fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Help make Party-approved missions harder
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Costno
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by Costno »

something that could also work for this mission is to put it somewhere flatter, this would open up more lz possibilities and probably make it easier for the pilots to get people down quickly. Flying for the mission was a ton of fun, anything that involves several pick ups and drop offs are nice from a pilot's point of view (plus being air recon with Eagle-eye).

But if speed is the key, giving pilot's more options for lzs would help, I found myself having to waive off of one narrow Lz because of fire and then trying to find another spot quickly was tough. (Though any flat area would still need decent amounts of structures and vegetation to land behind.)

Aqarius
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by Aqarius »

Absolutely not, the hills are what makes the mission. If it were flat ground, we could just have one recon chopper and drive out there in trucks. Just make the bases a bit beefier, time adjustable, and, assuming the bases are at least somewhat randomized, make their numbers selectable.
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Sparks
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by Sparks »

Flying was a ton of fun, but the lack of much flat terrain made for that special kind of fun that you normals call "work".
Oh, and you need to put a repair truck and a fuel truck back at the main base, for cases where bad landings leave you able to fly, but with only half a tailrotor, the helo beat to poop and the master caution alarm going constantly. With the trucks, you can drop your chalk, let them go do chalk stuff, RTB, repair and refuel, and get back on station to extract them.

At least one enemy fireteam spawned entirely inside a rock.

There was confusion about whether we were destroying intel or collecting it, and it seemed the enemy started burning it as soon as we overflew them; so the fly-across-the-map-and-spot-targets-then-assault-them-in-order plan was doomed from the start.

There's an argument for enabling the thermals on the Wy55s here too I'd think.

Finally, please put trousers on the technical gunners. It's bad enough being one-shot headshotted with a .50 through the cockpit while doing 200kph 50m up by a guy in a moving technical, but when he's not even wearing trousers, that's just salt in the wound.
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darkChozo
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by darkChozo »

Okay, so I'm relaxing the default settings from 5 camps/20 minutes to 4 camps/30 minutes, though both are configurable (they already were, actually). My opinion on what the time limit is for has shifted from "do it as fast as possible" to "don't take forever", so that may or may not be a good number. I think we would've gotten 2/5 intel that last run with that time limit but I feel like we'll get faster now that we'll have people who are somewhat familiar with the mission.

Also, part of why the camps may have felt less coherent is that the AI could get pretty spread out, so you might have one fireteam "in the camp" and then 2 or three in the surrounding trees. I've tightened up their spawns (and upped the number of troops a bit) so hopefully that makes them feel more occupied.

I originally thought it would be cool to have thermals on the helis, but they really trivialize the search part of the search and destroy. The zoom on the camera is already really strong for properly identifying camps, thermals just reduces it to spot-the-white-dots. It could work for a much larger version of this mission, I think, though that would probably bore the hell out of the infantry.

I might add a thermals-enabled recon chopper that we can slot when we have fewer numbers, though. Would make for an interesting force-multiplier.

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fer
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by fer »

Like Uprising, I wanted to think about this mission for a few days before posting, because whilst I struggled with it - I liked the ambition. Because where this mission could really shine is as the basis for a JO.

:coolbert:

In the context of a main session mission, my concern with Chain Lightning was that it was trying to condense what would in reality be a large operation into too small a container - and that meant making a few compromises. For example, given our assets the helicopter sweep was a perfectly sensible approach to locating the camps, but it came at the cost of advertising our presence to the entire AO and forced the infantry to spend quite a long time as cargo. With all the camps revealed, there was another pause whilst the platoon leadership juggled the reports coming in and tried to formulate a plan - again, with more waiting for the infantry. The next phase felt a bit 'whack-a-mole', with squads being sent off piecemeal (which will slow most SLs down, since they are alone) whilst simultaneously being put under pressure to get things done super-rapidly. My experience, in Bravo, was of a lot of frantic running around, interspersed with helicopter rides. I'm all for confusion and terror, but this didn't feel quite right to me. So some suggestions:
  • Separate recon and QRF - If I understand correctly, darkChozo, your core mission objectives are really the search for camps and the rapid assaults - the intel stuff is a McGuffin to ensure the latter. I think those objectives could be executed by different elements. For example: have 1-2 recon birds (or big drones) to conduct the overflight, whilst the infantry is dispatched helibourne QRF-style as each camp is spotted. This won't eliminate all waiting time for the infantry, but with the search element there is always going to be a certain amount of that - and your AO is small enough to make it bearable. What it will do is make the experience for the SLs more focused, and allow them to plan on the ground (where it is quieter).
  • Make the timers more nuanced - I get that the overflight of helos would - and should - put the insurgents on edge and cause them to go active, but it would be nice if the countdown to burning their McGuffins was only started when a camp felt it was actually being moved against. Something like a trigger per camp that understands the difference between a helicopter flying overhead, and boots on the ground. This way, we could recon all the camps but still have a chance of getting to them all in time. If you wanted to be really clever, you could have a master timer that put all the remaining camps on countdown after 2-3 had fallen (to simulate radio comms).
Hope that is helpful.

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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by darkChozo »

So, something like 2-3 recon Hellcats and a couple of Mohawks/Tarus for transport? That could work. Pilots are usually ready way before the squishies are loaded anyway so the recon flights could get started while everyone else is sorting themselves out. Plus, five recon helos was probably overkill, now they'll need more of a search pattern than just a sweep. The only risk I see is that the CO waits for a complete recon before sending out the troops, but I imagine most COs would be aware of how boring that is for the troops and keep things moving.

For the time constraint, what I'm thinking is a much, much more lenient overall timer (basically the same as is in now, only set for an hour or so instead of 20-30 minutes), combined with a per-camp "oh shit we're under attack" timer. That's mostly because I want the players to have to split their forces for speed, otherwise the camps would just get rolled by 30+ players and offer very little challenge. Fluff-wise, it's "oh god troops what do I do" vs. "huh, that's a lot more helicopters than usual, and I haven't heard from Nicholaos for a while....".

Aqarius
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by Aqarius »

You could always scrap the recon birds and just defang a couple of those big drones. Could work out to slow recon, so the CO would have to strike the moment a camp is spotted, and keep a contingent troops on hand for when the next one is found.
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fer
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by fer »

Aqarius wrote: ... so the CO would have to strike the moment a camp is spotted, and keep a contingent troops on hand for when the next one is found.
That's pretty much what I had in mind when I termed the infantry 'QRF'- each time a camp is found, a squad would be sent off. The CO might even pause the recon until a squad becomes available again (or looks near completing its objective).

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Sparks
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by Sparks »

Not sure the Mohawk is a fantastic choice for the helo if the mission goes down that route; the Taru transport would be very useful as it's remarkably agile for its size, but the Mohawk or worse the Huron in that terrain for any kind of fast reaction is just asking for trouble of the on-fire-and-rolling-down-the-cliff-face variety...


...but that being said, I'd really like to see the Wy55s stay. They just have that fantastic UH-1 type of ambience and do well in that terrain. Head-shotting no-scoping trouserless AI apart, that is...
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Re: fa3_c69_chain_lightning

Post by SuicideKing »

Kasmeister wrote:Communication would be absolutely impossible, if AAF starts shooting CSAT, CSAT has no way to tell them to stop or something. We'll end up with CSAT shooting AAF in revenge and after a bit of pew pew bang bang we get 5 intel to cover and a fireteam on each side to recover them.
Could use a "radio man" for something like that, someone who's in CO group but resides in the channel of the other team (and uses CC).
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