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Literally at the beginning a big red circle was drawn and said this is enemy territory and dangerous, FLO decided to ignore that and go into the heart of enemy territory and expected a lenient response from them
I’ve said my piece on NB and AA stuff so I’ll leave that out.
As far as the complaints about the mortar fire goes, I don’t think it’s very valid. Mortars and set emplacements will always have landmarks in the region preranged. We were told during briefing that the blue line was friendly territory and everything beyond that was enemy occupied. For some reason, the plan was made to break 5km into the enemy territory and then move 3km north and then attack 2km west into the base FROM inside enemy territory, passing through a total of THREE enemy villages and ONE enemy city.
From the beginning, this plan was doomed to fail entirely. And it’s no surprise that when the PLT got engaged at a town and stayed around there for circa 30minutes, that artillery was then dropped upon that position. Yes. It killed a lot of people. Yes, it stopped the PLT’s progress. No, IMO it was not unfair to be there. Upon first contact and the lose of PLT members, there should have been a general retreat called immediately. Whilst I understand that is not entirely always possible, I can say as NB I never heard a call for retreat over the 152.
The brief also mentioned the heavy AA presence at the base, so PLT should never have factored in NB support until the attack was in full swing. Once a second reinsert wave came in and the PLT regrouped and commenced the attack, progress was made at a really effective pace. It was a shame we could not entirely clear the base but it was well built and well defended. Perhaps with a full NB support then, it may have been finished.
On another note. I find it absolutely abhorrent for any member to take a leading position (PLT, Alpha e.t.c) and then quitting the mission because they didn’t like something that happened. When you do that, you leave a huge hole in the middle of the remaining members, especially if you’ve chosen odd elements at the beginning. Even if you’re not happy with something that just happened, you should (IMO) suck it up and play on for the sake of everyone else. It is not fun for people to suddenly be left without a leader or any kind of plan and have to reshuffle PLT around entirely.
That said, that reshuffle was very effectively done and commendations to [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/16385839/avatar/small.1599350353.jpeg” name=“Jash”]16385839[/user] for stepping up and performing well as a MAT leading the PLT.
Ultimately, my main take from this mission is:
- Listen to briefings properly.
- Accept that shit happens sometime.
- Don’t be afraid to change plans instead of smashing your head into a brick wall.
First of all the mission had an amazing amount of work put into it and the emplacements around the airfield objectives were really fun to fight through and I don’t think I have ever seen such a well built amount of objectives to attack. The only thing that really annoyed me was that we didn’t have enough time to enjoy all the hard work placed in the mission.
If we do not have the freedom of movement to circle around a set of objectives there should be more of a warning than a quickly drawn circle that is just as quickly removed. The message that this was deep into enemy territory was not communicated very well at all. We have a map can be included with OPORD or the mission can have areas marked as extremely hostile do not enter… Anyway I am not saying everything needs to be put into a OPORD or briefing as missions with surprises are fun! That could be the whole point of a mission, not to have enough intelligence. I don’t think this mission was one of those as the point seemed to have fun attacking a well made series of areas within the airfield.
[quote user_id=“9240990” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/9240990/avatar/medium.1579262273.jpeg” name=“Teddy”]
If we do not have the freedom of movement to circle around a set of objectives there should be more of a warning than a quickly drawn circle that is just as quickly removed. [/quote]
The circle was around the safe area the whole mission, though I agree it should have been a more permanent marker placed.
Maybe it happened so fast you don’t remember but I was talking about the red circle around an enemy area. I guess it is so undefined what "safe" is but I believe that a better communication could have been made to show that everything not safe was extremely hostile and would be very difficult to travel through. I think that was the only problem with this mission and if it was better communicated then we would have been able to attack more directly and really get into some exciting game play from the beginning, just like the last hour of game play which was really fun and challenging at the same time.
I’ll admit, it wasn’t a well communicated fact on my part, it should have been defined in the Opord and on the map from the very beginning. This is my fault for assuming that PLT would go for the obvious head on assualt, and in the future I’ll ensure hostile territory is clearly defined and marked as deadly or dangerous and cut off approaches that shouldnt be taken.
Ah, the red circle. Yes. I was speaking of the blue safe zone marker.
Really enjoyed this mission, mostly because of the chaotic nature of many moments where we were more trying to survive than actually execute a plan. Even though that’s not how it’s supposed to be, it was fun.
So this was my first time as FTL and also first time driving in a convoy.
We started the mission as a convoy (with me in lead) and I was under the understanding that the mountains were the enemy territory, but I assumed that the towns we cleared last mission were still safe ((edit: my expectation - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/427933289643245588/568936137876570112/unknown.png )). So when we encountered (many) contacts while driving towards the village I panicked and didn’t want to expose us by stopping the vehicle and instead decided to just floor it through. I missed a turn on the map so after zig-zagging through the first town a bit and road-killing 4-5 enemies we stopped near the fuel-pump town.
Unfortunately when we stopped there we decided to be friendly with the locals from that town and not instantly open fire on them, but they thanked us by grenading Blodos (and Shadi while patching him), meaning we were down to 1-2 men basically from the start.
Then we regrouped which we managed without casualties, but with some more wounds. I don’t really have an opinion on whether the mortars (artillery actually apparently) we then encountered were fair. They missed us in the first 2 volleys and we still stayed in the same buildings. We should’ve moved either farther into town (away from mortars), or into the forest as staying put was just hoping on them not knowing our location or them running out of ammo.
Then the invasion of the airfield. I don’t think I was a very good FTL and/or Alpha lead, but that was mostly because I didn’t really know how to lead a FT with support from yellow when we were only 3 man and they only 2 men strong. So I didn’t know if we could do effective bounding overwatch movement etc, so I mostly left yellow to their own (Mother and Teddy) while keeping red with me.
Love to Tux for keeping me alive and dragging me around for half an hour.
First of all, sorry to the people that died in the first engagement. My plan did sadly not work as planned at all. I was working under some assumptions that turned out to be false leading to huge losses on our side. I knew there would be some enemies on the path I took. I thought we could take them because I thought that the enemies would consolidate their forces on the airfield. As it turns out they did not reinforce the Airfield as much as I anticipated. Again very sorry that this did not work out and lead to casualties.
I feel like we were already sufficiently punished loosing about half of Alpha through the failed attempt. We tried to fall back sadly, we could not. I was very unhappy with the punishment we received while trying to fall back. We were already heavily wounded but kept getting hit by various enemies, from fireteam sized infantry elements, BTRs, to finally mortar fire. We could not find enough time to regroup, patch up and get moving. Here is where I have a problem: I think Zeus should not keep on punishing players, ruining their fun and motivation, but instead give them some space to regroup and find another way out of the bad situation. In my opinion, the realism part was overvalued here and the CNTO motto "Serious Fun" was not held up. There was no fun to be had.
I agree with Teddy that many things were not in the OPORD and just mentioned in the briefing. As I pointed out before, I was aware of the possible enemies but not that they were heavily fortified on those positions. The AA presence was mentioned but I thought NB could easily handle hanging out 2-3 clicks away from the Airbase south. Sadly they did not take part in the planning and as such could not inform me that they cannot perform this. This was only mentioned when I presented the plan to everyone. This is a bit late, as I cannot spend another 10 minutes making up a plan.
About the "big red circle was drawn and said this is enemy territory and dangerous", this sadly included everything apart from our base. So I don’t think it’s fair to assume, that the direct route would be "obvious" because it was also marked as enemy territory. It might not have been as deep in the enemy territory but again I thought they’d focus on the direct front and not on the way around the front.
Sadly was unable to attend but I really like the amount of feedback in this thread. Well done lads!