[Sun] 11 December 2011

[fer]

Missions:

• Cholo
• Ride of valkyries (re-worked version)
• The Takedown Alt
• Finale SE
• Fog

We did frighteningly well tonight. With a peak playercountof 25, we were able to play both adversarials and larger coops. It was wonderful to reach far past the 2 hour mark and still have over 20 comrades to throw at Finale SE (the last official mission of the evening), and at least a dozen for after-party mission, Fog. We also saw some new comrades (Toad, AJAX and EBass), and I hope they'll chime in with their own AAR posts in this thread.

Reminder: Folk sessions are big on how we do certain things; tonight reminded me that there are a few loose ends we to be aware of (collectively):

• Folk sessions start at 19:30 UK; with higher playercounts it's really not polite to show up late and ask for us to wait.
• It's great to be helpful, but when new players need guidance please let the hosts answer over TeamSpeak.
• Once we hit the briefing, banter goes to sideChat. No exceptions, please.
• We don't plan by committee. Players can help by not offering unsolicited advice, and COs by not asking broad questions.

The better we all are at observing these points, the better the Folk sessions will be - particularly as we have more comrades in each session. Please help me and all the other hosts in this regard, it is much appreciated.

[DarkTatka]

Cholo

Leader: Headspace
FTL leader: Ajax
- - Me

Task: Defend the policestation.
There was not much going on, as there was few of us, total darkness and 3times the gangstas. What was cool about the mission was LOTS of ingame banter, which did marvels for the atmosphere. Seriously, that was fun. What was not fun was almost pitch black darkness. I couldnt find the stairs to second floor for good half a minute and that was after half a minute figuring out that there ought to be stairs somewhere, and being totally unfamiliar with the policestation I couldnt move without bumping into something, getting stuck behind invisible tables etc. After some fighting in close quarters and popping some unlucky gangstas from a window, I found out that everyone on my team was dead, so I slowly made my way through the hallway, shouting "make my day, punks" and getting shot afterwards from some poor kido with a popper.

Ideas: The pitch black was too much. It might be ok to have a first minute of the mission in daylight, showing "normal" life on station and basically allowing the policeman to 1) see how they look like 2) get a feeling for the layout of the policestation 3) maybe take positions. It was real immersion breaker for me being a policeman on my own station and not being able to find stairs, watching wall for seconds if it contains door and so on. Then it might be scripted to "get dark", and the real action can begin.

Ride of the valkyries
We were Charlie squad with Nullkigan in lead.I was not in my best, and couldnt understand a thing on TS, as FTLs were using it to give orders to their squads. Which is ok, but, guys, I dont know you all by voice. Therefore I cant figure out who you are adressing when you say "Everyone board the left chopper". Was it my FTL? Was it the CO? Was it someone else? And as there was lot of us, some orders WILL get lost, misunderstood or worse, executed by someone else. After a while I simply gave up and blindly followed Nullkigan, who did a fine job with ingame orders and ingame voice.

We disembarked, made slowly our way accross a hill, got to a road. Getting to group of rocks, I crossed the street to take a peak at what was happening. Yeah. Smart thing to do. So I got shot, tried to crawl to my mates and got shot again.

When I got in the game again as JIP, I didnt know what to do. Head was waiting with a chopper on base, so I got on. As JIPs dont have any leader with a big sign on him, and any callsign (we eventually got assigned to Alpha), I got totally lost and just followed the pack for the rest of the game.

TL;DR - I was having fun, but it got really confusing. I like the simple, shorter, focused missions more.

The Takedown
Task: KillTry capture Aziz
We disembarked near the mosque, got into position and enjoyed the street life. Some drunken idiot drove next to mosque, I thought he will drive in, so I opened fire with my SAW, stopping him. Some sucker in civilian clothes tried to kill our team from behind, I opened fire, hit a tiny winy bump in front of me, the bullet ricocheted and killed a woman next to me. Ups.
I got high with nice view of the mosque entrance, with rest of team a bit closer to it. One takistani came close, took out his weapon and started shooting into my friends, I was not quick enough and he got one, but I was ready when he came to finish the job. Nullkingan reported hes wounded and started to crawl to me, I went out to help him, but he was bugged and I was not able to drag him/carry him/stop bleeding. Just in that moment we came onder fire, ending Nullkingas suffering and I dashed for cover. Quick check, saw the attacker and went after him. Problem was, he had a friend I didnt know about. Good job Takis.

[Bodge]

Just a comment on the giving suggestions and CO questions. It is probably best to assume that one of the FTLs knows the answer to any CO questions and allow them the time to answer it, if you have questions try putting them to your FTL when ingame.

Egg made the valid point "Why did I get hushed when Bodge had just made a suggestion?". The main reason was that CO asked about the AO and I was Alpha FTL so gave him information on the area in question, please note i didn't tell him what to do with that info.

[wolfenswan]

Cholo

Part of Delta Team and I did my best to replace the missing music (sorry if that annoyed anyone).

I made it onto the roof successfully and finished off one policeman head had incapacitated. I was the first to go onto the second floor were I got taken out promptly.

Ride of the valkyries

I was Delta's unconcentrated (sorry Fer) Assault Rifleman and once again realized why I can't stand the RPK. I think I managed to take out one BLUFOR from 50m and that was about it. We got pinned down on a hill summit early on from where we retreated, covered Charlie's flank and proceeded town inwards. There was an akward moment when I started carrying the incapacitated Fer when he was ordering me not to. I was stuck in the animation and didn't feel like dropping him on the same spot *again*.

Anyway, I took a nearby rooftop and watched Delta's and MAT's demise thanks to friendly CAS from the front row seats. There wasn't much left to do in town so I hopped into the MI-8 (riding shotgun) to get us to the next town. We got under light fire on landing and thanks to incredbly bad luck I got shot through the front-window while everyone else survived.

The Takedown

I was leading BLUFOR and ordered Bravo to split the humvees and cover both entrances to the mosque while the little bird's would circle town. It was from my understanding that Bravo was getting hammered badly so I my pilot Tiger"I can get you down basically anywhere"shark to land us near the next which he apparently understood as making a sommersault over a barricade and crashing head first into the pavement. Thing's went even worse after that: we watched Bravo getting wiped out by the insurgents and the rest of BLUFOR circling merrily in their little bird as apparently they had missed my order to land and secure the mosque.

When they finally began to land, head took out one in an amazing LUCKSHOT but it was too late anyway and Unaco/Azim had made it into the mosque.

Any comments/suggestions on the changes made? I fealt that BLUFOR had problems IDing potential threats (as they should) and we should probably have deployed the little birds further south.

Finale

I'm growing a bit tired of writing AARs for this mission. So let's just say we all died horribly.

[DarkTatka]

Picture worth a tousand words, video worth 1000*25*time_in_seconds words. Sorry for the rather low quality, and my voice is missing.

[SvDvorak]

I only stayed for the first two missions since we were too many players for the third one and I had some reading to do anyway.

Cholo
Alpha Leader

Our squads mission was to attack from the west together with bravo which started out well enough. Alpha reached the building without any trouble and we tried to enter the north-west entrance. That entrance turned out to be full of friendlies already so after Nullkigan noted that there was an entrance to the south-west we moved around the building. Just as I reached the entrance I got shot from the second floor by DarkTatka I believe and I smiled as I heard alot of chatter about me dying from friendly fire.

Ride of the valkyries
Alpha Leader

Once again, the mission started well enough, Alpha and Bravo landed on the west side of the first target-town under some machinegun fire. Both squads managed fine and started pushing east. At the same time Charlie, Delta and MAT had landed east of the town and were pushing west. I got an order to clear the hill to the north of the road we were following since it was told that it had a machinegun nest at the top. Our squad pushed up beautifully and killed the gunner before we were detected. Then all hell broke loose and my entire squad, including me, were gunned down. I believe it might have been the machinegun nest on the hill to the south, but I am not certain. What I do know was that the medic only reached us in time for me to get back in action. I felt bad for a short bit since I got them all killed while I get revived and walk away. Though there was not much time for any grieving since the role of commander was thrust upon me as our CO had passed away and I was next in command. I've never really liked that much being a CO, I prefer squad lead, so I felt very awkward in my new role. Alot of men were lost and rejoined as JIP which I designated to be the new Alpha squad, which helped Bravo clear out the west side of town. Early on I lost contact with Delta and MAT which had apparently had been blasted to pieces by accidental friendly fire from Ebass's jet, it took a while before I actually understood this so Charlie were all alone in clearing up the east side of town.

Finally, with the town clear and about 15 men alive we jumped in the transports again and started traversing towards our next target town where my plan was essentially a big line push with all three squads... this turned out to be a horrible idea. The lz-points turned out to be to exposed so we lost Charlie pretty much as they landed from what I gather. The rest of the attack did not go much better since a Humvee was raining death on both squads and we did not have any AT alive at the moment. With only about five men alive I told Fer to call the mission. I believe that mission might be a bit too long and difficult without any revives, but it might just have been bad luck/a bad attack plan. Also, JIP do not see their squad leader it seemed so they had trouble organizing themselves.

EDIT: Oh, and hearing Unaco scream "DON'T YOU DIE ON ME SOLDIER" while he was healing me was hilarious.

[DarkTatka]

I was thinking about it and I must say Takedown is my favourite mission I played with Folk. It has lots going for it and although I havent played it as sympatizer yet, but I bet its fun for them as well. Its very atmospheric, with just the right amount of BlackHawkDown going for it. I always felt like an intruder in foreign territory, bound to get shot as soon as I even blink.
Good job whoever wrote it.

[AJAX]

Cholo
It was a cool concept and fun, just a bit short. The poor lighting inside made it almost impossible to see anything.

Ride of the valkyries
Total fun. I was along for the ride and I had quite a good time. That mission seemed quite real to me, or as real as a sim game can be.

The Takedown
Being an eye in the sky on the skid of a little bird looking for the target till "swipt" bullet to the chest and dead. Was hoping to get ground bound and help secure the Mosk. I think the target made it in safe??

Finale

George Armstrong Custer. nuff said.