[Sun] 19 Apr 2015 (Frogger)

[audiox]

So yeah, this seemed familiar considering yesterday.

[Sparks]

It doesn't seem to matter if I'm driving or not, me and cars in Arma just do not get on...

[Ferrard Carson]

A Box In A Box
Deployed as Alpha Squad Leader
Our two squads approached the occupied town with all due haste, clearing out its inhabitants with only a minimum of friendly fire. Astoundingly, no one died!

We deployed along the main road, the CO element scouting forward and clearing out an HMG nest on their own. Again, astoundingly, no one died!

And then A3 got overzealous in "procuring" getaway vehicles and decided to flash their ass at the oncoming Convoy. Half of A3 vaporized, and the rest of them soon followed as they got enmeshed in city-fighting vs. AAF armor. We made a decent accounting of ourselves before CSAT helicopter troops (and helicopters!) started raining down around us. Alpha was cut to half-strength before I ordered a strategic redeployment in a less hostile direction, but before we could make good on our escape by sneaking along the gulleys and ravines, some Dukes of Hazzard twerp joyrode their pick-up truck to the ending trigger and ended the mission before the entire rest of the platoon mangled mishmash of random men could make its way to the extract.

The 3 Way
Deployed as NATO Alpha 3 Fireteam Leader
"Get up on that hill and cover us!" I was told. So up the hill we went. Upon reaching the summit, we opened fire on what ended up being a fireteam of OpFor... plus their Squad Lead element, plus their CO. With our four guns, we were at almost half-strength compared to their base of fire, leading to the obvious result of their weight of fire winning out. I was slow in responding appropriately to this, however; as I pulled back off the hilltop and ordered a withdraw to escape the murderous hail of bullets, AJAX's flanking fireteam shot me dead from the reverse slope that we had ascended not five minutes prior. As I lay bleeding out on the hilltop, I called out to ASL, "A3 has been flanked and is entirely incapacitated."

After I bled out, I witnessed ASL mosey on up to the hilltop and right in front of AJAX's crew. After the obvious thing happened, A1 and A2 found themselves under fire from both sets of high ground, with another CSAT Squad within grenade toss, while NATO had virtually no kills to show for it. We predictably lost.

Lightning Strike
Deployed as Alpha 1 AR
Consider this first segment a cautionary tale against passive-aggressive FTL'ing:

Some strange man decided that the best place for the AR was... the driver's seat? Makes absolutely no sense*, but I'm not the mission-maker or the FTL.

Unfortunately, my FTL didn't quite understand that I didn't have a GPS, and that it was a Bad Idea(tm) for the driver to be opening his or her map while driving. Number of instructions received while driving to the initial observation post: 0.

At the first hill, the entire platoon parked itself and decided to empty a ludicrous number of magazines at targets some 400-500 meters away. While I jockeyed to keep a rock between us and any major threats, Tigershark my gunner ended up expending all his ma deuce ammunition from this first vantage point, something which puzzled our FTL when he realized what had happened.

There soon followed a series of "mount up / dismount / mount up" shenanigans that ended with us taking cover on a wall with a CSAT autorifleman in a perfect position for enfilade fire. We were incapacitated very, very quickly and died very, very slowly because ASL didn't get a good status report from us until about three minutes later.

Re-Deployed as TH2 Ghosthawk Pilot
With Aqarius watching suspiciously from the rightside gun while Tigershark once more caressed my hard, black gun barrels, I took to the air at the helm of a Ghosthawk. "Bravo is in trouble!" I was given the call. "Go give them air support!" Aqarius called out that he had hauled as many FAKs into his backpack as possible and wanted me to drop him off as a FAK dispenser while Tigershark and I provided gun-runs overhead.

Despite a little bit of TrackIR-induced disorientation (I need more practice, it seems) Aqarius was set down in a smooth, controlled fashion, and we lifted off again as a bewildered Bravo stopped running towards what they thought was their extract and safety. I flew stately low-altitude orbits of the area, Tigershark's long, hard rod spraying white-hot rain over the few CSAT who offered us resistance. Eventually, we dropped back to the deck and came in to retrieve Aqarius in a deliciously delicate pinnacle landing. Upslope of us, TH1 gathered up all of Bravo...

...then deposited them another 300 meters distant whilst under heavy fire. In an effort to help, I overflew the area on a gun-run, but despite Aqarius's mini-gun work, enough bullets found us that they blew out our main rotor. Turns out, ArmA 3 choppers don't auto-rotate the same way that ArmA 2 choppers do. Plus, I was fairly low and fast to begin with, with nothing but trees and gullies beneath me...



*AR as MRAP driver really doesn't make any sense. Of your four troopers, the AR is the one you most want dismounted, simply because they have the biggest gun of the four-man fireteam. If you keep someone in both the Driver and Gunner seat, then you've got the following troops at your disposal - pick two:

• FTL - Rifle + Grenade Launcher + Rangefinder
• AR - LMG or IAR
• AAR - Rifle
• RAT - Rifle, LAT launcher

The AAR has the least to offer of all four, so they should definitely stay in the MRAP. The AR has by far the most to offer, so they should definitely dismount. The FTL and RAT are both of middling importance, and it can mostly be up to the FTL as to who dismounts. One comment though: the RAT's launcher doesn't really factor in. If you are facing something that needs an AT asset, then your MRAP is in a deathtrap situation and should be escaped from immediately.

~ Ferrard

[Miloki]

So much fun... Sorry I missed Sunday but my damn mouse stopped working for no apparent reason on Saturday morning New mouse arrived last night so ready to go again.

All that's left is for me to learn how to play

Miloki

[Sparks]

Made it in for the start of the session tonight, but only with two or three minutes to spare (which we spent seeing how low we could drive each other's framerates on the explosives range).

A Box In A Box
Alpha 3 RAT with AJAX (FTL), Tigershark (AR) and Boarnoah (AAR)



A nice start to the night, on a mission that's only ever beaten me into a pulp. But I had AJAX and Tigershark as my meatshields squadmates, so how could it go wrong? CO had a fairly simple plan, we'd take one side of the street, Bravo would take the other and when the convoy hit the main crossroads, we'd hit the lead vehicle and then pump rockets into each of the vehicles following it.

We moved up through the town, clearing a few enemy contacts as we went, and after a bit of on-the-fly retasking, got to our allocated strike points readily enough. Then CO changed the strike point and we redeployed. We didn't think much of our allocated building (it had a stone wall around it which meant we had no cover from which to fire or to hide) so we switched across the street and occupied a likely two-story. However, that had been allocated to Bravo 3 already, so we tried to rapidly redeploy further up the road to our original point, but the convoy chose that point to show up and we came under fire. We got back into our building, I got up to the top floor with a nice view of the street - but the street also had a nice view of me and it tried its best to kill me through the walls. I fell backwards out of the room, threw myself down the stairs and was rather surprised to find I wasn't already dead. AJAX called out the position of the IFV attacking us, I snuck across the building's ground floor to where I had line of sight on it, lined up the crosshairs for a point-blank RPG to its tailpipe.... and then as I hit the trigger, Arma said Screw you buddy! and jumped my crosshairs into the wall beside the window. The RPG hit about twelve inches from my face and both myself and Tigershark got vaporised while the IFV commander laughed himself to death. AJAX lasted about another twenty seconds and I didn't see Boarnoah go down, but by the time I was fully in spectator mode, our whole fireteam was gone.

Sometimes I think this game doesn't like me...


The 3 Way
TH1 Pilot



Another straightforward plan - I'd fly the MH9 to a forward LZ and wait to carry out an extraction, everyone else would push on in vehicles. Alpha 3 would take a base of fire overlooking the town while Alpha 1 and 2 would run in, bag the VIP and call for extract. I'd swoop in heroically, nab the VIP and be gone before CSAT could change their shorts.

All of this plan rather went to pot however, when CSAT clever-girl'd Alpha 3 from behind, something I saw happening from the helo LZ, which I pretty quickly abandoned once I realised I was within range. Alpha 3 got wiped out, and over the next minute roughly the same thing happened to Alpha 2, Alpha 1 and ASL while I hovered about rather uselessly wishing I had something to shoot back with. Finally the last promoted ASL went down and all our forces were gone so I decided I'd go play with the guys who'd murdered Alpha 3 and spent a minute zooming about and getting them to fire at me so I could figure out where they were before turning TH1 into a kinetic missile. Sadly, I picked the wrong rocks when guessing where they were hiding and so my fiery death proved harmful only to myself

Rats.

Oh well, got to fly, I don't care

Lightning Strike
Alpha 2 FTL with gqren (AR), Major Effort (AAR) and Universal (RAT)



This one was the doozy, taking up most of the night, and was the most challanging for me as well. I volunteered for FTL 'cos you have to pay your dues, and after a little bit of banter and discussion of the plan, we got down to it. The plan itself was simple - take the only hill to the south, avoiding the towns and using our hunter's HMGs and thermals to effect over long engagement distances, then push past the checkpoint into the town to kill the AA and get our aircraft in, then assault the motor pool. Simples.

We got to the hilltop readily enough, only for CO to be attacked by a tank that we somehow never located. We spotted a few patrols and vehicles and murdered them from afar, then pushed up on the now utterly decimated checkpoint having fun with comms and crosstalk and getting disoriented and clearing a town as we went. Alpha 1 and ASL died valiantly somehow at the checkpoint anyway, and before I knew where my socks were, I'd been promoted to ASL, which was a first for me and a bit of a confusing workload. CO had me regroup Alpha, which we were trying to do when someone in Bravo drove over me (Arma vehicles had it in for me tonight), and after I got up again and limped off, we arrived at the checkpoint. We located Alpha 1's corpses in a sea of bodies they'd left behind and then waded through a second collection of corpses that Major Effort had created with our Hunter's HMG, and linked up with Alpha 3 who were watching the town hosting the AA battery from the east while Bravo assaulted the AA. Once linked up and regrouped, we pushed up to the town to support Bravo, Universal killing an Ifrit at point-blank range in the process.

The AA battery destroyed and the town secured, CO deployed us to watch the north edge of town while the helos came in to pick us up. We abandoned the vehicles and were airlifted to a surprisingly close point south of the motor pool, where a Bravo unit was in trouble and had called for an SOS response. Except that it turned out that by the time we got there, everything was fine, more or less, so we decided to mount back up into the helos and press on to the motor pool, just as soon as Bravo had run over two of my fireteam for good luck. We loaded up Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 into the helo and booked it to a point about 200m north via a scenic 2km route, but as we came in for a landing, someone opened up on the helo and the next thing I knew I had half of Alpha 3 slumped dead in my lap and the helo wasn't sounding all that healthy. We bailed and counted our still up and ticking troops and found that we now had gone from the full three fireteams and ASL element that we'd started with in Alpha to six people including ASL. I'd say that was bad, but actually that was more people than we had at this point the last time we ran this mission.

This still wasn't fantastic, and it wasn't made any better by TH1 taking off and immediately taking fire and having to pull off an emergency landing right in front of us. As we'd already lost TH2 just a minute or so earlier, this boded ill for our escape plans. I sent our RAT to try to help repair the helo (I had misremembered who on the team had the repair kit but it turns out it wouldn't have helped anyway) and some mucking about took place with trying that. After a minute or so, I called a halt to it and told everyone to leg it on north to link up with Bravo for the final assault on the motor pool, and we ran on, but ten seconds later, as I paused by a Hunter to see where everyone else was, we got targeted by two enemy helos with rockets and were blown into raspberry jam.

Most of that I think was my fault - I let us get far too bunched up and we just became a big juicy target. Lesson learned.

Somehow three of Alpha 2 survived along with the remaining element from Alpha 3, and gqwen was now ASL (though apparently my death infected them with a sense of democracy and so they assaulted the base by secret ballot). Universal made it as far as the final demolition targets (and was in fact both ASL and CO for a short time ) before being viciously shot in the back by a cowering AI officer in an uncleared bunker, and moments later, after destroying much of the motor pool with the remnants of Bravo squad, Noose managed to pull off a simultaneous kill of a tank with being killed by the tank, his RPG passing the tank's bullets in mid-air. And that was the end of that, after over an hour of gameplay, much cursing at vehicles and channel commander (which was switching channels on me at the worst possible moment because I have some as-yet unsolved keybinding conflict) and of course, swearing a lot at the AI in general. Not one kill to me, but my fireteam hosed down entire swathes of enemies so I'm choosing to call this a Huge Success

Tank U Comrade
Tnk2 Commander

Arma didn't like me for this one, it first froze up during the download and when I disconnected and reconnected, it went off in a huff and lost the connection entirely. So I took the hint and called it a night.

The evening was still fun and challanging and I would try it again, but next time I'm volunteering for FTL of Alpha 94...

*AR as MRAP driver really doesn't make any sense. Of your four troopers, the AR is the one you most want dismounted, simply because they have the biggest gun of the four-man fireteam. If you keep someone in both the Driver and Gunner seat, then you've got the following troops at your disposal - pick two:

• FTL - Rifle + Grenade Launcher + Rangefinder
• AR - LMG or IAR
• AAR - Rifle
• RAT - Rifle, LAT launcher

The AAR has the least to offer of all four, so they should definitely stay in the MRAP. The AR has by far the most to offer, so they should definitely dismount. The FTL and RAT are both of middling importance, and it can mostly be up to the FTL as to who dismounts. One comment though: the RAT's launcher doesn't really factor in. If you are facing something that needs an AT asset, then your MRAP is in a deathtrap situation and should be escaped from immediately.

You know what, I'm gonna be contra-ver-sial and say that for that mission, in that terrain, that that's all wrong. Makes lots of sense in close terrain or when clearing a town where there's cover everywhere for infantry to get close, but that's not what this mission was like. We were in open flat terrain, heading for the nearest and only hill for several hundred metres, with lots of concealment but almost no cover. In that scenario, this is what I wanted my guys doing:



My logic is this:

• Your AR is not your fireteam's main weapon here, your MRAP's HMG is. You want to protect that asset and get it to where it can do some good.
• Long engagement distances, thermals and adjustable sights mean the MRAP can engage pretty much any target that it can see, so getting it to an elevated position and hitting targets 500-1000m out is a good plan. But concealment is a pain because it negates that long effective range which is the MRAP's main strength here. So you need a scout element ahead of the MRAP to find any close concealed threats.
• You need a driver and a gunner, so you only have two elements to work with to protect the MRAP and scout for it.
• Your RAT can hit light targets, so you want his AT asset in play, not unavailable while driving or gunning. So he's walking.
• Your AAR ought to stick with your AR and while he's kindof expendable by comparison to everyone else, in this case he'd be uselessly expendable because all he could do is stumble across concealed enemy and die. That's a wasteful kind of scouting technique. So the AAR is staying in the MRAP. And since he's still kindof expendable, he's gunning - that way if the MRAP's hit, your driver can make a run for it with the remains of the fireteam if that's at all possible while the AAR covers the team with the HMG (any hit that immobilises the MRAP is not likely to leave it intact and operational, but if you're hit that badly, this is probably all academic anyways, and your scout element has probably screwed the pooch and is dead anyway).
• Your AR is your second-most important asset, so using him as an ablative scout's a wasteful idea, and he's about as useful as the AAR would be in that role anyway. So he's driving the MRAP.
• And that leaves you as FTL. You have at least binocs and smoke rounds for your UGL, which lets you spot enemies and mark them for the guys who don't have binocs or scopes to let them engage at range (though the AAR should be using the HMG thermals to help here). And apart from that, you're pretty much ablative; if the fireteam loses the FTL it can get back all the functionality from your stuff by looting your corpse, which is standing order #3 or thereabouts; so you get to walk point.

This way, if FTL misses an enemy and stumbles into them, RAT can hit them if it's something like an Ifrit and the MRAP can handle infantry. If it's a T-100, well, look, you're probably toast anyway so it's all academic, but at least the RAT can try to kill the thing's treads while the MRAP distracts the tank by running for it; and now at least everyone gets to die trying something rather than just looking surprised. It gives your AR team the only chance of survival they have, and maximises your team's most likely chance to do the squad and BLUFOR any good at all by immobilising the threat so SL can deal with it more readily (it's not like you had a huge chance anyway if a tank managed to sneak up on you, or you on it, but look, if you're falling off a six-story building, you still try to avoid impaling yourself on the rails at street level...).

It does all rather depend on intervals, but that's a big part of the FTL's job to enforce. Folk are naturally gregarious huggers, so it's down to the FTL to apply the hose to keep them separated by enough of an interval that when the guy in front is hit by a tank shell, the next guy isn't taken out by the shrapnel. That way the enemy has to use one tank shell for each of us and we achieve an economic victory that way Comrades!

[Eagle_Eye]

Carson and Sparks,

I think you both have good points, and to be honest my mind is still very undecided about how best to mount an MRAP. As the mission maker Im trying to keep things logical from my point of view, but even my opinions dont particularly mesh with the party line, so I try to keep from changing too much stuff around from the base Folk Platoon.

When there is no HMG, I think its fair to say let the AAR drive, that way you have UGL, RAT and AR available to dismount and lay down fire.

When it comes to a partial dismount of a HMG Hunter, I think it can be viewed a few ways, and all have pros and cons.

• Dismount - RAT and AR: Best choice for firepower, let the FTL drive. cons are that the FTL is now doing two jobs, and his awareness is severely limited.
• Dismount - AR and FTL: Best choice if expecting CQB or infantry, cons are that you have not AT asset readily available (Although for light vehicles, IFRIT etc, the HMG should be able to cope). The main problem I see here though, is that you have split up blue and red elements, In folk we deal with logistics problems enough as it is, and I think in this case it would be best to keep things as simple as possible so that the fireteam can manouver easily. which means keep red team in the car (the HMG makes up for the AR and AAR guns combined), while blue team is free to move as normal.
• Dismount - RAT and FTL: Now you can keep your elements together, you have AT, HMG and UGL support (hopefully enough for each type of threat you might come across.

Basically it boils down to a trade off of firepower, ease of management and suitability for the terrain you are dealing with. I know that the party line (hopefully audiox will back me up on this, he's the one that told me, but even then it was after some host discussion on the subject, and Im sure people still have differing opinions) is for the AR and AAR to stay in the crew positions and act as red team, while blue dismounts). I think in most broad situations this is the best way to go, so ill probably leave it unchanged in future versions (although i should put the positions of each person in the slotting screen so that people know what they are signing up for).

[Ferrard Carson]

I still don't see AR as driver as a good thing. The same logic that makes the M2 our best gun on open terrain makes our AR the second best gun as well. Longest and heaviest barrel, best ballistics, a working bipod, weight of fire - the RAT's carbine and FTL's rifle don't even come close. Sparks, you even acknowledge that the AR is the second-best tool, so I find it hard to understand why you advocate putting them behind the wheel rather than providing automatic fire from a different angle than the MRAP.

I also don't see how the RAT being dismounted helps at all. They have the worst gun for open terrain, and again, if we encounter anything that requires AT assets of any kind, then the MRAP is a deathtrap and should be dismounted immediately, in which case our RAT is now ready to respond.

And if the vehicle is unarmed, then there's no point in keeping it crewed.

I also don't see how keeping the color-teams together factors in - the Crew is one of your teams, Footmobiles is the other, and it's an even more pronounced difference than simply Red vs. Blue. Color coordination really shouldn't override keeping the big guns active.

FYI: The Party Line back in A2 was that the RAT drives and the AAR guns, while the FTL and AR fight dismounted. I see no reason for that to have changed.

~ Ferrard

[Sparks]

Sparks, you even acknowledge that the AR is the second-best tool, so I find it hard to understand why you advocate putting them behind the wheel rather than providing automatic fire from a different angle than the MRAP.

Because when you have a 12.7mm HMG pounding into a target using thermal sights and an armor-protected gunner, there's no point in the AR giving away their position outside that so their soft fleshy pulpiness can absorb some of the enemy's lead. I'd even stick them on the gun to get them further back from the windscreen and more armoured, but then if we all had to bail and run, the AR couldn't stay at the gun to cover our retreat, while AAR could (obviously AAR wouldn't like it very much, but that's what AAR stands for laddie, you're the "Additional Ablative Rifleman", none of this assistant nonsense). And if they're driving and we had the time to park the MRAP and let AR go hide off to one side and then have AAR engage, well cool, but that's not a travelling deployment, that's an ambush and you rethink that on the fly.

And if the vehicle's unarmed, hells yes, things change and the AAR's driving in all such scenarios and if I could get the AR to ride on the running boards I would, but when the RPG magnet can actually shoot back, I'd rather have the AR inside whatever cover we have available, but in a position to get out and run while the AAR covers him with the HMG.

And if we were in a town, where there's lots of cover, then yeah, again, AAR's gunning and AR's dismounted. FTL or RAT driving, I dunno, I'd lean towards FTL but that's because I think the RAT's more valuable than the FTL. In fact if we had very much cover outside at all, it'd be enough to make me rethink the deployment, but this AO from this mission? That's just all open fields and reeds and bushes and we don't hit a town until we're past the checkpoint and assaulting the actual AA battery. Which is a bit unusual as AOs go for us really, there's almost always topography or cover of some sort. It's just this scenario, where there's no cover outside the MRAP for anyone to take, and lots of concealment to let enemies get close, that I don't want my AR strolling along outside the armour so that the first burst from concealment can cost the team's AR.

I also don't see how the RAT being dismounted helps at all. They have the worst gun for open terrain

If it was practical, I wouldn't want them to even have their gun out to be honest, their job is Ifrits and light AT targets like that. The only targets I want RAT engaging with their rifle should be within 100m and is probably shooting me in the back at the time so they're distracted from RAT anyway.

And if the vehicle is unarmed, then there's no point in keeping it crewed.

Assuming you actually like your fireteam that is...

I also don't see how keeping the color-teams together factors in - the Crew is one of your teams, Footmobiles is the other, and it's an even more pronounced difference than simply Red vs. Blue. Color coordination really shouldn't override keeping the big guns active.

It's not color coordination - red is my AR team (ie the guy with the gun and the guy with the gun's ammo and AAR is also watching AR's back when AR's set up and firing). Blue is "the other guys", who basically just make small things go boom and spot things from far away.

Unless you meant about the blufor comment, in which case I just mean that if we walk up on a tank, well, we're pretty much all dead anyway, we probably can't kill a tank with any asset we have, especially if its a snapshot, but we might be able to kill its treads on one side with an RPG and lots of blind luck, so it becomes a less-mobile threat and by then we've called in its position to SL. So we're all dead, but what killed us is now known about and its location is known and it's not going anywhere immediately.

edit: Never mind, didn't see Eagle's comment!

[fer]

IFYI: The Party Line back in A2 was that the RAT drives and the AAR guns, while the FTL and AR fight dismounted. I see no reason for that to have changed.

I'm not aware of the Party line changing on this. In this case the Party line is derived from Dsly's TTP2, the relevant section of which you can read here (interestingly, despite ST's move to 6-man FTs, TTP3 has similar points to make about positions and dismounts). It should be noted that the reaction to contact is not always to dismount - speeding/fighting through is just as legitimate an approach when facing certain threats or in terrain that is unsuitable for infantry.

Notice also that in both TTP2 and TTP3 the fourth member of the fireteam is referred to as the rifleman - not the AT specialist. Over the years - and particularly during our Arma 2 era when RPG-7s were plentiful and effective - I think we came to see the fireteam as having a real AT capability (during that same period, MAT attachments were not much more than RATs with more rockets, reinforcing the idea). In Arma 3, the weight of rockets and strength of enemy armour (even light armour) has changed the equation somewhat.

My recommendation is that mission makers and element leaders alike should hold the RAT role in much lower regard these days. For mission makers that means giving the platoon more heavyweight assets for combating anticipated enemy armour (MAT, HAT, armour or CAS). For element leaders - read: FTLs - remember that your fireteam is built around the SAW, not the launcher. Frankly, the launcher (which started life as a single-shot, disposable LAW or RPG-18 and was a weapon of last resort) is only carried by the most junior member of the FT because compared to the UGL, SAW and spare ammo for the SAW, it is a weapon system of lesser moment-to-moment importance to the element.

[AJAX]

Oh, and by the way, Top Gun Sucks.

You want to see some real flying in a movie? Watch Biggles

When your cameraman's in a tree and he's looking down on a couple of complete and total lunatics flying real aircraft with no sense of self-preservation whatsoever (instead of some daft short eejit on a sound stage pretending he's in a jet) - now that's a real movie about flying

Just sayin'.

You know the actors in Biggles where on a sound stage for close ups as well. Just sayin... And most jet scenes in Top Gun were real shots , just did not have actors in them. Tom is insane but Top Gun was a great movie for the time. IMO....