[Sun] 06 December 2010 (MARSOC)

[fer]

Missions:

• Warlords
• Swept (adversarial)
• Operation Shockwave
• Cacheola (adversarial)
• Defend the Base (inadvertent Chocolate Rain version)
• Defend the Base

Huge thank you to everyone who came along - it was a terrific session, and a great turnout. Well done to all comrades, and thanks to the brave BLUFOR running dogs of MARSOC. After the heroic performance of comrade Redkid, it may be time to mint some medals ...

[LiddleFeesh]

I concur, a great time and a very memorable game tonight.

1. Warlords (26 players)

I played as the AT team (one man with four RPGs and an angry temperament) and I was dispatched south of the village under commander Mort’s orders. His inspired leadership requested me to watch south for targets and lo, a Humvee moved up the road right where I was expecting it to be . I held fire until the Humvee moved towards a small walled homestead at which point I opened fire with all four RPGs, destroying the Humvee and doing some general damage to the structures and any infantry units nearby.

I saw General Carver riding into the walled homestead on a technical and he was promptly dispatched; probably by whichever infantry survived the RPG assault. DM rained machine gun fire down on the location from opposite me on the eastern hill. I advised Mort to travel south, to the west of the road.

Mort ran instead like a coward to the north, which promptly won the mission for us ☺

2. Swept (14 OPFOR v 13 INDEPENDENT)

We split into three main teams, alpha, bravo and Charlie. I was RPG soldier in Bravo, led by Mort. Our commander chose to keep the fire teams in a wedge formation and set us two fallback points. We used those fallback points fairly early in the game as the engagement distances were quite large (~500m).

We took heavy casualties at our second fallback point due to oncoming fire from the blocking force (mostly from a technical) and sniping fire from the OPFOR. Due to a lack of leadership (because they were dead), I headed East - killing the driver and gunner of a technical and stealing it. Banshee suggested that I go back west (in the technical) for Tigershark, which I did. I had a great time gunning down the sniper by the rocks to the south as well as blasting away at groups of running infantry. I managed to kill at least two before Tigershark and Banshee survived me, driving east to the waypoint. At one point we came under direct AT fire from a MARSOC fellow. He missed, luckily for us.

3. Operation Shockwave

A huge mission around Zargabad in which FOLK played a selection of terrorist cells with a wide variety of objectives.

Potentially very good but to summarise I’ll leave it to the first exchange of feedback heard on TS3 ☺

“This needs a lot of stuff to be done before this mission will be fun”
- Banshee

“Really? For you?”
- Sonsalt

4. Cacheloa

A fairly standard start, and a typical force vs. force confrontation ended with the most hilarious demonstration of the perils of veteran mode by RedKid, who after promptly dispatching the tyres of a humvee from a rooftop RPG shot, went down and claimed the turret of the humvee as his prize.

We watched as he gunned down the first of a two-humvee mechanised patrol, taking down two of the MARSOC players. Then he gunned at the trailing humvee taking out another.

We watched in absolute amusement as the enemy force in their confusion couldn't determine either what hit them or where it was coming from. Four further enemy casualties followed and by the time the mission was over, both G and Mort were moving in on the one remaining BLUFOR player - dispatched again by their own mounted M2.

--

We followed this with a couple of good fun defend the base missions, getting all the way to the tenth wave on the last one.

Thanks to everyone who took part and to everyone who helped make the session happen. It was good fun!

[Tigershark]

Potentially very good but to summarise I’ll leave it to the first exchange of feedback heard on TS3 ☺

“This needs a lot of stuff to be done before this mission will be fun”
- Banshee

“Really? For you?”
- Sonsalt

Priceless Feesh. That made my day

[fer]

Warlords

- CO: Mort
|-- Medic: Fer

Comrades, I must confess that I played almost no role in this mission at all. Our commander granted my wish to set up a medical aid station in a building towards the centre of the village, and after establishing People's Clinic No. 94, I spent the rest of the mission looking out of windows, waiting for a BLUFOR running dog to appear. No capitalist pigs arrived at my medical establishment, so I was unable to render them immobile and deliver a speech about the benefits of public healthcare. So whilst I'm afraid we've lost this year's grant money from the Nancy Pelosi Foundation for Social Progress (and Finger-wagging), I am happy to report that our glorious leader made good his escape. I particularly enjoyed his final order:

"Die well, comrades! I'm off to a safer location!" (or words to that effect).



Swept (adversarial)

Xiathorn was using my computer for this mission, so I got to watch over his shoulder as he demonstrated the shortcomings of the AK-47 in a long-range firefight. After his death, in spectator mode, I enjoyed watching the theft of an enemy UAZ and the confusion it was able to sow amongst the ranks of the sweeping force. Gutsy stuff from the remaining comrades, rewarded with our second victory of the evening!



Operation Shockwave

- CO (nominal): Fer
|-- Terrorist: General Carver
|-- Terrorist: messiah

When I was killed I was facing my attacker, completely unarmed, and standing no more than 5m from the muzzle of his rifle. Once I got beyond my frustration, I remembered that this is exactly why I like ArmA2: missions can become distinct game-types in themselves, forcing you to learn or create a whole new range of tactics and approaches. In that respect, which makes our gaming so different from the pre-ordained questing of WoW or rail-shooting of CoDx, we are very lucky - I hope we never forget that. There are various aspects of this mission that I'd like to see tweaked, and I urge anyone who's interested to join me in assembling some useful feedback for its creator, Sonsalt, who now has access to the folk forum. In the meantime, here's what happened for me:

After we had translated Sonsalt's co-ordinates for caches into map markers (many thanks to comrades Tigershark and Feesh), and the mission had started (allowing us to see our starting positions), I outlined a very simple plan:

• Tigershark's cell would arm itself from the south-east, then hit the villa
• Mort's cell would arm itself near the oil facility to the north-west, then hit the facility itself
• Headspace's cell would arm itself south of the airport, before striking the market to the south of the city
• My own cell would journey south to the city's northern edge, then hit the central mosque
• If a cell managed to complete its primary target, it was to instantly fall back to Beardface's position and defend him

With regards to comms, after giving this briefing we went to 'radio silence', using only group and direct VON to communicate within our own cells. It made things very atmospheric, because we could hear firefights and explosions in the distance, but had no way of knowing if our comrades' efforts were meeting with success or a hail of .50 cal rounds. Or both.

Initially, Carver, messiah and myself drove south in a car, but abandoned it at our designated cache, where we disappointed to find a single sniper rifle and a pistol. Arming messiah with the rifle and Carver with the pistol, we struck off to the south. Carver then made an excellent suggestion: that I, as an unarmed civilian (kinda), should walk ahead and act as their scout. Accordingly, we made our way into the city thus: me walking slowly down roads and sidestreets, whilst Carver and messiah dashed between enterable buildings behind me. In such a fashion we were soon across the street from the main mosque.

Walking into the mosque I saw no enemy contacts, and directed the others to cross the street and climb the stairs leading to the tops of the outer walls. At this moment we were bounced from the south and almost instantly messiah (our rifleman) was immobilised at the foot of the stairs. The BLUFOR fireteam moved in for the kill, finishing-off messiah and executing me where I stood.



However, comrade Carver was still lurking further up the stairs, with a Makarov in his hand and a powerful need for revenge. Moments later the bodies at the foot of the stairs were clad in ACU as well as shalwar kameezes.



Cacheola (adversarial)

Again, I handed over my PC to comrade Xiathorn for this one, watching over his shoulder as the action unfolded. Xiathorn's own death was superb, as he chanced upon a dismounted Hummer crew from their rear and lit up the dismounts from no more that 10m away. Sadly for comrade Xiathorn, the gunner was either already in his position, or had mounted in a flash, for soon the contest was between 7.62 and .50 cal, and only one outcome was likely thereafter.

From the spectator script we watched in awe as comrade Redkid performed acts of sheer brilliance: blowing the front wheels off a Hummer at almost point blank range (from a rooftop), before killing at least one of the dismounting crew, was impressive enough; but it was what he did next that was truly epic. Mounting up in the turret of the immobile Hummer, Redkid seemed to be enacting the advice of that crazy tank commander in the film Beast of War:

"Out of commission, become a pillbox. Out of ammo, become a bunker. Out of time, become heroes."

And Redkid certainly became a hero. Lighting up several enemy vehicles, he almost single-handedly reduced the remaining BLUFOR troops (which at the time outnumbered our surviving comrades), until only one remained. We watched with baited breath as the lone Americanski attempted to get the jump on Redkid, at one point nearly succeeding, before our brave turret gunner comrade put a final round through the capitalist lap-dog's body.

Redkid is a hero of the socialist agrarian workers' revolution!



At this point, on behalf of everyone at Folk I thanked the MARSOC players for another fine evening in their company and declared the session over. However, all were welcome for some Defend the Base insanity.

Defend the Base (inadvertent Chocolate Rain version)

And it was insane. GBUs fell from the sky like hail, and then everything began to explode. Amazingly, quite a few of us didn't die, but it was clear that something wasn't quite right with this version of the mission. When we had stopped launghing (because it was very, very funny), we restarted ...

Defend the Base

... in the original(-ish) version of the mission. Folk took the east and north walls, MARSOC the west and south. We bled players through the mission, until (on the 9th level?) there were only a handful of players left. Comrade Xiathorn and I took turns to operate the same character, and to argue about reversing the Y-axis of the mouse. It was epic, and we nearly beat it. Nearly.

[Sonsalt]

First of all hey, and thanks for allowing me to post here.

I want to take the opportunity to share my ideas on the Shockwave mission and what the intention I had while making it.

As you have already noticed, there where several objectives for the terrorist side to match and the weapons given have been quite limited.

The idea was to give you the advantage of blending in with the local population, selecting your target and use the advantage of cover and confusion to strike and disperse immediately. The decision with how many cells to hit a target and conducting multi prong attacks was entirely yours. In any case intel was the most vital part for both sides.

Why the terrorist failed in my opinion:

The fact that the amount of weapons have been limited was not the reason for the failure as an open confrontation was not intended in any case. Two out of the 6 primary targets have been not guarded, and have been populated by civilians. The easiest way to destroy them was to just use one person move onto the sight and blow it up. For the better guarded areas a combined strike would have been the way to go. Also there was a supply camp that was only lightly guarded and could have provided all types of weapons including Stingers and AT launchers. Designing the mission I thought you would hit this sight first, obtain the necessary equipment, take out the choppers with stingers and then move on the airfield or the embassy.

All in all the preparation, briefing and the amount of possibilities might have been a bit too much for the first attempt. Also we had to make some last minute changes as the civilian ambient module had some issues and my (Detect weapon) script failed to work without CBA.

I personally feel that this mission has a lot of potential and at least for the MARSOC side already provided some tense moments. The biggest asset of this type of mission is to be able to just blend in, and move undetected among the enemies.

With some tuning and improvements I believe this could be great fun for everybody.

PS: the Briefing was intended to explain the complex situation and give you some time to prepare your tactic and strategy. Maybe for the next event you meet in advance and plot an evil plan

PPS: The USMC air force had no ammo truck an thus was limited in the amount of ammo available.

[fer]

The idea was to give you the advantage of blending in with the local population, selecting your target and use the advantage of cover and confusion to strike and disperse immediately. The decision with how many cells to hit a target and conducting multi prong attacks was entirely yours. In any case intel was the most vital part for both sides.

We might have been confused, here. Our understanding of the directive on comms was that we couldn't use TS. So after sketching out an initial plan we went to radio silence, using only Direct/Group VON. As for the decision to attack many targets, that was a decision driven by the fact that in order to win the mission we had to accomplish 6 separate tasks (attacking 3 locations, taking out at least 2 UN trucks, killing the US Ambassador), whilst at the same time protecting Beardface. With less than 12 men in total, and only basic weapons, we had no hope of winning a stand-up fight against mechanised / air-supported BLUFOR. By spreading ourselves out and attacking in parallel, the theory was that we would force you to split your assets and even miss us entirely (at some locations). Our real ability to take cover amongst the civilians was also a factor; without the ability to holster small arms, our options were perhaps not as broad as your original vision.

The fact that the amount of weapons have been limited was not the reason for the failure as an open confrontation was not intended in any case. Two out of the 6 primary targets have been not guarded, and have been populated by civilians. The easiest way to destroy them was to just use one person move onto the sight and blow it up. For the better guarded areas a combined strike would have been the way to go. Also there was a supply camp that was only lightly guarded and could have provided all types of weapons including Stingers and AT launchers. Designing the mission I thought you would hit this sight first, obtain the necessary equipment, take out the choppers with stingers and then move on the airfield or the embassy.

I think you're envisaging a period of intelligence gathering that would have been far longer than we anticipated. It also conflicts slightly with the impression you gave in the verbal briefing, which was that time was ticking away (because BLUFOR was closing in on the locations of our caches and Beardface). The other trouble I have with the idea of sequential assaults is that hitherto our casualty rate has been so high that there was little likelihood of making past the second firefight - particularly if BLUFOR was able to concentrate its assets against us.

PS: the Briefing was intended to explain the complex situation and give you some time to prepare your tactic and strategy. Maybe for the next event you meet in advance and plot an evil plan

That's true; again, perhaps there's a disconnect here: the concept of Folk is low friction gaming - we don't train, or have organised sessions outside of Sunday. So the idea of having to pre-plan a mission is outside the envelope for us as a playing community (which we aren't anyway, but, omg, it's complicated explaining what folk is). In other words, the expectation was that the mission - like all others played in the joint sessions so far - would be something we could play without pre-planning.

All in all the preparation, briefing and the amount of possibilities might have been a bit too much for the first attempt. Also we had to make some last minute changes as the civilian ambient module had some issues and my (Detect weapon) script failed to work without CBA.

I personally feel that this mission has a lot of potential and at least for the MARSOC side already provided some tense moments. The biggest asset of this type of mission is to be able to just blend in, and move undetected among the enemies

I absolutely agree with you that the mission has potential. Ignoring implementation issues (such as being able to hide weapons), I would identify our collective challange as this: the sheer scope and scale of the mission meant that each side could arrive at a very different concept of what needed to happen, in effect playing two missions 'in parallel' (this is particularly true for the insurgents, who faced armed AI as well as humans). That disconnect between concepts can really harm everyone's enjoyment if the expectations of each side are too far apart.

To give a perfect example of where this has happened before, look at Tigershark's Milk Run mission, played (sorta) during the last joint session. As envisaged, it was to be a mission of roadside ambushes and duels between Stinger-toting insurgents and brave LB pilots. In reality, what happened was that the BLUFOR players at the crash site thought differently about the problem, decided to walk over a mountain we (the mission maker and also the folk CO) thought was impassable, making the whole mission a non-event - BLUFOR drove to safety, bypassing all of the ambushes. It happens - and it's why we should try and iterate this mission, such that we strike a balance between broad possibilities, and the 'parallel concepts' issue that I believe undermined its success last night.

Hope this helps, and thank you for taking time to discuss this with us here - it's much appreciated!

[mort]

I played the sniper in Cacheola I fired one shot at long range with my SVD and most satisfyingly I had one kill (sorry Gabriel).

A really enjoyable session and I hope we get to do it again.

[DM]

RedKid, who after promptly dispatching the tyres of a humvee from a rooftop RPG shot, went down and claimed the turret of the humvee as his prize.

Sorry it took so long, I am bad at posting this stuff