Please leave feed back, stories or videos about the event here.
I’ll leave my feedback structured in a few separate paragraphs.
Alpha Performance
Overall I think Alpha’s performance was good. Throughout the majority of the mission, the two fireteams covered each other and avoided most of the times bunching up. Radio comms could have been better but as I said during the debrief being FTL for the very first time is quite daunting and thus I feel [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/19716424/avatar/small.1540924361.jpeg” name=“Blodos”]19716424[/user] handled himself well. My personal tips for any FTL or element leader (no matter the experience level) are:
- Stay on "red" direct speech volume whenever possible: give micro-management orders to team members via direct speech and communicate with other element leaders via radio. This separation helps to keep radio clutter to a minimum.
- Always reply to orders given by a superior element leader on the radio and read them back. Example: SL "Yellow move East and following the line on the map to WP15. There we consolidate the squad and assess the situation". FTL2 "Yellow copies, we’re stepping off towards WP15." A succinct summary read-back of orders given by SL accomplishes three things: 1.) SL knows you understood the intent correctly and you are executing the order now. 2.) All members in fireteam yellow had a chance to hear the order for a second time and now for sure know what they are supposed to do (in case FTL goes down). 3.) repetition of the order give the FTL a quick moment to internalise what is about to happen, it helps with multitasking of micro-managing the fireteam members and communicating with the chain of command.
- During slotting get pen and paper and write down all 1ICs and 2ICs of each element on a piece of paper or a doc on a second screen. It really helps to keep track of who is in charge of what when shit hits the fan.
- Whenever possible use names to assign tasks. Instead of saying "someone cover the North entrance" say "you there XYZ, cover the entrance while the rest of us clears the buildings in front of us."
When we destroyed the BTR at the supply depot, like many I assumed the small build next to the exploding wreck would shield us from the blast. But as usual, Arma was being Arma and I think the lesson learned here is that we need to stay well clear (min. 50m) of any vehicle hit by an AT.
One thing I noticed quite a bit in Alpha was that 2ICs did not step up on the radio when a 1IC went down. This is a fairly critical part of the job of any 2IC. Example: I am AAR and my FTL goes down, the second I am aware of the fact this radio call has to go out: "This is Clarke taking over Yellow, XYZ is hit and unconscious". This ensures that SL always has the full picture of who is leading the fireteams and what the status of his FTLs is when they are unable to communicate. The same principle applies to FTLs and SLs, when and SL goes down A1 lead has to immediately communicate this via short-range and if SL perishes recover the long-range and pass on to PL that the element is being taken over by an FTL because the SL is dead.
Finally, I had an instance where I almost shot a friendly at 100m range because he was carrying an AK - he was firing well past me to engage an enemy at another ridge but still, this could have gone very wrong very quickly. Information regarding enemy equipment pickups (especially rifles) has to be carried through the entire CoC on both long and short range radio so people are fully aware.
Leadership
For most of the mission, leadership was solid, I liked the plans laid out and the adaptability of said plans once on the ground intel changed our approach.
As stated by others during the debrief PL should not be at the front lines unless absolutely avoidable, which it generally is because if SL goes down either FTL1 or FTL2 will become the new SL so there is no need for PL to take over the squad directly.
This is something that is highly situational but I did notice two occasions where we could have eliminated an enemy fireteam that was patrolling out in the open with no cover while being unaware of us. We had ditches, trees and rocks so definitely a tactical advantage when it comes to cover. In my view, it is almost always preferential to engage such an element in a coordinated long-range ambush instead of trying to sneak closer. In the second situation, we finally got spotted by the patrolling element while we were on the move to close in and thus found ourselves out of position with only half our forces being able to return fire effectively.
Lastly, when a Tuesday mission approaches 22.30 the mission has to be concluded within 10(ish) minutes to allow for a proper debrief and closing of the mission by 23.00. In my view leadership should have concluded the mission around the CNTR mark of 2:10h, we started 10-15 minutes late yesterday due to technical difficulties. There’s no shame in calling a mission quits because the time ran out. A Zeus can come up with a follow-up scenario like "we didn’t manage to escape the island, but we found an abandoned mine shaft at hill " (can’t see the hill number or town name on CNTR). After a night of sleeping rough, we continued with our mission etc."
Zeus
In general, I enjoyed the mission and the added tension of not having resupplies. The scenario was certainly interesting but far too ambitious for a single Tuesday op. Overall I had a positive experience in this mission but during it and now on CNTR several minor things bothered me a bit so I’ll list them here as hopefully constructive feedback.
In the beginning, we were dealing with a lot of technical issues due to the ACE/CBA update of the weekend. While people were still spawning in one by one we suddenly got engaged and while we managed it well I think the AI should have been on fully passive until we had most people from mod support back in game and had time for a team huddle to orient all element members of what we are about to do. The engagement forces us to skip that and push fairly aggressively forward into obj 1 right away.
The mines in my view should not have been present in this mission. There were already a lot of objectives to complete and no vehicles to facilitate fast movement or reinserts. The mines (even though most of them seemed to be training mines) just slowed us down further in several stages of the mission, thus contributing to us running out of time.
Just like with leadership the Zeus especially needs to respect the players time. Around the 2:10h mark we moved up the hill and kept getting engaged by a sniper, an enemy well outside of our range to safely identify and kill without taking losses. It slowed us down and forced us to move around the hill and assault the town from the North. Then later once we were inside the hospital Yellow had occupied the first room, Red was covering outside as SL had just been killed. Yellow was stacking up on a door to deal with a CQB contact on the other side when suddenly a player controlled AI runs past Red team into the room of Yellow and lit up three of our guys completely (RL time was around 22:35 ish). Red subsequently rushes in with the medic to save three unconscious people and the wounded survivor and then before everyone is back up nades start getting fired into the room one by one, further wounding people. While during debriefing explained as teachable moments or "punishments" Zeus has to keep in mind what time it is, especially during a weekday op. Events are not training-ops and picking moments when we are already approaching or within overtime to punish players or slow them down unnecessarily is a no-go in my book. It further contributed to mission-fatigue and people feeling like they just want to be done with it. In my view, all three instances (sniper, CQB runner and grenade thrower) were unnecessary and quite tiresome. Maybe one of those moments would have been ok(ish) for me but all three strung together in a row really hampered the experience at the end of the mission. A good example of us getting punished during the mission was around the mid-mark where Red team got wiped by a static emplacement due to a close-by building not being properly cleared.
overall I enjoyed this opp despite my incompetence as an effective FTL, I do agree with the feedback that I have received and I will try my best as one can do and pick up on my mistakes. For the opp itself I think the first 2-3 objectives went somewhat smoothly even though we could of gone a bit quicker in taking the objective as we were taking far to long on some of them but, in some cases it couldn’t be helped.
As for the blue on blue that occurred I couldn’t find the first one the CNTR but, I did find the second one and I have no Idea why it happened all i know is that i think at the time i was outside trying to get the long range radio to work and even though i was somewhat close i didn’t hear anything about friendly fire in any case since DVD is in my squad i will take full responsibility for his actions since i probably could of told him to check his fire since there could be friendly still inside or something along those lines.
Last of all thank you for the mission Dusty it was a good mission despite it the problems that occurred plus next time make me spec opp or something so i can go solo and stealth kill some enemy infantry which is what im good at lol.
Very good mission, good Zeusing. Had no problem with anything what was done by Zeus that day. Loved the mine-fields, number of enemies, testing our vulnerabilities. Had feeling like it was realistic mission as some units were well controlled and I would like to see this always 
One thing - we have big prolem with getting spotted by the enemy first - in this case I would suggest to ask yourself after you spot them and call 3*Ds (direction, distance, description). If the AI would be a player, would he be able to see me ? If the answer is yes, get in defilade or prone and do not get higher than crouch or prone. One person get spotted - all the team is revealed.
The lower profile you keep - the harder is for AI to get spot you - it s programmed. Even just getting into crouch will help a lot. If you are prone - do not fidget - use the alt key for head swivel - as you would in KOTH for example. Think about how AI spotting work and do not forget - Zeus is there and he sees too.
I enjoyed the op. I believe our performance was overall very good with minor mistakes here in there. I would say the operation was way too long. It was the 2nd longest operation in the past 6 months and that on a Tuesday. This is why we had people disconnecting during the last hour making every fireteam less effective.
And then there was the issue of enemies spawning behind us and in locations we checked. This is unacceptable in my opinion. I already don’t agree with getting punished by Zeus for every mistake but at least the enemy force should "punish" us fairly. Because it really does not teach anyone anything if they just come from behind where we already checked.
Here are some examples:
http://priv.carpenoctem.co/cntr/?m=72aac8a3&t=3247
http://priv.carpenoctem.co/cntr/?m=72aac8a3&t=8283
http://priv.carpenoctem.co/cntr/?m=72aac8a3&t=8614
http://priv.carpenoctem.co/cntr/?m=72aac8a3&t=9157
There are more single infantrymen spawn at the questionable location during the op.
I agree with [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/16433725/avatar/small.1623044483.jpeg” name=“Flo”]16433725[/user]. Spawning in enemies this close to us, especially in locations that were already searched and cleared should be a no-go. I wasn’t aware of how much it happened during the op but the footage linked by Flo are good examples of instances I find very questionable indeed. Thank you for taking the time to comb through CNTR for these links.
Especially situation number 1 where the building was searched and cleared by Red team and then while Yellow passes [user avatar=“https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.enjin.com/821401/site_logo/small.png” name=“Mother”]18447842[/user] checks the same building again to ensure it is indeed clear. A few moments later an enemy with a silenced weapon pops out that very same building and lights me up like a Christmas tree. During that engagement, I call out the enemies direction which results in a minor argument because several members rightfully claim that it’s impossible that I was being shot from a direction that was thoroughly cleared just minutes ago.
In a table 1 discussion infiltrators were mentioned as part of the story and I assume these spawns were exactly that. But those enemies should be pre-placed, prone and set to not fire and then be used IF they were not discovered. To make them impossible to find and then punish players even after they cleared the location they came from is just frustrating.
To be clear: the enemies don’t have to be pre-placed an hour or even half an hour in advance. Just within a reasonable time frame before we go to the area in question to allow for their discovery.
As PLT I think we did alright and I no longer feel bad for missing the suppressed guy at the river, since he wasn’t there to begin with.
Assuming this gets fixed in subsequent Zeusing missions(as I also +1 the don’t ever spawn in areas people checked rule), we should be granted a better opportunity to perform at missions such as these. Being stabbed in the back ain’t fun for anyone.
Despite this being a small island, there was simply too much walking as reinforcements. I think this type of mission should be one life if anything.
And of course, please don’t let the enemy shoot into spawn when we’re planning.
So I really enjoyed this mission. I got killed by explosions twice this mission, so I think I’ll be more careful of exposing myself to them in the future
There are a couple moments I want to highlight we could’ve done better that weren’t mentioned. This was only my 2nd mission so I don’t know how common these mistakes are, but my first example is at CNTR - Carpe Noctem Tactical Recap
Here I am sitting on the roof with Mother looking at the town, and I see a guy coming from a direction from which I thought there are no friendlies (south-west). Right before I saw him however we were told that there are friendly engineers across the road. I don’t really know all the uniforms yet, so although I knew this guy was not from Alpha, I wasn’t sure if he was maybe an engineer, PLT or the pilot. I did however ask another 2-3 times if we had friendlies across the road in the south-west as this guy was being very shifty only looking at our direction, instead of covering in the direction where actual enemies would be as this area would’ve been cleared if engineers had pushed up to there. I had my gun trained at him the whole time in case he opened fire but he didn’t, but he’d definitely spotted us. Maybe my communication to Clarke was unclear as to where I though I’d seen hostiles, or maybe there was a mixup between PLT and him. In any case he escapes and later places the autoturret that kills Red.
In general in this mission I had problems with identifying the engineers as the people outside Alpha don’t have a nice HUD showing they are friendly, though I don’t think I ever fired a bullet at a friendly as I was being very careful.
The second occasion is at CNTR - Carpe Noctem Tactical Recap
We’re pushing along the south bank of the stream, but nobody is covering the north bank, so we get ambushed and 3 people of yellow go down wounded. We were going single file along the riverbed there, so idk who’s responsibility it is then to keep an eye on our left flank, but we could’ve come off much worse in that engagement.
Under sniper Fire
Opens door*
"Bad door*
flo-"why is it a bad door"
flo opens door
flo-‘BAD DOOR BAD DOOR’