COOP: North Atlantic Terrorist Organization

[Ohdahh]

2023-11-21T19:00:00Z→2023-11-21T21:30:00Z

Map: Stratis
Time: 1237
Weather: Stormy to lighter rain
Host: Ohdahh (Co-Zeus: Shadisica)
DLC required: None

In the far future, after years and years of civil wars, the once peaceful European nations have convoluted to a new being: North Atlantic Terrorist Organization, or short, NATO. In service of their great leader Jens Stommenberg they try to take over as much land as possible so they can stretch their influence across the remainder of “Europe”.

OPORD

I Situation:

A few days ago, they have taken over the island of Stratis so they have a stronger military presence in the area and can cause some more mayhem. The island was mostly used as a small military storage unit, but little to no forces were there to defend the island when the terrorists first landed, all friendly military units were killed, with the few civilian forces working the land being kept hostage.

They now have taken control over certain camps and created a sort of stronghold in the town of Agia Marina. Next to that, there are some other forces scattered across the island, who will act as reinforcements should it be necessary.

You, the Counter Stommenberg Alliance Treaty, or short CSAT, are being dropped in to rid the island of NATO’s occupance and put an end to Jens’ uprising. The airfield next to Agia Marina looked like a great place to catch them off guard and give them only limited time to set up defenses.

Friendly Forces:

• CSAT
• PLT, A, B, C.
• You’re on your own.

Assets:

• None

Enemy Forces:

• NATO infantry and armor

Civilians:

• No

II Mission:

You are tasked with clearing the stronghold of Agia Marina and the remaining camps with terrorist units.

Hostages have been taken to a small compound close to the Kamino Firing Range awaiting extraction to NATO HQ, your job here is to secure these hostages and bring them back to the airfield so they can afterwards get relocated back to their homes.

III Execution:

Commander’s intent

• Clear and recapture Agia Marina of terrorists
• Clear and recapture Air Station Mike-26 of terrorists
• Find and rescue hostages by the Kamino Firing Rang

Movement Plan

• Recommended movement plan is to clear Agia Marina first so that the strongest portion and amount of enemy forces is cut off. Afterwards, the Air Station is the most logical next move, so that the hostages can be rescued safely.
• In the end, the movement plan is made at PLT’s discretion.

Fire Support

• None

Optional Tasks

• None as of mission brief.

IV Administration / Logistics:

Resupplying

• Resupply can be brought from base.

Reinforcements:

• Reinsertions will be on the hour every hour and be adhered to strictly, no deviation is allowed.
• Reinsertions are the same for all, including vehicles teams.
• Platoon Commander has a one time reinsertion wild card at his disposal, call this in through HQ.
• At predesignated times, reinforcements will be sent out of the base in the smallest transport vehicle which can hold reinforcements.
• Upon insertion to the AO, reinforcements should stick together until regrouping with the main force in the AO.

[Azrael]

Briefing
I noticed that you mostly followed the contents of this post, which is a good start. However, I think you could have added some more details and insights to make it more engaging and informative. I also felt that you were not very confident in your delivery, which might affect how the audience perceives your message. Maybe you could practice giving your notes more fluently and in-character, to engage the player base more.

Additionally, during briefing, you left out details crucial that were only answered when questions were asked.

First Objective
During this mission, I was lucky to be part of the red team of Alpha.
I noticed that the number of mass-causalities in this mission was very high, which caused most of the gameplay to be a black screen.

I noticed that often the commands were not given with confidence and sounded very hesitant.
I personally did not enjoy the objective due the number of times we were downed by enemies.

Secondary Objective
Upon arriving to the secondary objective, we got into a very heated battle really quickly.
After retreating from the objective, I had the unpleasant experience of dying by a single headshot.
I then proceeded to spectate for the remaining of the secondary objective.

Final Objective
After arriving at the final objective just getting reinserted, I was behind a rock and was shot in the head once more, returning to the familiar black screen. Unfortunately, we have once again fallen into a mass-cass, which we fortunately were able to recover from.

After some poor coordination on my end, the red team ended up into the town, whilst Yellow retreated. This was afterwards rather quickly amended, and after getting up from this situation, we were informed that we failed the mission and were ordered to return back to base.

Summary
Overall, the mission idea was great, but the execution felt a little off at certain moments.
It is very well possible that this is entirely my own fault at moments, but the amount of mass casualties was depriving the mission of fun for me.

[Shadisica]

https://priv.carpenoctem.co/cntr/?m=a186bfd3

[Karl]

Great mission!

Certainly kept medic insanely busy, this was the first op where I have seen the medical box be completely empty and Platoon create empty of blood as well.

I probably only had 4 or less bags left at the end.

Leading/planning wise it was mostly well done but I do feel we could have used our vehicles a bit more/closer to objectives, and assault some locations slightly better, though these are all seen with hindsight and I certainly would have not done better myself as lead. WP to @Garf for being such an active lead and staying on top of everything.

CCP/Mass casualty situation wise, our security could have been better twice, where a hostile snuck into our group and then downed multiple extra people. Additionally, I kinda want us to have better ways to get people moved to cover, for example a bit faster movement when dragging and also faster animations for dragging + being able to cancel this.

Lastly, we did have some excess tomfoolery at the end half which prevented lead from communicating effectively, but this was resolved after being called out on the most part and was not too excessive.

Hope to see more missions from you @Ohdahh and I hope to get more discussions regarding what maybe could be done regarding some of these more negative features mentioned in our modpack.

[Clarke]

I think @Ohdahh did well for his very first hosted Arma event ever. Also a big thank you to @Shadisica for co-hosting the event.

Mission Design

• Try to give leadership (PLT,SL) additional tools to accomplish the job. Especially if numbers are low and we only have LAT launchers available to deal with armoured threats it can quickly turn into a meat grinder for a single squad (which at times yesterday certainly was). Examples could be Simplex artillery, AI air support, AI IFV support, UAV support (armed or unarmed) etc.

• Another way to balance the experience a bit more if AI support is not desirable is to pick an enemy force that has weaker body armour (militias, irregulars, insurgents etc:). This can offset the feeling of being underpowered when attacking superior enemy forces with inferior player numbers since players have a medical system “protecting” them to a certain degree whereas AI does not - making us more survivable overall.

• When choosing the enemy AI force keep in mind their weaponry. Vanilla NATO forces have a standard calibre of 6.5mm which shreds our armour very effectively. This was a contributing factor to why people would go unconscious much more often and why injuries resulted in multiple “large avulsions” instead of small or medium avulsions, which in turn increases treatment time as our bleeding coefficient is quite punishing for larger avulsions. Sidenote: funnily enough vanilla 6.5mm is on average more damaging/causing larger injuries than RHS 7.62mm even though that wouldn’t be immediately apparent if one doesn’t know about it.

Mission Execution

• Considering the lack of additional tools, limited intel and the lower turn-out I can’t really fault @Garf for anything in particular. I think an armed UAV could have given us a great counterbalance to acquire more intel on the move and take out limited high-threat targets before starting the assault but since it wasn’t available we had no choice but to approach first to objectives from a given angle and hope for the best. The third objective was definitely more of a hail-mary approach but considering the time constraints (it was already 22.10 by the time we arrived there) it’s understandable that Garf didn’t want to sneak up to the hostage compound to spot enemies first.

• Convoy procedures were barely followed in the op. I tried to remind folks by starting to do the call-outs myself whenever I was a driver or navigator but this is something that should be adhered to at all times, even when it’s just two vics in play. Following proper convoy procedures/comms ensures we have optimal situational awareness and it minimises injuries/potential loss of vehicles along the way.

• Radio discipline was very good for the most part. The vast majority of the operation only element leaders occupied the short-range radio and others only stepped in when something actually urgent/immediately dangerous occurred. This is how it’s supposed to be, especially when 10 people share one radio channel.

• When mounting up orders are given by leaders please follow them immediately. Nothing is more frustrating when everyone is being held up because some decided to prioritise looting/resupplying. If there is a good reason for delaying mounting up (such as a critical injury without a medic present) then communicate it up the chain of command proactively.