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Good mission, really interesting and one fantastic ambush that really hit us hard but fair. That ambush was really nice as it felt natural and not forced but worked perfectly.
Generally, people were a bit more casual today. This may be down to the TS issues we had in the beginning, the missing willingness to lead (4 FTL slots were open after initial slotting) or maybe also something else. Hopefully, this was just a one-off.
Then I’d like to say sorry to the people that were down for a long time. There were some troubles with the first resupply delaying it by 30 minutes and then radio to HQ broke down because ACRE really disliked the terrain. I sent about 50 requests to HQ and sadly not have them were ever received. That meant we did not have enough blood to put into our critically wounded,
Blue team was a bit of an odd element this op. We had a 50cal humvee and while it’s true I also wasn’t really in the mood to micro manage a fireteam, I think we handled it well. I was mostly driving the humvee to high ground positions from where we could provide overwatch on the objective and spot any incoming hostiles (there were many technicals this op) well before they managed to get the drop on us. So after I got us to a new position I’d dismount and try to call targets for Confox on the gun, while Blodos on the AR would be helped by Mathusse. In the end no technicals ever managed to get close while Blue was on overwatch, while a couple others (objective 1 when we were blocked by buildings, and later while blue was in the building that collapsed) did manage to do so.
On medical: The main reason why we’re having people unconscious for so long is that it’s almost impossible to die. You can only die from 2 things: being unconscious AND getting a "fatal wound to important organ", or from cardiac arrest after 5 minutes (and I’m pretty sure CPR resets this timer every time it’s done, even when unsuccessful). Previously if people got mortars dropped on their heads they’d be dead instantly or within a minute from bleeding out. Currently people don’t die from bleeding out (afaik, though not 100% on that), thus we are left with many people on low blood that refuse to die and need a shitload of blood to regain consciousness.
No matter how good our supply lines could’ve been. Even if medics had been fully stocked (which is 6L on spawn) they probably only barely would’ve got everyone hit from those mortars up, and maybe not even that.
So ye a solution to medics not losing all blood is to increase the lethality of our system (by changing what can kill us, me and Shiny tested it yesterday and there are some options). Or maybe medics should start making choices on who is worth using blood on (such as no people that "have lost a fatal amount of blood").
I was down a lot this op, so I haven’t seen everything. Anyway, not really in the mood to write a whole story, so I’m just gonna do some bullet points.
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Possibly because of the TS issue at the start, but I felt like this mission was a lot more chaotic than previous missions. This was noticeable in a lot of ways, like formations being absent, people not checking targets, poor situational awareness. etc.
While I noticed this in-game and tried to act on it by getting people going again, and offering my opinion that we should be moving since we were having a deadline, I was making some poor plays too. -
The trucks used had very severe sun glare on the windows, making it rather hard for the driver to see what is going on right in front of them.
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Medical was a little weird, but apparently this was mostly down to us being out of fluid toward the 2/3rd mark, so people stayed down.
Overall though, the mission was fun and the teamwork was still good on a higher level, but it did have a bit of a different feel compared to the other missions I’ve been part of.
Unfortunately I apparently am in the mood to write a whole story 
Overall great mission, it was a nice change of pace to be dropped straight into the firefight and have to work from there, like others have said the ambush was well executed, felt pretty natural and everyone reacted well to it, gathering in their teams and supporting each other before we all regrouped. It did feel like there was a lot of waiting around this mission, either waiting for people to wake up again, or waiting for resupply, or new orders. Of course we now know the issue with resupply was down to radio faults again, but at the time it felt like waiting around for no reason.
On medical, it was a bit of a weird one for me this time. I randomly took a scratch while we were flying which was annoying, then when we were clearing the airfield I ended up with 5 wounds, took a few more during the ambush, then a lot when the mortars fell, but I never went unconcious until the hostage compound where I lost so much blood I physically couldn’t stay standing. On that note while the medics did a good job with limited supplies it did feel like it took longer to get a stitch than previous ops, there was a few points where I was bandaging the same wound multiple times with more blood loss each time. I’m sure some of that was due to medics being stretched between so many people, my poor communication, and after the mortars fell my fireteam kept moving to fast to get a stitch so no knock on anyone in particular, was just a weird comparison to previous ops.
I don’t agree with medics just straight up not using blood on those that "have lost a fatal amount of blood" especially if they have to resources to get the person up, sure prioritise those who can get back in the fight faster but straight up going "Yeah, no, I’m not treating them because I might need these later" just means that person is either going to be a burden on the team by needing constant CPR while the player stares at a black screen, or they’re going to be left to bleed out and die which isn’t particularly nice And personally, it would leave me VERY tempted to simply hit respawn if it’s close to the reinforcement timer rather than risk missing it and then having the medic say they’re not going to try treating me.
Just as a thought I had while typing this, what about something similar to the once per mission emergency reinforcement? Have it so once per mission the platoon lead can call in an "emergency medic" or something to have the Zeus heal X amount of players? Just incase we end up in a situation like the end of this mission where we have 3-4 people all with fatal blood loss and no supplies to treat them, obviously not suitable for all kinds of missions, but eh, I have weird thoughts sometimes.
tl/dr: good mission, enjoyed the landing, nice ambush, lots of waiting on peoples, weird medic stuffs.
The random scratches were from the first attempt to get the humvee in. They hit the plane so some people (me included) took some damage.
[quote user_id=“19950517” avatar=“https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.enjin.com/821401/site_logo/medium.png” name=“Tinder”]
And personally, it would leave me VERY tempted to simply hit respawn if it’s close to the reinforcement timer rather than risk missing it and then having the medic say they’re not going to try treating me.
Just as a thought I had while typing this, what about something similar to the once per mission emergency reinforcement? Have it so once per mission the platoon lead can call in an "emergency medic" or something to have the Zeus heal X amount of players? Just incase we end up in a situation like the end of this mission where we have 3-4 people all with fatal blood loss and no supplies to treat them, obviously not suitable for all kinds of missions, but eh, I have weird thoughts sometimes.[/quote]
The respawn is a worry I’ve had for a while with the new ACE system and we are taking to long to adjust the medical system to our wishes. The thought you had might be good but it sounds like a shitfix to a bigger underlying issue.
Next mission we will have quite a few changes to the medical system on 2 separate OPs to see if they make it better. I hope we can have some feedback after these 2 and then check out if they improved on things.
[quote user_id=“3602631” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/3602631/avatar/medium.1411590107.jpeg” name=“Shiny”]
The respawn is a worry I’ve had for a while with the new ACE system and we are taking to long to adjust the medical system to our wishes. The thought you had might be good but it sounds like a shitfix to a bigger underlying issue.
Next mission we will have quite a few changes to the medical system on 2 separate OPs to see if they make it better. I hope we can have some feedback after these 2 and then check out if they improved on things.[/quote]
I’ve not been tempted to respawn so far as if I know I’m going to be down a while I’ll just load up something on my phone until I’m up, but if theres a likelyhood that I could be down for 20mins, miss the reinforcement timer, then get told I’m going to be left to bleed out… Ehhh… It’s a lot more tempting
My idea is definitely not an ideal fix to any sort of issue, like I said it was just an idea I had Fixing the radio’s so we can call in supplies more reliably would go a long way to keeping people up, I’ll try and keep notes from the next couple of ops with the changes to see if it improves, though I believe they’re one-life ops, so not sure how much medical feedback there’ll be heh
We’ve done emergency medical evacs before to get them healed at based. I think that’s also pretty thematic and makes sense. We usually used for the medics when both medics were incapacitated or the medic ran out of blood. This would have sadly not saved us either that operation though since ACRE created some massive issue for the coms between the players and Zeus.Generally, I am very much in favour of such a system though. I would not make it like a wild card but rather something that can be called in whenever the need arises.
Medical feedback from my point of view/experience: Went unconscious 3 times this op and I have to argue, the random wake up chance is too low and the bleed rate is still too high.
First time I went unconscious was after a 50 cal hit me 3 times in my body (I think 2 large wounds and a small wound). My teammates were right on top of me and able to patch me quick and I woke up relative quick, before the medic arrived. Still needed a blood transfusion as I lost quite some blood, even with my fireteam right on top of me, patching me the moment I went down
2nd time: Missed the entire ambush scenario as I was shot during the drive. Got hit by 1 large avulsion (in the chest I believe) but stayed unconscious for at least 8 minutes. It was only after a medic arrived and stabilized me, that I was able to wake up. Had there been no medic (maybe cause of a similar reason), or had there been a situation where a medic couldn’t reach me, I would have been out for probably much longer.
3rd: Missed an entirety of town clearing as I got hit upon arrival of the first building in town. My wound here was 1 SMALL velocity wound and caused me to go unconscious. My team was again quick on patching (after dealing with the treat) but I still noticed the blood level indicator had gone down at least 10%. After about 5 minutes, the medic arrived and performed medical stuff on me, but still another 5 minutes went by before I woke up. It all took about 10 minutes to wake up after initial wound receival. Had this once again happened in a scenario where it went unnoticed or something, I might simply have bled out from a small wound.
This op does simply show why you can’t compare Medical resupply with Ammo resupply. Just face it, we in CNTO are simply not the greatest at resupply (not specifically talking about this op, but also from ops in the past). And even after we did receive 1 medical resupply, we still did NOT have enough blood. Simply because the bleed rate is still too high. People who normally wouldn’t need blood transfusion now did, consuming the blood bags from the medics, who were now out of blood the moment it got crucial. Causing people to stay unconscious for half an hour if not more. And also the current settings simply influence the ops pace too much, as we simply had moments were we had to wait for resupply for medics, so people could get back up.
Also imo, the ridiculous fluctuation of heart rate/BP from wounds and drugs cause it to be impossible to get an estimate on how much blood a person needs in order to stabilize.