Leave some feedback 
Fun OP with MAT, thanks for the mission Baegel defo an interesting setting. A few observations I made during the OP:
- When we get attacked straight away on mission start then Plt should have an opportunity to plan on the briefing screen before mission start.
- If we take heavy contact/casualties on an objective like the mortar town then move away, plan and move out. This is what we did so happy with this good work from what was left of Alpha and Plt. Sorry MAT moved back to the base to grab the MAT resupply box. We got friendly fired by the dead people at the base but due to no long-range comms with them couldn’t call anything in. Maybe have a Long Range Radio for Base/Reinforcement use in missions with reduced radio resources.
- On route we took contact and due to being outnumbered, we pushed through, this exasperated our rapid movement across the map.
- We were using roads and fast travel because it made NAV easier but agree with Baegel we could have used nearly all off-road and only roads occasionally. Don’t think our NAV was up to scratch for this though across the board.
- If we take mortar fire we need to stop staying put and treating the wounded. We should carry the wounded away before any treatment as fast as possible, using vehicles if you have them. We need to set a regroup and just meet there ASAP. If we have more wounded than we can carry then we have to leave people behind. Interested to hear if anyone disagrees?
- Lots of bunching up in the mission, I found myself moving MAT quite a bit just to have some Plt separation. We should all try to avoid this even if it is the only/best bit of cover around.
- Apologies to Hateboarder I was pushing for us to move quickly quite often which was my mistake, there we defo times we could have taken more time to plan before stepping off.
- Was loads of fun at the end accidentally getting well too close to that enemy base, had fun with our last stand.
- Thanks to Clarke and Koffer great teammates who performed like OG PMC’s!
- Would love to do more OPs with reduced radios and BFT again but really think we need some easier OPs over smaller maps to hone our skills across the community and then take on a mission like this. Some training would be awesome too. Maybe start with one variable at a time, so our load-outs are from a standard faction but we don’t have radios, then work in another OP but then take away BFT, then give different load-outs just an idea for gradual easing into these types of OPs for the community.
All around great points, thanks for the insights Dachi.
I agree with training and smaller ops, because this is the sort of bread and butter that everyone needs to know before they’re handed a radio and a GPS in my humble opinion.
I had a lot of fun with Alpha, I took 2 direct mortar hits and 2 rockets to the face and still ended up participating throughout most of the operation.
[youtube]YMsHyoAfzJA[/youtube]
Without radios, every leading role had to repeat all important information to their subordinates, but with the quick pace of the mission, there was rarely time for that. As soon as any leading role was hit, their entire element became clueless. For a short time I (accidentally) joined MAT and they had an easier time because the unit was so small.
I don’t think the navigation issues we faced were a case of lacking map navigation ability, but rather the need to adjust communication and movement protocols when playing with limited tools/tech.
All in all it was pretty fun. :thumb:
I also agree that communication was not what it could have been. Like someone said at debrief, communication over long range would have to be constant, and orders repeated from SL > FTL > to fire team members.
I wasn’t in range for short range radios, so I don’t know what FTL comms were like, nor what fire team communication was like, but long range radio communication was really lacklustre. Elements were forgotten, artillery support wasn’t used, and so on.
The navigation problems came in during the attempt to get to the second bridge when elements got lost and MAT faced a company of enemies alone.
Anyway, I’m glad you still had fun!
mortar discipline aside, even if we are spread out and prepared, when we don’t have vests and helmets or any sort of doubled up fortifications/trenches/citadels, mortars and explosives and rockets bombarding us sucks. Casualties need to be treated immediately, and bleed out fast. Not a fun time. I’ve seen it bog us down many times from GM perspective a squad member and from a leadership perspective. Not to say that bunching up and poor decisions shouldn’t be punished but I much prefer the first shot is short approach to the get fucked approach.
Yeah I agree with price here. As a GM you should know when players are not having fun no more. If you notice on long range that coms are breaking down and players are being bogged down you can choose to hammer them with mortars more and whipe the platoon while the reinforcements are coming in. Or you can choose to lay it low for a bit to get everyone up and get them moving and coordinated. I think I would have had 100x more fun if we were given some leeway.
Also remember, if a platoon is already pinned by all the wounded. A mortar strike or multiple dead on are not going to get them moving quicker. It works the opposite way.
Of course you can blame the players in making poor decisions but you also have to remember it’s a game and people are here to have fun. Not die 3 or 4 times in a row and "waste" their night being at base.
I do enjoy the no radio’s thing. The downside I think is, people are less inclined to lead when something like no BFT and no radios. Causing others to step up. I am going to refrain from leading in those scenarios too just because it’s not fun at all to have multiple elements on coms without knowing where they are when you get given platoon lead as alpha lead.
So while it is fun. I think leading is way less fun. So keep that in mind when making these missions. If none wants to lead we will have to push others to do it and they might have less fun. Then pushing them with though decisions or relentless mortar strikes makes it even less fun.
And I gotta be honest, I thought about quitting when we kept getting hammered. I even called out on long range that it wasn’t fun anymore.
Hope we learn from this and the next (smaller?) no BFT, no radio mission will be more fun for leading elements.
I loved the low tech setting of the mission, but I already mentioned this in the debrief. MAT had an easier time communicating since we were only 3, and we worked together very well, so I give the op a 9.5/10 (gotta deduct half a point for failing even though we took the objective on time!).
What I do want to mention is that I think the attitude of people towards mortars and artillery is wrong. (Almost) every time an element gets hit by mortars we get complaints towards Zeus afterwards that it was unfair/not fun/only slowed us down etc. Honestly I think this blame towards Zeus is completely unjustified. I cannot remember the last time I personally got severely injured by mortars, while I wasn’t already aware for a good minute that they might be landing on top of me any moment. Every time I do get hit, I already know they have a good chance of hitting my position, but we just don’t move from it for various reasons. The reason is always something different "we were busy with treating wounded/planning/waiting on reinforcements/etc", but none of these reasons are valid to stay on a position that you know is at risk of getting mortared, yet we do this all the time. Every time we do a FTQ (tonight we have one!) we practice and say, "move off the objective asap after taking it", and we do so. Yet in our normal ops, we only do this sparingly while we often loiter for 10 minutes on the objective while lead is planning the next objective and we get reinforcements or a resupply. Almost always (in ops where we’re fighting enemies with mortars), Zeus then doesn’t hit us with mortars the first time, but misses by 100m to warn us, and then we still don’t move. This op there were people still in the same patch of forest that got hit by mortars the first time 20 minutes earlier, I don’t know what you’re expecting then?
I do want to add, this op was quite extraordinary in our technological limitations (compared to our usual playstyle). A big problem was that reinforcements didn’t have a radio and we had no BFT, so really we had no choice but to stay near the coordinates we’d communicated to them or we risked missing them. This was going to put us at risk no matter what. Also, I’m backseating (maybe unfairly) quite a bit here since I haven’t been taking a lot of leadership roles lately, and I do really appreciate everyone that does. However, in our response to mortars/artillery, I hope that people that draw the short straw in the future don’t immediately go blaming Zeus for the next mass cas. Instead look at what actions we could’ve taken that would’ve prevented it rather than asking Zeus to scrap narrative elements of a mission for our ease.
[user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/3602631/avatar/small.1411590107.jpeg” name=“Shiny”]3602631[/user] [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/9116490/avatar/small.1400145727.png” name=“Price”]9116490[/user] While I get the sentiment and I agree in principle, this is also something you have to consider:
- You had all the tools to do the job. You had artillery fire support, and falcon, and didn’t use them (except at the very end).
- The enemy AI mortars wouldn’t fire, so I deleted them and shot them manually at a much more dispersed rate. The PLT would have been annihilated much sooner if it were the other way around. I made sure not to target players in an unfair way.
- Yes, communication was difficult, yes leading was difficult. That doesn’t mean bad decisions were not taken. If bad decisions only lead to a GM going "oh I should be lenient here" then what is the point of making good decisions? What is the point of good planning, if you can just stroll around the map without any consequence?
- The OPORD asked you to take your time. I asked you to take your time in briefing. Instead, there was a blind rush into enemy territory that was full of enemies. I don’t understand what you expected. The odds were given to you from the start, you were asked to play smart, you didn’t.
- I didn’t mortar you to speed things up, and I didn’t mortar you to punish you, not directly anyway. I played the enemy as I think they would have acted. I understand that people are not there to "waste" a night, but at this point I think everyone’s fun depends on PLT just as much as the GM.
I don’t think these are unreasonable points to take into consideration.
You asked us to not do any extra work, because we’d only get paid for the actual objective. That’s the main reason I was going to avoid fighting through the entire map.
Our route took us around 3 kilometers away from the nearest ?-marker, while our execution was shit, I thought it might be a good path to sneak along.
(not bitching or complaining, I had a couple real bad brain thoughts and fuck-ups during the mission, thought it was all fair.)
Yeah that’s correct, your thinking was right when it came to objectives.
Just execution didn’t go to plan