fa3_c52_uprising

[darkChozo]

The FIA stage an assault on Sofia. Unfortunately, they decide that bringing real weapons is for cowards.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the patch made this mission a lot harder than when I originally tested it. Bravo also seemed to get a bit unlucky with where the initial enemies ended up and fought pretty much all of the nearby AI at once. More numbers wouldn't have helped either, we didn't really get to the point where we could bring all our forces to bear.

Changes I'm considering:

• Either get rid of some of the cache defenders or make them a bit weaker (maybe give some of them SMGs or something)?
• Make the distribution of the caches a little more obvious.
• Figure out why a helicopter pilot decided to commune with Bravo.

[Pooter]

Was I really supposed to get a starter pistol?

[darkChozo]

Yup. It'd actually be pretty useful at night (you may have noticed that you don't start with NVGs).

I did just get an interesting idea of how to uparm the "riflemen", though...

[Sparks]

This went surprisingly well actually, but I think the weapons-in-one-cache-and-ammunition-in-the-other idea should go die somewhere quietly. The addaction way of doing this for the Weekend Warriors mission would work pretty well.

The final assualt on the base - day-um. That was something new. The AI used AT on us. It was fucking awesome.

I wasn't impressed at the AI who downed me in the compound, firing through the wall of his closed metal prefab shack thingy without even trying to exit the building, but the rest was awesomesauce. I was irked that we didn't have enough manpower to get past that stage, which is a good thing.

Our medic's reactions at the start on finding they had in essence a few packets of bandaids and nothing else, not even a pistol, was priceless.

The only think I can think of that might make for an improvement on the mechanism level would be if there was a way for us to start off with civilian status, and only trigger a change for us over to BLUFOR status once we either shoot an OPFOR or get seen by an OPFOR while holding a weapon. That would allow us to be able to get close enough before drawing pistols that their carbines and rifles aren't a completely overpowering advantage. If A1 hadn't gotten as close as they did to cache 1 at the start there, Alpha would have been toast.

[darkChozo]

Rearming via addAction would be tough. Multiple loadouts plus a limited supply make it a lot more difficult than Weekend Warriors, plus I think it's kinda cool to look into the box and see what you got. I think I'll abandon the split cache thing though, it's kinda pointless when we can scrounge ammo from the AAF. I'll probably do something like a fireteam's worth of equipment per box (give or take), with less emphasis on ammo because we can get more pretty easily.

A civilian start is interesting, but I think it'd be a lot of work to make it not feel too gamey. Like, on one hand it doesn't really make sense that the AAF wouldn't be suspicious of twenty "civilians" in tac vests and balaclavas hovering fifty meters away from them. On the other hand, opening fire on a single guy wearing normal-ish clothes walking towards them is a bit excessive. That sort of thing feels better if you're in a town with a bunch of civilians as cover or something, I think.

[Sparks]

A civilian start is interesting, but I think it'd be a lot of work to make it not feel too gamey. Like, on one hand it doesn't really make sense that the AAF wouldn't be suspicious of twenty "civilians" in tac vests and balaclavas hovering fifty meters away from them. On the other hand, opening fire on a single guy wearing normal-ish clothes walking towards them is a bit excessive. That sort of thing feels better if you're in a town with a bunch of civilians as cover or something, I think.

Can we start without tac vests and balaclavas, have those in the cache and have a single pistol with a clip or two in normal clothes without being detected?

[darkChozo]

I mean, I think it's possible. Something that probably makes sense is that if you get too close to the soldiers or the cache they issue a warning, and if you don't leave within X seconds they start shooting. I'm just not sure it's worth the effort.

I've made some loadout modifications that should give the fireteams a bit more punch at range. Should make the initial assault less risky.

[fer]

I struggled with this one, and having thought about it for a few days, for me it's about 'credibility'. Although crate-worship is definitely not something the Party would encourage, the concept of a mission where our equipment/fire-power increases over time is something different (and not unwelcome). Comrades who recall our time in Takistan will probably remember missions where we ambushed TK Army convoys in order to steal their FN FALs, then assaulted a nearby base. However, in the version of this mission that we played last Sunday, the set-up felt rather suicidal - and that was before I got into Spectator and started counting the number of enemies in the town. To borrow a concept from the old Takistani missions, it would be preferable if there was a greater temporal or physical gap between the fight to recover the arms, and the engagement of the main garrison (and other patrols). The way insurgent forces survive is by picking their fights, so the way in which the mission (currently) forces us into a desperate dash/grab/fight just doesn't ring true for me. I might feel differently if the set-up was like Weekend Warriors: with the enemy attacking and us having to scramble for arms; but since we're supposed to be the attacking force (and thus picking the timing) it feels off. Maybe just moving the caches further away and making them more of a standalone objective would do the trick.