With 26 comrades in tow, the Party stormed the beaches and struck another blow against the occupators, dictators, creditors, and other enemies of the people.
Important Note: In RadioGag(a) we tested a putative new ORBAT code-named FAXORBAT-4C. Your thoughts on how this candidate ORBAT worked out would be very gratefully received by Party scientists.
As always, the Party greets with open arms any comrade who would like to share their experiences, questions, comments, notes, footage, grumblings, angry rants, and calls for summary execution. Especially that last one
How AJAX took out 8 fudging guys in the first map is beyond me, what the hell dude, CO stands for Commanding Officer not... Crushing Overlord... Something.
And what the hell is up with the durability of the NATO IFV?
I was both on the giving end and receiving end of friendly fire this time around... First someone in A2 in the APP shot me, then I was hit from behind presumably by someone in alpha in castle crashers. But, no, neither of those come anywhere near to what I did to my comrades in RadioGag. Schismatrix, first of all, was hit and being helped up by Ferret, this was happening about 10 meters in front of me. Since the area was rather hot, I decided to throw smoke to cover them.
Except I didn't throw smoke. I threw an RGO.
I had a bit of an oh shit moment, and some poor schmuck ran right around the corner literally on top of it (it might have been mabbot but I can't remember) and got his guts blown to oblivion. Schismatrix and Ferret ended up being OK (after a five minute search for anyone with a damned FAK or a medic) but it was quite a terrible mistake.
[check back for video clip]
There are only three things I hate in this world: Ranting, Lists, and Irony.
This was my first night fighting in service of The Party, and I was honored by the fine welcome which my fellow tovarisches offered.
I particularly enjoyed my time FAK'n about in Medical Scavenger Hunt: AKA Radio Gaga. Our opposition was surprisingly capable of cutting a NATO-Shaped hole out of a hostile punch, despite impressive IFV support at every turn through the lead-addled labyrinth.
And congratulations to whoever shotput the deadly shrapnel which mangled me and my friends in Altis Pirate Party. Your placement was impeccable.
I'm starting to hate video recording software. I figured out the problem with echo that I've had for a few weeks and then OBS didn't record my mike last night. I think it just recorded the game's audio output. sigh. This was working before now dammit...
Altis Pirate Party Alpha 1 AR with Railan (FTL), Glenn (AAR) and Mort (RAT)
Plan was, A1 in the first line of defence, A2 in the second. Based on CO's eval of the terrain at the start, the first line would either be in the valley to the south of the HQ, or in the buildings around the HQ, and the second line would either be in the buildings or higher up the hill. Because of low numbers, we weren't going to be very ambitious, and were going to let the enemy come to us.
Mission start saw CO choose to put the first line (us) in the buildings while A2 went further north. I checked out the upper floor of the only two-story, but it had no openings facing south. Looking back though, leaving it was a mistake. FTL scattered us about the buildings and I wound up in a ruined building that I really didn't like the look of and we only put me in there because it was a grenade trap.
Initial contact happened away from me on the western approach, and got me thinking that it would be a great diversion to let someone sneak up from the east, and sure enough a fireteam or so did. I caught sight of one and unloaded a half-belt or so at him, then legged it from the grenade trap as someone tried to reduce it to gravel via UGL. Glenn legged it a few seconds later, and probably saw my pancreas as it flew out of my back riding on a 556 round. Someone got me back up, and I tried to get a firing position again, but I started thinking only an idiot would hit us from the east again and A2 was down to one man so it made far more sense to run around north behind us. I pointed FTL at a rock and asked to go there, he said yes and we legged it, and A2 mistook us for the enemy and FTL was down. Doh...
From the rock though, we had a really good firing position - but we were too late and they'd already looped far enough north to get out of the field of fire from there. I tried to reorient north, spotted one and hosed bullets at him but apparently this was an opening scene from pulp fiction and I missed and he shot me.
/sigh
Castle Crashers Alpha 3 RAT with Boberro (FTL), StenGe (AR), and Bormanov (AAR)
Nice straightforward plan, fancy rifles with silencers and scopes, what could go wrong?
We moved to our initial alpha waypoint masking ourselves with terrain for the most part but found we had to come further south than anticipated because of the steepness of the cliff. But we got to a nice overwatching position and then proceeded to open up on on several patrols on the facing hillside, around the castle, on the opposite ridgeline and down in the valley in between. We must have killed off at least four or five fireteams from that location before we pressed across the valley and moved up on the castle. We had two instances of close contact before getting to the castle itself, one of whom was eliminated readily and the other of whom literally ran up to someone in Alpha 1 or 2 and was shot at under 1m range. That AI never even raised his rifle. Was the difficulty setting borked?
We pushed up, took the castle with minimal casualties, but Alpha 3 never went inside, we lost Bobbero as we crested the ridge and got absorbed into Alpha 2 under AJAX and secured the road outside the castle. Then we pushed back to a point overlooking the valley, killed off another fireteam, almost friendly-fired CO and Bravo with grenades and rifle fire respectively, then pushed on to the town meeting relatively little resistance because we'd already murdered two fireteams of them from the hilltop 500m away from their position with ARs.
I got seperated from A2 by stamina issues and wound up on a higher vantage point by a road into the town overlooking A2's approach along a culvert further downslope. It gave me a good line of sight into the buildings they were approaching though, and while scoping them out for EI, up popped a HMG Strider. I took a shot at it with a PCML, but I'm crap with the PCML, especially at night, and only managed to remodel some Altian's house. I pushed up to the hemco's at the entrance to the town, was almost friendly fired, then pushed into the town and was promptly shot in the appendix by a sneaky AI. A2 got me back up and we pushed on clearing the town, but I was well behind the line at this point and didn't get into any more significant contact before the mission was called as a victory when we secured the town.
Not a bad mission, but it did feel a bit like everything was happening at a distance. Which isn't terrible, but just a bit disconnected.
RadioGag(a) Charlie Squad Medic, attached to Charlie 1
Definitely a case of Charlie Squad, Best Squad.
Looking at the map, having Charlie head across the water to the western side of the town looks like you're between scylla and charybdis in that you could beach if too far south and get shot at from the town if too far north. So instead, NATO takes the town from the west and pushes to the cache; Charlie attacks the radio tower from an amphibious landing in the shelter of the eastern side of the docks at C1.
On landing, I suggested to CSL that he pick some volunteer (other than me, 'cos I was the medic and you can't medic from 500m away) to take the boat and its minigun back out into the bay as a mobile base of fire. We moved off down the beach looking for cover to use to get up to the tower, and as we did so, CSL opened up on the tower with grenades. We never saw what hit back, but there was a whoosh, a bang and no more boat and now Sam was CSL. Argh. I attached to Charlie 1 for comms now that the CSL element was toast, and we pushed down the beach to just south of some buildings; but as we charged up to them under cover of smoke, Sam bought it without us noticing, and now Tigershark was CSL. We set up in the buildings, now four strong, with the AR/AAR team of Zitron and Costno in the more northern building. We plinked away for a few minutes while CSL oriented himself and I fixed a problem with my rifle, then we got hit by something very big, very loud and very explosive. I ran up to get Zitron back up, then he got shot again, so I got him back up, then ran south to get Tigershark back up after he caught some lead, then I ran back north again to stick a bandaid on Costno's boo-boo, then back south again when Tigershark called a retreat back to the beach a few seconds later. By now, I had no more smoke grenades, and none of the bodies I came across for the remainder of the day were carrying much in the way of smoke.
We got to the beach, right down to the waterline and put the very small terrain between us and the big nasty guns at the tower. Then nasty people to our west in the town started shooting at us. We returned fire and killed them, but they got Costno, the bastards. I stole all his stuff and caught up with Zitron and Tigershark, and we pushed into the town along the beach, killing a few people and giving Zitron a new scratch or two from frag grenade shrapnel as we went. We got to the church on the beach and holed up, then contacted command who were very impressed at our tale of woe and massive overwhelming opposing forces and told us not to worry, that helo extraction and air support was on the way to go take a crossroads in the middle of the town with all its enemy AI. We were very impressed with this order.
We pushed up the road to the crossroads, stopping only to be shot at a few times, and managed to make it all the way to the crossroads which we couldn't take because there were more of them than there were of us and they had more bullets. We got stuck in an alley where the northern end was under fire from a wooded hill and the southern end was under fire from further east. We needed to go west. I suggested blowing a hole in the wall that was in our way with an RPG, but instead we fought our way round a corner, and once I'd had a kidney removed by an AAF round and had been revived, we made it, and were immediately engaging EI to our front with rifle fire and grenades. It was very exciting. We pushed up, but just after I'd pushed up to behind Tigershark, I turned round to see Zitron get shot through the head I ran back, but he was gone. Weeping with grief, I stole all his stuff to honour his memory and pushed back up to cover behind Tigershark. At which point CO asked if we could hurry up, finish that objective and take the next one. (This was CO, who had the ARMOURED VEHICLES while we were dressed in particularly bullet-resistant gingham and denim...). sigh
We held until the IFV reached us, rather than run out into the street and get shot, and as we linked up with the NATO infantry who were all "these guys ain't so tough", their IFV took three rockets from what turned out to be one EI in rapid succession and now nobody had armour. Except the bad guys, of course.
Now at the crossroads, we headed north. Tigershark was leading, but I got shot at from the upper floor of a shopfront and got delayed killing the EI; by the time I was done, Tigershark had eaten a grenade, and the once-mighty Charlie Squad was now down to a sole survivor - the combat medic with his first aid kits, RPG, AR and grenades. Tovarisch, in the Party, combat medics take both parts of the job seriously.
Once I'd stolen the last of Tigershark's personal effects, I headed back south to the crossroads to get Bodge back up. Managed to do this, then the four bodies nearby proved too much for my corpse-looting instinct and I was busy rifling through an AAF officer's wallet looking for cash or pornography intel for the Party when I got shot from an AR-wielding EI we'd missed to the north. After a kerfuffle or two, I was back up and so was CO who'd come to get me, but as I ran out of the smoke to the crossroads, CO was shot again as was Railan. The EI was to their north, so I tried going upstairs in a shop to get a shot at him from above; I spotted him, but he fired first and Charlie squad went out with a headshot
All that was left of BLUFOR was now two NATO soldiers, and when Bobo ran the wrong way a few seconds later, only Nice Guy Chris was left, and the mission was called as inconclusive as there were still two squads of EI and an IFV left and we all thought it'd take him at least a half-hour to get through that lot and we wanted to shoot more things.
On the second run, we had some success shooting at... things? IFF wasn't very strong especially as the colours no longer match teams. Then our vehicle took damage when we rammed a truck (hey Madrak, there's your perfect record ruined ) and we had to dismount after we killed their crew in CQB. Madrak and Eagle spread out, but I was down to 1 round and was limping so I figured I had to rearm at the truck. The trucks have no ammo, but happily one of our fallen brethren donated some of his ammo. I reloaded and started to plink at the last OPFOR offroad, who had the unsporting idea to run me down. I couldn't run, there wasn't any cover. It did not go well for OPFOR
Then Eagle shot me in the back, the cad.
You utter swine!
On the third run, I was very sneaky, and got out of the offroad right at the start and stole another nearby truck so we had one vehicle more than OPFOR expected. I had no gunner so I had to try ramming a bit, but only managed to distract people. Then my offroad was shot up and I had to bail, and while I planned to repeat my badassery from the last run, I was killed by my ACO Green sight.
I ran back, but he was gone. Weeping with grief, I stole all his stuff to honour his memory and pushed back up to cover behind Tigershark. At which point CO asked if we could hurry up, finish that objective and take the next one. (This was CO, who had the ARMOURED VEHICLES while we were dressed in particularly bullet-resistant gingham and denim...). sigh
) and we had to dismount after we killed their crew in CQB. Madrak and Eagle spread out, but I was down to 1 round and was limping so I figured I had to rearm at the truck. The trucks have no ammo, but happily one of our fallen brethren donated some of his ammo. I reloaded and started to plink at the last OPFOR offroad, who had the unsporting idea to run me down. I couldn't run, there wasn't any cover. 
