Please leave your feedback, stories and observations about OP Invasion here.
Now put your legs up
Really loved Malden, it just feels realistic.
As for how we performed: well, it seems Alpha 2 (yellow team) was unable to form a wedge for three times in a row and it’s very annoying to just not be able to keep a formation in a fireteam. I have to agree with who said that radios were constantly busy for no reason, to me it felt there wasn’t a proper chain of command where SL gives orders and FTLs readback and acknowledge but rather a common discussion over the radio which ended up being confusing. One thing we often miss is calling the involved element in a communication; no surprise then if nobody understands what the task is, the task "we’re going there" is just too generic.
Also someone said during debrief that our movement was a bit chaotic and that’s true, but maybe that was due to the time limit and the absence of PLT coordinating all elements which led to a higher payload of work for Shakan as SL.
Anyways I enjoyed the mission a lot, can’t tell what difference Dachi and Freghar made playing as OPFOR but it’s going to be interesting to watch CNTR recording. As always, thanks guys.
The way the mission was supposed to be set up was to have a recon mission a day early. They would slip in (4 man team) and find out mission objectives, mark up where the enemy troop concentrations were, hide out and wait. Then the next day the actual coop would start with the intel given to us by the SF team, they would begin on the island itself and start causing trouble for the defenders so their attention is taken off the main strike force.
Had everything worked out as planned we would have had a much better experience, unfortunately Highway encountered some difficulties with a vanilla module that precluded the SF recon mission, effectively forcing us to go completely blind into the main mission.
I agree with what’s being said above, blue team did maintain wedge although the radios were busy as all hell. In my opinion orders should be simple and clear. Move there, set up here, watch this road, attack that house. That said I find the technical issues of the mission set us back considerably. I do apologize for advising the SL not to take the AH-1Z cobra for the mission as I didn’t know there was only 1 AA unit in the area. I think we need to run some training concering formations and maybe do something about radio chatter. While I noticed that the chatter was excessive, I also noticed that sometimes it was absent when necessary, for example when we were doing bounding overwatch yellow team missed 1-2 prompts of "Yellow moving!" or "Yellow, set!" which slowed us down by some so we need to work on that as well.
I made a list of things that need changing in order for future such missions to be much smoother.
1 Side channel for map markers - We only had global and group, which made us waste precious time on getting all 4 elements to mark the objectives on the map, the alternative was to announce our plans to OPFOR.
2 Long Range Radio box for use with artillery - Arty units could have one in it’s inventory so people who got killed could coordinate fire missions with the troops on the ground. I operated the M119 howitzer but I couldn’t get into contact with the SL because of a lack of radio which really hampered the effectiveness of the fire missions as the communication was done through map markers so no effect on target could be relayed back to me. The howitzer itself shook itself apart after 4-5 shots, killing me in the process so we couldn’t use to support the final attack at all.
3 The assets themselves. The M119 was shaking itself apart and the AH-1Z had useless Hellfires. Note that I don’t blame Highway who had no way of knowing about either. AH-1Z’s Hellfires got fucked major league by the Jets DLC as it cannot lock onto targets that are more than 1.5-2 km away, putting it into harm’s way of the AAA emplacement. I will do an equipment check to inform mission makers what works and what doesn’t such things can be avoided in the future.
The mission was fun for me, I hope we have multiple such missions (preferably with the included pre-mission recon sweeps), all around good fun, but also a sign we need to have basic training more often in order not to go off the rails.
The replay is now up on CNTR.
Apologies for talking too much over the radio as SL, I always get too chatty when excited…
Well, practice makes perfect I can safely say nobody here was born a SL, FTL or any other role. The more you are exposed to the stress of command the less effect it will have until you basically consider a tank assault on your position a "day at the office".
But like I said we need to train more frequently so stuff like this becomes second nature.
Also a bit of an add-on to my point regarding the M119 howitzer, I think that artillery training should be done so more people know how to use the arty calculator and map tools to strike enemy targets in cases where we have no artillery computer. I wouldn’t put it as a general training but more like for those people interested in learning it.
Mission was fun [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/13688253/avatar/small.1433248519.jpeg” name=“Highway”]13688253[/user]. Yet more than any of the gameplay I appreciate the experimentation.
It is little too often for my taste that our missions seem to mostly boil down to fairly generic attack, patrol or defense missions. Not that there is anything wrong with them but I would like to see more experimentation and innovation if possible for missions. New angles or just new spins on old concepts. New does not have inherent value in itself but it does keep our gameplay varied and attempts to increase the fun factor.
I enjoyed the mission with the chance to use the support teams DMR and MMR in the taktics.
Best for me was the hunting game at the end of the mission. After i looked the replay on cntr I think this was finally a draw in the control zone of the last objective with 4 AI, Dachi and Freghar against me. 
With additional long range radios the artillery would be more useful.
Perhaps a transport truck and some boats in the harbour would be an other option instead of flying by chopper.
Thanks guys for the feedback, really appreciate it. I was unable to play it but this way it was even better test than if I was present.
Some conclusions besides fix the obvious bugs with artillery, markers etc are this:
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Original intent was to allow teamwork, cooperation and tactics for both sides. Instead of evolving it to usual individual pvp shoot and move pattern I would like that suppression, flanking, security and all the nice things we love to use in coop games be applied to hybrid. I have somewhat failed in that and will look to fix this in the next iteration. Opfor due to very limited number of people could only play pvp while I don’t know about blufor. There was indeed more room for proper application of tactics but still 15 players had to fight 20+ enemy soldiers at the same time. Tactics don’t help that much when sides are involved in a fair fight (quite the opposite). Removing AI from opfor makes the mission extremely flat (stupid) while adding more AI to blufor evolves into something I can not comprehend. Ideas are welcome.
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Unfortunately opfor guys could not command AI due to high command being broken in multiplayer.
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Unfortunately blufor restrained from using the Viper due to hellfire issues. Artillery piece is odd and will replace it with something like self propelled artillery vehicle.
[youtube]OzVJnkaMG-Mhttps://youtu.be/OzVJnkaMG-M[/youtube]
[quote user_id=“15519795” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/15519795/avatar/medium.1493755975.png” name=“Argon”]Well, practice makes perfect I can safely say nobody here was born a SL, FTL or any other role. The more you are exposed to the stress of command the less effect it will have until you basically consider a tank assault on your position a "day at the office".
But like I said we need to train more frequently so stuff like this becomes second nature.
Also a bit of an add-on to my point regarding the M119 howitzer, I think that artillery training should be done so more people know how to use the arty calculator and map tools to strike enemy targets in cases where we have no artillery computer. I wouldn’t put it as a general training but more like for those people interested in learning it.[/quote]
This is a really great idea but I would say also come along if you want to act as a someone who calls in artillery. The main problem I encountered when using artillery manually was no designated forward observer and no standard way to report the fall of the shot. Basically I caused problems by asking for fall relative to the last shot, the target or friendly units and we got all mixed up… Woops.