Coop - Aegis

Please post any feedback on the Coop Aegis.

As mentioned in the after-op PTS: the Bradley was really hard to use with only daylight sights, especially as night drew in. In the heavily forested land I couldn’t see anything, except for a few places and the TOWs kept hitting trees, despite enemy TOWs having no issue hitting us. It was quite frustrating constantly being hit by enemies I couldn’t see because they were hiding behind trees, etc.

This was my first defence with cnto and it was freaking amazing !! It was intense from start to finish, even laying down a minefield was exciting, just to think that it might blow up some bad guys
I found it was really immersive with all those armors which really makes you fear for your life, the transition to night and the overall pleasant explosions everywhere haha :slight_smile:

This is my favourite mission this far, looking forward for the next defence mission !

How were the weapons? Any issues?

I found that the 50 rounds belts were hard to use. I am personnaly not used to these and it didn’t really feel like a machine gun to me as it was hard to lay down some heavy fire or suppressive fire without having to reload after a few bursts.

Did you like the assets provided? (Vehicles)

Yes. Although I did not get to use them myself. Having Dagger by our side and Reaper over our head really added to the immersion and also to the gameplay.

Did combined arms improve the gameplay or detract from it?

The gameplay was different from anything I did with CNTO and I liked it a lot, but i guess this is a personal opinion. I think the same kind of mission with mostly infantry can also be interesting.

Did you like the defensive stuff provided? (Mines, Static weapons, entrenching tools,etc) Were they sufficent

I loved the mines, maybe there could have been more type of mines in the supply crates "just in case" (thinking of anti-personal mines). Maybe there could have been more crates with misc. stuff like flares, smoke grenades; rockets, etc.
I loved the structures at the defensive lines (watchtowers, sandbags, etc.)
I did not get to use or see someone use any static weapon so I don’t have an opinion, but having some at our disposal is a good thing.
I liked the entrenching tools but unfortunately for me, at one point I kinda focused on digging a few trenches due to excitement although they weren’t necessary, only to be reminded the hard way that it did not protect from BTR fire … It is good to have them in our inventory though.

Did you like the enemy and its attack intensity?

Yes, there was a good progression in intensity, which put us under high risk of being surrounded, but squad lead took the right decisions at the right time and we were allright

What about enemies composition (enough of a mix between tanks, infantry, IFVs, APC)?

I think I would have preferred more infantry and less tanks, but reasons for this are the AI so I’ll adress this in the next question

How was the AI?
I have watched most of the Zeus POV. I am no mission maker whatsoever, and maybe you guys already thought about this but I’ll share my thoughts anyway:

Regarding the ennemy composition, I think less armor, but more threatening armor, would be better. I do not mean bigger tanks, but tanks that are actually firing at us. Most of them were just rushing through everything, and when they eventually stop, they would rarely shoot at us even though we were clearly visible. I felt like they were target dummies for the AT rather than actual threats. (You had to remote control them many times only to make them shoot at us) I think fighting an armor should be though: quickly find hard cover or concealment, maybe draw its fire to give AT an opportunity to fire at it without being torn to pieces. … some kind of organised reaction at least. Manually controlling as zeus could do the job, but at this point I think you should clearly shoot to kill rather than to frighten us: it is our job to quickly get into cover/concealment, anyone standing in the open in front of a BTR is clearly gonna die. However,you obviously have a lot of things to manage. Maybe double-zeusing could work ? (this could also be practice for a new mission maker maybe)
A little thing regarding the minefields: I think when the first armor hit the first mine, instead of having more armors hitting more mines, having the ennemy bring someone to detect/disarm the mines would make more sense. I do not now if this is even possible as zeus though. Maybe roleplaying that the armors were delayed for some time (something like 20min ?) where an armor was hit by a mine would do the trick ? Then repeat when an armor is blown up at another minefield

How was the overall pacing for you? Were there alot of boring lulls?

Everytime we were not fighting the ennemy, we were preparing for its arrival. Expecting the ennemy is exciting so I do not think there was any boring moment at all

Was the OPORD descriptive enough or would you have expected something more in there?

It was good I think

Was the landscpe interesting? Were the tools provided useful in the landscape?

It was very interesting. the road, bridges, valley shaped area was really cool

How did you like the mission idea overall?

Again, I love defence missions

What do you think made the mission good or bad experience for you?

It was a very immersive mission and also very intense from start to finish. The slow shift from daytime to nightime was cool too !

[youtube]fvmZtln3X-g[/youtube]


Couple of questions to anyone who played in order to get targeted feedback:

  • How were the weapons? Any issues?
  • Did you like the assets provided? (Vehicles)
  • Did combined arms improve the gameplay or detract from it?
  • Did you like the defensive stuff provided? (Mines, Static weapons, entrenching tools,etc)
  • Were they sufficent?
  • Did you like the enemy and its attack intensity?
  • What about enemies composition (enough of a mix between tanks, infantry, IFVs, APC)?
  • How was the AI?
  • How was the overall pacing for you? Were there alot of boring lulls?
  • Was the OPORD descriptive enough or would you have expected something more in there?
  • Was the landscpe interesting? Were the tools provided useful in the landscape?
  • Leaders, were the tactical aspects fun?
  • How did you like the mission idea overall?
  • What do you think made the mission good or bad experience for you?

How were the weapons? Any issues?
As squad lead I don’t take sights as my job is not to kill but lead. The iron sight on my weapon was a little difficult to aim down but nothing out of the ordinary for me. I don’t know if I am just useless with underbarrels or if all the sights are broken, but it usually takes me at least three shots to find the range. I think that is a personal issue though.

Did you like the assets provided? (Vehicles)
Loved it! I love the variety and I do think we tend to have higher player counts due to this too.

Did combined arms improve the gameplay or detract from it?
Adds to it. To me at least it makes it far more immersive.

Did you like the defensive stuff provided? (Mines, Static weapons, entrenching tools,etc) Were they sufficent?
I though there were more than enough mines, and we did place them perfectly. Static weapons bug me only because it seems to take ages for teams to get them in position. I don’t know if that is down to players getting use to ACE or working out where to use them, but either way we need to train with these. Entrenching Tools I never used as i didn’t know what we had until too late. We also don’t use them very often so it may be worth training with this as well so everyone knows where best to place them. I also don’t think there was any MAT ammo at the ammo cache sites which bugged MAT team. Maybe this was on purpose though?

Did you like the enemy and its attack intensity?
Either there weren’t enough, or we killed loads, or we just retreated at the perfect moments, but I’m use to us being under more pressure when withdrawing. I think that was down to good timing on our part. Besides that I thought the balance was good.

What about enemies composition (enough of a mix between tanks, infantry, IFVs, APC)?
I thought there was a good balance. Maybe letting them have one chopper or something, even if it just a small transport. it would have made things a little more interesting, or just different if small teams got droppped behind our lines.

How was the AI?
Again, I was leading, not shooting. We seemed to be able to kill a fair few and there was a good balance between the number of deaths and players who survived the whole mission. From that perspective it seemed good.

How was the overall pacing for you? Were there alot of boring lulls?
Any lulls were taken up with preperation work so I didn’t really experience a boring period.

Was the OPORD descriptive enough or would you have expected something more in there?
It seemed enough to me. I don’t think any force flanked us to the north though as was possible. That could have made things interesting. Even if it was only a squad or two with an IFV.

Was the landscpe interesting? Were the tools provided useful in the landscape?
I loved the landscape. I didn’t appreciate elevatoins enough when planning but luckily others did. I thought it was great. Panthera is a great island that we don’t use enough.

Leaders, were the tactical aspects fun?

They were for me. As I tend to do, I give my team leads lots of leeway to move as they see fit and they were experienced enough to communicate and work well together (especilly when I died). There was plenty for us to do.

How did you like the mission idea overall?
Great variety and defensive missions like that are one of my favourites.

What do you think made the mission good or bad experience for you?

Again the variety and good team work by all players.

Hows that for feedback Zcribe? Want to know anything else or something in more detail?

Thanks for the feedback guys. Especially Ozzie for bothering to do my questionnaire. I really do appriciate it and feel like this gives something really valuable back for spending time on making the mission. I know this is kind of a pain in the ass thing to do but compare it to mission making. I hope more people will take their time to write out what they liked or did not like about the mission. Especially people who disliked some aspects or felt it to be mediocre. It it very difficult to make future missions fun if people don’t express their opinions. I’ve had to hunt down negative opinions. It is also hard to justify spending your time making missions rather than earning more money or spending it with loved ones if people don’t want to take time to give you a proper feedback. Still all-in-all I really do appriciate the people who took their time to give me some feedback.

I prefer having questions to answer as it means I don’t really have to think as much about what i’m posting in terms of structure etc.

If you write the questions then I will answer!

Here is some late (i’m sorry) feedback.
I played as the driver for the bradley.

first of all, love that you made the list for targeted feedback, makes it somehow easier.

How were the weapons? Any issues?
i loved that we had different weapons than the 9mm sting. this enabled the survivor to engage targets when the bradley got taken out.

Did you like the assets provided? (Vehicles)
I LOVE that we do combined arms! having CAS and medium armor is a huge motivational booster. The fact that we play out what Arma in nature is (combined arms simulator), is really nice.

maybe in the future, we could have a dedicated littlebird to do some scouting, if we were not to play with CAS?

Did combined arms improve the gameplay or detract from it?
improve… nothing more to say.

Did you like the defensive stuff provided? (Mines, Static weapons, entrenching tools,etc)

didn’t really get a chance to see it in action. although i think the trenching stopped a tank at some point, which might have caused some issues but not sure?

Did you like the enemy and its attack intensity?
I found playing as the Bradley, we were a little under powered, since we had a hard time engaging enemies. Therefore at times, i felt the intensity was on the high, which i personally like.

What about enemies composition (enough of a mix between tanks, infantry, IFVs, APC)?
Yes. good job mixing it up. I think from the bradley perspective, infantry was the most deadly for us.

How was the AI?
Pretty good.

Was the landscpe interesting? Were the tools provided useful in the landscape?
In case of the Bradley, i think the terrain was towards the jungle side. Therefore again, we didn’t get the full potential out of it.
I could imagine from [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/11628947/avatar/small.1429971672.png” name=“Eistee”]11628947[/user] perspective being in the A10 it was pretty good, both being able to use mountains for cover, and having a good angle of attack… kinda jealous i didn’t get that chance :smiley:

Honestly, I quite liked the mission overall, especially the sense of strategy that was so crucial to me in OFPL and that I was kind of missing a bit in Arma 3. The planning phase was longer than usual exactly because we were trying hard to come up with a way to funnel the enemies through narrow sections of the terrain, though I really think this is the kind of mission where having a "briefing preparation" phase would be very useful. This idea was floating around in the past and it’s kind of hard because we don’t reserve slots anymore (and thus can’t know who is going to lead). Too bad.
Having an extra 30 minutes to prepare the plan, consider how the enemy may respond, adjust for that, etc., would be great.

This resulted in us, the MAT team, staying a bit back and me (mis-)using that to serve as a logistics team for the first defense line. We planted about 60 AT mines in a great location as it was the only sensible way for the enemy armor to go through, then we went on to relocating the TOW to the front lines, at which point it was too late for it to be of much use, I guess.
As the southern bridge was marked "BLOCKED", I assumed that no armor was coming through that way, but somebody placed a "?" red marker, so I decided to go alone and set up an M2 position on the hill north of the village, covering the south, while the other two guys went east to the front lines with the TOW.

Turns out the BLOCKED bridge wasn’t blocked in the end and armor went through. Damn whoever marked it as such.

At that point, we tried to stick to the main squad, covering their tail (as requested by Ozzie the Great) and defended the second line pretty well. To the point that we wasted all the AT rockets from the previous resupply as well as all the disposable AT launchers from the next resupply point.

The third line of defense (as set up by A3?) was maybe too close to the buildings and too exposed to the foresty area on the "right" (facing the enemy direction), where we got eventually flanked from.
Pretty much the entire position was made from ACE trenches, which I think can be a useful tool to reinforce already good positions, but a really bad tool to create new positions in the open. I believe it creates this impression that you don’t need to look for a good position because you can "just create one", resulting in the inferior defense line we had.

The last stand was pretty much what would be great to have at the previous line, a long distance with a wide open space for TOW to shoot freely and for us to take cover. I guess it isn’t so clear-cut, because the CQB environment on the previous line could be pretty good against any armor as it would get surprised by our TOW had it advanced before its infantry (which IIRC didn’t happen).
What did happen is that a tank managed to tear our first TOW to pieces on the first defensive line, indicating that long range isn’t always a safe bet.

Lastly, I would like to thank for the awesome air (ground?) support, which managed to neutralize our 60-mine perfectly-positioned minefield. [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/15892250/avatar/small.1457892701.jpeg” name=“Bananapeel”]15892250[/user] , next time you’re doing the sweaty work and we’re blowing the mines behind your ass, alright?

For the GM;

  • Placing the suppression target on the plane doesn’t do anything unless you can actually see the unit (blue circle). You were creating artificial targets at the edge of the map by blindly placing the target over the red circle. Use a map next time. :slight_smile:
  • "Force WP Behaviour" is a [G] action, meaning it’s enough to place it on a single guy in any group (or on ground + mouse-select groups). It’s placed on soldier(s), not on waypoints, and it affects only the group’s current waypoint, not any other.
  • Seriously, you’re better of using "AE - AI Features" and Disable AUTOCOMBAT, place it on ground, then mouse-select all the soldiers. This will force them to remain in AWARE (will move more, shoot less).
  • I don’t know at which point did Banana destroy the mines, but after one tank bypassed the minefield (by what I assume was a lucky chance and a non-BLOCKED bridge), the other tanks were just spawned behind the minefield. I know a Zeus cannot do everything perfectly and babysitting tanks driving all the way from the base is PITA, but maybe not doing so defeats the whole purpose of having a well thought-out defensive plan. I don’t know. Just a thought.

I stuck the blocked marker on the bridge. I put a civilian vehicle across the bridge. I guess that didn’t block it? lol :oops:

Next time I guess we would want to mie the bridges.

Did anyone record this one? I would like to see it from players point of view.