Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

I like this mission - lots going on.

Our squad went quite well, with only one casualty (Gum) who unfortunately got turned into Swiss cheese by MG tracer fire from a rogue BMP that flanked us and hosed us from behind with MG fire from about 900m. >

We destroyed our first objective - the fortification no problem, by using a stealthy approach, and excellent covered fire positions with interlocking arcs and coordinated engagement. Luckily we were ready to engage when the other squad initiated.

We moved into the fortified position cleared it and manned some 12.7mm HMGs just as the chopper was taking off. We managed some hits on the chopper but not enough to bring it down. We heard the stinger launch but did not see any impact.

We should have moved into the town quicker but we were kind of pinned with multiple armour contacts in various directions including a MBT, and we were out of AT weapons.

This is where Gum got perforated, and was bleeding heavily, we were way too far from the other squad to get to the medic, and not enough time to apply bandages (if we had any?). He bled out in 20 seconds leaving a big mess. I think he soiled himself too. We managed to flank right (to E) and reach the buildings of the town, and this is where the mission ended because Trotska was KIA.

We probably should have moved quicker into the town after destroying the fortification, and we definately needed to stock up with way more AT weapons, and maybe something heavier to take care of that MBT (like a Jav or Dragon...)

Next time I think I'd split our group into 2 teams, one to destroy the fortification, and one to stealthily infiltrate the town before the action starts. This would mean everyone waiting a bit for them to move into position before engagement.

There was a little bit of desync as the chopper was taking off but not enough to cause any major problems in my opinion.

I'd like to give this mission another crack sometime - it's a cool mission.

As for my point of view, I think this map pretty much speaks for itself:



I grabbed a heavy sniper rifle. To save time, I took the risk of driving us in jeeps close to the fortification. Fortunately there was a nice little valley we could park in, concealed from the enemy. After crawling over the ridge, we spotted the enemy fort and flanked a little right to position ourselves in bushes. The fortification was about four heavy machine guns behind sandbags and about a dozen infantry standing around looking stupid. No Soviet patrols or anything bothered us.

I had us form a line and assigned targets, then waited for Marto to report ready so we could attack the Soviets all at once.

As I was waiting, I noticed Ninja, our medic, was losing connection. I thought, "Bummer, but we can do without one guy." Well, except that once his AI took over, he immediately fired on the fortification. D'oh! Well, we all opened fire then as there was no turning back. I alerted Marto; he said he was engaged anyway.

Despite our premature engaging, the enemy machine gunners died easily, and Soap hosed down the infantry with his scoped M240. I had said that I would disengage after killing the heavy MGers as long as the other infantry didn't seem to reoccupy the weapons, but that plan didn't really seem like it would work at such a close range to the enemy. So we killed them all, at the cost of one casualty. It was our AT guy, #2. I can't remember who that was. :-[ Sorry!

We flanked left and then approached the northern fortification from a hill overlooking it, about 250m away. Their four machine guns were pointed to our left. Again I ordered a line and assigned targets. I detached Siil and had him positioned a little behind us, so he could wait for that chopper and pluck it out of the sky.

This time things went much more smoothly.  I dismembered some heavy machine gunners with my 50cal sniper rifle. Drejddan, who also had a sniper rifle, nailed the others, and Soap and the rest killed the infantry. No casualties this time...well, not yet.

After this success, things went downhill. I ordered the squad into the bushes down and to the right of us, while Guba's chopper decided to take off. Siil fired his stinger but missed. We got a touch of desync, I think that was probably why. WGL AA missiles should almost always hit if you lock them, and Siil seems competent enough to lock.

Then enemy armor to the south started pumping MG fire into my squad. I ordered the squad to retreat to the north, behind the ridge, instead. Another casualty (#6, again sorry I can't remember who). Enemy armor lost LOS with us, and we started picking off long-range targets in Lipany. But a few enemy infantry also started harassing us from the east.

Drejddan was wounded and bleeding. I tried to get our AI medic (formerly Ninja) to heal him, but I think the poor loon died before he could link up with Drejddan. Soap said he had bandages, and of course these bandages somehow managed to disappear from his items before he could use them on Drej, and then reappear after our poor sniper bled to death. OFP for you. :

The Resistance showed up at about this point, in front of us coming from the north. Adding to all the confusion, we were dealing with some pretty serious desync at this point. Well, I was. It was hard to track eachother, the enemy, or Troska's squad. I sniped some more enemies in Lipany, then got shot by who knows what. About a minute afterward, Troska must have gotten killed. I didn't see him go down, members of his squad were doing the desync jog-in-place routine most of the time. By then most of my guys were dead.

So mission failed. Still, it had good parts, especially before the obligatory CiA WGL co-op night desync.

Improves:

--When Ninja disconnected I told his AI to move to our rear, for fear of alerting the enemy, which is what happened anyway. Somehow I managed to forget that I could simply order him to hold fire. Squad leaders, if one of your dudes seems to be losing connection, and you're lined up for an attack, use the OFP interface to order his character to hold fire, go prone, and stop moving.

--We might have avoided our casualty at the first fortification if I had planned fields of fire like Marto did. I just went by weapons, e.g. I ordered Soap to hose down the infantry. I could have both done that and also lined people up in appropriate positions to maximize fields of fire.

--This will sound like a dumb question, but is there a reason the medic needs so many bandages? The medic's heal ability will stop any bleeding, I think, therefore he doesn't really need his tons of bandages. Maybe just give him a few to use on himself. Couldn't we parcel out the rest of the medic's bandages during gear selection? Drejddan might have been saved if he had a bandage on him.

--I should have had someone pick up our dead AT man's AT weapon at the first fortification. That might have helped when we had that armor hurling bullets at us. For that matter, it would probably have been a good idea to search the fort for Russian PG-7VLs. A PG-7VL is roughly as powerful as an M136, but you can carry two of them, thus giving a single AT soldier the capability to kill a T72.

--Even if I/we had done all that differently, though, I'm not sure that the firefight north of Lipany would have gone much better. I think I got a tad over-confident, and maybe should have been more wary of the significant enemy firepower in Lipany. But then again, the whole point of the USMC squad is to provide long range fire to cover Troska, which we couldn't do if we had been very cautious. So I'm not sure what to do differently. I'm also not sure how we could have better luck taking down the chopper.


Sustains

--Despite the flaws noted above, I was very proud of my squad for wiping out those two fortifications with a grand total of only one casualty. I was expecting it to be much more difficult. But everyone followed orders, and everyone acted intelligently except for Ninja's AI. Kudos to you all. 8)

Misc

--I guess desync wasn't as bad for Marto as it was for me. But from my perspective, it was pretty bad by the end. Maybe because my squad was dealing with more long range targets? When I died, the player roster (p key) was showing desync factors of about ~1000 for most players. Not the worst we've seen, though.

Good game, everyone. 

I suffered very little desync actually. The only thing I feel I need to point out is that my M240 wasn't scoped. Also, it was basically the armour which killed us, we took maybe 2 casualties in total from enemy infantry, the rest was the tanks shooting us.

(03-15-2010, 05:53 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]WGL AA missiles should almost always hit if you lock them,

Not always.... Aircraft in WGL dispense flares...

(03-15-2010, 05:53 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]--This will sound like a dumb question, but is there a reason the medic needs so many bandages? The medic's heal ability will stop any bleeding, I think, therefore he doesn't really need his tons of bandages. Maybe just give him a few to use on himself. Couldn't we parcel out the rest of the medic's bandages during gear selection? Drejddan might have been saved if he had a bandage on him.

Sometimes if you are bleeding very badly it takes 12 or more bandages to stop the bleeding... So the medic has that many so he can have a good chance of surviving if he gets hit himself. You could redistribute bandages at start - no problem with that. But usually it's quicker to heal at the medic rather than apply bandages... if there's one near enough...

(03-15-2010, 05:53 PM)RKDmitriyev link Wrote: [ -> ]A PG-7VL is roughly as powerful as an M136, but you can carry two of them, thus giving a single AT soldier the capability to kill a T72.

Depends which model of T-72...... Try and see how many PG-7VLs it takes to destroy a T72B(M) (K-5) in the editor....... Also depends where you hit them....


On your map, we got into the buildings at GR 107029

(03-15-2010, 06:22 PM)Mjolnir link Wrote: [ -> ]I suffered very little desync actually.

Well that's nice to hear.  Maybe it was just me. The mission seems to lag when I open it up in singleplayer editor. Maybe it's my computer specs. I wonder what makes it so hard on my puter?

(03-15-2010, 06:22 PM)Mjolnir link Wrote: [ -> ]The only thing I feel I need to point out is that my M240 wasn't scoped.

I thought I told you to pick up a scoped M240 at start??? There should be one in the ammo crates, for future reference. Oh well, you seemed to kill people well enough anyway. 8)

(03-15-2010, 08:05 PM)Marto link Wrote: [ -> ]Not always.... Aircraft in WGL dispense flares...

But I've never actually seen the flares spoof a missile. Sometimes I see the missile do a weird turn next to the chopper and shoot in the air perpendicular to the ground, though. That's not what it looks like when it spoofs, does it?  ???

Quote:You could redistribute bandages at start - no problem with that. But usually it's quicker to heal at the medic rather than apply bandages... if there's one near enough...

I'll do that then. The problem occurs when the medic is KIA. Although sometimes you need 1 zillion bandages to stop the bleeding, it quite often happens that someone is "liek omg i r bleedin!!1 wtf is medic doin?" because medic has disconnected or gotten nailed by a rifle grenade or something.

Quote:Depends which model of T-72...... Try and see how many PG-7VLs it takes to destroy a T72B(M) (K-5) in the editor....... Also depends where you hit them....

Point taken, but I don't suppose the M136 is any better, though? I'll have to check in the editor.

Scoped M240 would be cool, but I'm pretty sure WGL doesn't have one...

Not sure re the AA missiles, haven't tested it thoroughly. I do know it's much harder to hit an aircraft with an AA launcher in WGL than in any other mod.

There are 3 different rounds the M136 can come with in WGL - the standard antiarmour round, a more powerfull antiarmour rnd and a HE/HEDP round. They are in the weapons exel file...

(03-15-2010, 11:32 PM)Marto link Wrote: [ -> ]Scoped M240 would be cool, but I'm pretty sure WGL doesn't have one...

Arrrrgggghhh, it seems that I got the M240 confused with M249. There's definitely a scoped M249. :-[ :-X Sorry for the confusion.

(03-15-2010, 11:32 PM)Marto link Wrote: [ -> ]Not sure re the AA missiles, haven't tested it thoroughly. I do know it's much harder to hit an aircraft with an AA launcher in WGL than in any other mod.

Well I was just testing and it seems that the missile does in fact tend to spoof when the target is flying perpendicular to the line of fire. In my experience it almost always hits when fired from in front or behind, though.

Quote:There are 3 different rounds the M136 can come with in WGL - the standard antiarmour round, a more powerfull antiarmour rnd and a HE/HEDP round. They are in the weapons exel file...

I'll have to check it out then. The one that comes with antiarmor specialists is definitely no more powerful than a PG-7VL.

Other comments that I just realized:

--Is there a reason that the Black Ops squad gets default BIS LAWs, Tony? ???

--Next time, we may wish to consider having the USMC squad loop all the way around and attack the northern fortification from the east. There should be more than enough time if jeeps are used. This strategy would have the advantage of bypassing the western fortification entirely. The resistance doesn't seem to be threatened by it. That side might have better cover (hard to tell without playing/spoiling the mission), and if we play our cards right we might even be able to cut off Guba's chopper. Which reminds me....

--Even if we hit Guba's chopper with a stinger, there's a good chance that he'll bail out and survive. Hunting him down won't be quite feasible if all units are west or south of Lipany, which adds another reason why we might want to try the eastern route.

(03-15-2010, 10:27 AM)Marto link Wrote: [ -> ]This is where Gum got perforated, and was bleeding heavily, we were way too far from the other squad to get to the medic, and not enough time to apply bandages (if we had any?). He bled out in 20 seconds leaving a big mess. I think he soiled himself too.

sorry for the mess i've left. shame wgl has no vacuum cleaners to assign as extra weapon......

Hola!

Nice to hear you liked the mission, would be great to see it completed :-).

Dont think too complex, the mission is thought to be played straight forward. Your Approach was good i think so far, only the timetable was a bit too slow (at least for the SF´s) and we had bad luck due too AI and my running forward mistake, which triggerd the alarm too early.

ANd the Law´s: Well, you know the guys are not officially on the island, so they have to take what they can get...

Greets

  Tony