1st of all, I stand by all of the smack talking I gave as IFV1 commander. Every word. We should have killed all of the FIA scrubs with our big cannon, but I panicked and forgot to hit the smoke canisters.
Also, a screenshot for all the haters. Even if we went down in flames, we rolled into that town in full style:
Sparks wrote: I've had it happen once because my microphone cable was physically unplugged, and I've also had it happen when steam was running in the background and had the wrong input selected for audio inputl
Interestingly, I was getting feedback from the Steam Mic test element, and the ArmA auto-adjust Mic option seemed to be responding to how loudly I spoke (read, how loudly I accused my computer of being a worthless piece of something or other).
Sparks wrote:(these days I just turn off the steam-client-in-the-background thing, it eats fps anyway and all you really get from it is screenshots and there are easier ways to get those if you're not already recording your session.
Thanks for the advice, I'll try running it without Steam gumming up the works next time!
Word of advice Raptoer, all I needed to know was where the IFV was. It was really hard to concentrate with all the chatter; that actually goes for the whole mission. We didn't split channels, so we had all the element leads in the same channel, and there was a lot of cross chatter.
But despite the messy comms I had a blast during this mission; Urban environments are the best.
Shit, I need to stop drinking and going to sessions
''I am not going against tanks'' - Tryteyker, MAT gunner.
''Downboated so much, it's an u-boat now.'' - Boberro.
''Sorry, I meant hon hon hon baguette baguette Eiffel Tower'' - Mabbott
Sparks you really have too much time on your hands
I'm not amused
''I am not going against tanks'' - Tryteyker, MAT gunner.
''Downboated so much, it's an u-boat now.'' - Boberro.
''Sorry, I meant hon hon hon baguette baguette Eiffel Tower'' - Mabbott
Through an odd and random confluence of events in the universe, I was actually quite a bit early (mainly because I'm trying to do some mission writing and the only machine I have to debug on is the main gaming rig; parents with young kids will understand when I say that time on a machine locked in an office upstairs is not a commodity that's in plentiful supply ), so there was quite a bit of fooling about with various transport helos pre-session.
Pre-session fun
So I don't fly these larger transport helos often enough to be proficient and I ought to. The MH9, I'm happy enough in, I've got a rough feel for its power curves and so on, but the Huron is a lumbering bus that has embarressed me on many occasions, the Mohawk a lumbering underpowered bus, and the Mi290 is... actually shockingly nimble and agile and how the hell does it do that when it's the size of the other two and what are they doing wrong?
As to the Orca, the less said the better. I have no idea of that thing's power curve, it's like my fun landings with the attack helo in Insurgency. Detach main rotor, land. Walk away, not looking back...
Landing BBC Reporter
You try orienting with that map
Comrade Fer asked if I'd do some cinematography (or else) and use the splendid camera for this mission, and hey, it'd be different (besides, the Dacha is a bit humid at this time of year). The camera's controls are a little quirky and I really need to play more with it if I'm to get any interesting shots; mostly I left it on the automatic settings. Also, the mouse needs inverting to allow for smooth panning/tilting, and the speed of movement is off, I must see if it can read the pedals properly to give fine-grain control of translation speed rather than 1% or 100% and nothing in between.
But I got some nice stills and some nice video footage as Alpha, Bravo and Charlie fought to their glorious, often hilarious, and almost always sudden deaths...
Ahem. I mean, I enjoy the challange of the transport pilots duties with Party-approved levels of professionalism and sober contemplation of the FLYINGFLYINGFLYINGFLYINGFLYING*scuffling noises*GET. BACK. IN. YOUR. BOX. We talked about this inner child, you do this again and I'm telling you that you're adopted, got it? Do you want to go back to Tigershark's Gymnastics Academy for Young Men?
*sigh* He's so troublesome sometimes.
Anyways...
There are some negative-sounding bits in here Tovariches, but I say them with love because the Party mandates that we all love one another as Comrades in the Great Endeavour, and as Comrade Tigershark often says, Special Group Hug Everyone!
First of all Tovariches, as Comrade Fer teaches that without self-criticism we cannot advance, that we need self-criticism as we need air and water, that the strength of the Party consists precisely in the fact that it is not afraid of criticism (because it is by definition perfect) and that from criticism of our own shortcomings it draws the energy for further advance, I must confess that I suck at piloting badly enough that I got my copilot killed and stranded the entirety of Alpha Squad because I didn't do the job right. So maybe if I explain what I think I did wrong it'll help save the next copilot...
Bees pretty much has only one sane approach path - down the coast, an overland hop somewhere around Drimea, then along the southern coast to Iremi bay (and one day, some sadistic sod is going to stick a random AA unit on that route and we'll all be toast, but anyway). I did want to do a nice cinematic formation flight for this, but TH3 didn't get clearance to take off until after TH1 and TH2 were away and those gits legged it and I couldn't catch up. *sigh*.
Tovariches of the Party Gosplan, whose instruction and gentle guidance during the construction of our glorious battle plans is so critical to new COs, can we instruct future COs in missions with more than one helo to please, please, pretty please with sugar and the special attention of Comrade Tigershark on top, have all the helo elements on their own teamspeak channel? That way we have teamspeak to coordinate flights, vehicle channel to talk to our chalk, and CC gives us access to the guidance of command elements (through copilots to alleviate workload if necessary). But if we're in the one teamspeak channel with the groundpounders, our comms get noisy and confusing and bad stuff happens. We also can't coordinate formations without talking over everybody, we trend away from communicating amongst ourselves more in order to avoid talking over orders to groundpounders, and other stuff doesn't get done and as a result we perform below our potential and then the Party falters tovariches, and we all weep. And our potential isn't terribly high to start with because we all have lives and families and jobs and other bourgeois and decadently unhealthy diversions from our commitment to the cause (though Zitron's pulled off some seriously hairy stuff of late) - but that's a good reason to reduce pilot workload by not having half of Alpha talking in his ear on teamspeak while landing.
We all regrouped between the final waypoint Detroit and Rally Point Boston, and about then things got edutaining, with us coming under accurate fire from the town while still shy of the rally point, a good 800m out from the beach and almost a kilometer from whatever was shooting at us (was it an autocannon? It felt like an autocannon). TH1 and TH2 had already abandoned the rally point and TH3 joined them sharpish as soon as the problem became obvious. This is a good example of what I meant about bad trends in our communications Tovariches - TH1 and TH2 had already abandoned the rally point but nobody warned ASL, TH3, TH4 or TH5 (and possibly CO and BSL) of the volume of fire...
ASL then had TH1 and TH2 drop their chalks on the beach south of reference point Missouri, which was about the best LZ available, while TH3 dropped ASL and AM off in an overwatch location with the sniper team at OP California. I was kinda happy with that landing by the way, the approach was acceptable (if not perfect) through to the final landing, which had to be a bit squidgy to let me see the terrain and clear the tail rotor of the rocks. I didn't intend to stay for more than ten seconds, but ASL had other ideas, so we hung out on the mountaintop for a while. Er. Comrade Commander. Please don't do this. The Party-provided MH9s have many, many strong points, as you would expect of Party Technology; but armor is not one of them and if we're not moving, we're dead. That's why the LZ is where we usually die, as we slow down to change the active verb from "impact" to "land". We ought to go in as fast as we can manage, drop off or pick up, then exfil out as fast as possible to a safe distance. Also tovarich, between you, me and the Party, parking an MH9 on a mountain slope is a bit hairy; at one point I relaxed on the collective and we started to slide - we didn't roll and go boom because of luck, not skill.
In all honesty Tovariches, if the helo I'm flying has to go boom to give the others Comrades a better chance to stay un-boom-ed, then my duty is clear; but wasting Party Resources like helos does risk some special attention at Comrade Carson's Institute of Culture. For example, we knew OP California was secure; TH3 could have dropped ASL there while TH1 and TH2 orbited back near WP Detroit, then TH3 could have done a fast low-level pass from west to east on a line from between OP California and LZ Oregon to an exfil point headed southeast over the beach towards terrain masking from the hills, with CO and the sniper team all watching closely.
I'd give us maybe 20% odds of survival, but all the AA would have opened up on us and you'd have had their locations and that would have let TH1, TH2, TH4 and TH5 plan their LZs better and more Tovariches would have lived to extract. I'd roll those dice for that payoff, what udarnik wouldn't?
So Noose and I hung out for a few minutes at OP California, listening to heavy fighting as Alpha fought their way in and hit both their targets but took heavy losses. TH1 and TH2 kept talking nice and calm while they pulled off some truly hairy flying in very hot LZs - kudos guys, that was some slick shit right there.
ASL released us to go orbit over the bay during all this, and we just orbited while trying to keep eyes on the beach looking for clean LZs. And we managed to hold formation with TH5 for about ten seconds at one point for fun. Then TH5 flew high over OP California and got lit up by what I think was autocannon fire and they exploded before they could autorotate to the ground. Unlucky
After a few minutes of this, ASL made the call to regroup for extraction. TH1 was gone by this stage (sorry guys, I didn't even hear you go down), so TH2 and TH3 were tasked to land as close as possible to extract Alpha. And this is where I screwed up twice, got Noose killed and stranded Alpha.
First off, I didn't plan the approach well. The call was so urgent that I got get-there-itis, which is a bad thing. I knew - it was obvious - that the LZ should have been right on top of Missouri and I planned to get in by the wall, but I should have pushed it even further back into the lee of the two-story, but I didn't know the incoming fire was so heavy. What I should have done is talk to ASL for a few seconds to find out the condition of the LZ and plan it better, and I would have realised that coming in from the sea was probably not the best approach, and we should have tried to come in from the west just north of OP California at NoE altitudes using terrain masking as much as possible. Fail to plan...
Secondly, I mucked up the approach because of that lack of plan. If you watch TH2's approach, he got it right - came in low and fast, and was exposed for a minimal amount of time. He was unlucky and the AI hit him anyway; but he was on the right path. I came in higher, over 50m up at one point, because I needed to see the LZ - if I'd planned this out, I wouldn't have needed to do this - and as soon as TH2 was down, the enemy AI switched to TH3 and we got turned into swiss cheese.
Noose bought it in the first few seconds, shielding the engine from the 20mm cannon fire with his head Every alarm went off, lots of things went red and we were virtually autorotating immediately. I thought we still had a chance at this stage - I still had some tail rotor and we hadn't exploded and I wasn't dead - so I did the best altitude-dumping-switchback-looking-thing I could (during which we lost even more tail rotor and things got... interesting) and dropped us down by what I assume was the remains of TH1 on the beach (mainly by guesstimating where it was under me as we turned, we were having some control issues which the loud explosions from more incoming fire were not helping). I wanted to get to the two-story but I didn't think we'd make it so I just went for the terrain masking of the beachfront instead as it was closer. Or I thought it was, turns out the beach was under fire too. At that point I took stock and learnt that the engine was kaput, the main rotor was in the red, the tail was in the red too and Noose - our sole surviving crew chief who could repair helos - was no longer surviving. And pilots can't repair their own helos (er, maybe that could be tweaked? It seems a bit... unfair). So now we were stranded with no transport. Well done Sparks...
Anyway, go down fighting, so I grabbed the MXC and some ammo and ran to join Alpha, throwing smoke as I went.
That wasn't smoke. Oh ffs.
Ninja braved enemy fire to come revive me after my self-harming moment, then he hit the wrong button and gave me another bullet hole to bleed from. Honestly, can't say I blamed the guy We ducked and dived for a few more minutes until Grumpy and Mabbot pulled off some seriously squeaky-bum tactics to kill our final target tank and at that point the party showed mercy and called it as a victory
Can't help but think I need more time in the editor with the pedals though...
ps. What happened to Bravo and TH4? I never heard anything, it was like they flew into a black hole or something...
Squirrels Alpha 2 AR with Raptoer (FTL), Ferrard Carson (AR), Nim (RAT), Major Effort (R) and Cardova (R)
Apparently, we had a plan. I think that means Carson has much better radio skills than I do (which is entirely believable), I just thought we were to go hide on the northern hill and wait for the enemy to walk past us and shoot them at point-blank range with big guns.
However, the enemy sneakily drove down the open road on the other side of the AO, so we hustled quietly to the treeline on the southern hill, where the base of the hill met the town. We snuck along there for a few minutes searching for enemy as we listened to Alpha 1 and MAT1 exploding a lot, when we heard the IFV's engine and then we got super-sneaky. So super-sneaky that I manage to super-sneak around a rock and came face-to-face with it as it sat there 30 metres away. One quick change of underwear later, the team was alerted and oriented. I caught sight of some enemies, confirmed we were weapons hot, and started firing bursts at them, most of which I suspect had more influence on the local topiary than the enemy. After having fired off a few bursts, I displaced and lined back up on where I'd been aiming. At that point, I realised that I could see the IFV, it could probably see me, and I hadn't much hope of displacing further; but Carson was further east from me and I thought he was even more exposed to infantry pushing south on us. So I fired off a few shots at the infantry to make them think for a moment, then threw smoke to give us both cover to move. However, some git spotted me and some other git fired four high explosive shells at me Turns out that at 30m range, there is no such thing as hard cover from an IFV.
However, I was down but not dead; once Nim had put a rocket up the IFV's tailpipe, Major patched me up and I ran to cover along with Carson. He ducked into the house; I was holding outside waiting for the infantry we could hear to round the corner. And around the corner Kefirz came and I held the trigger down...
...and the git did this sort of hip-shimmy thing that I think Comrade Tigershark has been teaching in lesson twelve in his Gymnastic Academy for Young Men, and Kefirz dodged all the AR's bullets and then shot me in the head. It was... disconcerting.
However, Carson then gave a brief masterclass in fire and movement in close quarters and wiped out pretty much an entire fireteam by himself in under a minute. So that was fun to watch
After that, it was mainly mopping up, though Tigershark did not want to be mopped. We cured that using a combination of grenades, rifle fire, and two full belts from an MMG, followed by more grenades just to be sure. Remember Tovariches, there is no such thing as overkill...
Hedgehog Alpha 2 AR with Audiox (FTL), Noose (AR), Tom (RAT), SuicideKing (R) and Grumpy (R)
Lovely cinematic drive up to the deployment point apparently... which we couldn't see much of at all from the back of the truck
The helo overflight there was cool though. It was different once we got out of the truck and got past the oh-dear-bhudda-the-truck-is-alive-and-trying-to-run-me-over moment. And that A-10... phoarrrrrr. Nicely done Eagle_eye, take a bow.
Mostly though, this mission turned into being about being cannon fodder for invisible enemies. I don't think I saw a single EI during the entire mission. Lots of irony provided by Comrade audiox, or Cassandra as we should be calling him, and more fun working the radios (badly, but I'm actually starting to enjoy it - it seems that I enjoy anything in this game that doesn't involve actual shooting) and map reading and both simple and compound swearing at the LYING BASTARD of a map.
After audiox checked out early, I mostly spent my time trying to keep my fireteam in one piece while an IFV tried to render them into different pieces, then we were ordered to push up to a gully to support Alpha 1.
Gully my arse. In fact, my arse probably has a deeper gully than that "gully" we had to take cover in. THE MAP LIES.
As we were lying there in the weeds, it became fairly obvious that something very bad had happened to first Alpha 1, then ASL, then Bravo squad, and soon it was going to be our turn to have the bad thing happen to us. So, after asking SuicideKing to politely desist from trying to make his handle ironic, we all decided that we'd be bad thing'd at a time and in a manner of our own choosing dammit. So we all regrouped in arsecrack gully, lined up to do our over-the-top charge, and then just before we charged, some unsporting bastard of an AI put a 50cal round through the three inches of helmet it could see from 600m out. That's a target of 0.43 MoA comrades. In the real world, specialised hand-built railmounted bolt-action rifles would find that a challenging standard of accuracy and a good rifle with good ammunition and a good scope could only be counted on to hit a target that was at least seven inches across at that range.
So I felt a bit cheated of my chance to charge for glory to be honest
Oh well. Nice mission, possibly could stand a tweak or two. Liked that we all had rangefinders though, it would have been downright unpleasant without them. A little more cover and maybe optics on the sights and I think this one could be an absolute meatgrinder full of fun (like when that clown hired for Comrade Carson's last birthday had that accident with the sausage machine).
And for those brave comrades who made that glorious glory charge, it was glorious to behold!
Weekend Warriors North Patrol AR with Eagle_Eye (FTL), Cardova (RAT) and Grumpy (AAR)
Operation sleepover is probably the first time I've managed to survive this mission. However, I shall remember it for far longer for more mentally scarring reasons...
*shudder*
We all piled into the sleepover headquarters initially, though I think someone didn't find the armory in time, and we started hosing down the incoming bad peoples. Someone (was it someone from North Patrol?) was late running into the compound from the north; we were literally firing over their heads at EI coming up the road chasing them. Very cinematic. I managed to disable a technical (I think), and a few EI, and a rabbit. The first of many such lagomorphs I slew in the Party's name that day. Night. Evening. Whatever i was, it was dark and stressful enough to start with Comrade, and then people showed up and started shooting at us.
We held the HQ for several minutes under continual fire and returning that fire with gusto (and bullets, many many bullets). Someone didn't have a rifle so I gave them my pistol. Someone else surprised the bejeepers out of me by coming in a door I'd just opened on the second floor and damn near got perforated. But we held our ground, and afterwards, when the last of the grenades was gone and we weren't hearing much incoming fire anymore, CO ordered us all to go out and chase down the stragglers and execute them to send a message regarding the abuse of Party mountaintop retreats.
North Patrol gallantly sallied forth, minus our FTL who bought it without us noticing. We encountered some resistance at the front gate from EI sheltering behind the lookout post; we threw all the grenades from the strider at them, then flanked their corpses and shot them for good measure. We cleared the northern approaches of EI and lagomorphs, then swept to the south. At one point, two someones tried to friendly fire me. I'm not sure if the blue-on-blue aspect was more troubling than the fact that they missed, but we can discuss that later in Comrade Carson's Institute of Culture's Self-Examination session. We cleared the last of the lagomorphs and then the final EI and that was it, mission TOTAL VICTORY FOR THE PARTY
Afterparty
Room Service, take one Police
I've not tried the charge-straight-at-the-hotel-in-the-Ifrit approach before
I found myself behind the charge for this one though, only catching up to the action as we took down the last Mafioso, who managed to dodge an entire clip from my SMG because of my head tracking confusticating me momentarily. That's my story, I'm sticking with it. Quite a fast mission in fact which is why...
Room Service, take two Mafia
...we reran the mission immediately after the last one, just swapping sides. And with no time for planning, we spawned and ran straight to the hotel. I wound up in the lead somehow, but as I ran to the hotel door, Arma took my highly trained soldier avatar and decided that an eight inch step was sufficient to make him forget how to exist in the physical universe, and I found myself in the hotel. As in, in the hotel. The floor, to be exact. And unable to get out of it. Kefirz joined me in my existential quicksand moments later, and we spent the next few minutes trying to extricate ourselves when the enemy charged one of the other doors instead of taking us up on our resigned last stand.
Kefirz somehow managed to fold his spine through four dimensions and squeezed himself ass-first back in to the real world; I wasn't able to replicate this. So i waited, stuck in the floor, while he ran off and got shot. Then I threw all my grenades to attract attention and myself and the police stood around for a minute firing whole clips at each other in full auto with no effect before the Party drew a line under this abuse of the laws of physics.
It was definitely entertaining
RoadThunder
Ah, driving. Hmmm. Well, I've not tried this mission since I got the pedals, so maybe this will...
Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm still shite at driving in Arma
Also, somehow the brake pedal maps to the nitrous. That was unexpected.
But at least I finished the course this time (last time, I hopped a race barrier without noticing, got turned around, and drove the wrong way around the entire course and by the time I got back to the finish line, everyone else had quit and gone home for the night).
Insurgency
What can I say? General mucking about with interesting DLC weapons, HALO jumps, stupid layouts, VR suits at night in a combat zone, and some fun strafing in a Wy-55 for a while. Nice way to finish out the evening.
Overall, that was the most fun I've had in an Arma session in quite a while, much enjoyed, thank you everyone, it was excellent!
And we should definitely post in that weekend events thread in /r/Arma again.
guns.ie ● stochasticgeometry.ie ● weak.ie
Don't tell mom I'm a pilot, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse
: https://infotomb.com/3o0eq.mp3
