Republic of Folk

Missions:

• EolaKastro
• Bees
• Uneasy Partners
• Raidolo (after-party)
• Race Thunder (after-party)

A return to better numbers this Sunday, with 33 comrades rallying to the cause of a socialist agrarian utopia! Actually, not only were there some completely new faces in the mix (welcome), but tonight saw the return of comrade Grizzly - who has been playing with us (on and off) for nearly 4 years! I also want to remark that when we started mission #3, over 2 hours into the session, we still had a playercount of 30. That's a really fine show, comrades. The Party thanks you all. Except you, Zitron.

We began with an adversarial: comrade Wolfenswan's EolaKastro. After the usual build-up phase (during which INDFOR runs all over the place, terrified of helicopters and trying to work out where BLUFOR is going to appear), the action all took place in the eastern end of the main valley. Despite the relatively small numbers on each side, there were flanks and counter-flanks, but eventually BLUFOR's ground forces were neutralised and their airborne colleagues flew away. It's okay, though, the Party will execute them later.



Next up was cooperative mission, Bees, but now with two twists: we would be playing at night, and comrade host NetKev would be Zeus. Veteran comrade Grizzly gamely stepped-up to the challenge of being CO, and presided over an epic victory. Taking minimal losses in both men and helicopters, the platoon managed to destroy both MBTs, as well as accounting for 80+ enemy infantry and at least 4 enemy IFVs. So many tracers, so many RPGs, so many dead! Kudos to all involved, especially the CO and his SLs.



Finally, we attempted comrade Lynche's Uneasy Partners, which I have never seen completed. Until now. This mission was almost over at the very start: driving through some villages towards the dismount point, both squads were engaged at close range. At one point - probably when I was trapped in the back of a pick-up, bleeding out - I thought we were going to have failed before reaching our FUP; but I was wrong. Slowly, but surely, CO comrade host NetKev and ASL comrade host Blip2 took control of the situation. Alpha, in particular, managed a masterful bounding advance across open terrain to reach and eventually seize the ridge overlooking the main objective. Then, in the second phase of the battle, many comrades bravely gave their lives as enemy AGL and HMG rounds rained down on our squads. Yet somehow we weren't entirely wiped out, and in the final push a handful of comrades reached the base, eliminated the targets, and drove away to freedom in liberated enemy vehicles.



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.

Again, a big thanks to everyone who came along tonight. This was my last session for about a month, and it was awesome fun.

Full AAR to come, but I did want to say I'm surprised by how restful it is to play as a pilot in Bees. It's ten minutes of worry and the Shepard's prayer* during briefing, five minutes of fighting framerates, not having that wonderful map marker and so taking a wrong turn and nearly landing at the wrong LZ, then fighting framerate drops at the WORST POSSIBLE MOMENTS, and then you get to chill for the mission until the final heroics to extract everyone at the end, including helicopter dogfights, hot LZs, and total confusion over whether we had gotten everyone out.

But I think it's Madrak's anal gland issues that will stay with me after that one...





*The Shepard's prayer, for those party folk who don't know the work of Alan Shepard, goes "Please Lord, don't let me f*** this up"...

Arrived more or less in time for the start (if only by the skin of my teeth) for this session, and oddly everything was working (ARMA3 ate all my control settings during the week and I had to redo them from scratch, which was both annoying and a good reason to immediately take a backup copy of them )



EolaKastro

Hm. A straightforward enough adversarial I thought, until I saw the map and thought "we're going to be fighting in valleys of fog against hard to spot adversaries again, aren't we?". Only this time, I was in the squad medic slot previously taken by Hero of the Folk FishermanJim so now I'm feeling performance pressure

The initial insertion went swimmingly, we progressed readily through the terrain with our impromptu gunship overhead threatening to be a menace to the enemy, and indeed it made first contact with them using its cannons. We wheeled towards that contact having cleared the first campsite we'd encountered, and then made contact with enemies and engaged them. At least I think we did, I never saw anybody which was very confusing. Then Alpha 3 was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I thought "this is it comrade, time to go be a hero with the morphine" and bravely headed in their direction for about ten steps before catching a mortar shell's fragments with my teeth (my squad lead may well have been actually hit by the shell). And that was pretty much it - in a moment or two of intense shelling, all of BLUFOR's ground forces were wiped out ("Hey, I'm still alive!" -- "You're not really") and the mission was called.

Bees

Oh, it's the airwolf video one!

I've actually been seriously tempted of late to take a pilot slot. It's probably the most fun I have in the game, but I was holding off until I got the CPU upgrade and pedals in a month or so. But then Fer announced that there would be six helos in this mission and I thought "What's the worst that could happen? They'll have enough in case I crash from framerate!" so I stepped up and took a slot, which should have scared people more than it did, really.

And it was AWESOMESAUCE.

Granted, I was not the most polished pilot out there and I should have tweaked the effects level in the audio settings much earlier, and we weren't terribly clear about the formation for TH3 through TH5 so I wound up in the lead somewhat unexpectedly (but at least TH4's bench passengers all had their legs after the overtaking, in my defence).... and yes, I did become momentarily unsure of my position twice, and yes, not all of my passengers made it to the LZ (one was killed by Arma and bled to death at the bottom of the ocean), but everyone who wasn't killed by Arma also wasn't killed by my landing which was close enough to the marked LZ for government work. And as we learn from our mistakes, I have now learned a lot.

After the initial insertion and dustoff, I basically headed back out to sea and hovered for a bit in case things went south quickly and an immediate evac was needed, but once it became clear that wasn't the case, we all headed over to a nearby safe landing spot for coffee and sandwiches.

I feel the party needs to double-check that the transport helos are equipped with coffee and sandwiches in the future.

And I think Madrak needs a vet.

Once things got hairy back in the AO, the MH9 pilots got into the ghosthawks to act as gunners and we had a few minutes of impromptu gunship duty before an autocannon made swiss cheese of our gunship. Our pilot made an impressive exfil and emergency landing, but the autocannon had claimed one of our gunners (and really made a mess of our paintwork too). TH2 picked us all up and we returned to the picnic site forward operating base, got in our MH9s and went back to do an extraction from a hot LZ (I was impressed by TH1's gunners making sure we had an authentic experience by making our approach hot as well, that was sporty). The original planned LZ, by some marked buildings down the hill wasn't going to work - Alpha couldn't get to us - so TH4 and myself went to them and grabbed them off the hillside. I probably lifted early - I'd been counting the guys running towards us and saw them all accounted for but should have asked first but in the end it transpired the count was good and we'd gotten them all out.

Then the attack helos got annoyed at us and chased us back to the safe zone. Helo dogfights must be interesting when you're strapped to a bench on the outside of the helo with the target painted on it. Eggman had a cunning plan involving me landing, them all getting off and shooting it down, so I dropped them all off and bounced the helo about a bit to try to draw fire, but I don't think it worked well. So I landed again, got everyone onboard, flew them to the evac zone and dropped them off, then headed back to the AO because we had some reports of two folk still hunkered down in the AO. I got to a point just shy of the original Alpha LZ, but we had no comms with our folk-left-behind and it transpired that they were in fact fictional, so the mission was called there. Victory!

Like I said, awesomesauce. Would definitely do again. Preferably with a new CPU for a higher framerate and pedals for more precision and the effects volume turned way down so I could actually hear the radio this time. Thanks to all my passengers for monumental amounts of bravery and/or not knowing how much danger they were in from their own pilot!

Uneasy Partners

I'm told we've never won this one before - I can understand why!

Our original plan involved driving along a heavily guarded road at high speed laughing maniacally. It was suggested that this would be a shorter mission than usual, so we changed the plan to drive along a less guarded road. Laughter was still encouraged. And necessary, because our original dismount point was somehow predicted by the enemy who were lying in wait for us and we were under fire almost immediately. We survived that, then came under fire from the south before ever getting out of the small hamlet we had dismounted in, and so had to make an awesome 500m bounding dash under fire with suppression and all the fun stuff. Happily there weren't too many people plinking at us, but it was still amusing. I had to ditch the ACO sight though, that thing was useless to me beyond 100m since you couldn't adjust it for range.

We made it to the north side of the ridgeline and started clearing it from east to west, had a few fun firefights doing that and then started working on the southern side of the ridge which had a small cluster of buildings on the western end. This was where the first fire from the GMG-armed Ifrits arrived and I hurriedly got off the ridge with a rather panicky thought or two as to the safety of the ridgeline. We proceeded to clear the few buildings left, and then I missed one soldier to our south. He didn't miss my spleen and left lung, but happily we had a first aid kit to hand so I was up and running again in a minute or two. And for a few more minutes, we worked our way west to try to kill a HMG-armed Ifrit while suppressing the CSAT forces at the base. Well. Annoying them, more like. And then the Ifrit killed us. Looking over the video afterwards, I think I had target fixation with a CSAT soldier I was plinking at, because there were a dozen radio calls about that Ifrit and it was not exactly hiding, but the first I knew of it was the very large bullets hitting me

There were some spectacular deaths after mine - Alpha 3 were wiped out in a three-second CQC encounter with the same Ifrit (it even ran one of them over to add insult to injury), Madrak almost took the base single-handed, and Costno was not only as tacticool as all get-out, but even took on an Ifrit himself (granted, an unarmed one, but still). Then we killed the targets and won. Costno swiped a truck and grabbed a passenger, then the other three survivors (one of whom had engaged in psychological warfare on the enemy by stripping off his clothes to unnerve them) stole an Ifrit (which apparently flipped while I wasn't watching) and they all legged it.

And to end the mission, as he had promised us at the start, Fer killed everyone just after the victory call


Raidolo (after-party)

A less complex plan this time than last time - a direct assault from both north and south. We lost Noose at the first encounter, but breached the compound from both sides successfully and got inside the building. Fer took hits immediately in front of me and was killed immediately, but thanks to Arma's action menu I spent a few seconds trying to revive him anyway. Madrak ran past with a purloined SMG which almost got me to shoot him in a fit of mistaken identity, but then he hosed the last terrorist and the State was victorious!

Race Thunder (after-party)

I hate Arma Karts. They're funny, but damn, your backside is not meant to be that low to the ground at 50kph, and whomever fitted nitrous to them was a sadist who thought the problem wasn't posterior altitude but insufficient speed! I finished the course, through sheer bloodimindedness long after everyone else had logged out and gone home, and I'm pretty sure that at some point I got turned around and drove the remainder of the course the wrong way (I know I wound up in at least two houses' back gardens along the way), but I got to the finish line. Which was kindof an achievement. Sortof. I think.

I did catch some sick air, as the kids say, on one or two occasions. I didn't know karts could do double reverse somersaults...

But really, I kept thinking, "this would be much crazier if we were doing it in MH9s"...

Gonna write a bit about the 2 coops, since in the adversarial I basically couldn't spot any enemies and my fireteam did all the heavy lifting for me.

Bees - (Bravo Squad Lead)

Incoming essay about command structure (veering into rant territory)
I gotta say I think this mission is pretty great. Not too difficult, not too easy. I think missions work best when different squads are free to work independently on objectives, while still having the opportunity to provide support to one another. Missions where everybody attacks the same objective just tend to get bogged down I feel, and its easy for fireteams to be forgotten about or feel a bit left out.

That said I have to give major props to Grizzly his admirable CO skills. He gave Alpha and Bravo their objectives, outlined his overall plan, and then sat back and let the squad leaders lead while providing just enough communication support to keep things running smoothly. I haven't played much squad lead before, and I think its universally assumed to be the most difficult job in the FA Platoon. Generally this is because in my opinion, at times the squad leads can get too strung out (constant communication with CO and other elements, trying to micromanage FTLs and waypoints, etc) or can get skipped over in the chain of command ( The CO basically manages each Fireteam personally, and the squad lead just exists to ferry orders to the FTLs). The reason for these things I think comes down to mission design, where there needs to be enough objectives to keep the squads busy, while forcing the CO not to be able to micromanage too much, and provide enough freedom for the SL to plan and deploy his FTs in a useful formation where everyone gets a job to do. Either way this isnt meant as a criticism of other missions, but to point out how well Bees is designed, and how well this session went.

On the other end of the chain of command, I always feel that SLs should try not to micromanage their fireteams. I try to point my teams at a building/objective/whatever, and I want them to use their best judgement to move to that place and secure it. Again, this worked really well last night, and I have to commend my 3 FTLs (AJAX, BigBoss and Blip), who valiently assaulted each compound in a timely manner without complaint or getting bogged down with petty worries such as self-preservation and concern for ones wellbeing.

So as BSL I was originally very nervous, both because my command experience above FTL so far has been pretty atrocious, and because I was given at the last second 3 fireteams to command, probably 2 more fireteams than I have the brainpower to manage efficiently. But luckily, I was given the freedom to formulate an attack on the town and destroy one of the MBTs. Splitting in 2 groups, Bravo opened the assault by capturing the compound outside the town, while B3 provided overwatch on the sniper hillside. After some routine Gorgon killing as they rumbled in from the north, we assaulted the town proper, with B1 holding off the northern reinforcments as B2 entered and cleared the town and B3 planted the charge on the first tank.

With our objective complete, we pressed on to aid alpha squad. Pushing down the main road of the town, the 2nd main compound was taken, and after 3 or so satchels the second tank disabled. Shortly after we came under cannon fire from an unknown enemy. I ordered bravo to hunker down in a building, at which point CO informed me that we were being attacked by a CAS jet and our best bet was to run for it. Every man for himself at that point, we regrouped with the CO and headed for evac. After reaching the pickup point, and some brave heroics by AJAX and B2 to ensure no one got left behind, we managed to get picked up by pilot Zitron, who stayed unnaturaly calm even with enemy helicopters crashing 50m away. The addition of Zeus to the mission definitely added a great level of immersion to the mission, ensuring that things were tense and action packed right up until the end. All in all I think a triumphant victory for everyone involved (except all the dead AI, who suffered a pretty embarresing defeat).

Uneasy Partners - (Alpha 2 FTL)

Correct me if im wrong, but I distincly remember a victory in this mission just a few weeks ago, with the 2 targets being eliminated, and alpha squad having a perticularly brutal run for the exfil point right at the end (however the first time i played this mission, in one of my first Folk sessions, there was much GMG fire and death and dismay, so its not exactly a walk in the park). In any case, this was another fantastic mission from my viewpoint. Being more comfortable in the FTL role (really I just do it for the grenade launcher), I felt it my duty to spearhead the assault on the ridgeline, and since I survived Bees, a bit of a glorious death wouldn't hurt. Unfortunately despite my best efforts, Alpha 2 survived the suicidal bounding dash across 500m of open ground, and made it all the way to the top of the ridge, in part due to some excellent cover fire from the rest of Alpha squad, and in part due to the enemy's lack of awareness all-round. (At one stage myself and Raesor bumped into a guy in the woods, about 10 meters away, took me about 10 seconds to figure out if he was an enemy, and apparently he was thinking the same thing. I believe you can hear my profanity towards the end of Sparks' recap video).

I say that the enemy seemed a bit out of sorts during this mission, however on two seperate occasions while clearing out a shanty town, we came across enemy soldiers with apparent X-ray vision, happily shooting through doors, walls and whatever other flimsy cover we could find. Alas in the end my glorious death was less than glorious as blue team went StriderHMG hunting, and were promptly shot by said Strider. I take some consolation in the fact that same Strider went on to kill about 9 more comrades, so it was obviously exempt from the lazy Ai encountered elsewhere on the map.

Eagle_Eye wrote:At one stage myself and Raesor bumped into a guy in the woods, about 10 meters away, took me about 10 seconds to figure out if he was an enemy, and apparently he was thinking the same thing. I believe you can hear my profanity towards the end of Sparks' recap video

Ironically, he was probably the guy I saw from the ridgeline and was telling you about just before the GMG opened up on red team and we skedaddled down the ridge like lemmings in a Disney movie
At least you knew there was a HMG Ifrit out there, the multi-ton, extremely-loud armored truck managed to sneak up on me...

Not really done much in the way of After Party Reporting, but we'll give it a shot.

EolaKastro
Position: Mortar Team Leader (Medic for my dying sidekick)
Team: The best one, CSAT, or was it Indfor? Something that wasn't Blufor at least

'Mortars are my friends. Helicopters trying to gun us aren't. '

Me and my comrade Ninjademon began the mission with orders to find some safe ground, and set up to respond to any requests to shell potential targets. We jogged, carrying what must be at least 20kg's each worth of equipment, to a valley between two cache points. We set up in a fairly good clearing, with access to mortar all the points that Blufor were so insistent on trying to kill. Our goal was simple, kill as many of the enemy as we could. And bonus points for hitting the chopper. I thought this might come early with the FTLs relaying that the chopper had landed somewhere to the south east of our position, I could here it however the fog was obscuring anything further than 200m away. Eventually all hopes of catching it while it was in its most vulnerable position ended quite scarily as it snuck over a mountain and passed us right by over our heads. Our SL ordered us to head north into the forest, we quite happily agreed. My gunner kindly reminded me to take my backpack with half the cannon in it. After ducking and diving through a shallow valley under tree cover, and always under threat from two machine guns from a very scary sounding and low flying helicopter, we found a perfect spot, between two bushes, in a gulley and with perfect tree cover to be able to lay down cover all over. I dropped my bag, awaited my gunner to finally assemble the two together to form the perfect weapon.

"I've forgotten my bag". *sigh*.

5 minute later he returns with his bag, looking and sounding quite sorry for himself, and we assemble to await orders to blow some Blufor of the face of the planet. We were under constant threat of hundreds of bullets suddenly from the skies heading towards us. The helicopter passed over again and again. It was menacing, and scary. Every time it did, I'd order my gunner to stay still, we waited with baited breath. On one occassion the helicopter suspiciously slowed down to our right. My gunner decided 5 seconds before to twirl round on the spot with the gun. I'm assuming the helicopter crew saw this movement of green on darker green and opened up on us. The round of bullets hit him, and incapacitated him. Some ricochet hit me and I was injured. I dared not move, pretending to be dead as the helicopter continued on circling round for another pass. When I saw it move off I quickly revived my comrade, ordered the disassemble of our gun and to retreat into deeper cover. We escaped thankfully, although the helicopter kept passing overhead, always watching.

We set up again in a bush, sure that this time we'd go unnoticed. Alpha 3 reported that somewhere close to our south there was enemies, and sure enough gun fire started. Unfortunately we never go to bomb them. Meanwhile we waited for an order to start bombing some bad guys.

This order quickly comes through. A mark goes on the map for us to 'Bomb here', the camp had been 'liberated' by Blufor within the last couple of seconds, and Alpha 2 was under attack from a force near it. We dropped 3 rounds in a triangle around the point, hoping that the splash damage would be more than enough to incapacitate any enemies. I warned Alpha 1 that shells were landing close to them.

About 15 seconds later I could here the thud of 3 rounds hitting the ground. Turns out we caught a few of them with the bombs. It was a good day to be a mortar crew. The rest of the mission was quite quiet for us. A few smoke rounds here and there.

We celebrated victory by launching an infinite number of shells on friendlies. The end.

Gemoxy wrote:My gunner decided 5 seconds before to twirl round on the spot with the gun. I'm assuming the helicopter crew saw this movement of green on darker green and opened up on us.

...Yeah the thing is, I was going over my old AAF OCS manuals, and it turns out the mortars we nicked from the barracks have a radar signature when assembled. So, um, the more you know, right ?

Sparks wrote:
But I think it's Madrak's anal gland issues that will stay with me after that one...

Hey, those pilot seats are swampy as hell, I tell you what.

Also how did my grenade at the end of uneasy partners not kill any of the guys it landed right next too. I feel cheated.

I am what you could call a grizzled veteran. My ursine ways have been known amongst those of Folk ARPS since 2009, back when ARPS actually was a thing and Folk was still a semi-obscure group... Eventually those two groups started to play together more and more untill they gradually and formally merged into each other. I have both changed and not changed a whole lot since then... Just like Arma as it seems

Back in the day I was an overly-happy idiot, and now that I am getting some crunchtime into beating back my depression once and for all ( ) I am once again an overly happy idiot! Suits me just fine!

However, one thing has changed a whole lot: My fear. Back in the day, I ocasionally *dared* (or was volunteered) to command, and I distinctly remember the predecessor of EolaKastro, Internecine (IIRC), where the briefing looked somewhere like this:
Grizzly: uuuuh, so we go *places marker* here, and… no wait *deletes marker* and…
Stranglove: Stop being so indecisive!
Grizzly: Uuhhh, let’s go… *details plan for a bit*
Other members: But what if we instead go here and here?
Grizzly: uhhhmm…
Fer: ALRIGHT PEOPLE, We do not plan by committee!

In other words, I was wildly insecure. That has changed a lot: Now I freely admit I have no idea what I am doing and revel in it, and that has drastically changed my outlook on commanding. If you ever find yourself in the position of command, just know that letting things go FUBAR is part of the fun, and back in 2010 no one ever managed to finish a folk mission. FUBAR is part of a long and proud tradition here at FOLK. You can never do wrong! So go out there and have fun! As a side note: Also remember that your squad leaders have a much better eyes on their individual situation. Defer to their judgement at all times, as it both makes things more fun for them (more personal freedom) and for you (less micromanagement). This isn’t starcraft 2, everyone you are commanding is just as smart as you are (or just as dumb – again, it contributes to the hilarious failures!).

I must say that I found Bees to be a lot of fun. Spotting targets together with Fer for my squad leaders, who were being extremely effective at either murdering tanks (In Bravo's case) or not dying and making sure we weren't dying (in Alpha's case) was a bucketload of fun. Since Alpha was pinned down a bit, I ordered them to hold their position and defend it, so that they would draw fire for Bravo - who would blow up the MBTs in relative quietness and then retreat to Alpha's position where extraction would follow. I also ordered a helo in to give covering fire for Alpha, but I was later informed that that did not go well.

ZEUS, in his almightyness, got bored a bit, as he send some attack helicopters after us.

Then he send some more attack helicopters.

Then he send even more attack helicopters.

Then he send a CAS jet.

Then I started to slightly panic.

Bravo had not noticed that they were under fire from a CAS jet (although they defenitely noticed something was shooting at them), so I ordered them to hurry it up: I wanted to get everyone into the trees before the jet came in for another run. My gambit seemed to have paid off as the jet did not fire at us after that. THe last 10 minutes of the mission was a frantic evacuation where helicopters where flying, shooting, and crashing all about us whilst we hastily ran towards the helicopters and pulled back with surprisingly few casualties. I had half a mind to shout "FER, WE DO NOT PLAN BY COMMITTEE" at fer when objected that my plan would lose us helicopters, but then Bravo interrupted me so I had to forego being pointlessly badass for the sake of guiding my men instead. Tbh, I prefer it that way anyway.

So that was great fun! I wanted to do a proper AAR with maps and everything, but I had a very stressful day instead so sorry folks! I'll screenshot my battle plans next time around.

Grizzly wrote:Fer: ALRIGHT PEOPLE, We do not plan by committee!

Comrade Grizzly's re-appearance, like a Tu-95 returning to the skies above the North sea, reminds me of the good old days, when it was necessary for the Party to bring order to the chaos. And comrade Wolfenswan had a sweet moustache. I'll just leave this here: