Please post feedback for the mission here.
I liked the premise of the mission, however this felt like a 4hr mission, rather than a short one. Just a general thing for mission makers: I haven’t seen any battlelines for some time: I’d like to see the red and blue lines, and markers on settlements to be able to judge where enemies are likely to be. We got ambushed only a few minutes out of the base but the mission implied that there was enemies at the North side of the map, plus the timeframe of the mission wasn’t really built for that ambush. If we’d known where we should expect contacts then we can more effectively avoid/move.
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This mission for me felt too planned by GM. It felt like you were trying to push us in a specific direction which you had expected us to take by default. This was annoying since I thought this had one of the best premises for a mission.
You had a simple objective with an interesting enviroment. Nice new loadouts (Maybe not all correct to the Russian stereotype but they were fun to play with). We had chosen an interesting approach to the mission which you could have build on and profited from. Here I’m mainly referring to the lake/sea crossing which was something new and exciting. Instead we got pushed towards something old and redundant. A classic "move along this road" style. To your defence this approach can also be fun and interesting but the time was already getting closer and closer to deadline so the push felt unnessecary since we all knew we would never get to the objective.
Then in the last 15 min there was added a small objective to take an FOB along the road. To me this felt like a sudden solution from GM to give a feel of an end. You have to remember that we can fail a mission and that doesn’t make the mission worse at all. If you want to make new objectives on the go they should fit with the storyline.
For some final words I’d say that you have to watch your presence. It’s the hardest thing about being a GM: Making players feel like you’re not there. The players should shape the story of the mission. Their own seperate story is what counts and not the overall story. Don’t ever force them in any direction but give them the tools nessecary to build their own way. What I mean by this is that they should not be overwhelmed within the first hour of a mission of 2 hours. They should have obstacles placed in their way but never forced in a specific direction. Then when the first hour has passed and the feel of an achievement is there you can begin playing around with the "FUBAR" idea.
Also a mission should feel possible to achieve. When Thirsk was reached this already began going down hill. Even our apc was lost like 15 min into the mission which could not be blamed on us. Remember that you’re not the enemy as a GM. You’re there to make the mission fun and nothing else. If you want us to get in heavy fighting where many will die you have to make sure we achieve something first.
I’ll put some feedback on the 2nd mission for the night which should be a little more positive.
I kinda enjoyed this mission (even though the other one was a bit more interesting, IMHO). I’ve heard you swear as the BMP got hit (with us unable to repair it), so I assume slowing down the force like that wasn’t intentional. 
It was a bit surprising that the "elite" enemy forces were all over the place. Or maybe those weren’t the "elite" guys, I don’t know. IMHO there was no need (or much RP justification) to have the area swarming with enemies - this would make us move faster and take over at least one objective.
I can only guess why the town of THIRSK (and area) was occupied, but if it was meant to be like this from the start, maybe some recon should have caught it. Though it created a pretty intense situation later on with BMP destroyed and the us survivors running into a minefield, kind of squeezing us on 3 sides.
The biggest problem by far was time - for the last hour or so, it was really a race across the map for the objectives, but we were constantly under attack, unable to move very far. If the mission was 3.5h, maybe we would have tried to retake the town of THIRSK, then cross the water, assault Iron and maybe even the main objective. However I highly suspect an RPG on the slow-moving BMP in the water would be a more likely outcome.
Maybe it’s just these last two weeks, but it seems that we never get a chance to get anywhere close to the objectives because there’s just so much "stuff" (contact) in the way for a small platoon. Maybe that’s a lesson for us to develop better strategies like diversion?
One thing I would like to humbly request - please don’t use the suppression functionality when you’re unsure if the AI can see the players or not. The logic instantly reveals 100% exact position, speed, etc. about the target to the shooter, to make the AI actually suppress. This is mostly fine on open terrain, but in a foresty area, it’s really bad. At one point, I was lying on the ground inside a tree and suddenly got engaged from 100m away on the other end of the forest. Most of the time, after we retreated, we were receiving fire through trees - this is fine during a firefight (actual suppression), but when the contact was initiated by the enemy like this, it felt really cheaty. Especially as we were (I think) pretty well hidden in the forest / grass.
Overall, it wasn’t "one of the best", but still a fun mission to play though, maybe one pointing out that One Strategy Doesn’t Fit All and that we should re-evaluate it during the mission. I think we should have rather chosen a more "stealthy" approach after taking the initial contact and literally following the main road with a noisy BMP probably wasn’t it.
PS: I’ve made pilot/gunner into engineers, so that at least 2 people in a vehicle know how to repair it. Makes sense to me - make pilot and vehicle gunner able to repair · CntoDev/cnto-units@9f5c3db · GitHub .
PPS: Take a break.
I was too unlucky in that mission, so I ragequit. Kept getting killed the moment I re-inserted, instead of waiting another 30 minutes I just decided to do something productive instead. The others looked like they were having fun. Other players were running around like a headless chicken and standing up in the open with no defilade to retreat behind, yet I was the one that kept getting killed was the thing that made me ragequit. Nothing to do with the mission.
Exited the APC, crawled away, got shot by someone ten feet from the apc. Exited the apc, jogged 15 meters, and an enemy fireteam was on my flank. Waited until I walked by to start shooting even though FTL was a juicy target standing on the road.
Explaining some of my logic of Zeusing this op:
First it started with already an idea I did not think of: Going amphibious. I was ok with it but I did not feel that doing an amphibious crossing next enemy base would end well. That is besides the point. The initial ambush was there to get your head into the game. Get you to set up a recon force and stop people from just doing dick-jokes unitl full wipe due to negligence. I did not expect the BMP to get destroyed (Freghar apparently heard my swearing). Forgot to accomodate for the fact that the gunner cannot really see anything so he could not see the guys standing 50m in front of him. Maybe an argument for doing some other type of setup for convoys. The BMP is bit pointless in the front if it cannot spot targets.
With BMP destroyed the mission had already radically changed. Players started moving on using platoon wedge if I remember correctly. I left out some of the vehicles that were hidden by the OP unit that went undiscovered but that is ok. From that point on the mission had changed. I needed to drop in some patrols so you guys wouldn’t be doing a walking simulator. Thats what I did. 3 fireteams in Thirsk (Including the one that later ambushed you from the side). It obviously messed up the pacing that was planned. I said elite units in OPORD so I consistently tried to attack you guys from atleast 2 sides. 3 if possible. Even though players had the actual numerical advantage the fact that fire seemed to come from everywhere is what got you. Possibly what added to it was the fact that enemy was better equipped.
My intention was to push towards using the road. My fault in having sentimental attachment to mission. I was trying to move you guys towards what I considered the main attraction of the mission - trench lines. The problem of spending a hour in building something cool for the players to fight and players just ignoring it. I though trench line clearing is something no mission had yet ever had thus making it somewhat unique and quite interesting. This hope however just completly ignored the fun element of the players. So yeah, the main reason this mission flopped In my opinion was my overattachemnt to the mission plan. Will avoid this mistake in the future.
For mission makers as a whole; we have been missing the drawings of current battle-lines and so where we should begin to expect enemies. Given the length of the mission I don’t think we were expecting contacts at Thirsk or to be ambushed 5 minutes out of the base. The aforementioned map markers are useful for making sure players are aware they are in hostile ground and so pay more attention. The only armoured vehicles likely to survive ambush by AT armed infantry are the tanks as pretty much every other armoured vehicle is vulnerable to LAT weapons. That said the BMP actually survived but because our driver died we couldn’t repair it (hence Freghar’s change to allow gunners and pilots to repair vehicles).