CompoundIt SE - OPFOR Bravo SL
So, I think we all know the score with this mission by now -- BLUFOR flies in with a chinook to try and take out insurgent weapons caches in Zavarak valley. Bravo holed up in the center of town with HMG1 wandering about on rooftops trying to get their infernal contraption set up, while Alpha occupied Zavarak itself and CO/MMG(?) headed up in the hills.
After a while of waiting during which the Arma terrain started furiously eating people, we started seeing a helicopter flying about shooting red lasers at us, as well as enemy soldiers shooting bullets at us from the ridgeline in the North. After spending a while shooting at them it became apparent that the CO was in trouble, so B2 sent 2 men up into the hills to retrieve and abandoned DShKM along with Bravo Medic, all trying to avoid the choppers lasers of death and sniping from the ridgeline. Eventually all of Bravo was sent up the hill, just as most of the BLUFOR chaps went rushing down it.
We took some shots as we pushed forward to try and rescue the CO, but we found him dead with an evil Ferrard Carson gloating over the corpse. After personally disposing of the Western Devil we set up on the ridgeline and spied the remainder of the BLUFOR group holed up in a hut on the valley floor. After perforating the whole area and killing two squaddies, Tiger deftly placed a GP grenade behind the building to kill the last guy who was hiding in the doorway. Just as we prepared to make a glorious charge downhill and clear them out before going to rescue Alpha, the mission ended. Great victory!
Utes Clearance - Cursed TH1 pilot
Augh!
Although this mission ended up going pretty well, the beginning was a comedy of errors much of which can be attributed to me. D: Having just got my joystick working (shut up they're good) I decided to have a go at this flying lark. Unfortunately the USB plug had worked loose and as I moved my foot while flying over the sea, it dislodged and we ended up ENGAGING SUBMARINE MODE. Unfortunately engaging submarine mode turns out to be a bad idea.
With this fixed, Tigershark graciously (perhaps foolishly) entrusted me to fly again when we restarted the mission. Unfortunately it didn't go a lot better this time. Not having played Utes in a while I'd forgotten quite how small it was and didn't quite register that the LZ marked next to the beach really was *right next to the beach*. As such I ended up going too far inland and to the north, meaning we got lit up fiercely by machineguns and/or AA from the airfield. With passengers quickly dying off, and yelling that we were passing the LZ, I yanked back on the stick for a hard-stop, which resulted in a high flare exposing us to more fire. Nonetheless I at least managed to wrestle us onto the ground without blowing up before I and gunner Kefirz were shot, so 4 lucky but traumatised Alpha survivors were able to make it out. The ironic thing is I'd literally been practising landings for a couple of days in preparation. I even had a fancy high-speed, low-altitude circular flare trick under my belt. But in this case it was the approach that I messed up, making such fancy maneuvers moot.
The lesson is, always read the map before taking off, visualize the area and work out the distances between landmarks, as it's hella difficult to navigate when you're being shot at! Also, I wasn't aware that shift-click HUD waypoints are enabled for vehicle pilots/drivers, which would have been super useful.
Anyway, we spectators watched the remnants of Alpha meet up with Bravo and push north to the airfield, as Charlie seemed to handle the first objective fine by themselves. Damaged helicopters limped back to the carrier and wounded pilots died on the deck, but the choppers returned for daring gun-runs and extracts. Tigershark got wiped out by Fer(?)'s not-so-friendly fire, and Kiril the Bravest Little AI made a brave attempt at assaulting the airfield on his own.
Moonless SE (with a Hind) - B1 FTL
With my quiet but effective fireteam of mostly new recruits, including God! himself, we set out to ambush a column of insurgents in a valley, before moving out to clear out their hometown. In a novel piece of quartermastery, some (or all?) of us had FN FALs with night-vision scopes, but no NVGs, on a dark and (as the name suggests) nearly moonless night. Strang moved us up into the hills and it was just a case of waiting for them to appear, and get blown up by the satchel charge before wiping out the survivors in short order. Once this was done, we filtered up north into the hills, with Strang hungry for targets and his loyal squad rewarding him with blown-up technicals and AA trucks, dead insurgents, rocketed buildings and general glory. Once we rolled into town and cleared it out, the mission was declared GREAT SUCCESS.
Cholo Episode 2 (with more explosions) - Hostage guard
I believe Draakon took the helm on this one, spreading us out around the station so as to ambush and distract the incoming UN troops. Meanwhile I kept the hostages holed-up tightly in a room on the 1st English floor no American floor no English floor of the police station, by standing in the doorway like a big, un-get-pastable lunkhead. Unfortunately we didn't seem to have any comms on direct chat, so I had to communicate my disapproval of their debauched Western antics such as looking at the pile of money, looking at the chair, looking at the window and looking at the computer through the medium of swarthy scowls and meaningful pointings of my gun. They went cowering into a corner as the bullets started flying nearby, with me pointing my gun at the door like a very short-range sentry-makarov, but the western pigdogs were defeated before I had a chance to massacre them all.
Anyway, fun night. I shall get some more chopper practise and take a little hiatus from flying until one night, when you least expect it, I'll sneak into that pilots chair and no doubt doom another cargo-load full of hopeful soldiers to a fiery death.
