First of all I would like to thank LDDK for hosting and organizing and Spinoza for helping us.
Thanks to Folk for kindly letting us use their TS.
Thanks to CiA regulars for participating. We were shorter in number than I expected but we had enough people to get the job done.
It was amazing experience for me, truly the most epic mission I have played online. Most stressful part was managing communications as I was using both CiA and Folk TS and ingame VOIP. We had some really bad luck with flying vehicles, regardless of the skilled pilots among us. Air vehicles were unexpectedly very sensitive to ground touch
But that got us in situation of being stranded in the middle of the desert far from friendlies, and it took some effort to get us rescued.
Near the mission end we had only one combat casualty, but in the last 20 minutes all except me and David were KIA. Out of all units, only five of us managed to complete this 4 hour long mission. What a day!
That's all for now, as I am a bit tired after this I will write more detailed AAR tomorrow I hope.
Â
Hope everyone enjoyed the game, I dare say it was a success. Yes indeed, after a serious firefight the remaining SpecOps and KSK troops finished off Colonel Aziz and completed Operation Retribution. Main bulk of LDDK had a slight incident with the Stryker, the driver had a moment of daredevil bravado and decided to drive full speed down a hill. Apparently one of the wheels hit a pebble and the whole tin can went flying and exploded. I was the driver in the M1A2 Tusk and had a easier time but met two Metis missiles just south of Garmsar. The crew survived but perished later in the Stryker. Ce la vie.
Few pointers:
I confess I did not bother to check the content of the caches/boxes, I assumed that atlest one of them would have laser designators. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. If anyone frapsed he whole thing, I am really looking forward watching. Thank you again, the world is now safe again. Or is it?
Folk's AAR thread (visible to everyone):
[Sun] 04 December 2011 (with LDDK and CiA)
Also, here's my own AAR post:
Quote:CO: Fer
|-- Echo SL: Tigershark
|-- Fox SL: Bodge
Players, and perhaps mission makers more so, talk a lot about immersion. For small player-count missions the practical manifestation is often like the set of a western film: facades designed to give the appearance of being part of a much larger action, or clever briefings explaining why your platoon is alone.
That's all great, but nothing beats throwing numbers at the issue.
At the start of the mission, all three contingents found themselves in the same base. Folk's USMC troops were busy forming up a convoy of LAV-25s and other vehicles. Somewhere else, LDDK's US Army contingent was marshalling its own armoured assets. In yet another part of the base, CiA's KSK troops were strapping themselves into a helicopter transport. Finally, in the background, the sound of the CAS assets spinning-up their turbines added to the sense of being part of a larger (and possibly quite mighty) force. There was a moment just before we set off, when I was standing off to the side of our convoy, and an A-10 flew over; and I knew there was a player piloting that A-10, and that made the difference.
Anyway, we formed-up with Echo in the first 3 vehicles: Tigershark in his M2 humvee, a LAV-25 with the bulk of his men, and an ambulance behind. Next came Bodge's LAV-25, followed by an ammo truck and finally a trailing humvee with a grenade-launcher. After pausing to let the LDDK contingent trundle past us on the main road (in a perfectly spaced-out convoy), we set off.
We were bound for the middle objective, Kakaru, just north of the Darbang pass in the mountains that divide the southern and central areas of the map. Passing through Huzrutimam, the first village on our route away from the base, our spacings were good. My standing orders were to drive through any ambushes, but I suppose the point of ambushes is that they make it hard for the mounted forces to dictate terms.
So as we rounded a bend halfway down the road to Chak Chak, the enemy opened up on us from a little encampment to the south. Echo had pushed around the spur and into cover, but now dismounted and came up over the high ground to the aid of Bodge's squad, which was engaged in a stand-up fight from the roadside. We won, but comrade Headspace, the gunner in our trailing humvee, had been lost. And soon we were taking harrassing fire from another group of enemies to our north-east. I didn't want to get bogged down so ordered us to re-mount and disengage at once.
So it was at full speed that we hit Chak Chak, and it was perhaps inevitable that in the dust and confusion some vehicles would miss the turning. Fortunately, the village contained no hostiles, as LAV-25s doing 3-point turns would have made juicy targets for anyone with an RPG-7. Still, we were soon formed up again on the north side of the village, ready to strike out to the next waypoint: the Sar-e Sang pass. Looking north across the flat valley, we could see the road rising into the mountains. I didn't want to linger in the wide open spaces, where we'd have time enough to see a Metis crossing the fields towards us - but not to leave the vehicles. We pressed on at high speed.
In retrospect, an ambush at the pass was to be expected. I shouldn't have let us burst over the crest into the pass area without first doing some recon: Tigershark and his companions didn't stand a chance, killed in their humvee by a volley of Lee Enfield fire, their LAV-25 escort disabled at the same time.
I ordered Fox to disembark short of the crest, and stream over on foot with its LAV-25 in support. We knew there were survivors in Echo, but it was clear that they'd lost their SL. As I crested, I saw the motionless humvee and a strangely listing LAV-25 (wheels shot out). To the left of the junction there were trees and bushes, and I asked Fox to make for them and go firm. It wasn't immediately clear where Echo had been engaged from, but instinct told me to get men higher up. Fox was asked to send a detachment up the slope to our south, while I attempted to get my bearings and work out how to get us moving again. Then I saw a BTR-40 rushing down towards us on the road from the Darbang pass. And then I was dead.
Huge congratulations to comrade Bodge for stepping up to lead the Folk contingent to near victory, and certainly salvaging our honour!
:clint:
As a mission maker, I take my hat off to comrade Spinoza for some truly wonderful placement work. I crashed and had to re-join, so spectated for hours as a bird, loosely following the action and soaking up the enemy dispositions.
In terms of constuctive feedback, there are a few aspects I'd like to tackle in a different way should we get the opportunity again:
Unified comms: ARPS uses Mumble (like LDDK), so we should consider trying to get everyone on the same server next time. Language (and noise) is not necessarily an issue as we'd still split the players over multiple channels.
Less parallel tasking: although it's great to see different contingents working on tasks in parallel, we might have taken it a bit too far in tonight's mission; I was hoping we'd work more closely with each other from the outset.
To close, thank you again to LDDK for being such great hosts (again), and to CiA for being great to play alongside once more. I hope we'll see you all on the battlefield again soon.
:v:
Awesome joint coop everyone! Love large scale operations. Hope to participate in future again.
Posted a news article, uploaded a video and posted screenshots.
LDDK, CiA & Folk joint coop
p.s. post your videos, screenshots in this thread and I will add them.
Kenwort, without permission I linked your video in
http://www.kyllikki.fi/?p=news but I suspect its ok? If not, let me know and Ill remove it. I did mention though its courtesy of Kenworts
(12-05-2011, 04:38 PM)Spinoza link Wrote:Kenwort, without permission I linked your video in http://www.kyllikki.fi/?p=news but I suspect its ok? If not, let me know and Ill remove it. I did mention though its courtesy of Kenworts
It's okay Spinoza, if it's public on youtube then you're free to share it
Here is my full AAR. Please forgive me if you find any mistakes, inconsistencies, mixed up names, grammar and spelling erroursâ¦
To my surprise I was only CiA member that showed up except Rundll who came too late to join. But our ranks decimated by real life were reinforced by four guys from Ronin squad and Stoops, Bubba, Foxhound and David. At the lobby screen I was not aware there was dedicated slot for me and all commanders in separate group. Apparently, I was having hard time managing communications across three different channels an all this added to my confusion and it took some time to get things going. Â
Our first task was destruction of SCUD launcher near Mulladost.
We started on the south side of the base near our Blackhawk and some weapon crates, while other squads were on the opposite side to the north. We wanted to have laser designators to help our air support during the mission but we have found none. Me and Bubba went with Humvee across the runway to look for them in crates inside the hangar. At that moment I realized how busy is the airport with air units taking off one by one, lots of infantry and vehicles from other squads moving around, so we had to take extra care while crossing the runways. We found no designators but we loaded some rocket launchers in our Humvee and went back. On our way back I realized we were the only squad left at the base, so we needed to hurry. Finally after some more time spent managing our gear we were airborne and heading to our objective.
Stoops flew ahead of us in his A-10 making sure there were no enemy air units in our way. Kenwort was piloting our Blackhawk, and we went to the east before making a turn north to our objective, flying close to the border of the map. We encountered enemy Mi-17 somewhere close to the objective and Stoops made short work of it. Unfortunately, during the landing our Blackhawk was damaged because our descending speed was just a notch too high for this bird. Blackhawk wasnât flyable anymore and we couldnât fix it, but no one was injured at least.
We started to head to our objective when we saw AA missile being fired on Stoopâs plane from positions not too far from the objective. We heard enemy tank moving so we approached carefully the hill overlooking the target area. We saw wreck of Mi-17 Stoops had shot down earlier and four enemy pilots near it who then went north. We would meet them later again. We managed to spot some support vehicles and SCUD launcher under camo net west of Mulladost. One four man patrol that included guy carrying the AA launcher which fired on Stoops earlier and T-72 were patrolling the area. Stoops destroyed the tank in Mulladost using bombs but after that he needed to rearm so we had to wait till he comes back.
By that time we were asked to provide support to Folkâs squads which were having some trouble on their way to their objective in Kakaru but we couldnât do anything since we were still without means of transportation and had multiple enemy contacts around us.
Finally, Stoops came back and started to do bombing runs. Infantry tried to provide guidance describing the target position, but it took some attempts before bombs hit the support vehicles first and then the SCUD (not sure, but repair vehicle seemed undamaged by the bombs). We were lucky, because it was the last bomb Stoops had that destroyed the SCUD.
Stoops then went back to the base to pick another transport chopper for us while we headed back to our landing position. On our way there we encountered crew of destroyed Mi-17 which had perfect opportunity to get their revenge on us, shooting at us from close range while we were crossing the ridge. We lost one guy there (canât remember whom) but managed to kill all four of our attackers.
Upon reaching the landing zone we received bad news â Stoops crashed while landing at the base and got killed. This meant we were stranded in the middle of the hostile territory with no vehicles with could use to move out. While there were some options considered, like for example taking that enemy repair vehicle which was close to the SCUD location to fix our Blackhawk (which was apparently most practical thing to do, but somehow it did not occur to us), I contacted other squads and after some quality time of team bonding and beer drinking in the desert Blackhawk piloted by Winters (from LDDK) came to pick us up.
Since we were already falling behind I opted not to go to the base to resupply and we went straight to the vicinity of the next objective that was given to us â to provide support to Folk squads assaulting village of Kakaru and on their objective to eliminate guerilla leader. On our landing approach, chopper was (again!) damaged and couldnât fly no more. We were really bringing bad luck to the pilots flying us.
After that Kenwort went on foot back to the base to pick Littlebird that was approved for our use. Rest of the squad went north where Folkâs LAV ferried us to the Kakaru which Folkâs forces have already almost got completely cleared from enemies. We saw and engaged along with Folk some enemies on the west of the village. After some searching around the village somebody succeeded to find and kill guerilla leader and thus another objective was completed.Â
Only remaining objective was eliminating colonel Aziz which was believed to be in Bastam area. Kewort reached our position NW of Kakaru in his Littlebird to fly us to the area SW-W of Bastam. Our squad was too big so transport had to leave somebody behind. Not having heart to order somebody out of the chopper I decided to stay and watch while my squad was being flown to the north, to the unknown dangers. Kenwort would then have to come back for me too.
At his point we had only one combat casualty and were six men strong, not counting our pilot Kenwort. But other squads had many casualties so our small force was needed in assisting the assault. After landing near Bastam, squad reported enemy contacts NE but did not engage. They also saw armor contacts. Finally, when I rejoined my squad we headed to Bastam going east, and this time we were not being late for the action as we were in Kakaru. Upon getting close to the city we encountered mortar fire and had to fall back. We had no casualties but were soon under attack from enemy infantry on the same hill where we were on, from the north, near the fortifications overlooking the city. Some of the enemies were killed but some of them got away.Â
We proceeded north and turned east to the bunkers where we once again encountered the same enemies at close range and lost Bubba. After eliminating them we observed enemy tank moving out north. When he was gone we started shooting down enemies on the top of the mosqueâs wall. Being sure that streets are clear of enemies and seeing some other squad (not sure which one) entering the city from NE we entered town form west.
Upon entering Bastam BRDM was reported to be east of the city, approaching. We knew it was going to pass junction in our vicinity so I ordered David to hide and stay prepared to fire a missile on it when it comes near. But BRDM spotted our firendlies in the eastern part of the city so it never came to our junction. We all got scattered around the city, but at some point most of us and LAV were engaging BRDM. It was really chaotic and I donât remember what happened to the others from our squad, all I know is LAV was destroyed and all except me and David were killed, while BRDM was still roaming around (we lost Kenwort and his Littlebird too, but Iâm not sure how did it happen). Finally, David managed to fire a missile on the BRDM at close range and destroy it. Soon after enemy T-72 came back from the north. It went somewhere south and we havenât seen it after that.
What little was left of all squads proceeded to clear the mosque. Me and David were on the mosque walls looking for AT weapons, still believing that T-72 will eventually come back. We heard shots being fired inside the mosque and had message that colonel Aziz is dead.
Finally, all remaining players lined up in front of the mosque for the photo session. After that we celebrated our victory by shooting our weapons into the air.
I also wish there have been more joint action with other squads, but it was fun anyway. Maybe next time?
I just figured, it really didn't matter that squads were not working together all the time. Even without it was a great feeling just knowing that there are other squads fighting their own battles kilometers away from us. It really felt like we are just being in a small part of a huge battlefield and that war would still go on no matter if you're there or not.
Agree with Misha, but in my opinion it still would have been a lot greater if we would have been working a bit closer on objectives relating to each other. I mean something like taking out and artillery base so that one team can attack a base (so that the other teams attack would actually be halted by artillery). Or maybe ambushing a convoy so that the enemy can't support a town being attacked by our troops. This way all of the teams are needed to complete mission.
The missions we played on this coop night was just awesome hands down, but IÂ think it really wasn't as good as it could have been since one team could have completed the whole mission. And Stoops could have single handedly taken the scud down by spotting the SCUD with few flybys (With a hint of luck with him).
Wainting for the next coop night, but I hope that this gets trough to the mission maker!
(12-09-2011, 08:05 PM)Bubba link Wrote:Wainting for the next coop night, but I hope that this gets trough to the mission maker!
Folk has invited LDDK and CiA to a joint event on on January 8th, and the plan right now is to write and run a mega-coop. Details to follow closer to the time, but it's probable that there will be more emphasis on contingents working together.
(12-09-2011, 08:05 PM)Bubba link Wrote:And Stoops could have single handedly taken the scud down by spotting the SCUD with few flybys (With a hint of luck with him).
Negative, I don't think I could have spotted it under those camo nets. Even when I had you guys talking me on it was near impossible to pick out. On the radar it just showed up as a grey contact so without ground forces I would have been useless. On the converse side of that you guys could have probably handled things just fine with a few well placed AT shots, although you would have had to engage ground troops to get the shot probably.
I think that even in missions where CAS can identify and engage targets by themselves I prefer to have them under the control of an FAC. That way not only do the ground troops not feel useless but also the pilots have to communicate well with the forces on the ground, forcing them to play as part of a team. In many ways if you are airborne, you are blind unless you happen to be in something that can lock on without ground forces assisting you, and where's the fun in that?Â
All in all, I think that mission was a great opportunity to see what kinds of things we like doing together, and what can be done to make it more enjoyable for everyone. I know in the "dead" chat there were lots of ideas being thrown around for future "Mega Co-ops" that we probably wouldn't have thought of if we hadn't done this one.
(12-09-2011, 08:05 PM)Bubba link Wrote:I mean something like taking out and artillery base so that one team can attack a base (so that the other teams attack would actually be halted by artillery). Or maybe ambushing a convoy so that the enemy can't support a town being attacked by our troops.
This looks more like it, and it makes sense for larger coops involving many squads. Somehow you need to tie them doing something that is directly connected. But last Sunday was great, anyway.
Its all well and good to have awesome objectives and massive joint attacks but sometimes people seem to forget a small detail, there is just so much a server can handle in terms of AI, objects, scripts and filtering all that to the players, not to mention all the mods etc. Its a fine balance between a smoothly running game and a laghell. Yeah, I did consider all those points mentioned in previous posts, but keeping in mind what I just brought up I decided the deal was not worth it. My original plan was to have each unit attacking separate targets, and a grand finale further up north where the defences were stronger, for example the enemy airfield. But as usual, nothing ever goes according to plan in war. Im pretty sure if we had attacked same targets simultaneously at the beginning there would have been FF incidents.
Very true about the scripting and server capacity. And I admit I dont know too much about scripting, but I do know it gets easily quite server-heavy.
I don't want this to start sounding like whining, but A convoy coming to defend a town that atleast one team would be tied to doesn't sound like a lot more AI or scripting to me? And I do understand that it puts quite a pressure on the mission maker when there are such deadlines as we have now with the coops, but I bet other people always have (maybe even do-able) suggestions!
Lastly, just one more thing. For how long will people attend coop missions that they find less interesting than regular coop nights? Of course the mission was great but the ground idea was not And please, don't consider this as anything like a "threat" but I just feel this way.
Ps. What's a mega coop night?
(12-10-2011, 05:42 PM)Bubba link Wrote:I don't want this to start sounding like whining, but A convoy coming to defend a town that atleast one team would be tied to doesn't sound like a lot more AI or scripting to me? And I do understand that it puts quite a pressure on the mission maker when there are such deadlines as we have now with the coops, but I bet other people always have (maybe even do-able) suggestions!
You can do that in the editor with a couple of triggers and some waypoints.