Pretty mixed results yesterday, let me go through it.
Core Advance
I was thrust into the commander slot by the techincal difficulties Variable had, so I was ill prepared and hadn't really thought about a strategy. The result was one big clusterfuck. There were a few key elements to the failure:
1) I had my teamspeak messages on, as usual, but there was so much traffic yesterday that I continuously got "XX has joined CiA" or "xxx has disconnected from CiA" that I could hardly understand anybody, and it distracted me like hell. I have now disabled that shite.
2) I found more than once that people do not stop talking when the commander speaks. That is not good. When the commander speaks, everybody else has to go quiet and listen. Multiple times, my attempts to coordinate were simply defeated by the constant radio chatter. Part of the problem, I think, was that the setup was very diverse and there had been quite a number of teams. See below for my take on how to fix that.
3) I had to repeatedly yay or nay things, or repeat orders. Someone asked me at least three times whether or not to take the tank, while I already said no on the first try. People didn't understand orders (see points 1 and 2 above), so orders had to be repeated multiple times. On more than one occasion, specialists in squads were split up so e.g. repairing the tank was delayed for a painfully long time.
4) APC's and tanks were understaffed, so the players that controlled them had to take on multiple roles at ones. The result was very poor positioning (our APC was hit in the middle of the road). Note, please don't take this the wrong way. As I said, the lack of drivers when the commander was gunning himself made a real mess out of things.
How to fix this
We rarely get to play missions like this with so many groups and people, so we're not really experienced with it. My idea would be to split up command (long range) level into two channels. Channel One is infantry only, in this case, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. Channel Two is vehicles, in this case, the two BTR's and the Tank. This separation means that communication within the levels does not clutter communication in the other levels. Also in this case, voice volume should be normal, not yelling.
The commander can use the alternate channel, and possibly split the channels to left and right ear, to accommodate easier recognition.
For point 3, I guess the problem was that I wasn't clear enough. Especially with this amount of people, it is difficult for an individual to understand whether the "negative" was meant for him or someone else. I should have adopted clearer language, like "Negative on the tank. Leave it as is. Confirm". And the addressee should then confirm this, because I also noticed (also in other missions) that confirmation is only given most of the time when explicitly asked for it.
As an example, if the commander say "Squard Bravo, move to the overwatch position", the natural reply should be "Bravo, moving to OP." In that respect, I'd like to point to the Standard Operating Procedures page.
Recovery
The resistance in the forest really caught me by complete surprise, I hadn't anticipated that there would be so many machinegunners there. Lost half the squad in that (sorry Ghost and Kruge and Den, and I don't know who else was affected). On the way up the hill I tired to apply a peel, which I think worked reasonably well. In this respect, I would like to raise awareness for some basic infantry tactics that could be employed in such situations but are mostly not because of lack of knowledge. Now, I do not want to propose training sessions (we're not the military here), but I guess we should start a thread on this and make it mandatory read. I'll get to that later. (EDIT: Thread opened here)
Good job by Air, too bad the Comanche is so ridiculously underammo'ed. We really need the Apache back.
While the mission wasn't entirely a failure, I attribute the loss of half of my squad to my indecisiveness when we came under contact.
Canidae Cull
Best mission of the evening, and surely in my top 20 of all times. I loved this mission, also because our part at least went pretty smoothly and I felt I did a lot better as Bravo's team leader on this one than on the two previous ones. We got out of our sub while grounded, and moved ashore in the cover of the wood east of the target building. Entered the building from the back and fought our way up to the top level were we killed our HVT. Getting back down was quite a bit of work, there was a couple of guys on the front side of the government park, so we had to employ suppression/move tactics to pass the open spaces in the stairwell.
Outside again, after we lost contact with the northern (Charlie) team, we decided not to head to our extraction but rather move there and support Charlie if they were still alive, or finish the task if not. There was a moment on the street next to the construction site where things got really hot, but partially thanks to Alpha approaching our position, and thanks to the excellent performance of my team, we managed to hold our ground. After we were clear, Alpha and Bravo moved in parallel towards the target building. We got into quite a number of skirmishes, but Alpha managed to get a shot off at the HVT so it was time to bug our.
Good job Alpha on taking out the Marid.
Overall, I loved this mission. That was some fine specops shit, the way I like my specops shit
PMC Versus: Afflamus
Valhalian did a great job controlling Derelictus. On the second approach, the SLAM mine apparently blew up something because we heard an explosion. For some reason, I thought that on the second attempt it was darker than on the first, but I might be wrong.
Oh yeah, I managed to wreck both cars on the first attempt. I was trying to look behind me to see if we had a gunner. Yeah, I know there is Mk4, but if possible I try to avoid using artificial aids; only that in this case, that artificial aid would have had me look ahead instead of elsewhere, and I wouldn't have smaked the rear of the lead car and ruined both. Oh well, lesson learned, and I am sure I am going to do it again next time
Overall enjoyable mission, the stuff you come to get used to when playing PMC Versus missions. Good immersion, good moodset.
Ghosthawk Down
Things worked out well until the Ghosthawk was shot down. Variable and me were climbing the side of the fortified hill when the backup team got completely wiped out. On our way back, a technical opened fire, I shot two Titan missiles at it but they both motherfucking MISSED, I am still not sure how that happened. I was trembling pretty badly, but not so bad that I would have lost lock on them. Mission was over a few seconds later.
I liked it, though, but I wish IronDuke's lunch packs wouldn't be so heavy. He packed me three titans and a dozen or more magazines, making my stuff weight well over 50 kilos.
Core Advance
I was thrust into the commander slot by the techincal difficulties Variable had, so I was ill prepared and hadn't really thought about a strategy. The result was one big clusterfuck. There were a few key elements to the failure:
1) I had my teamspeak messages on, as usual, but there was so much traffic yesterday that I continuously got "XX has joined CiA" or "xxx has disconnected from CiA" that I could hardly understand anybody, and it distracted me like hell. I have now disabled that shite.
2) I found more than once that people do not stop talking when the commander speaks. That is not good. When the commander speaks, everybody else has to go quiet and listen. Multiple times, my attempts to coordinate were simply defeated by the constant radio chatter. Part of the problem, I think, was that the setup was very diverse and there had been quite a number of teams. See below for my take on how to fix that.
3) I had to repeatedly yay or nay things, or repeat orders. Someone asked me at least three times whether or not to take the tank, while I already said no on the first try. People didn't understand orders (see points 1 and 2 above), so orders had to be repeated multiple times. On more than one occasion, specialists in squads were split up so e.g. repairing the tank was delayed for a painfully long time.
4) APC's and tanks were understaffed, so the players that controlled them had to take on multiple roles at ones. The result was very poor positioning (our APC was hit in the middle of the road). Note, please don't take this the wrong way. As I said, the lack of drivers when the commander was gunning himself made a real mess out of things.
How to fix this
We rarely get to play missions like this with so many groups and people, so we're not really experienced with it. My idea would be to split up command (long range) level into two channels. Channel One is infantry only, in this case, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. Channel Two is vehicles, in this case, the two BTR's and the Tank. This separation means that communication within the levels does not clutter communication in the other levels. Also in this case, voice volume should be normal, not yelling.
The commander can use the alternate channel, and possibly split the channels to left and right ear, to accommodate easier recognition.
For point 3, I guess the problem was that I wasn't clear enough. Especially with this amount of people, it is difficult for an individual to understand whether the "negative" was meant for him or someone else. I should have adopted clearer language, like "Negative on the tank. Leave it as is. Confirm". And the addressee should then confirm this, because I also noticed (also in other missions) that confirmation is only given most of the time when explicitly asked for it.
As an example, if the commander say "Squard Bravo, move to the overwatch position", the natural reply should be "Bravo, moving to OP." In that respect, I'd like to point to the Standard Operating Procedures page.
Recovery
The resistance in the forest really caught me by complete surprise, I hadn't anticipated that there would be so many machinegunners there. Lost half the squad in that (sorry Ghost and Kruge and Den, and I don't know who else was affected). On the way up the hill I tired to apply a peel, which I think worked reasonably well. In this respect, I would like to raise awareness for some basic infantry tactics that could be employed in such situations but are mostly not because of lack of knowledge. Now, I do not want to propose training sessions (we're not the military here), but I guess we should start a thread on this and make it mandatory read. I'll get to that later. (EDIT: Thread opened here)
Good job by Air, too bad the Comanche is so ridiculously underammo'ed. We really need the Apache back.
While the mission wasn't entirely a failure, I attribute the loss of half of my squad to my indecisiveness when we came under contact.
Canidae Cull
Best mission of the evening, and surely in my top 20 of all times. I loved this mission, also because our part at least went pretty smoothly and I felt I did a lot better as Bravo's team leader on this one than on the two previous ones. We got out of our sub while grounded, and moved ashore in the cover of the wood east of the target building. Entered the building from the back and fought our way up to the top level were we killed our HVT. Getting back down was quite a bit of work, there was a couple of guys on the front side of the government park, so we had to employ suppression/move tactics to pass the open spaces in the stairwell.
Outside again, after we lost contact with the northern (Charlie) team, we decided not to head to our extraction but rather move there and support Charlie if they were still alive, or finish the task if not. There was a moment on the street next to the construction site where things got really hot, but partially thanks to Alpha approaching our position, and thanks to the excellent performance of my team, we managed to hold our ground. After we were clear, Alpha and Bravo moved in parallel towards the target building. We got into quite a number of skirmishes, but Alpha managed to get a shot off at the HVT so it was time to bug our.
Good job Alpha on taking out the Marid.
Overall, I loved this mission. That was some fine specops shit, the way I like my specops shit
PMC Versus: Afflamus
Valhalian did a great job controlling Derelictus. On the second approach, the SLAM mine apparently blew up something because we heard an explosion. For some reason, I thought that on the second attempt it was darker than on the first, but I might be wrong.
Oh yeah, I managed to wreck both cars on the first attempt. I was trying to look behind me to see if we had a gunner. Yeah, I know there is Mk4, but if possible I try to avoid using artificial aids; only that in this case, that artificial aid would have had me look ahead instead of elsewhere, and I wouldn't have smaked the rear of the lead car and ruined both. Oh well, lesson learned, and I am sure I am going to do it again next time
Overall enjoyable mission, the stuff you come to get used to when playing PMC Versus missions. Good immersion, good moodset.
Ghosthawk Down
Things worked out well until the Ghosthawk was shot down. Variable and me were climbing the side of the fortified hill when the backup team got completely wiped out. On our way back, a technical opened fire, I shot two Titan missiles at it but they both motherfucking MISSED, I am still not sure how that happened. I was trembling pretty badly, but not so bad that I would have lost lock on them. Mission was over a few seconds later.
I liked it, though, but I wish IronDuke's lunch packs wouldn't be so heavy. He packed me three titans and a dozen or more magazines, making my stuff weight well over 50 kilos.
I don't need luck, I have ammo.