[Sat] 14 Apr 2018 (Weasel in the dark)

[Kefirz]

A big thanks to all the awesome people that came today.

Missions played:

• Mail Man
• Broadcast
• Operation Aion
• SAR

[Teizan]

We started with a Washington mission, Mail Man where we had to respond to and retrieve data from a downed helicopter. I was Team two Lead, and due to the limited passenger capacity of our Helo (only six seats), we were the first ones into the fray.

Not much at all happened during initial insertion, and nothing at all happened for a while after we set up as a Base of Fire in a local compound, until suddenly there were Guerillas streaming over the hillcrests in variable directions. I ordered Fer to get his Optic back on his Autorifle and to start shooting at them, while Washington as AH1 (who's game/PC had crashed, been left floating in the sky, rebooted, rejoined, and was flying around again) was being given tracer-fire directions to his new targets.

He got almost all of the main group we were facing with one run of minigun fire, then Team 1 called Objective Complete shortly afterward and Kefirz (SL) called for exfiltration. After breaking contact and making a long crouch-run to Team 1's position, Kefirz named Team 2 as the first team to exfil. After more running and some shooting, we made it to the LZ and Washington got us out safely.

That we couldn't handle sitting around very well when we got back to base is another story. I ended up brutally murdered in a traffic accident.

The first Adversarial of this session and a new Fer mission, Broadcast, could have been much more interesting if the battle wasn't very quickly over in the first exchange.
Big problem I had with this mission was the imbalance; Even in higher numbers, Semi-automatic FALs (plus a M320) vs defending M249s and M16A1s (also plus a GL?) didn't turn out too well. Since the latter were 3IFB and the former were unarmoured TAF, they had an armour advantage too.

A recording of the next one up, Operation Aion; Head's mission in which I was a RAT: (https://youtu.be/vZWl4Z8f8h0)

Then we played Search and Rescue, a hunt/rescue the stranded pilot mission, and it turned out to be overly gimmicky. The terrain was small enough that the pilot's only real chance was just to swim to the next island over, practically invisible against the water in the night-light. We didn't have boats and hadn't caught him before he started swimming, and so the only way we could have possibly won was if the pilot's rescuer crashed his helicopter.

Which he did. Thank you, Boberro.

[fer]

The first Adversarial of this session and a new Fer mission, Broadcast, could have been much more interesting if the battle wasn't very quickly over in the first exchange.
Big problem I had with this mission was the imbalance; Even in higher numbers, Semi-automatic FALs (plus a M320) vs defending M249s and M16A1s (also plus a GL?) didn't turn out too well. Since the latter were 3IFB and the former were unarmoured TAF, they had an armour advantage too.

In hindsight, I think I should have insisted that the slotting was even more unbalanced - TAF is supposed to have a major numerical advantage. Next time we play this, I'll ask that that happens (and if I am not there, please do that).

But I do have one other thought and wonder what others think: against AIs (in coops) we tend to make a plan from the briefing and stick to it until either it has worked or we are all dead. In this adversarial, I would be really interested to know if that's what happened from the attacking side, or if there had been any thoughts about 'probing' etc.?

[Teizan]

But I do have one other thought and wonder what others think: against AIs (in coops) we tend to make a plan from the briefing and stick to it until either it has worked or we are all dead. In this adversarial, I would be really interested to know if that's what happened from the attacking side, or if there had been any thoughts about 'probing' etc.?

The only kind of probing assault was that ASL had planned to throw lots of grenades before we started our real assault.

Otherwise, we all died too quickly for the plan to change.

[Kefirz]

Broadcast

AttackFOR CO

The plan was that the CO element would get up on the rocks North of the hotel and lob grenades and act as a distraction element, while A1 would strom the hotel from the West, my intent would be that if the distraction element would tie up like 1-2 people in fighting, that would leave 2-3 people against A1 (6 men), and they would take the hotel by force.

We landed the boats and proceeded towards the rocks and we got in contact with people (I saw 2 dudes) on top of them, this was good because that meant that we can still tie them up in fighting while A1 moves in on the hotel. I ordered A1 to push for the hotel as planned while me and my medic started advancing to the rocks. A few firefights and grenade exchanges later, I got into 2 m knife fight with Jinef or Palm, I forgot who now... but anyway, I died there. Afterwards Jinef (I think), started a super flank and basically surprised and killed A1 and that was the turning point of the mission.

Operation Aion

CO

Head needs to fix the ORBAT to our template and it will resolve an additional problem we had - radios. I tried contacting with elements that didn't have a 148, so I had the Weasel to deliver a radio to them and around that time they died, I think. By this driving to the front lines it was exposed and paid the price, which severly limited in the latter stages of the mission. The Weasel wasn't supposed to be in the front lines in the first place, but what happened, happened.

SAR

HuntFOR A2 FTL

It is a promising mission. I was in the hunting team and looking back at it, we shouldn't have dispersed as we did, instead we should have stayed in our 3-man elements. Because when the teams were spread out, we couldn't establish good comms and were out of talking range or lone-wolfing this thing. It was easy to locate where the prey (downed pilot) was, however it was hard to communicate it through, because:

a) People were out of radio range
b) People were lone-wolfing
c) We just don't have such a radio discipline to re-translate messages further

We still could have won the mission, if Bob hadn't made his mistake. We could have shot down the bird when it was hovering stationary, but our M2 was out of ammo. So Teizan, you need to stop jumping into assets that the CO has not called for and this isn't the first time you've done it, but I'm calling you out now. Because the M2 was out of ammo early in the mission, while firing at moving targets with a low chance of success of hitting them, we were down an asset which would have been more useful in the latter stages of the mission. So in the end the ammo was wasted with no real reason, which only made our mission harder and more complicated for the CO.

[Teizan]

Kefirz, I was specifically told to take the M2 on that one. Can't remember much else, but that's a definite.
I just didn't expect the second box of ammo (which I was saving for that later point you mentioned) to consist of practically nothing. Lessons for next time, I suppose.