44fabulous comrades donned lab-coats, fetched eye-protection and snapped on their surgical gloves as we began to Science our way forth into a potential new era of FAXORBAT-4B!
The evening began with Fer's classic Inter IV where sneaky, sneaky OpForian attackers snuck within a stone's throw of Gatolia before storming the place with extreme violence. The Independent-ians didn't stand a chance. Then we were called To Arms, where two squads of 7-man sections set about thoroughly ruining the day of an AAF convoy, trading perhaps half our number to secure a truck filled to the brim with medical supplies for our revolutionary medical clinic! All records referencing the "Bravo Barbeque" have been expunged, especially those implicating high-level party officials within Alpha Squad. The AAF and CSAT response to this glorious act of patriotism was to fall into petty squabbles with one another, a process we hastened during the course of Comrade Lynche's Uneasy Partners where our squads and change chewed our way through an entire AAF / CSAT joint base before being gunned down by merciless .50 cal Striders as we made a mad dash for the cake promised to us by Captain Miller.
Flush with victory, we turned our guns on one another, first in a massive meeting engagement in Appropriation, Part II's very tricky forested terrain (thanks for the great mission, Blip2!), then in a new, slightly broken run of Wolfenswan and Harakka's classic Crateresistance! The former ended inconclusively when God On High decreed, "AAF has won!" even though the majority of both forces were still up and running. The latter, however... FIA was dealt a stunningly absolute defeat by a casualty-less AAF - The Gov't. troops wrested the high ground from a surprised FIA, and the survivors were cut to shreds by a murderous cross-valley crossfire, with the AAF CO personally executing FIA's squad leader. Yikes!
FAXORBAT-4B Feedback
Today, of course, marked the official debut of our grand experiment with FAXORBAT-4B (here's a link to the grand announcement post). We hope all comrades who attended will help us understand what worked, what didn't, and what other things should we take into account when evaluating this potential path forwards. We wish to know about your experiences with FAXORBAT-4B during this session in four distinct areas, arranged in beautiful copy-pasteable code below:
[b]How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?[/b]
[[FEEDBACK GOES HERE]]
[b]How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?[/b]
[[FEEDBACK GOES HERE]]
[b]Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?[/b]
[[FEEDBACK GOES HERE]]
[b]Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?[/b]
[[FEEDBACK GOES HERE]]
As ever, please post your thoughts, feedback, screenshots and video here - we even have a YouTube channel upon which we might throw some of your videos if you share them with us! More details can be found in this thread!; more guidance on video editing for Folk ARPS is provided by yours truly. 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.
Finally, some recommended reading for all comrades, new and old:
"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."
Fun session, probably the first time I managed to actually hit something and upclose too!
Inter IV CSAT Alpha 3
Everything went swimmingly well till we got behind a house in the compound shortly after both Ajax and philFlame got shot by nasties hiding in the nearby bushes, me and Fidel managed to hide behind the house taking shots at everything that moved till we won. I got Tebz and Madrak one of whom was the the last of the fia team(?).
To Arms Alpha 1
This went a lot better than 2 weeks ago since there wasn't as much confusion over the larger sections, that ifv managed to get a couple of us including me when we ran towards the gully near which the truck was passed =(. Also wasn't the town stated to be clear of hostiles? why did bravo have to seperate to clear it
Crateresistance AAF Alpha 1
That was awesome we really snuck right upto fia on that hilltop, me and egbot ate the return grenades by fia, I was stuck bleeding out and I only asked for medic in von which I think no one heard me
The after party was cool too, pistol round was fun.
Lots of fun! It was good to see some names I recognise from, err, two years ago? Should be able to make some Sundays, hopefully Certainly looking forward to it!
Teleporting in to the village, such as it was, we set up in our compound (such as it was) and awaited the enemy. Not long after that, bravo 1 took contacts by the church, and A1 was retasked to support. As we moved there, however, the majority of opfor had moved into our old position. A brief, intense firefight followed, and I was slain whilst trying to heal the medic/flank. Good fun though.
To Arms
B2 Section lead
Bravo was tasked with clearing through the city and then setting up on the other side of it. After some initial plinking at baddies on the big hill to the north, we moved through the city, blue covering/engaging targets on the hill with red sweeping. We took contacts on a crossroad in the town, cleared them out, nearly shot Bravo 1 who had moved in front of us, and then started the long walk around the hill. Zebby was killed at some point in that engagement (our only loss to enemy fire). We then started, and continued too, suppress an enemy element on a far hill about 400m away whilst bravo 1 moved up to the top and had some IFV fun, as I understand it. We expended a lot of ammunition on that hill, but eventually the enemy were dead. Big apologies to Dan and Tebz, whom I accidentally exploded (after a seperate, non lethal accidental frag earlier, too). The grenade key is now rebound. With the enemy dead and the fuel truck nicked, we pulled back to the garage and set up a defensive perimeter. A helicopter flew overhead, we shot a lone ai wandering down the road towards us, and victory was ours.
Uneasy Partners
A3 FTL
We drove across country and down the beach, laughing all the way, until we started getting shot at and Tebz was immediately killed. Bollocks. We dismounted, and returned fire on hilltop and roadside contacts. The squad bounded up to the top of the hill, taking light casualties, and then everything went tits up. The moment we crested, everything fell apart. I saw a lone gunman to the shack in front of us, so I GP'd him, but then fire started coming in from all over. Zebby was killed, me and Dan were knocked down and all around us, the story was much the same in the other fireteams. Someone got me up, and I went and got Dan. The squad retreated, healed up, and A3 consolidated into A2. Beaten and battered, we moved around to the west to act as a base of fire for bravo. We were quickly suppressed by 50 cals that drove around, hiding from us. Until one chose to re-appear, on the shack where we had been driven back. I heard the cracks over my head, I looked over to the east and saw the strider, the 50 cal flashing on top of it. I then went into what could be described as 'complete panic' with my contact report sounding something like: 'Eagle Eye! Shack! East! stider, 50 cal, run! *incomprehensible screaming*' but then someone exploded it and all was well. Until the 50 cal ifrit showed up, but then someone exploded that too. It got Fer and Darkit though. RIP. The battered alpha under Tigershark now moved to the base perimeter, regrouped into one squad. and assualted the tower, then some office blocks, and put large amounts of fire into the dome. The VIPs were dead, the base was ours, and now all we had to do was extract. At that point, AGS and 50 cal fire started coming in from seemingly all over. One mad, unsuccessful scramble for AT later, and we were booking it south. Alpha was cut down around me, and as Tigershark was cut down by small arms fire, the mission ended with a victory.
Appropriation, Part II
ASL, CO
After being 'promoted' to mission leader, I formulated a plan. As we didn't know the exact location of the trucks, we would try and sweep through the woods, then along the road, with the bravo fire support element providing base of fire. Well, we heard some shots north and retasked slightly. Bravo spotted one ei AR, eagle-eye blew him up with a 400 GP shot, and we started to maneuver on that position. We took fire from a compound, saw the trucks, and started to advance on it, whilst Bravo engaged more ei to the east, locking down that flank. As we got ready to begin the final assualt, mission victory triggered. I'll take it!
Crateresistance
FIA Medic.
Oh boy. So, all started well. The trucks didn't explode, and we set off towards our one cache. Some minor confusion with directions later (no, A1, offroad as in the trucks not offroad as in the driving) we were all set up, me and Eagle-Eye the squad lead in a little house next to the cache. As we pondered the direction the enemy might come from, we found they'd chose the sneaky route, and were basically on top of A1. We thought we might get the drop on them, turns out we were wrong. A1 was wiped out, and we hid in our little house, hoping they wouldn't see us and they'd run right past us to get to the cache. The GPs and bullets that started ripping through the walls soon put that plan to rest, so we hid and awaited the inevitable. A2 was cut down, and we waited with bullets thudding into the house. Then blip2 appeared right by the window, and shot eagle-eye. I tried to get him, he dodged and then shot me too. My shouts of 'You'll never take me alive' were proven accurate when he then executed us both.
All in all, very good fun. Will give some thought to the new ORBAT and make a post.
That vehicle at the end flying through the air was glorious.
"Full sails!" - Kefirz
"Don't engage, wait for them to pass the [*rocket launched with wooooosh sound*] bridge... [*boom - rocket hitting the tank*]" -Me, leading an ambush.
For the empire
Mabbott wrote:That vehicle at the end flying through the air was glorious.
Was that Bravo Squad Lead's ingenious solution to the inexplicable lack of wirecutters in his loadout?
Because if so, I'd like to point out that trucks don't normally explode after hitting chicken wire...
guns.ie ● stochasticgeometry.ie ● weak.ie
Don't tell mom I'm a pilot, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse
madrak_the_red wrote: Tigershark was cut down by small arms fire, the mission ended with a victory.
I was wounded...just don't want to give the impression I died...because you know....some nefarious types around here are trying to make that "Tiger's thing".
Sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken.
On time for a change, and switched to OBS with an equaliser on the mic... which unfortunately mucked up the sound, giving everything in the video a nasty reverb effect (and wouldn't you know it, that's one of the hardest things to get rid of from audio ). Oh well, didn't detract from the fun this evening...
Inter IV Bravo 1 RAT with Fer (FTL), Eqbot (AR) and Clubs (AAR)
Ooo, kill everyone, a nice easy plan
Well, technically we were supposed to be all sneaky-sneaky through the gully and pop up in the middle of town to murder everyone while Alpha 1 and 2 attacked from the other side and Alpha 3... er... actually, I missed what Alpha 3 was supposed to be doing there. But it turned out to be somewhat moot in the end because the gully wasn't so much a depression so much as it was a slightly sad piece of the field with one or two more bushes than the statistical average. We headed off down it anyway with Fer leading and after a few minutes of careful sneakiness, came under fire from somewhere. I was sure it was from the east (but looking over the tape, that was probably MMG1 opening up on the source of the fire which was to our south). We popped smoke and pulled back, collected ourselves and started to push forward again. I stepped sideways from the gully to sneak a peek south first, someone in the surprisingly close church saw me and opened fire, I fired back and the plan morphed into myself and Fer suppressing the church while Eqbot and Clubs advanced to grenade range. This again morphed to Fer and Eqbot advancing and myself and Clubs providing base of fire. No harm though, because just before Fer hit the church, someone shot the last OPFOR and we won
(And for once I hadn't wasted all my ammo without hitting anyone! Yay!)
To Arms Bravo 1 rifleman with - oh heck, here we go - Netkev (SCL), Pooter (Grenadier), Reppyboyo (AR), Dannysaysno (AR), Pepper (RAT), and Bormanov (R)
The first large-scale test of FAXORBAT-4B, this, and I was looking forward to it. Command took a while to get plans in order, but that's okay, to be expected. Alpha section was pointed at the hill overlooking the ambush, Bravo 2 was to clear the western edge of town and push up in behind Alpha, and Bravo 1 was to clear the eastern edge of town to the church and then cut west to assist. The last time we ran this mission, the whole western edge of town was infested with bad guys, so I was glad we were clearing as we went, though I thought we could have been sent a bit more directly north, but hey, we'd probably have missed some little git of an AI who'd have then shot us all in the back. So off we went.
Eh. I love the banter on these missions, no honestly I do; but holy crap does it not mix with seven-man sections at the same level as it did with fireteams. I had no idea what was going on for that first few minutes, it was just all noise. I had to listen to it on the tape for a few minutes after the mission to even figure out that we were talking about weaponising hugs.
But, that aside, it went well. No resistance at the church, no resistance clearing buildings, no problems at all after we asked Netkev to stop trying to get out of commanding us by sticking his head into every possible place an AI with a gun might be hiding. We pushed north from the town up the hill, and then Netkev spotted an IFV and it was Pepper's TIME TO SHINE!
Anyway, after pepper finished missing the IFV with all of his rockets and Netkev bravely had run away with the rest of the section and I'd had a chance to go "Hey, where'd you guys go?" (isn't giving the order kindof a part of an ordered withdrawal? ), someone else killed the IFV and we went up to the top of the hill and then bravely charged down the far side, through all the reeds in the world and got to the truck. Bormanov was picked to drive and bravely took off, straight into friendly fire that shot him, destroyed the truck's wheels, mangled its engine, and then exploded the one thing that was the entire point of the mission.
Happily, there was a second truck! ("I don't remember that in the briefing?" "SHUT UP COMRADE") This time Netkev took the driver's seat (ha, like any of us were going to be silly enough to obey that order twice ) and while I watched crustycuffs getting friendly-fired by the anti-Bormanov team, Netkev barrelled over the hill in the truck surprising the hell out of a few rabbits. We legged it after him, falling back to the town to defend it, and I snagged what I thought was an AR along the way (hey, one of our blue team had it, they were all AR gunners, it's an AR, right?).
We got back to town to the dulcet tones of the radio asking if that was a friendly tank they could see (Comrade. Seriously. Have you ever seen a friendly tank that wasn't on fire in our games? That's how you tell which tanks are friendly and which are not). And then an enemy helo showed up, and when we opened up on it I realised my AR was not an AR, but an MMG and I was now carrying several boxes of ammo that did not fit my gun. I tried swapping with AJAX, but direct VOIP isn't worth the time it takes to talk into it apparently, so he didn't swap (he was the MMG1 leader, I figured he had the ammo for the gun) but instead he gave me the ammo. Okay, if you don't want the big gun, I'm cool with that
We took defensive positions and awaited the onslaught. One AI ran round the corner of the road from the west. Two ARs, one MMG and four rifleman all shot him simultaneously. And there were rabbits. And that was it for the counter-attack apparently, and we won. Excellent!
And after that entire mission, all the firing, all the grenades, two seperate primary weapons, and many, many funny banter moments, I had exactly zero kills. /sigh
Uneasy Partners Bravo 2 FTL with philFlame (AR), anvilFolk (AAR) and Eqbot (RAT), with cameos by AJAX (AR), Bormanov (survivor from a nasty disaster) and the AI (gormless twat that kept running around like a headless chicken)
We don't plan by committee... but maybe new COs should ask old hands for advice a bit more. I'm just saying - command planned to drive from the start to point 2, dismount and then there was a fairly complex assault plan on the compound. I didn't think there was anything really wrong with the plan (hell, it beat the last time when we had to run between points 1 and 2 on foot), I just feel that it was missing some bits; like what to do if someone engaged us between points 1 and 2; and how to deal with the armor in the compound.
Okay, that negativity out of the way, time for the fun negative stuff!
I dislike driving in Arma. I'm crap at it. So why, no matter what role I take, do I seem to always wind up behind the wheel of a highly explosive vehicle with several people in it? (or not quite in it, in our case, as we left someone behind when we rolled out). Anyway. At least I didn't blow up two of the vehicles by trying to get them to mate before the mission start
I did manage to completely lose BSL though, who was patiently saying "We're here, to your right, can you see us? Hello? Over here? We can see you..." at the offroading point for a good 30 seconds before I found him again
We pootled down to around point 1, and got orders to disembark. Then re-embark. Then philFlame lost connection and the AI took over and wouldn't get in the truck. And I nearly friendly-fired someone while ordering it to get in (sorry about that btw). Then we were told to disembark again. And then re-embark and by now I was ready to just ignore orders and tell Eqbot to drive us to Cuba, but instead we got the order to advance down the beach towards point 2 so away we went. We got 50m past point 2, then came under fire so we pulled in sharply, bailed out and took cover behind the truck, then moved cover-to-cover towards the ridgeline with point Red our final target.
Things at this stage were a bit... disorganised. AJAX had joined us in phil's AI-held slot, then AJAX left and the AI came back, I was not handling the comms traffic well (even worse than usual in fact) and we were all spread out. We managed to gather ourselves up on the hill for the final assault on point Red, which went without a hitch, then two HMG striders barrelled out of the base and we pulled back to hide behind the hill while MAT took care of them. Phil had managed to get back in by now, so we were back up to full strength and we managed to get at least slightly regrouped. Command pointed us at point purple, and we started advancing on it, pausing only to grenade the bejaysus out of two unfortunate AI. We moved up to point purple, and spent a few minutes merrily hosing down enemy with AR fire and talking that fire in on the enemies via rangefinder and comms. That was fun
Then BSL asked B2 and B3 to kindly shift their arses into gear to go join them with B1, and we hurried up behind them. BSL pushed forwards with B1 (possibly BSL was B1 actual at this point, aquarius was suspiciously quiet and BSL was sounding a lot like Netkev), and we moved after them, but not fast enough to catch the shrapnel from the grenade that minced them into small chunks. And suddenly I was BSL. Yay, field promotion...
At this point, and this is my fault, Bravo totally bogged down. We spent way too long hunkered in a tin warehouse that wouldn't have stopped a BB pellet, let alone the HMG strider's rounds, and I should have pushed us up to the wall of the compound a lot faster a lot sooner. When I finally did pull my head from its damp warm dark resting place, there was an inconvenient fence between us and the wall, and I didn't think running along the wall of a hostile compound for a few hundred metres was a good idea. Happily, someone had parked a truck by our warehouse, there were no orders to leave it be or protect it, and it was about as useful as a chocolate covered toilet seat where it was (and if you think I was going to get in that thing to egress from a hostile armed compound with HMGs everywhere, you don't fully appreciate the depth of my instinct for self-preservation ). So I got into the truck and drove it full-tilt at a point between the wire fence supports.
At this point, some information was experimentally determined. Firstly, wire fences in Arma are apparently completely solid and made of two-section lengths. Secondly, while in the real world a truck driven at the wire in a wire fence mid-way between posts would just barrel through the wire, in Arma, the wire snaps at the posts ten metres away and the entire fence falls over like papier mache. Thirdly, this is sufficient impact to sever the driver's seatbelt and bodily throw him through the windscreen, where he lands five metres forward and somehow five meters sideways from the truck without any damage, moments before the truck explodes Michael-Bay-style.
However, we now had a gate through the fence and legged it for the wall, where Alpha was already working clearing the compound. We piled in behind them to help. There were a few moments of confusion as we went through, but no friendly fire, and then someone in Alpha eliminated the targets and now it was time to leg it. Command wanted to do a full sweep of the compound first, but I figured that was not a survivable plan, and sure enough as we hit the south-western wall of the compound we came under fire from what I think was a GMG strider. I didn't hang about to find out, I ordered all of Bravo to run away to the exfil point on the southern side of the compound. We made it there, command declined my idea of searching for vehicles to escape in, and ordered Bravo to pathfind south along the escape route. I ordered B3 to stay with command in case B2 was massacred by the strider, and we legged it south looking for enemies and finding none, until as command and the remainder of the platoon came up behind us, a HMG or two started chewing at our ankles. Bormanov called in that there were striders incoming and I was looking at us on a small hill with minimal concealment and no real cover, striders to our north coming at us while the platoon tried to flee south, where there was open terrain, no cover and possibly a HMG at the roadblock to our south.
Oh well, time to die.
Eqbot had the AT so he had to die too. I ordered everyone else to leg it to a house nearby that looked like the only cover in sight, while myself and Eqbot went to the highest point around to give him a chance to spot the strider, and I lobbed smoke everywhere to give us a chance to live long enough to fire at least once and buy time for the platoon to escape. Comrades, it was a glorious heroic death in service to the Party that we sought, giving our all so our comrades would have at least a chance to escape and return to the warm embrace of the motherland and possibly Fer's dascha. The tears flowed freely down our cheeks as we made our peace with the world and readied our weapons for our last few seconds of life, at one with our noble sacrifice and content with our end.
Then blip2 shot both of us in a friendly-fire incident and then everyone was dead.
Can't I even have a final stand in this game without someone on my team shooting me in the arse? Yeesh. Happily, we'd killed the targets so it was called as a win. So that happened.
Appropriation, Part II Alpha 2 SCL with Leander (Grenadier), Fidel Donson (AR), philFlame (AR), Zebby (RAT), Dan (R) and Tabz (R) You know what, let's try funnier acronyms.
Cod, who was also Alpha Squid for this mission, decided to screen from the south for this mission, with A1 on the ridgeline for a direct approach and A2 to their east for a road approach. We spawned, deployed and moved to our OPs, but A1's Scampi called in that he had no good visibility so Alpha Squid pulled him back to cover the trucks. A2, however, found itself on a nice small hill with good cover and sightlines, so we deployed there. There was some fine-tuning of people to get as many eyes and firing lines as I could, and then we settled in and waited. Leander spotted OPFOR first, but while we were relaying information up and down the line from Alpha Squid, someone lobbed in a 40mm grenade from 400m out and I was down a grenadier and an AR. Mental note: spread the bleep out.
I was all for counter-attack here, but Alpha Squid ordered a withdrawl instead, hoping to sucker (see what I did there) OPFOR in closer. We pulled back over the hill as sneakily as we could, hoping they'd take the hill but they never did get across the road; we snuck back around the hill, came up on their right rear quarter and opened up on them with 40mm UGLs and AR fire. The fight went well for a few minutes, then went quiet, then before we could move up and reengage them from the rear while A1 engaged from the front (ooo-er), the mission ended as a loss. The ending condition needs some tweaking
Fun mission though. First time I felt FAXORBAT-4B really showed off its potential.
Crateresistance Alpha 2 AAR with Pickers (FTL), Leander (AR) and Mort (RAT)
This confusticated me at the start. We spawned so far from the crates that I was convinced we'd been changed from defenders to attackers. But no. We drove to the cache with only the one near-death experience from a near-miss on the road, A1 set up overwatching the cache on the hilltop, A2 hid away at the northern base of the ridgeline and command got up close to the cache. Then the enemy attacked from the same direction we'd driven in on (what the bleep? Do they not start on the far side of the cache?) and while A1 did manage to trade grenades and clip two of them, they were wiped out. This then gave the attackers a pretty solid view of our backs at the base of the hill and we wound up pinned and then perforated (and it didn't help that one of those not-a-single-fuck-to-give rabbits was hopping about near me, making me think we had close contact instead of being under fire from the ridgeline), and command fell microseconds later, without taking even a single enemy with them or us. When even Ferrard is left saying "Yikes", you know it's gone badly...
Shipping Problem (afterparty)
Capture the flag, party-style, with bonus levels of banter This was fun. Even more fun with pistols. Even more fun than that when you remember what hats your teammates are wearing and that the enemy have different coloured hats.
I also suspect this mission is designed to teach you never to heal a teammate, an enemy or yourself, and to execute every injured person you see
We should play this mission more often
guns.ie ● stochasticgeometry.ie ● weak.ie
Don't tell mom I'm a pilot, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse
~ Ferrard
Certainly looking forward to it!
and Netkev bravely had run away with the rest of the section and I'd had a chance to go "Hey, where'd you guys go?" (isn't giving the order kindof a part of an ordered withdrawal? 
), someone else killed the IFV and we went up to the top of the hill and then bravely charged down the far side, through all the reeds in the world and got to the truck. Bormanov was picked to drive and bravely took off, straight into friendly fire that shot him, destroyed the truck's wheels, mangled its engine, and then exploded the one thing that was the entire point of the mission. 
