Excellent turnout for an easter sunday session, with 40 comrades ready to lay down their lives for our various assortment of causes.
Runlist
Self Service - in which FIA decided to handicap themselves and still won
Hillside View - in which forest, fog and FIA proved to be a deadly brew. What happened to AH1?
Cratesistance - in which the slotting was a bit loopsided but CSAT went all MLG anyway
Hold the Line- in which the line was held indeed. Also, PTSD is a thing.
Thanks to all comrades who made this a great session, and as usual tell us of your exploits. Mission makers always love to get feedback on their missions, which you can do by clicking the links in the runlist. See you next time
Hold the Line:
Netkev joined CSL after we initially attacked the bunker in the west, we fought side by side almost constantly until the end of the mission. We survived losing 2 commanding officers, several (I lost count) armed vehicles and being suppressed non-stop for what felt like an eternity.
After Kefierz, our 2nd CO, died order seemed to break down in Charlie Squad. The town had been captured, the counter-attack had just begun and we were the only 2 left in the squad. Little did we know what we were in for...
We fought valiantly for such a long time but eventually we were forced into a guard tower. We hid in there taking heavy fire for what seemed like a hours, popping up and shooting back when we had the rare opportunity. Jeep (I think I have the name wrong) somehow (and amazingly) managed to reach us after some time and was pinned in there with us too.
I don't know how it happened, I turned to return fire for a second and when I ducked down again Netkev was dead. Seeing his lifeless corpse there broke something in me. Many tears were shed and the part in my head saying "Stay alive" just died. I picked up my fallen comrade's LMG and without even thinking about my own safety I sprayed at a passing troop transport.
I don't know how many of them I killed, maybe none, but at that point my suffering came to an end.
So I inherited a senior position not once, but twice this evening, and once was my first time squad leading with a command structure still intact. It was somewhat stressful, and I'm sorry if I ballsed it up slightly. But anyway, on to the reports!
Self Service
A2 FTL, and then CO
All seemed well, I was snug and secure in a fireteam lead slot, we were driving into town with the comforting voice of auidox in command. And then ASL and A1 ones vehicle started jittering all over the place for me. I felt kinda bad when I slammed into the back of them, breaking my front wheels and their rear wheels. I was not, however, expecting the explosion that followed, annihilating ASL, A1 and leaving me in command of our now somewhat slimmed down forces.
Implementing the previous plan, I sent A3 to one entrance whilst I lead A2 to an entrance on the far west of the compound, and sent the techy off to find a covering position. At my entrance, I found several enemies snuggled around a pipe, who had not seen me. I vaguely co-ordinated my squad and sent some GPs and fire at the guys by the pipe. Red team went in, got knocked down, I fired several more GPs at the pipe guys and all seemed well. A3 was breaching, shooting was happening, and me and red team were moving into the compound. At some point, the technical exploded and I believe someone flanked my covering team, knocking them out. I had a close run in with some shadowy figures that turned out to be enemy, so I blasted them. Whilst sparks was reviving the covering team, me and Lynche moved through the containers, I think there might have been more shooting, but I do certainly remember spotting an AAF dude on the other side of the compound and shooting him. And then shooting him some more to make sure he died. And then we won! So I assume that he was the last AAF dude left. All in all, after the somewhat disastrous start, rather a fun mission (for me anyway. Also, somewhat intense. The dark fighting left my heart pounding!).
Hillside View
B1 FTL, and then rather rapidly BSL
My first time playing this mission since my first session, and this time it was somewhat more successful (for a certain definition. We actually destroyed caches!). We dismounted, B1 was providing overwatch, firing on enemies in the valley and across the hill, when BSL went down (apparently to friendly fire) and I suddenly became the new BSL. After realising (read:being told) that I needed to turn cc on, we became somewhat organised and proceeded to move through the forrest, following mortar strikes. We took light casulties and shot some dudes whilst alpha got all kinds of chewed up on a hill to our north. Some regrouping and more mortar stikes later, we continued to move through the forest, identifying and destroying a couple of caches. The was lots of plinking at dudes in the fog that we could barely see, and the helicopter went down at some point because of...something? More running through the forest followed, and one very unfortunate incident involving a technical occurred that I will not continue to speak of. I died as I was plinking at some AI and their plinking skills were superior to mine. One shot right through the face. I then got a good giggle out of the teams extraction attempts.
Cratesistance
A2 FTL
Not much to say about this one, apart from the unfortunate slotting mistake (which we heroically overcame, huzzah!). After our halo insertion, in which I had one man land on top of the enemy and promptly die, and another killed shortly thereafter, my 2-man team we grouped with alpha 1, who had destroyed their cache. Whilst this was happening, ASL and B1 were duking it out to the north east and got two more caches. Some long rang GP fire was put on cache 2, and the mission ended as we advanced on it.
Hold the line
Alpha medic and then J3 AR
I took a nice medic spot so there was no chance of field promotion. Alpha successfully captured its compound whilst charlie and bravo engaged vehicles and were slightly chewed up by them. We captured a checkpoint, adopted what was left of bravo and assaulted the town. It was here that I met my demise, but only after the town had been cleared. Whilst running around the launcher pile on the shore, checking for wounded and such, a heavy gun engaged that position, rather abruptly ending my life.
Turns out I had died just in time to slot into juliet, and nato rode in on our tacticool digicam boats and proceeded to...wander around, shoot at distant infantry (with scopes!) and fall off ruined buildings, and then at the end run around town screaming in search of a very scary IFV. Ultimately, we were victorious, thought I think I had one of the least PTSD-inducing experiences, all things considered. I did run across my corpse at one point, which was slightly surreal.
Self Service Deployed as AAF (DefendFor) Squad Leader
Here's a lesson in patience: The glorious AAF SL sets up his trio of fire-teams in a nice triangle formation, guarding one sector each. The fire-teams are given the tasking of drawing in the enemy and obliterating them at close range, with any fire-team who isn't committed after an SL-determined period assigned to flanking duty. The goal: To ambush AAF forces, even the odds, and then flank the surviving attackers with the initial contact team drawing their attention.
Contact went off... in a somewhat flawed manner, with half of A1 downed from the get-go. I lobbed a few grenades at the attackers in an attempt to rattle them, but they seemed to have ill effect even as I sent A2 and A3 on a two-pronged envelopment of the--
Oh. So FIA did a flanking force and I impatiently told A2 and A3 to move before they had a chance to intercept the flankers. Right, that's the AAF leader dead, though Boberro did avenge me by killing both of the folk who came up behind us. From the afterlife, I watched a FIA technical successfully deploy the Death Blossom much to AAF's confusion, followed by the untimely death of the rest of AAF - A1 was reduced to rubble by the FIA Assault, and A2 and A3 were cut down as they tried to return to the AO (save a rogue Jaap who ran off into a village, chucked his weapon into a nearby bush and went native - if I had survived, I would order an immediate Internal Affairs investigation!).
Oh well
Hillside View Deployed as MMG GMG Gunner
After such a rubbish command performance, I figured that getting my hands on a big gun was the better end of the bargain this time. Little did I know that the GMG would prove more of a foe to job performance than enemy bullets.
See, the GMG is a very simple beast, and it zeros based on the plane on which its tripod has been deployed. This is, of course, little help in an area of Altis featuring precisely 0 flat planes upon which to rest the damn thing. As a result, all of my shots landed some 100-150m past their intended target unless I compensated to an insane degree.
Still, I expended some 120 rounds of ammunition. Choice quotes of the evening: "I can't see anything in there, but I hear gunfire, so I'm just going to sprinkle grenades all over that forest." "Whoa - something just secondaried..." "Ferrard, there's another contact moving from left to right in the valley-- Ouch, that looked like it hurt." "I'M HELPING!" The last may have been exclaimed as I contributed 1 grenade to the barrage of mortars that obliterated a FIA encampment.
And then a FIA rifleman engaged us. I dumped out of the gun, pulled up my rifle and crossed behind my team leader... and the twerp of an AI nailed me right through the head with a bullet that was intended for NetKev.
~ 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."
Right, so Sam and I were in position just south of the AOA waiting for target call out's. We played a bit with JTAG and fired a missile at something through the extremely dense fog.
When hoovering low next to a tree line my collective jittered or cut out or something like that with the helicopter dropping down quickly and bouncing up again, damage was done and a emergency landing was made, Sam managed to patch us up for a flight back to the FOB.
Rudder effectivity was significantly reduced with a constant left input required to stop the AH1 from going into a uncontrollable spin, so limping back to base we had to initiate a climb in dense fog(full instrument flying at that point) and for some reason the helicopter initiated a catastrophic uncontrolled decent with a significant yaw to the right. I could see the radar altimeter and IAS drop quickly and just before impact on the hillside the ground made itself known. We crashed not far from the FOB and my best guess is that the helicopter was broken enough in such a way that it couldn't sustain a hover or climb flight up the hill towards the FOB.
Oh, and I didn't realize Refueling was a manual procedure so I just sat there waiting until I accidentally saw the fuel icon pop up when looking at the fuel tank...
Another point of woe is that KB+Mouse flying seems a lot easier for some reason. What has BIS done with the joystick controls?!
Actually managed to join the last ten or fifteen minutes of the workshop this time, but couldn't see the map and didn't want to slot in without warning in case it mangled something. Still found the audio of interest though.
And then we did a few minutes of training on the Explosives Range
This game's so much easier when the vehicles don't shoot back...
Self Service
The plan was simple - charge into town, dismount, spread out, scout the storage compound and then plan the assault. It was a night assault, with no NVG (but everyone had flashlights in case they wanted to commit suicide by having everyone shoot at them). So far, so good.
Then about ten seconds before the dismount, everything blew up. Some thought we were after being RPG'd, some thought that ASL had driven at high speed into a wall, nobody actually knew what the hell was going on (me included). Someone called out for ASL, then A1 FTL, then A2 FTL (who then cried out for mommy). But no Mommy being available, Madrak had to lead us all to victory.
At least I think that was what he was doing, it was so dark I couldn't see my gun in front of my face until I was shooting and I spent half the mission with my eyeballs a centimetre away from my screen trying to figure out if that pixel was actually lighter than the other one or if I was imagining it. If it hadn't been for ST_HUD and the map, I wouldn't have known if I was in Charkia or Outer Mongolia. Honestly, I don't know if everyone else had yanked their gamma control so hard it became a delta controller or what, but I couldn't see a folking thing.
At one point, Madrak had us assault a pipe. I got shot in the liver. I think that sums up my combat effectiveness.
At another point, I volunteered to save two downed squadmates. Both died. I think that sums up my medic effectiveness.
Frankly, I could have been strapped to the front bumper of ASL's offroad and it wouldn't have effected the mission outcome in the slightest...
Hillside View
Oh suffering cats. I thought the last time we did this was bad. This was humiliatingly embarressing. I've fragged myself once by hitting the grenade key by accident, but this time I managed to deliberately shoot Bravo Squad Lead in the back.
Sorry Gemoxy
It's a bit of an object lesson (and the mission gave us four more) - I was in Bravo 2, we got the order to go down the hill into the valley in the lead position. Bravo 3 was right behind us, and Bravo 1 was overwatching. Then someone called contact west, I looked, I saw a puff of dust that looked like the dust kicking up from a prone enemy firing, so I suppressed the area with my AR. The AI got up and ran, so I aimed and killed it... and when I played the tape back afterwards, realised that had been BSL who'd run forward of our position and the contact west had been further up the slope
At some point in that engagement, the AI had nailed our FTL and I'd gotten a field promotion. Arma has a sick sense of irony. We proceeded further into the valley, with mortars walking in front of us as we went. We lost audiox to a close encounter with AI early on, and a little while after, we got shot at (and returned fire at) something that I have a bad feeling was Alpha 3. We pressed on into the valley anyway, and after a few moments where I magdumped at suspected enemy positions, I took my first round to the shoulder in the forest. Nutty got me back on my feet and we ran away from the shooting in the south and headlong into shooting to our north. The orders from command said to push north through it, so we did, and five minutes later we heard that Bravo 1 was in close contact and needed assistance so ourselves and Bravo 3 legged it to join them. I ran across an AI who shot me in the spleen, and Nutty used me as a meatshield and killed him. I got revived to the sounds of a very annoyed squad medic being friendly-fired in the third object lesson, and at that point I gave up on cohesion and told Nutty to shoot anything at all that shot at him, and we fell back with our comrades and regrouped for what was our final push north.
We got orders to proceed north up to the road on the ridgeline, and the open terrain looking grim, opted to stay in the forested valley instead, but an AI was on that open terrain above and behind us and he put me in spectator mode from behind while I engaged thin air in front of me with a half-box of AR ammo.
The remainder of the mission came down to some rather funny helo evac attempts (never send an AI to do a pilot's job), the second of which did irreparable damage to Altis forestry land.
And somewhere along the line, someone lost all their clothes and gained a funny hat. I have no idea what happened there.
Cratesistance
This one... well, we got outplayed really. After the initial fun with exploding cars and astronomically disastrous day/night transition times, we got somewhat confused about where we were going for a few minutes and got sent to guard cache 5 (even though we'd seen paratroops landing at cache 7). Ours not to question what the folk, I suppose. Guard duty proved very uneventful, and when the mission ended without contact, it was a tad fustrating. But not every mission can be awesomesauce.
Hold the Line
Holy PTSD Batman...
Okay, so this one started out quiet, with a teleporter accident thankfully not leaving me like an extra at the start of a Star Trek film. Alpha 1 held position at their initial teleport point on the road while Bravo scouted forward for a base of fire for our assault on the houses. Unfortunately, Bravo ran into a rather resilient HMG Strider and we spent the next few minutes trying to get close enough that I could see the damn thing with my render distance. During that time, it got hit at least once (I think by Bravo - Charlie was taking pot shots at it from almost a kilometre away but with limited success) but kept on ticking. Then just when I had it lined up in that last second before I fired (and after my brain told my finger to click), someone else fired on it and they got the kill while my RPG blew up a burning wreck. Super-efficient use of ammunition there Sparks, well done...
Happily a few minutes later the regrouped Alpha after clearing out our buildings made an assault on the checkpoint, and discovered another strider and finally I got a vehicle kill in a Folk session
And then was out of AT ammo for the second strider
And I'm about 90% sure we didn't accidentally frag a soldier from Charlie who was *waaaay* the heck out of position. Maybe even 95% certain.
So we booked it into Kalithea, taking fire and clearing buildings as we went. We found a useful cache of Titan launchers and ditched our empty RPG-42 launchers for them and some AT ammo (of course the helos showed up first) but as we were nicking stuff from the cache, we came under fire from across the bay by a strider. I flanked around through a broken building to get a line for a shot at it, only to be beaten to the punch by someone else. Then NATO arrived to reinforce us and drove off two helos. My FTL headed us out to a small hill to the southwest of Kalithea to watch the main road for vehicles, but the vehicles were way ahead of us (comes of having those big round things on the sides I suppose).
I don't know about everyone else by the way, but by the time we hit Kalithea, my framerate was suffering. It was down to 10-12fps by the time we hit the town and 5-6 by the time the counterattack started; and by the time we got out to that small hill to the south-west, it was hitting lows of 2-3fps and highs of 6-7. Which is why, when that ifrit started to drive all over us, I couldn't switch to the launcher and fire on it smoothly enough and got shredded by tracer fire instead. And that was it for me for the evening. I watched the remainder of the mission in spectator mode and bowed out at the end.
It was perhaps not the best night yet in Folk for me to be honest; lots of Folk, which was fun, but lots of confusion and friendly fire kindof spoiled it a bit (and it didn't help that I was guilty of the worst incident of friendly fire that night - it sucks knowing you ruined someone else's fun). And the framerate drop was a moodkiller as well. I think I could have taken that Ifrit at 20fps readily enough...
Oh well. Live and learn. Next time will be better.
Oh hai Gemoxy, what's that you have there?
guns.ie ● stochasticgeometry.ie ● weak.ie
Don't tell mom I'm a pilot, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse
~ Ferrard
