[Sun] 30 October 2011 (with CiA)

[fer]

Missions:

• Swept
• Cacheola (adv)
• Moonless

Comrades, and Comrades in Arms too (for I am cross-posting), thank you for making tonight one of the best Folk sessions ever. Over 32 comrades working together pretty seamlessly meant we could tackle two of our largest coops (comfortably) and play a tense round of adversarial Cacheola too. Huge, huge thanks to comrade Variable for brining the CiA folks to the party - I hope they enjoyed playing in the session as much as we did hosting them, and that we will get to play together again soon. Actual AAR post to follow, and I hope to see posts / video from others too (will cross-post from the ARPS and CiA forums where possible).

[Variable]

Hello Folk comrades! Thanks for this opportunity to fight side by side with you in the endless and ongoing Arma 2 war. We all had a great time and feel that this is definitely something we would like to do again in the future.
Thanks Fer for inviting us and putting this together! I will stay in touch.

[Joseph-Sulphur]

Jolly good session all, thanks to the CiA types for joining us and thanks to Fer for organising the joined up nature of the session.

Swept
Bravo Fireteam Leader
LeFuz (AR), head (AAR) and Harlander (RPG)

As Unaco placed his map markers on the map during the briefing I realised that something was very, very wrong. Most of the fireteams were arrayed against the blocking force, with only Alpha and Bravo (myself and Bodge's element) positioned to combat the heliborne forces. This is the opposite to how we usually play this mission, and even with most of the team facing the drop zone the black turbans usually at least give us a bloody nose. Nervous but grimly determined I led my fireteam into the house which Unaco had alotted us. Harlander and head asked several times if we were in the right house, and each time I responded in the affirmative. Only the arrival of Bodge's unit in the same house made me realise that I was actually in completely the wrong place.

We decamped across the street to another building and immediately opened fire on a hostile squad which was very bunched up along the road, between my fireteam and Bodge's they were wiped out in seconds. I'd raised concerns about the enemy flanking us to the south in the briefing, but Unaco hadn't seemed very worried (it's almost as if we were a minor, expendable part of his wider plan! Ridiculous, I know.) so I detailed head with watching our flank. Unfortunately the enemy had moved much faster than I anticipated and one squad was already level with us, and another squad was close behind them. Everyone in the fireteam opened up, barraging them with rifle and grenade fire.

I pulled part of the fireteam back to a house with a slightly better view of the southern flank, and we mopped up the last stragglers from this vantage point. Unaco ordered Bodge and I to rejoin the main force which was assaulting the mechanized infantry, so we pulled back in a beautifully executed bounding manoeuvre. When we reached the main force it was apparent that due to the abnormally large size of our platoon there wasn't any cover for my squad available, so I decided to move us forward to an orchard in front of the main force. I noticed that the enemy BMP was not destroyed, so I quickly ordered head to get in the gunner's seat to defend us from the inevitable onslaught from the other BMPs. At this point Harlander was shot by an enemy straggler, but it was smooth sailing from then onwards, with head killing the few remaining infantrymen and taking out the last BMP with a Konkurs missile. We soon reached the end which prompted a salvo of friendly RPGs aimed towards our BMP.

Cacheola
Charlie Squad RPG gunner
Wolfenswan (FTL), Xenu (AR) and head (AAR)

The leader of our Glorious Liberation Cell (Fer) came up with an innovative plan to simultaneously guard the caches whilst also denying the invading capitalist pigs a wider area of Zargabad. Head was designated as camper of the south-eastern cache, whilst myself, wolfeswan and Xenu set up camp in buildings around a crossroads in the north-eastern part of the city. After a few minutes wait we heard humvee engines, and I saw faint outlines of vehicles and men in the dead ground to our west. I fired an RPG at a humvee, disabling it but leaving its crew unharmed. I moved from my first floor balcony position to the ground floor, and saw the rough outline of a US army soldier. I fired a couple of rounds into his back, but waited a split second too long to make sure that he was dead and not incapacitated: a humvee gunner winged me with a .50 calibre bullet, incapacitating me. I was trapped behind a wall, with humvee gunners covering the route to my comrades. I bravely tried to crawl across the road anyway, but was executed in short order.

Whilst I didn't get to show my dominance over Iceraiser yet again, spectating the round was loads of fun. We howled when an enemy squad managed to sneak up on head, laughed when DarkTatka accidentally slipped of a roof, incapacitating himself (how we love Arma 2 physics). We cheered as Kenwort and Ayam ripped the last fully intact enemy squad to shreds and laughed again as DarkTatka painstakingly crawled into the compound Kenwort was defending, whilst the latter was occupied looting corpses.

Eventually David was the last (heavily wounded) Blufor man standing, and after gamely duking it out with the enemy (even managing to wound Unaco) he was cut down by our medic, Draakoon.

Moonless
Sniper Team Leader
Blake (spotter)

After giving the commander a quick sitrep on the location and disposition of the enemy column Blake and I started scouring the town with our night vision scopes to locate the enemy vehicles. We marked all three of the Zu-23 trucks, three of the four unarmed trucks and a couple of technicals. When the main unit touched off their satchel charges, initiating the ambush, the enemies in the town became alerted, and infantry groups started to move towards the sound of the explosions, which would cause us a lot of grief later. I was then notified by the commander that my markers were disappearing, and we weren't able to solve this incredibly annoying bug. I resorted to giving grid references for the Zu trucks, figuring that they were the most important things for us to keep tabs on.

As the main force checked that all the enemies were dead and regrouped, I realised that if the entire platoon of around 35 people moved towards the town from their present location they would be packed tighter than sardines, and having been on the receiving end of explosive 23mm Zu shells before I knew that our entire platoon could be wiped out in seconds. I suggested that the Hind be used to move a few fireteams to another angle of attack, and the CO decided to do this.

The part of the force which was not being airlifted began to move towards the town, Blake and I helped to take out a few of the infantry groups who were moving towards the ambush location and gave Foxtrot some information on what hostile forces they could expect ahead of them. At this point more hostiles suddenly shot Blake from close range, incapacitating him. This was another fireteam which had been alerted by the satchels, and which we hadn't spotted as they climbed up the hill towards us. We blazed away at point blank range with our Dragunovs and took them out. As I waited for the medic to come and heal Blake I realised the the western Zu-23 was traversing. I thought that it had spotted the Hind, so I tried to kill the gunner or at least distract it by opening up with my SVD, but I was soon shot in the face by the cannon. Come to think of it the gunner was probably traversing towards the muzzle flashes from our close range engagement rather than the Hind.

Good games all, I hope we can play with CiA again at some point!

[harakka]

I don't have an AAR, so instead I bring a video from Swept. The number of green dots in spectator mode near the end is a majestic thing to behold.

[egg651]

Here's Moonless:

[fer]

Swept

DC Medic: Fer

Comrade Unaco didn't hesitate to outline a plan that called for Alpha and Bravo fireteams to lay down their lives so that the rest of the platoon might be bought enough time to punch through the blocking force and drive onwards to freedom. And that's why comrade Unaco would get a medal if we handed those out here, because if it's one thing we adore in the Folk sessions, it's a plan that features certain death.

The second thing we adore is plans that go wrong, and in their abject failure to die heroically under the onslaught of the enemy helibourne forces, Alpha and Bravo ensured that the plan went awry. But in a good way.

Whilst CO, Charlie, Delta, Echo and Fox, plus the MAT and MMG elements formed up in a line to advance on the blocking forces, Alpha and Bravo headed 100m west and prepared an ambush for the sweeping force. As expected, our two westward fireteams were the first to be engaged, and soon I was hurrying away from the safety of the platoon to patch up wounded amongst those elements. Comrade Unaco even wished me a pointed 'goodbye' over TeamSpeak, having earlier promised to visit the wives of every 'hero' in Alpha and Bravo. Individually.

It was intense with the ambushers, but they were holding their own, and little by little they stalled and then rendered ineffective the helibourne troops. Under cover of smoke we all pulled out, rejoining the rest of the platoon, which by now had begun to engage the blocking force.

I can't tell you much about what happened in the advance, only that I was soon up on the left flank, high on the side of the valley, tending to what I think may have been the last survivor of a fireteam (Charlie?). Then I was scrambling down the slope, having collected an RPG-7 and some rockets from a fallen comrade. On the road, an enemy BMP-2 had been disabled, and soon it had fallen into our hands, whereupon it was pressed into service for the cause of building a socialist agrarian utopia.

As the clanking beast moved up the road I met up with our MAT team and handed over the RPG gear I'd saved, and watched from cover as at least two further enemy BMP-2s were destroyed or captured. From being the cornered, ill-equipped force of farmers that OPFOR sought to crush, we had become a mechanised contingent with no small amount of firepower. From here on in it was almost a cake-walk as we rolled up the remaining enemy and entered the town, not as fugitives, but as liberators.

Congratulations to comrade Unaco and all other comrades.

Cacheola (adversarial)

CO: Fer

There are many ways to defend in this mission, and with 15 brave comrades at my disposal I decided to try two. At the same time.

Firstly, I adopted an area defence. The district was divided into quadrants, with Alpha in the north-west, Bravo south-west and Charlie south-east. The north-east quadrant contains too much open ground, so I just ceded it. The brief to each fireteam was simple: spread out, wait for the enemy to get close, then use hit and run tactics. It's about knowing your escape route before you pull the trigger, firing from deep inside buildings, and being gone when the return volley arrives. MAT and the medic roamed freely in the centre, whilst I took up residence on a rooftop to the south.

The second tactic was to leave a solitary camper at each cache. Ideally hidden in a nearby building, the camper's role is to wait for BLUFOR to cluster around a cache, then ventilate them with AK fire. Those crazy Finns from LDDK used this against a combined Tier 1 / Folk platoon last year, and to great effect. I'm sorry for the campers, as it was very dull for them, and for that reason I probably wouldn't select this tactic again.

BLUFOR came in from the north- east, and it was Charlie that first engaged the enemy. I couldn't see the action, but the unmistakable light of burning vehicles soon illuminated the sides of buildings to my north. One hummer had been destroyed, but our other rockets had not found targets. Having traded blows, the platoons circled each other like wary boxers. Alpha attempted to flank the enemy and attack from the north, whilst Charlie hunted in the east. The next 5 minutes felt indecisive, as BLUFOR appeared to cluster in the centre of our triangle of fireteams, not quite breaking out but still managing to wear us down until only Bravo and the MAT team were still at full strength. I opted to consolidate my own forces.

All three of our caches were near our southern edge, so I collapsed the platoon back onto the bottom edge of the triangle: Bravo to the west, MAT team in the centre, myself on the east. Further east still, in an isolated compound, one of our caches was about to be found by a flanking BLUFOR patrol. However, it was Bravo, back in the heart of the city, that was engaged next. I sent MAT to their aid as we lurched west, only to spot a hummer parked near the eastern-most cache. I lurched east now, bringing the MAT team up to rocket the hummer. The turret gunner was quicker in the draw and I watched my RPG man crumple to the ground (by now I was on a rooftop). The hummer drove into my line of fire, entering the built up area again from the east, but the traversing turret was almost staring at me, so I froze. I should have run down the stairs and out, but I thought it might be possible to fire on a tire and render them immobile. As I prepared to do this, an enemy automatic rifleman mounted the stairs and shot me to death.

From death I watched as the surviving insurgents won a mini-war of attrition with BLUFOR, the enemy eventually down to one man. Not a crushing victory for my side, but at least BLUFOR won't be eating our stockpile of Haribos (because that was what was in the caches).

Moonless

DC: Fer
|- Medic: Suicide Perkies

Comrade Zwobot is a brave man. Within less than 2 hours of meeting the majority of players on the server, he stepped up to command a full platoon of six fireteams, three attachments and a helicopter gunship. I take my hat off to him, because it can be daunting enough doing that when you know 99% of the comrades involved.

We opened with a classic ambush: satchels on the road and the platoon split across high ground to the north and south. CO took Alpha through Charlie and the MAT team to the north, leaving me with Delta through Fox and the MMG team to the south (although in the darkness, Echo wound up on the north side and it was simpler to leave them there for the ambush). Off to the north-east, the sniper team was busy marking targets in the search area, and the gunship was circling around to loiter somewhere to our south. The enemy column played its part almost to perfection, walking into the kill zone in an orderly fashion. A negligent discharge from one of our comrades gave the enemy a fleeting moment of awareness before our FTLs detonated their satchels and everyone else opened up. I don't think we lost anyone in the exchange, but the valley floor was littered with enemy bodies.

My half of the platoon was charged with the mop-up, and we scrambled down the hillside to finish off any survivors and recover useful assets (such as RPGs). Just before this, our gunship had raked the road with chain gun fire, killing any remaining enemy stragglers. It was brutally effective. When we were sure we'd completed our task, I formed us up in a line: Delta up the slope to my left, Echo with me on the road, Fox up the slope to the right, and MMG team a little way back. We were ready to advance on the town.

Comrade Sulphur had a suggestion, and normally this would be enough for me to have him detained, but it was actually a good suggestion and resulted in some neat stuff. Comrade Zwobot liked the suggest too, and so it was that the gunship touched down at the ambush site and began ferrying the CO's half of the platoon to landing sites west of the search area. This was not without incident, because enemy patrols appeared on high ground in front of my formation and opened up. We exchanged fire and were victorious. The platoon was soon ready for a two-pronged advance on the search area, with my formation setting off first.

We moved in rushes of 20-50m, and engaged the enemy several times during our progress to the town. On our right, Fox (later joined by MMG) had to contend with several vehicles. To our left, Delta had to cover a lot of open ground, and so it was perhaps unsurprising that it was first to reach the cover of the outer buildings. The advance was not without cost - a truck-mounted ZU-23 had moved towards us and I understand that it knocked out the sniper team (so poor comrade Sulphur never got to see his suggestion fully implemented). We also lost Delta FTL, comrade Tigershark.

With the CO's formation moving in from the west, our formation was now holding the southern end of the town. Resistance from the centre was light, but Delta was coming under fire - the enemy had managed to get a large patrol onto the hillside behind us, near the last location of our sniper team. Everyone reacted quickly: once we'd located the targets, half the platoon was firing. I watched a single straggler running down the hillside towards the town, where I was safely ensconced with Echo and Delta. I put a few rounds downrange at him and saw him fall (though it was most likely to a shot from someone else - my shooting was lamentable that night).

The rest of the mission was essentially a exercise in mopping up the remaining target vehicles, a task accomplished by infantry and gunship. We had been victorious. Congratulations to all involved, but especially to comrade Zwobot for stepping up to take CO.

++

I'd like to offer a few further reflections on the session:

1. From my perspective, the CiA comrades seemed to fit right into the style of the session from the very beginning, and from 5 minutes into the first mission it felt like we were playing with regular guests.

2. On a related point, I'd like to say thanks to all our regular Folk and ARPS comrades for making the CiA contingent feel welcomed. It's easy to take good people for granted, but we should be proud of ourselves for being able to invite an established group into the session and mix in together so well.

3. I really hope that the session demonstrated just how interesting our options become once we have a player count of around 30. It's not just about being able to play adversarial missions - it's just as much about larger coops and even ones where combined arms make sense. We don't have the luxury of 10 guests from CiA every Sunday (they have their own session), so if you enjoyed this session I hope you'll think about ways in which you might help us get to those numbers on a regular basis.

4. The comms were a bit noisy last night, but never terrible; perhaps more importantly, I thought people were very good about keeping the banter in chat when it was important to clear TeamSpeak, and the traffic was down to numbers more than anything. We have a documented approach for using channel commander to cope with larger platoons, and if our numbers are this high again I'll ask that we employ it.

[DarkTatka]

Whilst I didn't get to show my dominance over Iceraiser yet again, spectating the round was loads of fun. We howled when an enemy squad managed to sneak up on head, laughed when DarkTatka accidentally slipped of a roof, incapacitating himself (how we love Arma 2 physics). We cheered as Kenwort and Ayam ripped the last fully intact enemy squad to shreds and laughed again as DarkTatka painstakingly crawled into the compound Kenwort was defending, whilst the latter was occupied looting corpses.

Oh. I really thought I was onto something with breaking my legs and crawling into combat

[Variable]

I hope it's not too late to post a CiA AAR, but here goes. Some posts made on the CiA forum on the Folk & CiA joint op thread (http://www.ciahome.net/forum/index.php?topic=2573.0):

Stoops:

This obviously isn't a full AAR but I thought I'd throw down things from my perspective for "Moonless"

At the start of things, Head and I quickly hopped in our Mi-24 Gunship and surveyed our weapon loadout, map position, and orders. We had only a small chin cannon, a few guided ATGM's and quite a few FFAR's. We were positioned a fair distance north east from the rest of the platoon at Rasman airfield. Our orders were to maneuver as we saw fit, do some recon of the target areas and to support the ground troops as best we could. (Supporting the infantry is what air assets are for after all!)

We quickly moved west towards Nagara, north of the target area using the terrain for cover as we didn't want to end up alone and on the wrong end of the AAA that was reported to be in the area. Once we arrived on station, it was apparent that we would not be able to effectively support the platoon from our position, so we made a quick decision to reposition to the southwest of the platoon's ambush location so we could support the initial engagement.

After arriving at our new holding position we waited in cover of the mountains for the engagement to start. While we waited, we tried a few practice pop ups. However we were unable to get a good range and firing solution on the expected ambush position. In view of that, we elected to stay put until the fireworks started so we could help mop up. After the infantry platoon opened up, we moved in a bit closer to assist but after hearing initial reports of enemy MANPAAD's we ducked back into cover and utilized pop up attacks from behind the hill until most of the enemy column was down. At that point we continued to provide cover while the assault on the main target area was getting lined out.

Reports from the scouts suggested that some of the infantry fireteams reposition to the north west of the main target area. The commander quickly agreed and we were tasked with putting the Mi-24's large transport bay to use. We approached the LZ and immediately started taking small arms fire from the north east. Fireteams Alpha and Bravo (I think they were the first two?) boarded quickly and we got airborne. We swept around to the new deployment area and elected to drop the troops just behind the designated area to make use of the crest of the hill. Unfortunately, I misjudged the landing slightly, overloading the landing gear dampeners and taking a small amount of damage to the main engine. After reprimanding myself for such carelessness, we proceeded back to the ambush LZ to pick up the remaining squads.

Once Charlie fireteam and the Command element were aboard at the assault LZ we headed back to the deployment LZ to set them down. Another miscalculation on my part flew us partly over the target area, not the brightest of ideas. This time it cost us in the form of taking fire from the AAA canons that the scouts had warned us about. Fortunately before they got a good bead on us, we were safely behind the hill once more. We set Charlie and Command down and received a "Hind, Dismount" order. After shutting down and hopping out Head pointed out that the order was clearly just for the embarked infantry, blushing from idiocy I once again boarded my cockpit...

It quickly became clear that the situation on the ground was heating up so we requested permission to relocate, and provide CAS. Unfortunately due to the heavy coms traffic we were not able to make use of the spotter team for Forward Air Control so we decided that we would be most useful on the north east corner of the target area. Taking a gamble that any MANPAAD's were out of comission by this point we took a high altitude approach so any canon fire from the AAA would be ineffective. Utilizing our radar, we quickly acquired targets for and fired off all our ATGM's (I was unclear on our loadout, I believe we started with six, with two confirmed hits.) After engaging all we could with ATGM's, we started to engage soft targets with the cannon, but due to the small loadout we found ourselves winchester quickly.

Radio chatter from the ground forces indicated that they had made an initial pass of the target area and had not found as many enemy assets as the scouts had initially reported. Head spotted a few trucks but was out of cannon and ATGM munitions leaving us only with the ample supply of FFAR's. The issue surrounding that was that while the gunner was the only one able to fire them (in this case), they are aligned with the nose of the aircraft. This presented quite a challenge in gunnery as I had to pilot a good firing solution and call for him to fire once my reticule was on target. After confirming quickly that there were no friendlies nearby, we engaged a technical that was close by, scoring good hits after only a few ranging shots. Head quickly spotted the last truck that the ground teams were searching for and talked me onto the target, dispatching it in short order. Shortly after that the commander called the target area clear and we headed back to the base for some well earned cold, frosty beers! (Okay, that last part may be slightly invented but after such an intense flight I sure needed a beer!)

A big thanks to Head for his fine gunnery. Without that, we would not have been able to effectively support the infantry platoon and we would have been a quite useless addition to the game.

As I mentioned before, that experience piloting for that mission was the most fulfilling experience I've had in Arma 2 and possibly one of the best moments in gaming for me. I personally enjoy flying quite a bit in Arma, but tooling about in the skies is just aimless sightseeing without hard fighting ground forces to support. Sometimes that means laying down CAS, sometimes giving a few elements a lift, and sometimes just putting eyes on things from a different perspective. Its always enjoyable for me, but this was even more so in having a group of this size to support. Thanks again for the opportunity and I'm definitely looking forward to being able to play in a Folk session again soon! (even if I have to keep my boots on the ground) :p

Not an AAR, by David's word are wroth mentioning as well:

Great AAR Stoops!

I would like to add my own big thank you to CiA for inviting me to participate in today's incredibly fun events! And a big thank you to Folk as well! This was my first experience with coordinated play in Arma 2 - I can see why people say the game really shines in multiplayer, as this was one of the most amazing gaming experiences I've ever had.

I'm already looking forward to playing some more sessions with you all soon!

And mine:

I'll let the others write the AAR as they are way more skilled writers than me, but I would like to say the Folk-CiA joint venture was a great experience. It was really fun seeing that many players operate in an organized way, as one team and accomplish the objectives. The adversarial mission was fun too. I really felt like a poor soldier being attacked by ghosts from all around me biting chunks of me until the bitter end...

Fer, thank you very much for this great opportunity. We all had a splendid time.

I would like to mention two CiAs that stood up in the fight though. Zwobot for his excellent leading in an unknown mission, with many new subordinates. The way you managed to keep it all together was very impressive, I hope we didn't make it too hard for you . Stoops for his amazing flight skill. A major part of the mission was seeing Stoops Hind being controlled tightly, transporting us and keeping us safe from the sky. It's really fun to play with such skilled players.
Looking forward to next time...

[wolfenswan]

Swept

Leading Charlie Squad along the ridge I was the very first to die, hit by one of those annoingly accurate AK-goons. Nevertheless I enjoyed watching all the others waltzing their way to victory leaving nothing but scorched earth behind.

Cacheola (adv)

Leading Charlie yet again, we hit in building on the eastern edge of town and my RPG grunt (Joe) was the first to engage and take out one humvee. But both him and Xenu (AR) were taken out shortly after and i ran into town, trying to outflank the enemy. I think I managed to hit one of them through a window (the building got peppered with bullets shortly after but I was long gone) but then I got taken out by a M2 gunner while misfiring my rifle grenade.

Watching the action unfold was a joy though. Grand game everyone.

Moonless

I was the CO Medic and shadowed Zwobot for most of the mission. The initial ambush was fun, especially with the Hind illuminating the night with MG tracers. After being redeployed to the West of the village I we kept pushing Westwards, I spotted the guys that got the Sniper Team (who promptly were disposed of) and fixed some people up. Though I hardly fired a shot during the mission I really enjoyed the epic and grand scale feeling of it made possible by the high player count.