CSTO bit off more than it can chew, the war started of as a simple joke game and one person took it personally, the horde of the orcs(RU) gathered up their last remaining ammunition’s and conscripts moved forward - towards the Baltic states, Finland and Poland, the fight for the era of mankind has begun.
OPORD
I Situation
We held up and assisted our NATO allies in holding back the orc horde, its our time to push them out and secure this area.
My last 2 cents to what was said during briefing: pushing into a known hostile armor position was a risky plan on Platoon side, which resulted in a near wipe, that last minute intel definitely did feel a bit cheesy, as in “oh do not go there!”. This could have done better. This map has a funnel style where there is only one central road down the middle which seems like an obvious ambush point, so it’s understandable why we wanted to go around. This can be countered by planning ahead for it (mention in briefing as Hateboarder mentioned) or shut it down early as possible in a logical way immersion wise. However, if you want, you can let players run themselves into a wall too.
This could’ve been planned better on both ends, however, these scenarios happen now and then, it is down to us how we deal with them.
Other feedback mission making wise: Be careful when using the premade assets like the bunkers. They often contain A LOT of models/assets for detail which makes them look really pretty but due to Arma performance and our player count, they tank FPS quite fast.
I would recommend removing as many assets there as you can, for example the Mortar Bunkers contained a bunch of decals, empty bottles, medical stuff and whatnot which served no gameplay purpose. While it hurts in a world-building sense, it is best to remove those for performance.
My take on this, yes i should have predicted people and have marked the HIKE path as no go, I was out micro managing other things around the AO and once I checked the map i noticed lines on the hike path and then I radioed in to inform that our recces spotted enemy heavy armor in the area, and for the roadblock situation, I did mark that and I did expect you not to drive into it so I guess it was decided to go full dry into a roadblock where another wipe happened, and for people questioning why the enemy was so close here’s a quote from the opord. Should of anticipated people and placed clear instructions to not go up a non vehicle road. And for the wipe close to base I didnt wanna waste anymore time so i just rushed it closer. You were given info about heavy enemy presence and decided to push into it
We held up and assisted our NATO allies in >HOLDING< back the orc horde, its our time to >push them out and secure this area<.
I was a bit harsh, since its only your fourth mission or so, but I didn’t have any malicious intent trying to break your mission or such, I joined only to draw lines on the map and felt like we were give no agency for it. Which is also why at a time of being really annoyed or “bummed out”, I thought making no further plans was the logical correction.
Hearing that the enemies have enough gear to send armor up a mountain made me only think how much they must have spread around the MSR, which is why I still thought going there was not so stupid.
I would expect that if players do something reasonable but unexpected, for the GM to still attempt to make it a fun experience and spawn maybe a scout on the path, that would then call for more troops, not a tank platoon on a impassable mountain trail as you put it.
a zeus lightning bolt would’ve been more subtle
yeah, it’s a little path, but I took it because I thought the enemy would’t expect it, or would at least have reduced defence there.
[constructive bit]
Build your objectives from the perspective of an enemy that doesn’t know where the players spawn or where it’s gonna get attacked from, this is also how people will think when planning an attack at it. Then let the players that have joined the game to make plans, make them. If the players then manage to defeat the defences, it’s not because they broke the mission, it’s because they outsmarted the outpost commader, and it will feel more satisfying to everybody.
whatever it means, the objective written in the opord, is to push them out from the compound we were headed for, and to destroy supplies that I assumed were at the airfield that you mentioned was their staging point.
I’m not involved in mission making, leading or planning as you know so please let me know what you think.
The mission description “Eliminate the dug in positions of Russian forces and remove their supply logistics” could be interpreted as:
take the roadblock because it is a dug in part of a supply route further up north - or not.
take out enemy armor because it is blocking the supply route - or not.
I think it could’ve been made more clear what the objective was. That way, we might’ve gone off road straight between both roads, all the way south to avoid contact and maybe even stay alive to take the airfield.
To balance out enemy heavy armor, if it is our intention to take it out. I think we’d need heavy armor ourselves. If that’s not available, we need intel about the movement plans or projected movement of that enemy armor so we can set up an ambush.
If we lack both those things and meet it head on, even if we disembark our AT guys at a distance, our chances are slim because we have to move towards or around them and that makes us detectable. Sending out spotters could be an idea but then the majority of players would have to wait for the spotters to report back in (or get killed). Spotters with vehicles are faster but also louder.
Anyway, I had fun in this op once again, happy playing with you guys. I only managed to get one kill and got killed once myself but whatever. I’m just starting to learn the fragile balance between taking cover and taking opportunities. There’s lots for me to improve in this game still.