[Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

How we died (in the future)
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fer
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Location: Emotional wreck

[Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by fer »

Missions:
  • Citadel
  • 3-10 to Kavala
  • Jolly Cooperation
  • Room Service
Brigade peaked at 37 comrades, which is great to see. Thank you to everyone who came along, and for slotting very smoothly. We had several new faces - welcome! - as well as a guest from another community (Landyacht from The Company). Tonight's session was very important to the hosts team, as it saw the debut of missions made with the first release candidate of F3 v3-1-0. We're especially keen to hear from comrades that encountered bugs or issues. So we can detain them and suppress bad news.

We began with a new mission, Citadel, in which comrade CO Ferrard Carson led a mechanised CSAT platoon (plus a tank) in a textbook The Bear Went Over The Mountain operation to capture a town in the north-west highlands. There was even the formation of an impromptu bronnegruppa. However, after this operation in which we took almost no losses, our initial attack in new mission 3-10 to Kavala proved so costly (in terms of manpower) that comrade CO Wafflynumber was overcome with cowardice and ordered a retreat after falsely claiming to have received such orders from the Party (comrade Wafflynumber has been detained).

Next, we tried something new: Jolly Cooperation, a 'co-operative adversarial' from comrade Lord Penney. Things didn't work out so well for the AAF contingent, and the mission was called before either force made it to the town. However, with some tweaks, we may see a re-appearance of this interesting beast. Finally, we all traipsed back to our favourite hotel for a round of cocktails, a buffet dinner and all the PTSD we could eat in comrade wolfenswan's classic adversarial, Room Service. BLUFOR won the right to occupy all the poolside sun-loungers tomorrow morning.

As ever, please post your thoughts, feedback, screenshots and video here - comrade YouTube Hero SuperU's FA doesn't just produce our video idents, but provides leadership and guidance to propaganda artists. We also have a new YouTube channel that he manages so if you have any content you think should feature then let him know and he will sort you out, for more info check out this thread!; more guidance on video editing for Folk ARPS is provided by comrade Ferrard Carson. Posts in the AAR threads really help us (the hosts and mission makers), both with understanding how we can improve the experiences, and showing potential comrades what our sessions are like.

:v:

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IceRaiser
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by IceRaiser »


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Ferrard Carson
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by Ferrard Carson »

Shameful display? I'll have you know that Citadel was taken with scarcely any casualties - all four of our armored vehicles even survived, though our poor tank will need a replacement tread and maybe a few nuts and bolts tightened in the engine block. Why, we didn't even require the reinforcements Company Command was so eager to provide us!

Workshop
Deployed as NATO Instructor Dude
After a quarter-hour of teething issues with VON, we finally got down to the business of learning the strategery involved in positioning an "armored" vehicle! With the help of the 13 comrades who attended, we learnt to find good fields of fire and to use them for the appropriate purposes without stretching them overmuch or exposing the IFVs to significant danger.

Citadel
Deployed as Glorious CSAT Platoon Commander
In we rode into the valleys and ridgelines of central Afghanistan Altis, we limited contingent of twenty-odd brave souls and the dozen crew of a four-vehicle bronnegruppa. In a carefully orchestrated set-piece battle, Alpha deployed on the ridgeline to the west of Objective Citadel, with Bravo and the bronnegruppa in reserve behind a saddle to the north. Overhead, Tigershark's beloved Darter filled our maps with an avalanche of intel, giving us a previously unheard of amount of good intel with which to plot our movements.

Finally, the moment came as Alpha finished scooting forward a hundred meters. The trumpets blared and machine-guns flared as Alpha opened up. As the static Titan emplacement in town fell to Alpha's fusillade, the bronnegruppa crested the hill to the north, laying utter waste to the town's garrison and blasting apart any rebel scum unlucky enough to be caught outside.

Bravo charged through the fog-filled forests and attained a foothold in the town with waves of tracers passing overhead and crashing into the next set of buildings, followed shortly thereafter by Alpha surging forward to clear the southern end. On the ridgeline, our tank drew the fire of something nasty long enough for the supporting IFVs to obliterate the enemy position, and their combined massive firepower enabled the entire infantry section of our platoon to clear the remainder of the town with no interruption.

Charlie squad arrived some ten minutes later, expecting to be thrown feet-first into a meat-grinder. Instead, they found a pacified town, with CSAT troops milling about, three IFV crews cooking breakfast on the top of their vehicles, the imposing bulk of an immobilized tank keeping careful watch over the entire assembly, and legions of FIA laying dead in the streets.

:hist101: Victory! :hist101:

I'd like very much to congratulate and thank the squad leaders and vehicle commanders who accomplished their tasks promptly and reliably, enabling us to witness the smoothest and most resounding symphony of combined arms that Folk ARPS has ever seen!

~ 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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boberro
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by boberro »

Citadel, Alpha Medic

I helped testing this mission and back then it looked like this:

Image

But in the real thing looked more like this:

Image

Alpha managed to get through this mission pretty well (save Draakong getting killed in the last minute).

3-10 to Kavala, C2 AR

My guess at what went wrong in this mission (as if I was in position to comment on that :D ) is that we were spread so much, that charlie never saw/heard any of other squads. This and the fact that single guy in a bush was able to stop whole squad.
Victorious retreat:
Image

Jolly Cooperation, AAF A2 AT

One shoot - two kills. Too bad I was on the wrong side of the barrel.
Image

Room Service, A2
So tacticool. Too tacticool to be a new Cholo if you ask me. But this thunder. This thunder!

Image
Delete this marker please. You're scaring the tank.
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audiox
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by audiox »

Workshop
IFV Commander

13 people in the workshop is pretty great. We went for a short ride in some IFV's, got to ponder where to place them in relation to a hypothetical advance, and talked a little about the merits of the different positions.

Which turned out to be prescient because of :

Citadel
BSL

Which contained a great many very powerful IFVs, and even a tank for our CO to play with. Luckily our CO was Ferrard, who hosted the workshop mentioned above!

Bravo was given the task of gloriously charging past a forest containing EI and into the city whilst Alpha and all the toys smashed the forces in the city from afar. This went incredibly well considering that we were a 2 fireteam element. We got in, and set up shop. Waited for Alpha and then started clearing eastward. Everything went swell until the last two buildings, which caused the deaths of a great many bravos.

It was fun to see so many toys and even a UAV fielded for this one. Everything went swell, so please add more death to the next run! :laugh:


3-10 to Kavala
A1 FTL

Having seen the set-up for this mission when it was tested earlier in the day, i was really excited for this one. Having a mission involve both an assault and an ambush is pretty cool, but unfortunately we only got to see the assault part.

Which, for A1 at least, had its charms. There were some close EI, and the MRAP moving up and down the dirt road was really scary. Also, we might have shot up a holy place. Just maybe certainly. Other than that we did some light covering and some house clearing and was under no real threat. Took some rounds from somewhere but didn't manage to pinpoint them.

We were hampered by the lack of a timely plan to get us into the zone we were meant to be clearing. Also, the amount of MRAPS coupled with the lack of AT in fireteams (and only one MAT) made for long waits, which aren't that amusing. (Except for me, since i had the rangefinder!)

Then we did a disorderly advance down south, only to be told to head back up north, for the mission to be called slightly afterwards.

Which is sad, since i know what we missed out on

Image


Indeed what seems to have happened is the same thing that happened in the next mission (and as Boberro mentioned above). We put our elements way too far apart from one another, so they end up being just another death in the distance instead of a mutually supportive dreamteam of AI-death. :jihad:
In my opinion we tend to do this very often.




Jolly Coopertaion
AAF CO

Have you heard the one about the norwegian and the swede who had to cooperatively CO? :lol:

Since we're so good at comms, lets add another layer! :dance:

I really like this concept, and i hope LordPenney gets it to work properly, but it has its kinks. As it was CSAT (Base of fire) had no real reason to try to keep AAF (Assault) alive as they tried to take the first objective. Also, i messed up by OK-ing a BOF way too far out from our objective. But CSAT would have no reason to want to be closer.

Basically, there should probably be a casualty cap that leads to both teams wanting to keep eachother alive. Also that casualty cap should probably be lifted after the three objectives have been met, since then its a free for all to the laptop. So yeah, lets just make everything even more complicated. :psyboom:

A mission that makes fighting the AI a competitive venture is a missing link between the advs and the coops, its just really really tricky to pull off. I hope we'll continue to try and that we'll find the magic sauce for this kind of mission eventually.


Also, a big thanks to Aquarius on this one. Having you make up a plan for alphas assault really helped me focus on those parts of the mission we never got within ten miles of! :zoidberg:

syrion
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by syrion »

This was my first session with Folk ARPS, and I really enjoyed it! I'm old (31!) and have a family, so time is a bit difficult for me, and calling some 20 year old "sir" because he plays a game more than me just isn't an option. :D From what I saw today, I think the Folk ARPS approach is going to work well for me, and I look forward to more missions in the future!

Workshop. I picked the worst spot for the IFV, cementing my determination to never be in a situation where I have to maneuver a vehicle. Glorious! It was nice to learn and hear other peoples' thought process, though.

Citadel. Since I thought I might have to leave early for Operation Shopping With My Wife, I chose the lowest-responsibility role: Assistant Automatic Rifleman on Alpha-1. It wasn't a bad role. With our quick deployment (which cut down on a lot of the tedium of marching, thanks guys), we ended up on overwatch, looking east into the village. I felt that it may have been more profitable to deploy the different fireteams of Alpha on different sides of the village to give better angles on some of the perpendicular streets, but that would necessarily be more risky. As it was, we had to operate without cover for a bit while spotting targets. When we'd finished that, we moved into a closer position and shot across a mist-filled valley into the town, taking out some static assets and visible infantry.

Traversing the valley was a bit of a fright, as our infantry movement was pretty ragged, and I was sure we'd run into a patrol, but luckily this phase was short and we got into town. Here, communications broke down for me a bit. It was difficult to hear VON because there was a lot of TS talk, and sometimes VON bugged out. (Alas, such is ARMA.) I did find myself kind of wishing we had an (easy) version of ACRE or something like that. (I know, no mods...)

I took a bit of friendly fire in the graveyard in southern Abdera, but luckily our comrade realized his mistake before I was killed pathetically, and I bandaged myself and proceeded to clear houses. Besides a couple of enemy KIA, the most eventful moment of this period from the perspective of A-1 was when I called out an enemy in the window, looking across the street... and everyone behind proceeded to unload on the window directly above my head instead. :psyduck:

It was really fun, with a good flow to the operation overall.

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Tigershark
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by Tigershark »

syrion wrote: I'm old (31!) and have a family, so time is a bit difficult for me, and calling some 20 year old "sir" because he plays a game more than me just isn't an option.
I scoff at your claims of being elderly. Having said that, at least we aren't Fer old.
Image
Sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken.

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Tigershark
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by Tigershark »

Also...no mention of the sterling job the UAV operator did to get the intel required to make a successful assault.

Thank you UAV operator. You are a God walking amongst mere mortals. Women want you....men want to be you.
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Sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken.

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boberro
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by boberro »

It's good to know the budget finally allowed the Party to provide us with UAVs
Delete this marker please. You're scaring the tank.
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Doofling
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Re: [Sun] 25 May 2014 (Shameful Display!)

Post by Doofling »

Cytadel

So, as my first mission with FA in probably 9 months or something (and the first one with Arma3), I decided to take a role without much responsibility and joined in as B2s AR.
Our first objective was to stay in Heads IFV, while he and his crew tried to get us through the thickest fog that arma has to offer.
That fog proved to be quite dangerous after we dismounted, as I literally couldn't see anything and out of a sudden found me walking directly behind our transport, just a few moments after it had begun its way to wherever it was supposed to go. I thought I was gonna be run over for a second, wouldn't that have been ironic! :D
Anyway, after we crested the hill overlooking our objective we quietly observed the village without any spotting left to do, thanks to Tigersharks UAV.
The same one apparently also spotted some opposition to the revolution in a forest between us and the objective and Bravo Squad got ordered to convince them of the Parties superiority.
Thing is, the forest was in a valley, which meant foggy fog again. So basically, we kinda crossed the valley to the town without seeing anything, besides looking very hard.
We cleared the mission objective (The town) by individual houses after that, this time spotting counter-revolutionarys and providing them with sufficient arguments to lay down their arms. And the rest of their bodies as well.
All of us survived... until our FTL and another comrade got overwhelmed by the might of the bourgeoisie just before we cleared the last two buildings.

All in all a very fun mission and Arma 3 is gorgeous!
It does come with a lower framerate than A2 though, but I haven't really had a chance to tweak the settings yet, so I'll see how that goes.
I also really dislike that the map is a textured map, which makes it very hard to read, in my opinion.
I found an addon that claims to fix that (http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=25637), but I notice that mods have to be whitelisted, if one would want to play with them on the server.
I found that reading the height-lines was very difficult, which proved for a nice surprise when I saw the valley, that I had not noticed on the map in this mission.

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