Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

We siezed the Keyhole but weren't able to seize the Shrine and destroy the mortar. Everyone worked very well as a team and this is what made it enjoyable even with a high casualty rate...

We moved into FUP1 (form-up position) - Gum's squad (Bravo) secured it and Bormann's weapons squad (Charlie "=North=") cleared towards and established the SBF position. We waited in position, and our MFC (mortar fire controller - Zwobot) called in a fire mission to soften up the Keyhole. Charlie got into heavy contact as Bravo assaulted and seized the Keyhole. Not much resistance was encounted by the assault (Bravo) due to either Charlie fixing and cutting the enemy off or the mortar fire mission, or a combination of both. The objective was ticked.

Charlie was still in heavy contact with at least 1 casualty, so Bravo and PHQ manouvred to provide assistance and get the medic to location. I think Borman was KIA and T34 took command which was good initiative and good comms. Charlie now had several casualties requiring treatment and withdrew to the edge of the forest near their SBF position. I sent the medic  to their location, but they were still under fire, and as they healed a GP-25 40mm grenade landed right in the middle of them killing the medic (Kurtz) and most of Charlie. I think Zaq was the only one left alive.

At the same time Bravo had taken some casualties from automatic fire, and from a hidden sniper I think. Gum and Slash were crippled, and lost their legs.... We withdrew into the forest to reorganise. The enemy were exploiting their momentum and had us surrounded with contacts on three sides.

We fought on and captured a tripod mounted DSHK in the forest. Gum's squad was reinforced with Zaq (PKM) and Ninja (from PHQ) and we formed all-round defence at FUP2. We still had contacts on three sides and multiple inbound enemy from the Shrine. The mortar ran out of bombs after some DFs (defensive fires) on the Shrine and the valley to the west of it. I called the CAS (close air support - Hinds) but they were "having mechanical problems" and could not help us.

The enemy lost momentum (maybe when Tony mounted the DSHK and gave them a taste of 12.7mm), we consolidated and began the assault on the Shrine at crawling pace (Gum & Slash ). We reached the dead ground west of the Shrine with many sparodic contacts, and managed to break into a sandbag fortified position with multiple handgrenades.

Then everything fell apart... I think Tony was hit and bleeding out, others were hit, and I was hit by a sniper, and started bleeding heavily. No one had any bandages left. We all got KIA. :'(

Well done to Gum and Slash for going on even with broken legs. Good work by the Squad leaders. Good work by Zaq and Ninja slotting into Bravo and reinforcing them. Good work by Ninja being my personal protection until he reinforced Bravo. Everyone who turned up worked well as a Platoon right from the start - great teamwork.

My observations in terms of our gameplay/proceedures:

Sustains (good points we should keep doing)
1. When callsigns halted or secured FUP's etc - we had very good all-round defence. Everyone was facing outwards 360 degrees, in a circular formation and giving target indications or engaging threats. This was good security.

2. Comms between Squad leaders and PHQ (platoon headquarters) was very good. I knew squad positions and whether they were in contact etc.

3. When we lost Borman (Charlie leader) others (T34 I think) stepped up and took command and let me know. This was good initiative.

Improves (Bad points we should try and fix)
When Charlie were still in contact at the edge of the forest near their SBF location I told them to stay there and sent the medic (Kurtz) over - that's when the GP-25 grenade destroyed Charlie and the medic. I should have told Charlie to withdraw into the forest further, then sent the medic over when it was safer. (Hero of the Soviet Union medal for Kurtz for running over under fire).

We took no bandages when our medic was KIA. Ninja was wounded and bleeding at FUP2 and had to run back to try find bandages and was KIA. Myself and Tony (I think) were hit and bleeding on the assault up the Shrine and no one in the remainder of the platoon had any bandages. Next time when the only medic is KIA we need to collect the bandages and ruck bandages and redistribute them.
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In terms of tactics - the assault on the Keyhole went well, but maybe we should have exploited that terrain more and set up an attack by fire position on it, reduced some of the enemy to the W and NW and then went on with the assault from FUP2.

All round it was fun and good teamwork and communications by all. Nice mission too Zwobot!

Everyone please feel free to add comments and also add some Retains and some bad points!

Also forgot to mention thanks Gum for leading at such late notice - it was good squad leading - you should do it more often!

Marto, you forgot the most important factor: yourself as a PltCo . You kept the whole package very well organized.

Maybe we could have saved couple lifes if we would have paid more attention to spacings between our own troops. E.g. those rifle grenades (atleast two) that hit the area close to SBF positon (Charlies retreat position in phase 1) killed or injured many of us. That brought back to the memory again things IRL when they always said that keep atleast 5m spacing on each other all the time.

Quote: link=topic=1985.msg10601#msg10601 date=1259574136]
Marto, you forgot the most important factor: yourself as a PltCo . You kept the whole package very well organized.

Well everything goes to plan until the first shots are fired.... as they say...

It was fun. I didn't even fire my weapon untill we were being probed from three sides in that forest at FUP2, and even then I was sitting in the middle of our all-round defence, I caught a fleeting glimpse of an enemy that Zaq was engaging run behind a bush, so I emptied a mag into it (ie spray and pray ). I was too busy communicating and trying to plan and also coordinating with the MFC and CAS etc... It was good that I had Ninja there as security for me... ;D

Quote: link=topic=1985.msg10601#msg10601 date=1259574136]
Maybe we could have saved couple lifes if we would have paid more attention to spacings between our own troops. E.g. those rifle grenades (atleast two) that hit the area close to SBF positon (Charlies retreat position in phase 1) killed or injured many of us. That brought back to the memory again things IRL when they always said that keep atleast 5m spacing on each other all the time.

Very true Slash, spacing is something to add to our "improves" list.

Terrain and enemy threat should dictate spacing and formations. Spacing in open areas should be spread out at least 10m. In forests it needs to be brought in maybe to about 3m for ease of control - ie you need to see you other squad members, and not get lost. Also in an assault line it is important: too close and too much risk of a HE or frag causing multiple casualties; too far apart and if one man goes down then you have a huge gap in your assault line with no fire going forward from that gap.... 8)

(11-30-2009, 01:10 PM)Marto link Wrote: [ -> ]It was fun. I didn't even fire my weapon [...]

I did not fire a single shot during the "Bloody Victory" mission but still it was one of the best Ofp experiences I ever had. Managing the squads, keeping up the situational awareness, see your orders being carried out and interpreted by your squadleaders etc. is very entertaining.

Mission was fun for me. I often was distracted with managing my AI mortar crew. The FUP for the Keyhole attack was not good from my point of view because it was very hard to see the spot round from the mortar and adjust the mission. So eventually I reported to Marto with faked confidence that the fire mission hit the hill although I was far from being certain about that 

Sorry that the CAS did not work.

I think we should play this again,  
with all support things working good
and with ppl which didn't play with us like OL,Grip, Misha etc.

it's just my suggestion only 

Well, it was a fun mission. It was even fairly fun to watch from spectating. My comments:

I'm glad I didn't crash! Only the e-Gods seem to know just what factors make my game crash.

Having about 4 or 5 guys, including me, get nailed by a single rifle grenade was obviously not something we'd like to repeat. But on the positive side, it was good to see that this massive loss didn't cause our unit cohesion simply to evaporate. We really did fight to the last man (and we still killed a lot more of them than vice-versa!)

The mortar--did it really run out of ammo or was there a bug? It seemed like it fired a lot less than 22 shells before the AIs stopped sending them over. But maybe mortar rounds are like money--they always disappear faster than you think! Perhaps the person in charge of mortars should keep a sheet of paper and put tally marks on it to tell how many rounds are left.

There was definitely some kind of bug with pilots. They must have decided that the radio trigger was just a suggestion. From spectating, I just saw them standing around next to the helicopter, with handguns pointed in air. I don't believe the radio message had any effect on their actions.

About bandages--poor Ninja got hit and 3 or 4 bandages didn't stop the bleeding! He ran all the way over to my dead body and (after killing a prone enemy 30m away!) still didn't find any more bandages. He bled to death after about five minutes and leaving blood puddles all over the forest. To prevent this sort of situation, perhaps a minimum of two medics is needed for a mission this size.

Despite one or more bugs, I think you made a good mission, Zwobot. Very challenging, that's for sure! I would be interested in playing it again sometime.

That's all I can think of, off the top of my head.  

(BTW--did you guys finish the one we played after that? With Zwobot and me in a doomed BMP?)

(11-30-2009, 07:03 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]Perhaps the person in charge of mortars should keep a sheet of paper and put tally marks on it to tell how many rounds are left.

I did just that. Unfortunately it was impossible to load the remaining rounds from the AIs inventories. I think the AI can only load the mortar if they have 2 rounds in their rucksack and 1 round will always remain unused but I can't tell for sure.
I had the impression that some rounds landed way off target although the mortar was already zeroed in but I might as well just not seen them because of the hilly terrain and limited LOS...

If they only have one round in their inventory then there is a command in the action menu ("6") called "Reload HE" or "Reload ruck HE" or something like that. This is different to "Load HE" which actually loads the bomb in the mortar. The "Reload HE" command makes them select it as a current weapon from their ruck, then you give them the "load mortar" command. This "reload" command is useful when they have 2 different bombs like a WP and a HE and you want to select a particular one. Nevertheless you still need to use it even if they have two HE so they can ultimately use both.

(11-30-2009, 07:03 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ](BTW--did you guys finish the one we played after that? With Zwobot and me in a doomed BMP?)

No, but I think we could make this mission next Sunday's organised coop mission. I've changed the crew and integrated them into each squad so that the squad commander can control their own fire support and transport. PHQ now has a command BMP to drive around in... 

Mortar and 152mm artillery is available, but I put in civilians that can't be killed in on purpose - so you cant just bomb the crap out of the objectives then just walk in...

mission was great, challengin, a hard fight all the way to the objective.
comm was great, and all players were well focused on orders and tactic.
pity was that wgl ais were doing all this too.....but against us and they won...(this time....)

my suggestion is that next time we use our snipers in a much efficent way, like setting up a 2 players snipa squad, tasked with reconing for nme snipas (they did a pretty good job against us), and GL inf (not to mention how much these ones made us struggle....).
infact i had the impression that during game we lacked of time taken for deep reconing....
considering the open terrain with hills and valleys, a detached snipa squad on an higher position could have helped assault squads through theyr path......

thanx to you guys all for the good time we had....and we will have.......

it's really impressive how i suffer when i see my buddyes die during the fight.........
reporting casualties to marto was the worst part of the job as a squad leader......

hugs to u all

By the way, it's a little late, but I forgot to mention: I could swear I heard a BIS AK-74 somewhere in this mission (near the end, close to the sandbag bunker). Just a bug report.  8)

Yeah - I heard it too.

I couldn't trace this imaginary BIS AK back yet. By the way: there are no bugs in my missions, only room for improvement  

Zwobot - Ive had that problem with converted missions before - all the units in the editor are WGL but do a search in the actual mission file for "soldier" or whatever the BIS name is and you might find that mystery BIS dude...