11-07-2009, 03:24 AM
To continue....
Overlord logged on and took command. The next mission was Operation Rainbow 5. Once again, we were Resistance vs. US on Malden. A group of 10 resistance troops must destroy a US convoy before it reaches the resistance HQ at around Ed12. The convoy will stop at a US fuel station at Fi17. No antitank weapons are available at start, so resistance must get to the fuel station first, wipe out guards, and then seize weapons to destroy the convoy.
Our starting position was marked at Fd18. The obvious route to the objective was east-by-northeast through the forest of bushes and stubby trees. But players who had been played the mission before reported that this route was no good. So Overlord planned to move north and attack the fuel station from the west. This attack would take us through much open ground, though we could take advantage of slight ridges as well as a clump of bushes surrounding the road at Fg15.
So we booted up the mission. We were greeted with a cutscene accompanied by the catchy Latin horn groove of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." Not all players expressed appreciation for this music. ;D We saw the tanks departing their base, but they were a long way off. Our long column set off northward through the shrubbery. As a medic, I was second to last in the column.
Our little army made it undetected to the bushes at Fg15. Overlord instructed me and a machinegunner (can't remember :-[ ) to take cover behind the dunes at Hill 47, while the others crossed the sandy expanse to the fuel station. I poked my head over the ridge to see the action. The squad was a solid line formation crawling through the open ground.
Bullets didn't start flying till our infantry were at roughly Fh15, less than 250 metres from the fuel station. I believe that our guys initiated contact. From down there, they must have had a pretty good view of the objective. Despite the lack of concealment, they massacred the garrison of around 20 infantry with rifle grenades and quick mouse clicking. No casualties from our side. (I would have appreciated having at least one injured person so that I could have felt more important! ). After dispatching the survivors--the inevitable handful of AIs that are smart enough to keep their heads down rather than waltz into the kill zone--we were given another serving of "Ring of Fire."
This was my cue to rejoin the main group. I ran over and noticed that our heroes had killed a sniper, and no one had taken his M21 yet. I grabbed the gun as others littered the road through the fuel station with mines and satchel charges. This lull in the fighting didn't last long, though. Yet another cutscene alerted us to the imminent arrival of US armor, and we dashed back northwest. Those of us not wired to satchel charges, such as myself, ran behind the dune that I was hiding behind earlier. The rest had to stop closer, lest their bombs go out of range.
I peered through my sniper scope at the incoming convoy--at least 2 M60s and an M1A1. I believe someone mentioned that the people who planted satchel charges should be careful because, after the explosion, the AI will detect the people who laid them. I ran some tests in the mission editor, and I don't believe that's correct. As far as I can tell, if you're undetected before your mine or satchel went off, you'll stay undetected after it does. That holds true at least of US M1A1s driving over BIS Russian mines and satchels. Now, I did also notice that after running over a mine or exploding satchel, the tank's turret (if it survives) will usually swivel a bit, as if frantically searching for whoever shot him. But unless it happens to swivel in your direction, you're not detected. If the satchel charge somehow increases your "detection probability" in itself, then it doesn't do so nearly as drastically as shooting an AT round at the vehicle. Perhaps satchel charges gave away your position in an earlier OFP version.
So anyway, after a short pause, the tanks proceeded into the fuel station. Peering through the M21 scope, I couldn't hear their conversation, but I imagine it was something like this:
Driver: "So like, guys, how come all the guys at this fuel station are sorta laying around and not moving anymore?"
Commander: "Guh, tank commander dunno. Maybe resistance make them dead."
Driver: "Maybe we should, like, turn around and go around this fuel thingie instead."
Commander: "Nuh, tank commander say we just keep going straight thr--AAOWWWWIEEE!!!"
At that moment, one of our guys set off his satchel charges, and the gas station objects burst into flames. There were around five explosions simultaneously--epic kaboom. And of course the tanks just kept plowing right through the mines and satchel charges. A heavily damaged Abrams swerved off the road at the closer edge of the camp and the crew scrambled out the hatch. I opened fire with my M21.
Unfortunately, my sniper fire throughout this mission wasn't too effective. I'm not sure if it was too much ping or too much distance (maybe at the edge of my sight radius?), but enemy troops seemed to "skip" a few metres whenever I pulled the trigger. I only took down 3 men in this mission--at least one of them was an officer. ;D
But all enemy tanks were quickly destroyed by mines and satchels--no rockets necessary! We weren't out of the woods yet, though. The enemy now sent in an M113, a truck, and a bunch of infantry. With most of our explosives gone, this counterattack was a harder nut to crack. Several of our guys got killed, including Overlord. Fat Tony took command. I just stayed behind the dune and took potshots at the enemy infantry. At some point I read through the chat bar that a teammate went down--I looked around and saw that the M113 had shredded the sniper next to me! :o But I didn't panic--not much, at any rate. ;D Just kept firing, and shuffled around in the sand to keep out of line of sight with the M113.
With several of our guys down, Viking suddenly mentioned that he had a LAW! Well, that gave us a glimmer of hope. But he missed his shot, and the M113 must have noticed him valiantly exposed on the dune and hosed him down. Our glimmer of hope flickered a little. Someone recommended that I try to snipe the gunner out of the M113 cupola. I don't think that's possible. Again, I experimented with the mission editor, and it seems to me that in vanilla OFP or FDF there's no way to kill the M113 gunner other than simply destroying the vehicle. (Fortunately, those M113s are so pathetically underarmored that they make BMPs look like musclemen).
Someone else worked his way over and grabbed Viking's LAW and remaining round. (Osku?) He took his shot, too. I didn't see the result, but if I understood the chatter on Teamspeak, the shot missed--and at that instant the M113 rolled over a mine anyway.
With the M113 gone, the odds were even again. I continued to hurl bullets in the general direction of enemy soldiers--if OFP AIs had any brains, I probably would have at least made them nervous. I believe it was Overlord who told me (from beyond the grave) to quit wasting my ammo. I got fed up and exchanged the M21 for an AK47, hoping that the sniper weapon would be more effective in different hands. But no one took it, so I just grabbed it again--better than letting it go completely to waste!
I believe there were only four of us left at this point--probably Fat Tony, Osku, Mikka, and I. Two of them went forward, and Mikka and I covered them with sniper rifles. We were worried about enemy patrols attacking us from the woods to the south, but as I recall none ever came. The two forward worked their way back to the fuel station to kill off remaining infantry. At one point, they reported two contacts, and I spotted two men running across the open sand. Fortunately I noticed their friendly uniforms before I shot at them. Not that I was likely to have hit.
They killed the driver in the truck that was still lolling around. Mikka and I advanced to hunt down survivors. There was a lull for about a minute, a few shots, and finally..."Ring of Fire" again! Reportedly, the last two enemies to be killed were pilots. lolwut? Well, the mission ended. I only got 3 kills, and no one to heal, but hey, team effort. Victory! Â
Overlord logged on and took command. The next mission was Operation Rainbow 5. Once again, we were Resistance vs. US on Malden. A group of 10 resistance troops must destroy a US convoy before it reaches the resistance HQ at around Ed12. The convoy will stop at a US fuel station at Fi17. No antitank weapons are available at start, so resistance must get to the fuel station first, wipe out guards, and then seize weapons to destroy the convoy.
Our starting position was marked at Fd18. The obvious route to the objective was east-by-northeast through the forest of bushes and stubby trees. But players who had been played the mission before reported that this route was no good. So Overlord planned to move north and attack the fuel station from the west. This attack would take us through much open ground, though we could take advantage of slight ridges as well as a clump of bushes surrounding the road at Fg15.
So we booted up the mission. We were greeted with a cutscene accompanied by the catchy Latin horn groove of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire." Not all players expressed appreciation for this music. ;D We saw the tanks departing their base, but they were a long way off. Our long column set off northward through the shrubbery. As a medic, I was second to last in the column.
Our little army made it undetected to the bushes at Fg15. Overlord instructed me and a machinegunner (can't remember :-[ ) to take cover behind the dunes at Hill 47, while the others crossed the sandy expanse to the fuel station. I poked my head over the ridge to see the action. The squad was a solid line formation crawling through the open ground.
Bullets didn't start flying till our infantry were at roughly Fh15, less than 250 metres from the fuel station. I believe that our guys initiated contact. From down there, they must have had a pretty good view of the objective. Despite the lack of concealment, they massacred the garrison of around 20 infantry with rifle grenades and quick mouse clicking. No casualties from our side. (I would have appreciated having at least one injured person so that I could have felt more important! ). After dispatching the survivors--the inevitable handful of AIs that are smart enough to keep their heads down rather than waltz into the kill zone--we were given another serving of "Ring of Fire."
This was my cue to rejoin the main group. I ran over and noticed that our heroes had killed a sniper, and no one had taken his M21 yet. I grabbed the gun as others littered the road through the fuel station with mines and satchel charges. This lull in the fighting didn't last long, though. Yet another cutscene alerted us to the imminent arrival of US armor, and we dashed back northwest. Those of us not wired to satchel charges, such as myself, ran behind the dune that I was hiding behind earlier. The rest had to stop closer, lest their bombs go out of range.
I peered through my sniper scope at the incoming convoy--at least 2 M60s and an M1A1. I believe someone mentioned that the people who planted satchel charges should be careful because, after the explosion, the AI will detect the people who laid them. I ran some tests in the mission editor, and I don't believe that's correct. As far as I can tell, if you're undetected before your mine or satchel went off, you'll stay undetected after it does. That holds true at least of US M1A1s driving over BIS Russian mines and satchels. Now, I did also notice that after running over a mine or exploding satchel, the tank's turret (if it survives) will usually swivel a bit, as if frantically searching for whoever shot him. But unless it happens to swivel in your direction, you're not detected. If the satchel charge somehow increases your "detection probability" in itself, then it doesn't do so nearly as drastically as shooting an AT round at the vehicle. Perhaps satchel charges gave away your position in an earlier OFP version.
So anyway, after a short pause, the tanks proceeded into the fuel station. Peering through the M21 scope, I couldn't hear their conversation, but I imagine it was something like this:
Driver: "So like, guys, how come all the guys at this fuel station are sorta laying around and not moving anymore?"
Commander: "Guh, tank commander dunno. Maybe resistance make them dead."
Driver: "Maybe we should, like, turn around and go around this fuel thingie instead."
Commander: "Nuh, tank commander say we just keep going straight thr--AAOWWWWIEEE!!!"
At that moment, one of our guys set off his satchel charges, and the gas station objects burst into flames. There were around five explosions simultaneously--epic kaboom. And of course the tanks just kept plowing right through the mines and satchel charges. A heavily damaged Abrams swerved off the road at the closer edge of the camp and the crew scrambled out the hatch. I opened fire with my M21.
Unfortunately, my sniper fire throughout this mission wasn't too effective. I'm not sure if it was too much ping or too much distance (maybe at the edge of my sight radius?), but enemy troops seemed to "skip" a few metres whenever I pulled the trigger. I only took down 3 men in this mission--at least one of them was an officer. ;D
But all enemy tanks were quickly destroyed by mines and satchels--no rockets necessary! We weren't out of the woods yet, though. The enemy now sent in an M113, a truck, and a bunch of infantry. With most of our explosives gone, this counterattack was a harder nut to crack. Several of our guys got killed, including Overlord. Fat Tony took command. I just stayed behind the dune and took potshots at the enemy infantry. At some point I read through the chat bar that a teammate went down--I looked around and saw that the M113 had shredded the sniper next to me! :o But I didn't panic--not much, at any rate. ;D Just kept firing, and shuffled around in the sand to keep out of line of sight with the M113.
With several of our guys down, Viking suddenly mentioned that he had a LAW! Well, that gave us a glimmer of hope. But he missed his shot, and the M113 must have noticed him valiantly exposed on the dune and hosed him down. Our glimmer of hope flickered a little. Someone recommended that I try to snipe the gunner out of the M113 cupola. I don't think that's possible. Again, I experimented with the mission editor, and it seems to me that in vanilla OFP or FDF there's no way to kill the M113 gunner other than simply destroying the vehicle. (Fortunately, those M113s are so pathetically underarmored that they make BMPs look like musclemen).
Someone else worked his way over and grabbed Viking's LAW and remaining round. (Osku?) He took his shot, too. I didn't see the result, but if I understood the chatter on Teamspeak, the shot missed--and at that instant the M113 rolled over a mine anyway.
With the M113 gone, the odds were even again. I continued to hurl bullets in the general direction of enemy soldiers--if OFP AIs had any brains, I probably would have at least made them nervous. I believe it was Overlord who told me (from beyond the grave) to quit wasting my ammo. I got fed up and exchanged the M21 for an AK47, hoping that the sniper weapon would be more effective in different hands. But no one took it, so I just grabbed it again--better than letting it go completely to waste!
I believe there were only four of us left at this point--probably Fat Tony, Osku, Mikka, and I. Two of them went forward, and Mikka and I covered them with sniper rifles. We were worried about enemy patrols attacking us from the woods to the south, but as I recall none ever came. The two forward worked their way back to the fuel station to kill off remaining infantry. At one point, they reported two contacts, and I spotted two men running across the open sand. Fortunately I noticed their friendly uniforms before I shot at them. Not that I was likely to have hit.
They killed the driver in the truck that was still lolling around. Mikka and I advanced to hunt down survivors. There was a lull for about a minute, a few shots, and finally..."Ring of Fire" again! Reportedly, the last two enemies to be killed were pilots. lolwut? Well, the mission ended. I only got 3 kills, and no one to heal, but hey, team effort. Victory! Â
R. Kurtz "Koortz" Dmitriyev
My methods have become "unsound."
My methods have become "unsound."