Post your stories, experience, videos, problems, etc.
One of my favourite operations. I guess I just love urban missions… I will start with what I think was bad in this one. Tank balance but you’ve talked this through, slow execution of plans/long planning and not enough people for operation this big(but I guess we can’t do anything about it 
). I’m not saying that plans of execution were bad it’s just… It took us so long to do anything. Airfield situation I understand due to lack of infantry but when we were in the city taking control over this area around this building(forgot how we called it but I mean the one we got ammo drop at) we secured the area, we stayed there for a while, repelling enemy reinforcements and then there was that moment when we should move up to another target but instead we were sitting in one place waiting for orders.(Don’t kill me Ozzie, I love you anyways ).
And BTW I think you could have thrown more infantry at us. A tiny bit more on Airfield and some more in urban area so we can feel the hell but that could be just me.
But the good part now! Wow Urban operations are really dope. With more people it would have been even better but I still had a great time. I was "forced" to be fire team leader for the first time. I wanted to do it somewhere in the future but I was surprised that I got an occasion that fast and I used it. So there I am. Shy person commanding people haha xD But that was actually great fun. I could get used to that I had fairly small team as we were 3 man from the beggining and we lost 1 in first encounter. When we got to urban we were 4 at some point(from 3 when we left airfield). Urban area was the true beggining. As ASL A1 and A3 were moving pretty much along the main road in the middle of the part of the town we were approaching I told my team to flank the enemy from south(and then east when we were under target on the map). Worked pretty well IMO and noone died even tho’ we had some hot situations. Then we moved closer the building we wanted to take over we shot some bad guys and that chopper thing was awesome. I believe from pilots perspective it had to be 10000000 times better but the moment when all our plans went to shit and we just drove to Night Bird ASAP to save them… Golden… We basicly risked our lives by going all in to save theirs(manwise it didn’t pay off. lost my whole team there and some other folks died). Also when Ozzie told us to fall back everyone was in the truck and I was pinned down and unable to move. Shots from 2 sides coming at me but I couldn’t figure out where from.
In conclusion, more people(we had too little infantry), more time, faster execution, GREAT operation, well spend time, tons of fun, team leading. 10/10 would survive the whole mission again.
Looking forward for more team leading here and there, just gotta get good first
OFC videos incoming today evening or tomorrow.
P.S. Someone from my fire team had VERY similar voice to my voice and I was going mental O.o Think that was Corwin.
I had a really good time last night!
The combination of open en close quarter combat was very nice.
In my point of view the only improvements that are not mentioned jet are about the tactics. I think we were rushing into our insertions and had to make better use of dismounted infantry and trucks as support. Also I think the communications between fire teams and platoon leadership could be more streamlined. A2 had some times that we were just waiting on our orders and when we arrived at our main objectives all fire teams bunched up. In a large city we have to spread our forces to take more ground and take more objectives. I no way I am saying somebody did a bad job, everybody really pulled it together. I don’t think I could do better myself, and everything above is just my opinion. I just think it is good to be critical to our actions so we can learn and improve.
For the good I want to tell you about my 4 most memorable moments:
- Taking an overwatch positions to support the attack on the airfield while choppers are hovering overhead destroying enemy tanks in the distance. Than we had to move up because we needed to support A1. On the run to the tree line we came under attack from technicals and had to make a dash to the tree line 200m in front of us. From there we directly had to focus are fire back to the airfield where the main assault started. Very intense, very fun.
- While we were gaining ground on the airfield A2 got moved up to the west side of the airport. There we came across a few buildings and the barracks at the north side of the airport. It was amazing to see how efficient we were clearing all the barracks. Me and Xander formed up and used good communication to clear a few of them.
Later when I came out of one of the barracks some random enemy popped out the door and starting shooting. I think I wet my pants on that moment! Got hit in the arm but was able to take down the enemy. - A2 had to take up position on a crossroad in town. We moved west to make a flanking move on enemy infantry. While we were engaging the enemy we were flanking we came under attack from 2 sides. We had to stand our grounds and fight for our life. I got shot in the head but managed to kill 3 enemy before being able to patch myself up. While still under fire we moved away from the hot zone and made our way to the supplies drop on pebble. There we linked up whit the other fire teams and had to fend of multiple attacks from 2 sides.
- The rescue of our downed comrades. I think from the moment the news came in to the time we had a plan turned around and engaged it only took maybe 30sec. We were all pumped and determent to save our pilots. When we arrived A2 took positions at the locations of the pilots. There we came under fire and had to fend of multiple attackers. Fighting and disorientation I completely forgot to use my AT launcher (Sorry :s). All of the sudden a big explosions and that was that, still don’t know exactly what happened. Something whit the chopper I heard.
Everything together, really great operation. Had a great time!
@Tropical: I don’t know if I have the same voice as you do. I don’t thinks so actually xp
I do have some mic problems, so maybe that was the problem 
Mission design was crafted towards maximum action and testing the ability to command combined arms. I think these goals were partly achieved. Due to the mismatch in tank capabilities the beginning of the mission became very slow and I felt like I had little justification to send in more troops to harass the infantry other than sentries without getting the tanks involved at first. Still once the engagement on the airfield started I kept trying to raise the tention.
Once the airfield was taken a T-72 was captured. Which proved to be more useful than the pretty Leopard 2s were. Even though the second Leopard managed kill quite a few T-72s before meeting its demise. That captured T-72 really let Teddy and his crew shine. The information that infantry provided for the tank crew showed that combined arms situation wasn’t too much to deal with. Not to leave out the exceptional Apache crew. I did try shooting them down by adding AA troops in hopes to keep them busy. I hope there were some "Oh shit" moments before the final shootdown.
Pebble was taken quite effectively. Tank and the helicopter did the heavy lifting while infantry dealt with the stragglers. Once the hostages extract began I moved in a squad so helicopter was actually waved off instead of just landing under fire. Something weird happened to the hostages so I had to play with them manually a bit. After hostage extraction was done everybody seemed to feel safer and went to rearm. It wasn’t my intention to let you take a break to rearm just because you need it. So I snuck in infantry waves and aimed to reinforce the idea that sitting at that place isn’t a good idea.
Next goal by plan was "Stone" the vehicle pool. It held alot of enemy equipment that could’ve been useful T-72s, BMP-1s, etc. I felt like I have been neglecting the Apaches a bit and letting them do what they want so I tried to create a real hardcore threat by using large numbers of AA teams. It worked and resulted in a shootdown of the Apache. Which created an amazing oppurtunity for dynamic story driven mission. Ofcourse I did not let the pilots sit on their ass either. Started suppressing them to hasten the infantry. That worked really well. Another place where after the arrival everyone fell into defensive mode so I just kept piling on units to get CNTO guys moving. These should be the broad strokes of the mission for me. The video I posted should reveal more if there is intrest.
Main lessons:
- Test your placed units (Tanks, Apache vs tanks) and assume modders are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
- Combined arms can work well even with a smaller number of people if everyone is competent.
- Test scripts more. The three mag standard on spawn was due to me using 2 different methods to mess with players gear and one obviously in hindsight overwrote what other did.
- Probably some stuff I cannot remember atm.
Recorded the viewpoint of the Zeus. Spoiler warning though.You see the dirty tricks of Zeusing. Still it gives a better awareness of what happened then one might’ve had being a groundtrooper.
[youtube]Hl5X1z7cK-w[/youtube]
Like I said in the briefing an amazing mission because it is so difficult to make a balanced combined arms mission that has something for everyone. In our "budget Altis" Kuma tank we still had better armour than the enemy T-72s and almost always managed one hit kills when we engaged the enemy. While we might not have been a super-duper modern 2010s marvel of German engineering we did manage a pretty impressive ratio of death and destruction. In fact if we were better it might have been a bit unbalancing for the mission. We had a nice plan at the start that was setup pretty fast considering how complicated the mission was.
Unfortunately we got a bit derailed after the dam by a very impressive enemy tank crew who spotted us from far away through trees. But then I gather Nightbird/Reaper saved the day and the survivors managed to carry on despite being one tank fewer than when you started.
While we may have been able to take two hits before brewing up at the airfield we got our main gun disabled and had to abandon tank as we lost our trusty gunner Banana 
Fortunately Eistee managed to find a T-72 with only a few dents in it and fix it up so the team was not tankless for long! We got to see what the enemy was driving and provide a bit of support as we all moved into the city. The fighting in the city was challenging with only a two man crew but thanks to support from you guys walking we didn’t get any RPGs on us, which was pretty bloody impressive so thanks for that
I really enjoyed the mission tonight. I love the combined arms stuff and we don’t tend to do it due to low numbers, but I think having 1 Attack Helo and 1 MBT with 2 or 3 FTs can work as we proved. The only issues we had that slowed us down a lot was the lack of ammo we had and the Panthers poor performance against RHS armour.
The attack on the Airfield was delayed because Thunder was destroyed. If it hadn’t we would have had the time to take another objective.
We were also slowed down when we took OBJ Pebble. I took time to order us to move out because we needed time to rearm as our ammo levels were so low and I was worried about that fact. We were also waiting for reinforcements who were coming in on foot. I could have helped speed this up if I had marked the fuel station where our truck was as they wouldn’t have needed to look for it.
One issue I spotted both when we initially left the base and when we left OBJ Pebble was the amount of time it took to get the convoy’s sorted out. There was confusion about what crate to load up and getting vehicles in position which wasted a lot of time. I don’t know if this was my fault or just general confusion, but either way I think some convoy training is in order.
The FTs also got a bit mixed up at times, especially when approaching OBJ Pebble. Again I just think this was a general comms issue. I spent too much time worrying about where the truck with our spare ammo was (again this was my worry about our low ammo levels) and knocking down fences and killing my FTLs while driving a Humvee. I don’t think I was paying enough attention to what I needed to on this occasion. I also had some new guys as FTLs so they were getting use to things and I was getting use to new voices so that wouldn’t have helped much.
Besides the comms stuff though, I think everyone did really well and made it really enjoyable to play. As I said in the debrief, I really liked the combined arms stuff and the downed helo OBJ. It’s so much better when it happens like that rather than scripted into the actual mission.
If we can find a way to speed up mission briefings, sort the ammo issue out and get some MBTs than can stand up to the T-72s from RHS then the mission will run much more smoothly. if we can improve general Comms and Convoy procedures then we will play better in the missions. Almost all of this has already been mentioned by others.
Overall I loved this mission and hope we can do a lot more combined arms events in the future. Great job Zcribe :thumb:
[quote user_id=“16558368” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/16558368/avatar/medium.1471276874.jpeg” name=“zcribe”]
[youtube]Hl5X1z7cK-w[/youtube][/quote]
Just some quick observations from seeking;
- ??? - I like how you use the AE Add to Curator functionality even though Ares provides a similar thing. … The AE version is better as it affects only your Zeus instance, which would be important if there were multiple people being Zeus.
- 4:35 - The sentry is just keeping the wedge formation, to put both of them in the bunker, dis-group them (ctrl-lmb-drag from the unit). Additionaly, turn them the way you want and disable MOVE (under "AI Features" now), that prevents turning as well.
- 19:20 - Again, one-soldier-per-group and disable PATH (turning without movement). Actually, disbanding the group is optional as with disabled movement, they won’t keep the formation anyway.
- 28:00 - It’s usually better to place a vehicle and squad separately, then mouse-drag the squad onto the vehicle. This way, the "cargo" has its own group which can be "unloaded". Note that cargo soldiers will get out as soon as they’re in the COMBAT (red face) state, when the vehicle becomes stationary - there’s a thing in AE-AI to prevent that if needed (place on vehicle).
- 51:15 - There’s no way the units will move outside because they apparently don’t have a pathfinding link between the interior and exterior of the hangar. The only way is to zeus-move them outside. Similarly with tanks (but you can remote control / drive those).
- 1:08:00 - You can move camera to the last guy that pinged you by pressing the Space key (by default, check Controls, Zeus).
- 1:38:20 - One nasty thing you can do (to make people throw grenades into buildings, Teddy-style) is to put a guy inside, disable MOVE, make him crouch, orient (zeus/RC) towards the door and use COMBAT state (red face) to make him raise the weapon. Maybe up the skill a bit, to ~70%. This creates a deadly chokepoint.
- 2:09:25 - Make sure to disable PATH for hostages, so they don’t run away. Or better - use ACE -> Surrender or in case of actual hostages (like here), ACE -> Set Captive (or something like that).
Hope this helps.
Guys. I’m genius… I’ve opened up my videos on one monitor and zcribe’s video on 2nd monitor and it is actually quite interesting to watch 2 of those perspectives at once. Try it if you have 2 monitors.
