Coop - Cookie Crumbles

Arma Lounge War Stories
1

Hey guys here is my experience and feedback for the 2nd mission last Friday.

I was playing as ASL for this mission and after a short brief to FTL’s we were on our way. We got unlucky from the get go and got smashed from our left flank at the plantation were the lead A1 managed to get in some form of cover while the rest retreated back into some defilade the way we had come. I approached the ridge with A2 and my team and took out one enemy soldier cresting to our right in between us and A1 I then proceed to crest the ridge in prone to asses the area for an assualt when BOOM Headshot FPS Doug style. That was me out of the game and I felt really bad leaving the guys in chaos when the shit had just hit the fan. What I saw and heard in the distance was some epic fire and the CAS team lighting up targets all over the area trying there best to help. The guys now under Akado’s leadership made it to the plantation and held there ground while the enemy was attacking from there N and West encircling them. The right call was made and with so many casualties in the opening engagement the guys pulled back to regroup and a new plan formulated.

Once I had met back up and taken back command the new approach seems to be much better and we quickly using smoke and cover manged to get into the village were the next phase went well from my perspective and the town was cleared quickly. It was when the time came to extract that thing went pete tong once again, the helo reported enemy now all around us we needed to extract quickly and get out before being over run this is when as the Chinook was coming in RPG’s began to fly and the helo went down, and we had to immediately switch fire to getting to the vehicles ASAP which we started to do a bit to slowly I feel we could have moved faster to reach the road but when we did all he’ll broke loose and A1 got wiped after getting pinned no mater how much fire ASL and A2 got fire support down, my plan now was to bound back into hard cover of the town and then peel right back towards safety unfortunately we took horrendous casualties even though we deployed lots of smoke and fire. Two survived.

Under really hard conditions the guys did great and I feel a bond was formed by all those who suffered on this day :shock:

For the mission the same goes for this as the previous maybe less enemy needed as before we sorted out ASR we needed a few to make it challenging now we need to find the new balance.

Regards,
Dachi

2

Well, if Ryujin really sent just one squad, there’s not much less you can go for.

I think the problem wasn’t the enemy numbers, it was the element of surprise, the jump they got on us as we all rushed towards the vehicles. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, because we (me & Xerses) reported heavy contact beyond the road when we (earlier) tried to extract the POW via vehicles. It should have been clear, at this point, that the area behind the road is hostile territory and we should have expected a push from that direction.
However even if we did, it would all boil down to a simple luck of us stumbling upon the enemies in the first place when trying to reach the vehicles for a completely different reason than recon.

The recon could have been provided by the helicopters (littlebirds have very long range thermals, no need to fly NOE to avoid RPGs), it could have been provided by a detached support team (sniper+spotter, HMG, …), assuming some people want to play them even if it doesn’t provide as much action as being part of the main squad(s). And last time I checked, we had at least one member who was very willing to learn all the range tables, kestrel stuff, scope adjustments and advanced ballistics (yes, you can enable it only for snipers, negating any performance impact), was okay with the role being primarily a spotter (not shooting), was okay with being very limited ammo-wise, … yet we still somehow figured out that all the limitations were not enough.
Compared to, say, a Bradley with thermals, powerful optics, heavy cannon, missiles, …

I don’t know, it seems that we’re unnecessarily limiting our tactical potential and as a result end up with bad security, trying to improve it with … less enemies.

I don’t think we did bad on the mission, but I think we could have done better, but we got lazy with AI being too stupid. :slight_smile: The first mission, as well as previous ones, went much better (after apparently some epic fail I missed), so I don’t think the AI is too overpowering. It’s just no meatbags anymore.

3

Yes that is correct.

[quote user_id=“13633351” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/13633351/avatar/medium.1434890353.jpeg” name=“Freghar”]I think the problem wasn’t the enemy numbers, it was the element of surprise, the jump they got on us as we all rushed towards the vehicles. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been a surprise, because we (me & Xerses) reported heavy contact beyond the road when we (earlier) tried to extract the POW via vehicles. It should have been clear, at this point, that the area behind the road is hostile territory and we should have expected a push from that direction.
However even if we did, it would all boil down to a simple luck of us stumbling upon the enemies in the first place when trying to reach the vehicles for a completely different reason than recon.[/quote]

The Enemy weren’t a surprise you informed me they were there when you tried to take the hostage back to the vics and I told everyone we had enemies to our North and South encircling us. This is when we asked for heli extract but with the heli gone we had two options stay and get surrounded but have hard cover or try and fight through forces to the North and get to our vehicles to extract we just got unlucky with the timing of them cresting as we did. We were also a squad strong so I don’s see how taking man power from the squad for a spotter would have helped in the situation but I do see with hindsight that leaving some men even if just my team on top of the building to cover may have helped but I doubt it as we as a squad were getting suppressed so a FT or my team of 3 I think would not have faired much better.

[quote user_id=“13633351” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/13633351/avatar/medium.1434890353.jpeg” name=“Freghar”]The recon could have been provided by the helicopters (littlebirds have very long range thermals, no need to fly NOE to avoid RPGs), it could have been provided by a detached support team (sniper+spotter, HMG, …), assuming some people want to play them even if it doesn’t provide as much action as being part of the main squad(s). And last time I checked, we had at least one member who was very willing to learn all the range tables, kestrel stuff, scope adjustments and advanced ballistics (yes, you can enable it only for snipers, negating any performance impact), was okay with the role being primarily a spotter (not shooting), was okay with being very limited ammo-wise, … yet we still somehow figured out that all the limitations were not enough.

Compared to, say, a Bradley with thermals, powerful optics, heavy cannon, missiles, …

I don’t know, it seems that we’re unnecessarily limiting our tactical potential and as a result end up with bad security, trying to improve it with … less enemies.

I don’t think we did bad on the mission, but I think we could have done better, but we got lazy with AI being too stupid. :slight_smile: The first mission, as well as previous ones, went much better (after apparently some epic fail I missed), so I don’t think the AI is too overpowering. It’s just no meatbags anymore.[/quote]

With a bigger player base we can look at specialist teams, I think if we struggle to make up a Squad which is really minimum for small Op’s then we can’t have a FT supported by Sniper and Spotter unless we change our mission style to that of a more SF Unit doing Strike Op’s not mainstream military Operations.

4

I’ve sent one RPG squad at you guys from the north. They were hidden from your sight by the road. But as with initial beginning, if Nightbird was instructed or decided on their own properly, they would’ve used littlebird (either one) to scout ahead and report back. Initial camp was there from the beginning, and I’ve spawned the squad way up north not to give Nightbird surprise.

As I see it, the problem was that Nightbird wasn’t scouting. While in Zeus I saw co-pilots laser marker focused on centre of village only. It was the same when Nightbird changed to Chinook, they were floating around village with gunner focusing fire on village only.

Before we introduce some new elements, I think it would be best if we learned how to use ones already existing.

Overall it seemed like guys on the ground were doing pretty good once they got their heads shaken when AI snuck behind them and stole the humvee. (I had nothing to do with that, it was all AI)

5

The initial fight at the farm/plantation was very interesting, I saw you were going a bit forward of the rest of us and ran up to try and protect you only to see you get shot. You did manage to die in a handy place, which is always appreciated, so I snagged your radio and managed to get it to Akado. Well done to Akado for regrouping the forces and clearing the farm then responding to guys in the high ground to the north of us. Vehicles moved with us and the only surprise was one guy using the defilade to sneak round behind us.

For the main attack I was one of the first causalities as our fire-team started clearing our half of the town. We entered a courtyard surrounded by buildings and I managed to get two enemy but I wasn’t quick enough to clear my section of the compound. Perhaps the main problem I had was I was still reacting as if I was fighting "old AI" who stay in buildings and hide, so once you check some windows and doorways you can count on one shooting out of them. I might be imagining this but the "new AI" appear to be much more dynamic and actually move up to attack through built up areas. This is of course awesome and means we have to fight in a far more realistic way.

The only other thing I took away from the second op was our chinook pilot did very well, it’s sky truck and he flew it to the edge of it’s capabilities, but perhaps we should try and use the chinook in a more cautious way: slowly moving back and forth over relatively safe areas far away from the hostile areas and using mini-guns to suppress large areas rather than going in close and looking to spot from the air.

As for the first op. I think it went well once I let FTLs work with each other and pick their own routes to achieve objectives and I didn’t tell them to take their teams to rubbish positions!