[Tue] 30 Jun 2015 (Bodybus)

[blip2]

Tonight a minimal 13 Comrades come to sweat it out on Altis.

There was:
Rebel Alliance Part VI
Fuel Charges
Exodus
Air Raid
Beachfront Property
Shipping Problems (afterparty)
Sky Rangers (afterparty)

As ever, please post your thoughts, feedback, screenshots and video here - comrade YouTube Hero SuperU doesn't just produce our video idents, but provides leadership and guidance to propaganda artists. We also have a new YouTube channel that he manages so if you have any content you think should feature then let him know and he will sort you out, for more info check out this thread!; more guidance on video editing for Folk ARPS is provided by comrade Ferrard Carson. 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:

• The Folk ARPS leadership programme
• Comrade Head's new launcher / mod updater (Swifty)
• Folk ARPS tags

[Schismatrix]

Great stuff yesterday, even though there was some audio bugs that sneaked in to Air Raid and a godlike display of 50 caliber sniping from the AI.

Rebel Alliance Part VI
I thought signing up as medic attached to the squad leader would increase the chance of survival. This was not the case.

Fuel Charges
Had my very first command as Alpha 1 TL in this mission. When I finally figured out how to give a briefing and display markers we were off to a great start, as A1 dug in to the north while A2 started sneaking in on the objective from the south.

Props to A2 for stalling the enemy advance with mmg fire from the south while still managing to capture the objective all sneaky-like. You guys fucking rocked.

Exodus
As TL for A1, we were ordered to hold the checkpoint until exfil. We did that, and after learning what a Hunter looks like we took off through enemy lines to reach the rendezvous. Before that, while defending, I witnessed 2600k putting an AT round in to a hostile vehicle (IFV?) at extreme range. Mad skillz dude.

Air Raid
Even though the sound bugged out, the mission itself was pretty great. Being on the receiving end of a mounted minigun is definitely interesting.

[Tigershark]

Peasant is a sneaky bastard

[Sparks]

Showed up late (1930 on a school night's tough when you don't get out of work till at least 1830 and you live an hour away and dinner has to be eaten). But glad I did...


Exodus
MMG1 gunner, solo



Had some initial problems with getting everything fired up when my head tracking software locked up completely and wouldn't let me use mouse or keyboard (could still hear slotting going on which was a bit annoying). Got in just in time before the mission start and was thrown into the MMG1 gunner slot. CO pointed me towards A2's position and I headed off to join them with my big machinegun. On the way, we stopped for a few minutes of that old game, shoot-the-paratroopers. Then it was up a tower with Madrak and myself spotting targets and throwing lots of lead at them. Infantry? No problem. Ifrits and trucks? No problem. Rabbits? Ha! Transport helos with troops? Er. Turns out that even two belts of .338 MMG ammo won't bring down a transport helo. What the hell are those things made from, neutronium?

By now I'd burned through all my MMG ammo, and someone had kindly brought up a HEMTT with ammo in it, but there was no MMG ammo available. I blame the 14th member of our troop, the MMG1 spotter, who would have been carrying ammo for me but unprofessionally decided not to show up that evening to play. Boo. I had to swap out to a spare rifle, and nicked all the smoke grenades. Back up to the line I went and spent a few minutes shooting at the infantry now advancing on us. Then the last Huron was away and the civilians were all saved, so we mag dumped at the infantry, I threw 14 smoke grenades (no, really, I counted) and we legged it in the HEMTT to join Alpha 1 at the checkpoint. Some futzing about followed and we all hopped into the uncovered HEMTT again and booted it for the evac point. Unfortunately, HEMTTs do not have armor for the infantry in the back and we were being chased by angry AI with big guns and all of Alpha 2 acted as ablative armor for the truck. So the truck escaped, but we didn't. Oh well.




Air Raid
CO Medic, with IceRaiser (CO)

I'm kindof sentimental about this mission for some reason...







So we piled into whatever vehicles we could and pushed up to Trucker's Lot, then the SAM teams headed to samorama 1 and 2 and I headed with Bravo 1 to DJ alligator. We got there just as the helos arrived on the horizon, and we shot one down without too much difficulty, but the other had learned what flares are and seemed impervious to bullets and had lots of red glowsticks of his own. So Bravo 1 and 2 legged it for the crash site hoping to find the data there. A jet arrived overhead to unnerve us and then an AH-9 emptied half its rockets into boberro who'd gone to get us some transport, then tried to murder all of Bravo 1 and myself. It did not go well for him.

We pushed up to the crash site, secured it, shot at various things, threw lots of smoke, allegedly started the data download process and then evac'd back to trucker's lot in search of the downloaded data (it's complex, okay?). Then we crashed a roadblock, CO knocked himself out on the steering wheel and everybody got booboos, so I earned my pay for a few minutes medic'ing. We headed off again in search of the data and got buzzed by a Huron and some annoyed EI along the way, got into a firefight at the evac truck, I ran out of ammo (again) and went to nab some from the truck and discovered Eagle_Eye had loaded the truck not with ammo, but with four ACO green sights.



We all piled in bar Eagle who was now dead, and legged it, stopping along the way to pick up the data, finally.
Oh and Madrak turned invisible.



Beachfront Property



Every so often you have to volunteer to lead and when it's just you and four others, why not?
I left the planning stage in the video just in case anyone's wondering what it's like.

The basic plan was simple - we couldn't go straight across, that terrain offers no cover and with bipoding, defenders have a huge advantage and with equal numbers on both sides, a non-runner.
We had no boats or aircraft so insertions weren't on the table (phnarr, phnarr).
So we really only had one sane option left - skirt around the cover on the coastline and bound up to a vantage point in the houses at 1 and 2 and snipe and UGL them to attrit them down to where we could charge.

The plan wasn't horrid, but as usual, didn't survive. We drove to just before point 0 (we had cars? why wasn't I told?! ) and after my tactical stopping procedure, swiped ammo and advanced on foot. We caught sight of some of OPFOR in a bunker while scouting from point 0, and my plan was to push Alpha 1 to point 1 and then UGL the bunker from point 0 to flush OPFOR into Alpha 1's guns.

What we didn't know was that OPFOR weren't all in the bunker and were trying to clever girl us. One pushed up the western shore and shot me in the spleen, but Alpha 1 killed him and revived me. Then we spotted someone skyline to our northeast and I UGL'd at him a few times. I told Alpha 1 to push on to point 1 and we'd do the UGL flush plan; then someone reported contact north and there was more UGL'ing but no firm contact after that. At this point, I lost track of one of my guys who'd pushed north of me to make sure no other OPFOR were up there; I saw him, he missed my IFF call and I shot out his left kidney by mistake. I ran up to him to revive him, and as I got him up I heard shooting, a call that all of Alpha 1 was down and a grenade, and right as I was thinking yay, I've lost almost all my team, we won. Turned out OPFOR only had two guys left, they'd rushed Alpha 1 at point 1, had shot at least most of them, but one Alpha 1 hero got off a grenade before dying and eliminated OPFOR.

Victory!



Afterparty - Shipping Problems, Sky Rangers, Insurrection

It's 30C outside in Dublin and hotter in the UK. So of course I took my clothes off for shipping problems. Alas, altitude still didn't help...

Sky Rangers was funny, in that we died by being distracted enough by a parachute that I *almost* made the turn instead of making it...

And Insurrection saw lots of helo fun.
"Can you believe how big this tree is?"
"Don't fly that close to it!!!"
"Relax, we're fi *bang**master caution alarm**no main rotor**crunch* ne..."

We all survived that, mind, then tried to commandeer a car that had a unique antitheft device. Then I drove up to an EI who shot me in the head.

I tried to get into the attack helo when I respawned, but IceRaiser flew into me and impaled my chest with the gatling cannon.

After reviving, I got in as gunner, we shot up a town pretty well, then ate a SAM and didn't autorotate well.

After respawning I decided sod the fancy toys and got back into my favorite MH-9 helo and flew off to pick up the rest of the team who'd just blown up a comms tower, and then flew them out of a hot LZ (even returning for one slowpoke) to go attack a supply convoy, dodging trees and power lines along the way across Altis. We saw the convoy, then ate a SAM and I *nailed* the autorotation. Unfortunately after I got out, some inconsiderate EI shot me in the head. And I called it a night round about then



A fun evening gents, thank's very much!

[Eagle_Eye]

Good time last night. Apologies for the couple of hiccups in my new missions, hope it didn't ruin anyone's fun.

Rebel Alliance Part 6
So I have learned my lessons about static MGs, even with the thermals disabled they can cause a bad time if given even a tiny bit of room to engage us as >500m range. But Holy Hell, I didn't think that the 50 cal on the back of a technical with iron sights could do the same thing. Ah well lesson learned. (on a side note though, this is what happens when youre making a mission and you play it like a strategy game for the AI, "hey if I was in charge of this base, I'd put up a roadblock there, and probably send one of the technicals down there where it can overwatch the valley". So in a sense I was the real winner in that mission.

Fuel Charges
RedFor decided to go for the best defense good offense strategy. As we proceeded up one side of the road, I spotted some enemies taking shelter in the Blufor fuel station, and a minute later fire from the barracks. "Perfect", I thought, "We are about to flank their attacking team and we know exactly where their defense is". Of course I stupidly assumed they had stayed as 2 teams (which we had done) and then got really confused when we couldn't find the rest of the team after sneaking up an enemy AR. D'Oh, BOOM, lose, shit...

Exodus
A different style of mission this one. Unfortunately getting the enemy to attack a fortified position is a bit like trying to get some comrades to attack a fortified position, there's always a bit of resistance
A lot of moving parts this one, but I think it went pretty well. I will point out that most it is expected that most definitely everyone will not reach the evac. This is a last stand kind of thing. There was supposed to be regular alert notifications from command about the progress of the mission also, but they crapped out and the radio operator has been replaced.

Unfortunately I was in the bed of the truck as we made our thunder-run to the safety of the exfil point, and took a bullet in the face.

AIrRaid
Good fun on this one thanks to some excellent zeusing by blip2. I think I have to apologise to Schismatrix (or 26K). I think we moved off of the hilltop, and either you didn't see us move/hear the call, or you were hit before we moved and I didn't notice. But it wasn't until we were about 400m away that I realised you weren't with us and had called out that you were injured over text radio. Not sure did you call it on TS, but you were gone before we could get back to help you. Also, I don't know if you guys know, but the truck full of infantry trying to escape at the end of the mission missed a column of NATO tanks by approximately 200m. I presume you could see the tracers and vehicles, but maybe didnt see that it was indeed 4 slammers bearing right down on top of you. Whoever gave the order to take that left fork in the road was keeping the deam alive there.

Unfortunately a most esoteric bug in the data-collection script caused some confusion towards the end (seriously Im not even 100% sure what caused it or how, and I cant believe it has never cropped up before, but its hopefully fixed anyway. Moral of the story, trust the location of the actual data laptop that you know exists rather than the marker), but the platoon managed to escape in quite some style.

Sparks: Thanks for pointing out the lack of gear in the trucks in AirRaid. I just forgot to add the gear init to them, so now they should have the regular party approved compliment of supplies. Also I don't know where you got the name insurrection from, but the game mode you were playing was called insurgency.

[Sparks]

Sparks: Thanks for pointing out the lack of gear in the trucks in AirRaid. I just forgot to add the gear init to them, so now they should have the regular party approved compliment of supplies. Also I don't know where you got the name insurrection from, but the game mode you were playing was called insurgency.

Gah. Brain knows they mean the same thing, picks one at random
Doubly annoying is that that's the second game called insurgency that I play

Also: you mean the ACOs weren't a prank???

[Peasant]

Fuel charges Blu for Alpha 2 lead

Peasant is a sneaky bastard

Yes. Leadership, in this case meant leaving Tigershark and Blip2 to their own devices. I did not expect that to work at all. But good plan Schismatix.

Exodus
note: there is no .338 mg ammo in the standard vehicle loadouts. If this is an oversight or a deliberate decision, I don't know.

But yes. Operation exfil-thunder run did not go nearly as well as imagined. But in my defense, my original plan called for me to be in the back of an armoured Hunter, not an unarmoured HEMTT. The only thing to do differently would be to go further south before turning east to go to the exfil point, not just following the road.

Air raid SAM gunner 1
1 chopper kill with SAM, but the other we didn't get. Then the AH 9 turned up and blew up the ifrit with boberro, I having heroically jumped out only moments before. one hike later, I found the laptop with the data in it. Then blip fired 6 rockets at me.

Fun evening though

[Eagle_Eye]

Also: you mean the ACOs weren't a prank???

No they were the sights that all of bravo2 threw into the truck before we got out

[Sparks]

Also: you mean the ACOs weren't a prank???

No they were the sights that all of bravo2 threw into the truck before we got out

HA! Because as a prank it was funny, but as evidence that all of bravo 2 hated the sights it's even better