Republic of Folk

Missions:

• Surfin
• Manhunt
• Internecine

After-Party:

• Church Of Kerry (Extra Crisp Edition)
• Racethunder XL

So today saw a brave 30 comrades brave our greek utopian killing fields.

It started off with a well prepared Draakon showing us how to get through (at least most) of Surfin' in one piece. The Mora by the ending was angered though, and took down its fair share.
Then we went for a slow and easy run of Manhunt, where IceRaisers AAF set up some roadblocks, but only managed to take out one fleeing Officer. Since that mission had an unsatisfactory amount of death we loaded up Internecine to sneak around guns blazing

The anticipated CQB in Church of Kerry was cut short by a well placed AT-round, and we all made friends again in Racethunder XL.


As always, thoughts, experiences, comments, ideas related to this session can be formulated below. Feedback is always appreciated.

If you happen to have footage of tonights event, or think you might like to film FA in the future, feel free to peruse this thread : http://www.folkarps.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=240 and this one : http://www.folkarps.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=659
If you tend to keep the camera rolling feel free to contact us hosts, so we can track you down and confiscate the microfilm. Having footage from as many places as possible would be nice if we ever needed to make one of our propaganda reels again.


Also, as told at the start, Comrade Draakon was given the opportunity to plan ahead for Surfin'. If you would like to CO, but feel uncomfortable going in blind and planning in the 5/10 minute time frame, then send me (audiox) a PM or ping me on Skype. Our planning cellar is really comfortable, has running water, and we'll be sure not to forget any corpses in there next time! We'll at least try to hide it under the bed....

first coop mission, alpha section leader

The mission itself

A classic linear advance-and-secure type of mission. loved it.
Well chosen, challenging, diversified, complex terrain.
enough enemies to keep us busy for hours (:
Would love to replay it (and, in fact, all the other COOP missions on arma 3 we didn't complete -- that's one great way to improve).

My performance

I think I did OK overall, other than
- not properly briefed the fireteams before the mission started (big mistake)
- I rushed inside a compound thinking it was clear, and got shot to death (more on that later)
- not enough awareness (and patience) on my part at the start of the mission, caused us to engage enemies at two opposite directions.
- I constantly had the feeling like we're behind schedule and we need to hurry up, which effected my judgment for the worst. I would like to hear if this feeling was just, from draakon's point of view. If it wasn't for that, I would have done it much slower and more thorough.
- I didn't use enough artillery support. another big error.

Alpha's performance

to the most part, proper movement and good shooting, generally speaking the FTL's followed orders and executed them properly, with the exception of (from my point of view)
- wasting too much ammo at start, even tho asked repeatedly to conserve ammo and lower the rate of fire; which caused some of the section to be low on ammo halfway through the mission.
- exposing yourself a bit too much and too fast at the medium-range engagements. my intention was to do it very methodically and deliberately, take our time,
and it's totally my responsibility for not stressing that out in the briefing.
- (the biggest mistake from my POV) was when I ordered A1 led by halop to assault a compound from the east side (the shoreline side), and then make their way through the compound to the NW. Instead, A1 moved from the south, securing only a part of the compound, and held their position.
that's why I assumed its clear a few minutes later, which got me killed.
- at one point, alpha 2 advanced further away without being ordered too, which caused some confusion.
- generally speaking, It would have helped if the FTL's would communicate more - specifically acknowledge the orders being given.
I know sometimes it's hard cause your taking fire etc, but still I felt we had some miscommunication now and then.

-were the ftl's/AR assistants spotting for the team? It seemed to me there wasn't much success hitting the targets that were 350-400 meters away.
might be wrong, cause I wasn't micro-managing ,but anyway the process of spotting for your buddy, and telling him how to adjust his fire, is one of the key points of putting out effective fire.


=

2nd TVT mission, A1 FTL

Kefirz, when I ordered you to move to the tall grass to our right, you stopped me in the middle of speaking saying 'let's just move', ran straight forward where there wasn't enough cover, and got shot.
Now, It's not the fact you got shot I'm upset with, but the fact you disobeyed, which really made it hard for me to lead us to glorious victory

as for the mission itself, I think fighting in pitch-black darkness without NVG's is no fun ,and there is really nothing wrong with having NVG's at adversarial missions.

I guess that's it, thanks for reading, thanks audiox for hosting.



peace

I don't have much to say other than apologies to Wrathz for shooting him during Surfin. And here I was all excited that for the first time during the mission the enemy was more than four pixels in the far distance...

Surfin'

Alpha 1
FTL Halop
AR Kefirz
AAR Pickers
AT Matt

I must say, I really enjoyed being FTL this mission. Not much downtime, constant action all around. Under TacticalSloth's guidance we ran on a hill and started to kill enemies in the town. Kefirz was quite effective with his MG, and the rangefinder on the FTL is a powerful tool for spotting targets. I think we got about 20 enemies before orders came in to abandon the hill and advance from Bravo's old position so they can cover us. It took some time to convince the team to disengage as there was a few juicy targets left in the town

In the assault I was incapped and bled out rather tragically around my comrades.

A few thoughts and comments


The assault on the compound where I got shot was a bit messy, as was pointed out in TacticalSloth's AAR, A1 assaulted from the S and immediately got flanked by AI so we got bogged down (Not to mention I first thought it was friendly fire hitting us as it was coming from behind). There was no one covering us so we had to pull ourselves out of there and take cover in the compound we were supposed to clear, I believe our SL was shot by those flanking enemies but cannot be sure.

Props to A1, good movement and shooting and generally not dieing and following orders.

About SL - as he mentioned he wasn't clear about what his intentions or plan was so there was a lot of room for improvisation and initiative, big props for not micro managing as it makes FTLing a hell lot of more fun. Where moving across open ground we did squad bounding and it worked fine. Also it was kinda hard to hear you TacticalSloth so my bad if I improvised where I should not have. Anyway you did fine and I had fun.



will add more when im not lazy

One thing I was wondering: if we did kill ~20 enemies on that hill, was it worth going through a substantial part of our ammo? On my screen (1920x1080) none of the enemies were bigger than a handful of pixels, and I'm not sure I killed or even wounded anyone. (I'm also not the best marksman if I'm not shooting at one of our guys just 10m away...) At the same time, those were 20 enemies that didn't threaten us once we descended into the village, but I definitely didn't feel I was much use on that hill - which may primarily be down to my own general inexperience and lack of mad aiming skills. What's the general thinking and experience on engaging enemies that far away?

Surfing
Me as CO

Some black men in suits with a SUV visited my house the day before and took me to a secret planning room I did not know exist. They told me to come up with a plan or else...
I liked the challenge that this type of planning provided. Not only did I have more then usual (24 hours instead of 5 minutes) time to think of a plan, I also had the opportunity to study the terrain, look at the composition of various objects and blockades and even move myself around in the battlefield to know what benefits and problems some positions provided. The plan was executed by Alpha and Bravo with relatively close results I was hoping to achieve.

The plan itself was the following: Alpha is assault element while Bravo is on the north hills, being able to provide covering fire from the higher ground into the town. As we landed at the LZ, Bravo instantly took up position due north of their LZ behind some rocks and were ready to fire. The position itself was good in terms of visibility to see the enemy and cover Alphas north flank as well as providing ample cover from enemy fire. The bad thing indeed was that the ranges of enemy being engaged reached from 400 meters to 600 meters. Alpha meanwhile was tasked with assaulting a hilltop north-east of the town, just bit outside of it close to the land bridge as well as the sea. That hilltop contained 3 sets of bunkers with some concrete walls between them providing good overwatch into the town itself, (as well as being closer to the town then Bravos position) including good cover from return fire from said town. The bad thing about it was that the enemy could easily flank from due north, which some FIA troops did. But thanks to Bravo, they got cut down fast. So far so good.

Once Alpha had taken the hilltop and secured the bunkers, they stayed on overwatch which allowed Bravo to come down from their hilltop and move closer to the town. They took up position just close by in a building and set of low rocky walls west of the town as well as Alphas objective 2. Here's where I think first set of problems started to arise. One, bravo sent 1 fireteam (B2 I think it was) alone up north along the ditch. From the map as well as with my binoculars from Bravos old position I saw that there were FIA infantry at the hills north east (directly north of the town itself) as well as in the ditch itself with rocks and trees and reeds to cover said enemy. I was afraid that the enemy would cut down our troops with ease and was hoping that the ample supply of mortar rounds would be requested to rain down on the heads of those enemy troops. Luckily, it seems things went in our favor anyway, since I did not receive any indication that all things went hell up there. While that was happening, I ordered Alpha to move up north onto the road using the same hill and rocks to cover their advance (as well as providing some smoke support from mortars on 1 section of their path to cover them) and then move east towards their objective. Here's where problem number 2 started to arise, which as TacticalSloth already told above: Alpha was slow to move.

Once Alpha hit the road and was advancing east, I told Bravo to move up north and take up position on the hills again, doing the same thing as before: Using the cover of the rocks as well as being on the higher position, to shoot down any enemy infantry and provide support for Alpha. From that point on for about 10-15 minutes Bravo stayed up there. Was that actually a good choice in the end to sent them there? I do not actually know, from my point of view (still at the original position Bravo took at the beginning of the mission) with binoculars, the enemy seemed to stay away from the north side of the town. I still saw some infantry die on rooftops and balconies, but I was hoping that since Bravo was there they would be able to see and report contacts as Alpha was advancing trough the town, clearing compound to compound. The lack of reports from Bravo as well as their very fast movement along the hillside eastwards indicated to me that perhaps that position was indeed not very good. So in the end, I did pull Bravo out of there and had them move down using the gully as their movement path, eventually hitting a warehouse and clearing it out. Alpha in the meantime seemed to spread out a lot during their assault on the first parts of the town and started to take casualties. We reached into problem number 3. Only alpha at this stage had requested 1 fire mission from mortars, which I could not confirm if it was successful or not. This meant that enemy had large concentration of troops (at least from my PoV) running around the town and with what Alpha being spread out inside the town lead to some casualties which also meant that they were again moving slowly.

And then we hit the final parts of the mission. The town was cut into "half" so to say, having east and west (which was cleared at this point) section separated by a wide hill forming from south to north. Bravo was tasked to take position at the highest point of said hill and Alpha to continue pushing along the road. Problem number 4 in my opinion was also reached at this point. Near the position where Bravo was tasked to move was a house with lots of enemy infantry around as well as a technical overlooking the area. The technical and troops were spotted about 10 minutes earlier (as there was a map marker on it). Not sure by which squad spotted it. Again, luck was on our side fortunately, since the technical as well as the enemy infantry were cut down fast by Bravo without a scratch. Things could had gone very badly however, since the area was not even softened up with mortar fire. From that point on, both squads kept pushing east, Alpha near the road on the south side of town and Bravo up on the higher ground north side of town. Along the way, we received fire from an APC that eluded its position to us as well as having bit of a communication problems in terms of what squad was going where. However, eventually we found the elusive enemy troop carrier who (I presume) killed few of our guys. Unfortunately, neither squad had AT left to take that thing out. Fortunately, the mortar strike, which by the way did not take it out, scared it away and went hiding god knows where. And the mission shortly thereafter ended with the captured APC still alive and enemy AA capabilities still remaining in their hands. We did kill their officers and majority of troops, so that counts at least 2 objectives completed.

With that, here's a few pointers I want to make:

1. * TacticalSloth, you are indeed right that you guys were slow and behind schedule.
   * Lack of fire mission requests disturbed me.
   * While its true that the first position Bravo went to had long engagement ranges, it in my opinion helped to clear out the first wave of enemy infantry coming out of the town as well as keeping Alphas northern flank secure at the cost of some ammo. Bonus points for taking out the technical and HMG from there as well, Bravo.
   * I did not keep both squads in check in terms of supporting each other during the 2nd stage of the mission when Bravo was in the northern hills and alpha was clearing the western side of the town.
   * Those damn UAV's seem to have a mind of their own it seems. Even when turned off, they decide to fly off and die. Besides, I think I should had kept it towards the end of the mission because the hills themselves were a good spot anyway for me to have a overview of the battlefield that I didn't need the thing online anyway. Had I kept the UAV offline and turned it on at the end of the mission, it would had made the job of locating enemy APC faster and safer.
   * My plan of having MMG be mobile between Bravo and Alpha at the beginning was useless due to distance they had to move between the two squads with the plan I laid out at the briefing. So, I decided to eventually hand them off to Bravo.
   * Check your CC's before the session please.
   * I am a man of speech. Hence why you might see errors in my AAR.

First of all, answer time!

(I'm taking only those things that affect A1 in Surfin')

TacticalSloth wrote: - wasting too much ammo at start, even tho asked repeatedly to conserve ammo and lower the rate of fire; which caused some of the section to be low on ammo halfway through the mission.
- (the biggest mistake from my POV) was when I ordered A1 led by halop to assault a compound from the east side (the shoreline side), and then make their way through the compound to the NW. Instead, A1 moved from the south, securing only a part of the compound, and held their position.
that's why I assumed its clear a few minutes later, which got me killed.

Not me or Halop (I think) didn't hear anything about ammo conservation, it was only when I checked that my AAR has no backpack and only 1 mag in his inventory, I said to Halop that I'm quite low, and then he put it higher on the chain, and we needed to conserve a bit.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe Halop will clear it up, but when you put up a WP4 marker and we were still at WP2, our FTL tried to communicate if he should go to WP3 first, but I suppose we didn't get an answer.

TacticalSloth wrote: 2nd TVT mission, A1 FTL

Kefirz, when I ordered you to move to the tall grass to our right, you stopped me in the middle of speaking saying 'let's just move', ran straight forward where there wasn't enough cover, and got shot.
Now, It's not the fact you got shot I'm upset with, but the fact you disobeyed, which really made it hard for me to lead us to glorious victory

To be fair, I wasn't shot by an enemy

Thirith wrote:One thing I was wondering: if we did kill ~20 enemies on that hill, was it worth going through a substantial part of our ammo? On my screen (1920x1080) none of the enemies were bigger than a handful of pixels, and I'm not sure I killed or even wounded anyone. (I'm also not the best marksman if I'm not shooting at one of our guys just 10m away...) At the same time, those were 20 enemies that didn't threaten us once we descended into the village, but I definitely didn't feel I was much use on that hill - which may primarily be down to my own general inexperience and lack of mad aiming skills. What's the general thinking and experience on engaging enemies that far away?

Well at the mission end I had 16 kills.



P.S. I'm not sure which compound are you talking about Tactical, but the one where Halop died was clear, I personally went in 2 of the houses and saw my FT members clear the rest. We were taking fire from the South and East at some points, but those guys were shooting in the compound, not from.

Thirith wrote:I don't have much to say other than apologies to Wrathz for shooting him during Surfin. And here I was all excited that for the first time during the mission the enemy was more than four pixels in the far distance...

The last person that friendly fired me. Was mysteriously friendly fired themselves. Surely the work of Karma. Surely.

Anyway. My POV for some of the Surfin mission. Strange things happened to me. Very strange indeed. And can we get either some long range scopes or can a Weapon Rest addon be approved because my gawd trying to shoot people at a distance without being prone is a dick. Especially with the grass in the way.

TacticalSloth wrote: Alpha's performance

to the most part, proper movement and good shooting, generally speaking the FTL's followed orders and executed them properly, with the exception of (from my point of view)
- wasting too much ammo at start, even tho asked repeatedly to conserve ammo and lower the rate of fire; which caused some of the section to be low on ammo halfway through the mission.

At some points, I was honestly spraying hoping to hit something because... range too strong.

Hosts comment.

Surfin

I really like this mission, so having wolf update it was really nice! It is infantry focused, and i just feel like it has everything a mission needs. First of all, the scenery contains both rock torn hillsides, more open, bunker infested areas, a nice reed area in front of the town, then the actual town, and on the side of it all a nice beach and the blue sea.
Being "walled off" by having the sea on one side means that commanders have one side less to worry about, giving them at least something resembling a breather. But it all comes together so well. There are many nice places to have a BOF when assaulting both the bunkers and the city. Then it transitions to some nice CQB in a pretty small and manageable town, then some more open ground must be covered to take out people in compounds and in the end you need to break out the big guns to kill of the Mora.
The transitions through the different stages are fluid and fast (when we don't all die), and the concentrated AoO means there's something to do for everybody most of the time.
Also, the fire support is great. It enhances the battlefield quite a bit to have those mortar rounds drop on enemies both close and far.

I really hoped that we would get at least two full squads for this one, plus both attachments. In the end we came up just short, but managed the mission quite nicely regardless.
As you may have noticed, you all had a light loadout, which was done on purpose. I asssumed it would suffice. It seems Alpha ended up a bit short on ammo, how did it work out for Bravo?

Not me or Halop (I think) didn't hear anything about ammo conservation

This may or may not have something to do with a problem i've been observing/gnashing my teeth at. As you know we all listen in on SL - > FTL chat in teamspeak. Which is the way i prefer it. There are two very obvious pitfalls to this though.

• [1] FTLs thinking that their fireteam-members heard what SL just said.
  [2] Fireteam members listening in on SL -> FTL and acting before FTL tells them to.

In situation 1 you end up with oblivious fireteam members, in the other, you end up with fireteam members who have already gone off somewhere before you told them to. Also, since we are playing as loose as we are, and there is no determined fireteam "behaviour" as such, ("a good thing"™)<- i actually mean it...., you won't know how your team members behave unless you've been here for a while and you somehow avoided all of those who occasionally have a good day and occasionally a bad one. It is a challenge to overcome, and actually pulling it off, so much people-vooodoo as it is, is enjoyable and quite frankly, impressive.

Alpha in the meantime seemed to spread out a lot during their assault on the first parts of the town and started to take casualties. We reached into problem number 3. Only alpha at this stage had requested 1 fire mission from mortars, which I could not confirm if it was successful or not. This meant that enemy had large concentration of troops (at least from my PoV) running around the town and with what Alpha being spread out inside the town lead to some casualties which also meant that they were again moving slowly.

It seems to me that we often underestimate just how squishy a squad really is when you come into a CqB-sequence. Especially when it comes to us, since most fireteams walk into the first CqB sequence with no real knowledge as to how the play of independence/codependence works for that particular group. That said, we've ninjaed some shit!

* TacticalSloth, you are indeed right that you guys were slow and behind schedule.

Brutal Draakon, just brutal!
But more seriously, from where i see it, Alpha had the harder task, which by nature would take more time and be more diffuclt to execute. Bravo had plenty of time as BOF, and spent their time in the hills, making long range plinking the order of the day until way into the mission. Alpha had to do make the transition CqB/Ranged/CqB in the first part of the mission, which takes a lot more micromanagement so you don't die/stray off course. (Also, if i'm not mistaken, Bravo was two fireteams with hosts as both SL and FTLs.)
(Though i'm not gonna suggest that we -never- succumb to way overlong plinkploink-operations to make our approach "safer" when we are explicitly asked to assault something.) I understand it from the "dying sucks because then the mission proceeds without me and up to 1 hour in limbo is not time well spent" perspective. But c'mon people, its pixel-war, it ain't supposed to be safe! Just remember to shoot whomever says that your faith will shield you from the bullets first.....



Manhunt

To be honest, i hoped we'd be more players for this one. I really like the set-up, as you really don't know if Attackfor will go in guns blazing or just sit back and wait for the officers to escape. Also, having to protect two fragile assets like that really puts you on your edge as Defendfor. Both sides have to plan for recon, potential attack, defense, breakout attack, escape, encirclement, and subterfuge, all in one mission. (Erm.... you don't have to, but you get the point.....) The battle may be CQB or countryside, and feints can happen on both sides. So great fun.
It almost worked with tuesdays playercount, but i feel that this is a mission that would really shine at one of our 40+ sessions.
Also, A3 rain sounds lush!

Internecine

I always find this to be good fun, the slow creeping panic that sets in as muzzle flashes and shooting noises come closer and closer. It shows how much fun can be had with something that is both sparse and compact. Also, it scales pretty well.

Church of Kerry

A minimalistic Manhunt, come to think of it. (Or the other way around?) In hindsight i probably should have done this instead of Manhunt due to the number of players.


Hope you all had fun!since its mandatory..

WrathzRevenge wrote:

Famous last words (7:11) ''Oh I see it, I see it!''