards the city. I rushed over first, chased down by and overeager GMG. Barely hitting the walls, I told my guys to stay down, as the GMG hit again. Right as we patched up, a lone EI ran up from the north, of all places, and A3, bunched up as we were, moved to take him. Bad move, GMG killed everyone but me. The EI now dead, I consulted command, who sent off what was left of A1, with Wolfenswan directing me to join on him (something about him 'still having his fireteam' ). As they came in, I warned them to keep their heads down, and a GMG burst later, I was FTL again ( :laugh:). Directed to assault the town, we ran into the reeds, losing the next batch of people (GMG again?), among them BSL, leaving the medic, and a single fireteam under audiox, and me as BSL. I somehow got a hold of an RPG and a Zafir, which went a long way in keeping everything else run relatively smooth from there (except for that time I killed audiox :v: ). We killed whatever officer was in the town, ran into the AA technicals but had no satchels to take them out (I just popped the wheels and sunk a burst into the engine block) and charged headlong into the Mora that had, erm, pinned down Alpha. Two HE rockets (and one kamikaze RAT), the IFV wasn't even disabled. It was however, panicked enough to turn tail and run north out of the AO. Good enough, I guess. We pressed on, exited the AO and declared victory.

During this session it dawned on me that had I taken Dabbo's (?) MG when I whacked him near the windmill I might've killed the guy I was shooting at on cache 2. What i'm trying to say is I'm looting MGs from now :D.





Some mussings regarding Cacheola:
Here's the thing: in the current setup, INDFOR is the guerillas.

The formula is as follows: defenders have an inherent upper hand, and conventional wisdom requires a numerical advantage(1) for a succesful attack. Cacheola balances that by giving the initiative to the attacking side, making the defenders reactionary at best(2) and succeptible to defeat in detail(3).
The advantage given to the attackers(1) (since this is modern warfare, after all) falls under the Lanchester square law (bluntly, number ratio: x:y, firepower ratio x^2:y^2). For INDFOR to attack frontally, they need a force superiority, either local or total. A problem (especially with larger player counts) is that a striaght 2:1 advantage turns the tactical blob into a full-on echelon attack that you just can't fight off. The reactionary nature of BLUFOR (2) here is dependant on the distance between the caches. In yesterday's game, even though we knew what IND were doing well in advance and were able to observe and engage from a significant distance, A1 was still unable to reach A2 in time to help. The defeat in detail (3) is helped not so much by the ratio of BLUFOR to caches, but rather BLUFOR to caches it can't afford to lose. Simply, having to destroy 2/2 caches is not that different from destroying 1/1. 2/2 vs 1/2, however, is twice as easy.

The thing is, at least one of these factors needs to either be diminished or missing completely for a possible defence:
(1)When the numbers are about even, INDFOR are the guerillas, exploiting the reaction time of BLUFOR to destroy fringe caches and pull back. (This would've happened yesterday, except INDFOR had the manpower to just steamroll A2 and A3 outright).
(2)When the caches are close together, the game forces one big confrontation (or, realisticaly, INDFOR trying some fancy flanking move while BLUFOR hunkers down and covers eachother). This is highly dependant on terrain (ie. the luck of the draw). (This was last Sunday. BLUFOR won a firefight at the hill, but then did not pin down INDFOR's flanking move.)
(3)When there are a lot of disposable targets, INDFOR (probably superior in numbers) blobs up and goes 'house-to-house'. BLUFOR here play the guerillas, because the number of caches they don't have to defend lets them see INDFOR coming and (more importantly) choose the battleground and retreat if needed. (This was the way it usually went in Zargabad) (of note, however, is that defenders lost here quite often, mainly due to M2 Humvees.)

Or, you know, I may be talking out of my ass :v:
[/allegedly]

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: [Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Kefirz wrote:Ferrard, were you the guys in the rocks and all of you were shooting at the only building at that barren field? I was giving you the yellow streams and I guess Danny was doing the same :D did I even hit you guys? Because you didn't hit me (some of them landed awful close though).

Anyone has a video of that engagement? because for me it was tense as fuck. :D


Regarding the cache placement, usually the host marks off the caches that shouldn't be defended, and AttackFOR, and DefendFOR just focus on those 3 that are left.
That was indeed A2 in the rocks throwing a giant wall of lead your direction. I know my shots were scattering all over the place 'cuz I haven't quite got the hang of ArmA 3 bullet-drop just yet. I think both Danny and I got winged by ricochets once apiece, but that was it. I'm not sure Danny even needed to go FAK himself until the final assault, so it wasn't much of a hit.

Sadly, I didn't record that mission :( It was indeed a firefight worthy of William Dafoe.

~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

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wolfenswan
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Re: [Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by wolfenswan »

Aquarius:
I'm confused, who's AAF now? In the original CDF (BLU) attacked, INDP (NAPA) defended. In A3 Blu defends, Indp. attacks.

I've opened a thread to discuss Cratesistance further.

Aqarius
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Re: [Sun] 27 Apr 2014 (AAF is OP, nerf AAF)

Post by Aqarius »

wolfenswan wrote:Aquarius:
I'm confused, who's AAF now? In the original CDF (BLU) attacked, INDP (NAPA) defended. In A3 Blu defends, Indp. attacks.

I've opened a thread to discuss Cratesistance further.
I'm using A3 designations. At least i think I am. AAF are INDFOR-ATKFOR. FIA are BLUFOR-DEFFOR

TLDR: numerical superiority of attackers is offset by increasing percentage of caches to be destroyed (either ad hoc by eliminating targets or in parameters) to give defenders breathing space. Number and disposition of caches seems less vital, but extremes may need tweaking.
[/allegedly]

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