Arrived in fine toddler time to miss both Gator Raid and the start of Manhunt (by about 2 minutes, rats).
Also, I dropped my resolution settings to try to boost my FPS (oh, the irony) and thus mangled my recordings which now look like someone playing deus ex (the original) while wearing sunglasses.
Charlie Foxtrot
Saw the choice, thought
"how could this go wrong?".
Command had a good plan -
"you know your squad slot? Forget it, you're in alpha, bravo or charlie depending on where you hit the ground".
Actually, turned out to be a pretty good plan.
Coming in a bit late thanks to an Arma restart, I wound up taking the MMG gunner slot instead of my preferred usual
"insignificant expendable cog" slot. And then my MMG leader was dropped on the southern border of the AO while I was dropped on the northern border, so things were hairy right from the off. Most of Bravo's squad linked up in two bunches, and happily I was in the bunch that wasn't hiding in the grass by the wheels of an armed enemy ifrit. So that was nice. We then almost walked into an enemy patrol while trying to link up and save the Ifrit-botherers, but happily the patrol was from the AI specsavers squad and were all blind, so they never found us even after walking within 50m of six prone soldiers who were yelling at the one standing soldier to lie down
Honestly, it's nice when the AI proves as competent as I am.
We watched them walk off, I had a small South Park flashback when I thought they turned towards us, but hey, in my defence, someone's face and the back of their head are very similar at night.
We moved on, bravely took a nearby hill and then found that the patrol had sought refuge in the opiate of the masses and were waiting for us in the chapel on that hill. My FTL and squadmate were injured, and I bravely tried to grenade the chapel only to find my squad had equipped me with smoke instead of frags after the
"I not G" incident. So I emptied a belt of ammunition into the chapel, just after Charlie 1 had shot the last of the patrol.
So far, I was being terribly effective.
We held position to repel whomever my smoke was going to attract, Charlie 1 saw an incoming patrol and I was sent to... well, allegedly reinforce, but that went as well as you'd expect. I managed not to shoot charlie 1 but I also managed not to shoot the enemy and as I lay bleeding into the grass, I reflected on how badly this was going.
Zitroen got me back up and moving, we linked up with Nigel and retrieved a tripod and at that point everyone noticed that they were getting about 5 FPS. I'm used to 5 FPS, so I didn't quite see the problem, but at that point the mission was called a victory on a technicality.
Sod, I'll take that.
The Rundown
Ooooo, maybe I can pilot?
Erh, no. Those slots went faster than that unfortunate bat a few years back who thought the top of the space shuttle fuel tank was a good place to take a nap.
We had a slightly confusing briefing, then mounted up into the wrong helo.
Ahem. Perhaps I should have said something when I noticed we were getting into a helo with no pilot, but, you know, expendable cog.
We very efficiently dismounted, mounted into the correct helo, hovered for a while because of some sort of confusion I couldn't follow (did I mention VON was doing the VON thing to me again?) and headed for our original dismount point, only to be rerouted midflight to someone else's dismount point because they had gone to ours (one of these days, VON will work for me and on that day, I will have about a 50-50 chance of knowing what the heck is going on...).
We dismounted, heard the target convoy had looked at our location and thought
"sod that" and bypassed us, so we remounted and flew off in pursuit. There was a brief encounter with two vehicles who exploded, I managed not to puke from the combination of rapid helo flight, aiming at a moving target, and 8 FPS, and then managed not to scream like a little girl (hooray for PTT) when our helo landed RIGHT NEXT TO the wires at our next dismount point.
But before we could engage, we won, because the FIA commander failed to escape, managing only to escap.
Vowels are important, therefore we're claiming that one
Afterparty - The Game
We played two rounds of this, which I was looking forward to, though without working VON and direct chat, there's somewhat of a missing element here I think. Mind you, I'm also missing high FPS, good aim, and situational awareness, so it's not like I'm not used to missing elements.
But seriously, someone needs to tweak this one. You can't just shoot anyone that's not your quarry without penalty. That way lies utter chaos and a complete lack of target discrimination. And getting shot 30 seconds after the go because a certain SOMEONE thought my head looked like a good way to check their sight alignment.
Also, spawning
literally three feet away from someone who has you as their quarry, that's just downright unfair.
Afterparty - bwazombiesrunohgodsbelowNYAAAARGH
I think that was the title of the mission anyway.
I know it was the noise I was making for most of the session. Spec Ops Scout with silenced SMG and TWS? Sounds good, I'll be grand. Oh, hang on, TWS has like 120x zoom that you can't turn off, I don't have NVG and OH GOD WHERE WAS THAT MOANING COMING FROM?
Run this way, into the dark, maximise my advantage. Be all tactical and stuff.
Everyone else headed to the church. If I had known where the church was, or for that matter, where I was, I might have joined them.
Instead, I spent a few minutes scanning the darkness with my WAY TOO HIGH zoomed thermal scope, panicing at the moaning, and then my scope went from all-clear-nobody-there to ZOMBIEALLTHEZOMBIEHESTENFEETAWAYFIREALLTHEBULLETSANDTHROWTHEGUNATHIMFORGOODMEASURERUNAWAYWHYARENTYOURUNNINGYET?DAMMITRUNFASTERNOTTHATWAYTHISISADEADENDWHATSTHATNOISE
CHOMP
And then I was a zombie.
It's a fun game mode lads, but I need a rubber sheet for my computer chair if we're playing it again.