[Sun] 10 June 2012 (New ORBAT)

[fer]

Missions:

• Flask (expanded)
• UNnecessary Violence
• Internecine II

Once more our numbers were good (above 40 for much of the session), and again the session itself ran to just under 3 hours. Importantly, tonight saw us use the new platoon ORBAT in the first two coop missions. From where I was (mostly in the dead channel), things seemed to go pretty smoothly - but myself and all of the hosts are keen to get your impressions of the new layout and comms set-up. We hope it cut down the comms noise for most guests, and made life easier for FTLs - but we'd like to hear from you. Yes, you. And you.

But not you, comrade Tigershark. You've said quite enough already.

Also, some very quick requests for threads that you should read (and follow) if you haven't already:

• Getting started with TeamSpeak 3 (for ArmA2) - esp. the section on Channel Commander (CC), which everyone should please configure.
• What is the Folk platoon?
• An illustrated guide to Folk comms

As always, thank you to all comrades who came along tonight, and helped make the session enjoyable. And apologies to comrade Gustav, my commander in the last mission, who I shot. And shot again. And again and again and again. Until I was quite sure that he was dead. Before asking 'Is command up?'

[Mike [MDS]]

Thanks for running another Session Fer & co

Flask X

I took the gunner's seat in the Shilka that roamed up the left hand side of the valley. A bunch of the piles of corpses Bravo team came across during their advance would have been our doing

Unfortunately, we took a couple of AT hits from not-sure-where, (I didn't hear rockets... are there non-rocket AT weapons?) careered out of control down the valley and crashed, just to Bravo's rear. Jimthedog and I hopped out and joined B2.

I then just provided helped B2 as we progressed, but the AT guys took care of most of the remaining threats.

---

UNnecessary violence

I had some sync issues but ended up as the gunner in B1's M113 APC, with Jim as my driver again!

Poor Chief and Cheese mostly had the job of trying to keep up with Jim's frenzied driving. (At one point I become aware of Chief's presence because I can hear him wheezing beside the APC!)

Sadly, this time, it mostly involved me watching our troops advance ahead as we were held back for fear of AT fire. At one point I dragged a BMP crewman away from his burning wreck to try to avoid secondaries. The medics took care of him, so I didn't catch his name.

In the end we breached the Villa compound from the East on foot, but got pinned down and lost some guys to the armoured vehicle. When Jim or Bodge became PlatCo (by virtue of everyone else being dead,) I grabbed the RPG off Chief's corpse and got a strike on the vehicle, but only immobilised it. I ran round to get a rear angle, got careless, and got an entirely-deserved round to the head.



Me futiley trying to drag someone (Chief?) to safety, before he died and I stole his RPG

---

Internecine

In the final mission I hid in the isolated south-eastern building with Pirate, firing more on friendlies by mistake (sorry Black Mamba!) than enemies Eventually ninja Fer sniped me in the face.

[Phoenix49]

My laptop ruined my and my teammates game experience, as it kept shutting down during the missions.

I would like to give some feedback on the communication, however:

1) From my point of view as an FTL, it didn't drastically change anything. Bare with me before you crucify me: I was in a teamspeak channel with at least one other fireteam, only FTLs used Teamspeak, while commands were distributed through CC. I guess if I turned CC off as an FTL I would only need to listen to my SQL and activate CC if I need to take over the squad.

2) I think the new system is better, because command probably needs to deal with with less FTLs, since the SQLs are taking care of it. So instead of shouting orders to 6-7 FTLs like last time, tonight saw CO giving orders to 2-3 SQLs. Makes CC cleaner

3) I don't want to complain, I will just leave this as a comment: Until I learn whose voice is who, understanding if people are talking on CC or TS is a nightmare. The worst part is, if someone talks on TS and then I reply on CC, and they didn't hear me (because e.g. that FTL doesn't have CC up or active), I have to repeat the command on TS while CC is confused at what I just said. It's not a mess, but it's a bit clogged in the beginning. After a while, I learn the voices of the relevant FTLs, SQLs and CO and it becomes smooth again.

I think this new system is clean and practical to deal with the numbers that the sessions begin to attract. I know it may not seem like it, but this post is actually positive feedback, in favour of the system.

[x25killa]

Missed the first mission. No report.

UNnecessary Violence

MAT minion for Nim. Attachment for Bravo Squad. Hopped in the ural with Bravo Squad and Bravo M113 behind us... or was. The driver of Bravo M113 disconnected causing slight confusion. JimTheDog took over the m113 and followed the ural later on.

Got to the location, nothing much happened. Moved ahead, big giant explosions near Alpha, Bravo FTL order everyone to get out the ural, we all hit the deck and... nothing much. We walked just incase of more explosions. Lots of walking. Spotted a BRDM 600 metres away, it drove off, no clear sight for my MAT leader.

We moved along. Another explosion, hit the deck, again no enemies nearby. Carried on... Wolf's M113 was awfully close to Bravo and BOOM! Bigger explosion connected with Wolf's M113.

Hit the deck, heard over the comms Wolf's M113 was down and hit needing medical assistance. Decided to help, dragged the corpses, used global instead of direct by accident, provided some help... it was clear. For a moment.

INCOMING ROCKETS towards my location, decided to run to the hill to see if I can spot them. Turns out I couldn't but did spot a group of enemies heading towards Alpha's position. Gave Alpha a heads up via side channel while marking position. We proceeded towards the villa via the dried river banks.

Bravo was pretty far ahead, had to catch up. Suddenly, spotted a crawl enemy aiming towards Bravo. Popped the fucker with 3 rounds of FN FAL before he could attack. Lucky for Bravo. Moved ahead, waited for Alpha to get into position, took out 2 more enemies and then Bravo ordered us to take out the BRDM inside the villa. I got Nim's back, we fired 2 rockets. They did connect but the BRDM was still alive. I got shot providing cover for Nim.

Turns out that the BRDM can take more than 4 rockets to die. Bugger me. Gong managed to take it down though. Everyone charged and Black Mamba scored a kill on Aziz. This was only Objective 1. Very long mission...

Internecine II

OpFor Charlie Leader. Adversarial. In charge of charlie, we had to flank the independent on the right side via a "pincer" movement with Echo while Alpha and Bravo were on the left side. It was all going good until the enemy AT decided to say "Hello" with rockets. 3 of them infact. Told everyone to leg it, one of the members got hit, we were down to 3 behind a building with gunfire towards our direction.

My comrade Capers informed me there was an enemy on the roof. I told the squad the plan: We crawl on the stomachs and shoot at the enemies. So we did... I took a bullet in the legs and was dying. Told Capers and Spec to carry on without me. I started singing and died. The medic was rubbish.

Bodge, you are one sneaky ninja.

Overall: Very long session.

The Communications: I approve. Did made things more simple and less complex.

[IceRaiser]

AAR - the bad ver.


Flask
Alpha lead: Nullkigan
Alpha 1: Tigershark
AR: IceRaiser
AAR?: Doge
AT?: Chief

We moved up on a ridge, saw nothing, moved up one the next ridge, saw a squad moving behind the next ridge.
Got OK to pursue them, caught up and stood about 10m from them >.<
Engaged them and got flanked from the left(south?).
Comrades Cheif and Doge bit the bullet(s).


Me and Tiger moved up to an overwatch position of the village, supported Bodge's squad that was moving up by the old art of magically giving the enemies leadpoisoning.
Village was clear so we started moving down the slope when I heard the unforgiving sound of an RPG.
It hit my knee, I died.

Tiger spent the next few minutes running around like Bambi screaming "Ice?! IIIIICE!?!? ICE YOU THERE?!?!"


UNessessary voilence


Bravo Lead: Bodge
Bravo 2: Harakka
AR: IceRaiser
AAR: Kataras
RPG: Flyer


Drive to Firuz Berhav(?) Harakkas order: "stand here out in the open and wait to be shot at".
He changed his mind after a minute and we ran to a mountain.
Then we ran to the "greenzone".
Then we ran a bit further.
Then the M113 got a SPG to the kn-..side and blew up. The BMP2(Gong2?) followed his comrade into a firey death shortly after.

We spent a few minutes waiting for orders (I almost fell asleep spooning with kataras...)
Then we got the order to run up to the villa and all hell broke loose;
Harakka got shot in the knee(fo' realz!), Flyer died like 2secs after. Bodge got wounded, an engineer died.


Then The Btr-youcan'tkillme-60 killed me and kataras


Fuelraid


CO: Bodge
FTL: Pummage
IceRaiser
Black mamba
Alone+easy target


My game crashed, stuck on waiting for host...
got in, everyone stuck, Fer announced a restart.



Internecine 2


CO: Bodge
FTL: Pummage
IceRaiser
Black mamba
Alone+easy target


Went south to cover that aproach, then up to town to help Bravo(?), into town and Alone killed some dudes,
Pummage and Mamba got killed, me and Alone grabbed a building each and hid.
I peeked out and saw Fer trying to look like a bush.
He did a bad job.

[Black Mamba]

Flask

Alpha 2 AR (i'm not sure now, was it A2?)
I'm sure i had an RPK though.
Basically, nothing extraordinary on this one, tried to follow my FTL as well as i could, engaged and killed a few guys, and waited for my FTL approval before shooting people, which resulted in no "friendly" fire incident. Good job from our fireteam overall, as we all survived.

UNnecessary Violence

Charlie 1 AR
Same here, but i didn't get to shoot my SAW that much. Was a bit chaotic at first, get in, get out, get back in, get the hell out, wait, scan in this desertic unpopulated direction, mount up again, finally, no, dismount, let's move up on foot.
Reported a few contacts on our left flank, that we let go. Then basically moved up on the left flank of a M113. At some point it went tits, armor exploding everywhere,as i had seen maybe ten enemies total since the beginning (Well maybe more. But i didn't even engage more than twice). We got to clear a coumpound, and a lone sniper shot my comrade FTL AstuteCat in the back. Took command for a few seconds to organize my FT, and get him back up, while i was laying down covering fire. Astute back up, he was shot down again. I sprayed the whole area with my SAW and apparently managed to kill said sniper, even though i never saw him. Astute back up again, we were tasked with a final heroic charge against the villa. Everybody was pretty much dead there, we took some sporadic fire, no casualties. Then we started clearing each room in the villa, eventually i ran into good ol' Aziz, and SAWed him in half, point blank. Again, my fireteam makes it to the end without casualties (well. If we consider completing the first objective out of three being the end).

Fuelraid

Got time to admire the fantastic job on the filters. Time seemed frozen.

Internecine 2

I was in Charlie FT. We went south to cover an approach Bodge said they would come from. Had to realize they weren't at all, obviously, redirected west to monitor the advance of our enemies. Got to engage a few guys in the distance and managed to kill head. Then we moved bak up to the village, where Mike put up a great prank: I hide in a house and start shooting when friendly comrades go by. Fortunately he wouldn't hit the broad side of a barn, neither would I, so we both got to survive a bit longer after some wild shouting on every available comms system. (Wait. Black Mamba. Is that a friendly? Oh. Sorry)
Then i followed Pummage in the village, we obviously moved a bit too fast, couldn't cover every area properly. That is when i crossed the path of one of JimTheDog's bullets. Or was it the other way around?
I finally got to watch comrade Fer commit his usual act of treachery, and consequently die.

After that we moved on to the ARPS server, where i got killed by a dead rabbit first, and a randomly exploding truck in the second mission.

About the new ORBAT, i wasn't FTL at any point, much less Squad Leader, but it seemed to run pretty smoothly. (a lil' bit less discipline in the second mission, maybe, and there was more useless chatter over the comms). But the first mission saw us act as a squad, having fireteams well coordinated and supporting each other. The fact that the squad leader doesn't have a fireteam to manage seems to make the orders come faster.
It seems nice to have a squad medic as well, so you don't wait fifteen minutes before the medic manage to cross the whole battlefield to get to you. I wouldn't know though, i never got wounded.