Please leave feed back, stories or videos about the event here.
Glitched out of helo, would play again, 10/10.
(For those wondering, my MMB hasn’t been bound to access quick menu for some time due to this exact reason)
I’ll quickly summarise my views on yesterday’s mission here so we can start gathering feedback not just for our own community but also Recce Gamers. For that reason I’ll categorise my post in three sections:
Our Performance
I usually try to refrain from overtly high praise and focus on where we can improve but I have to say that performance yesterday was exemplary, especially considering the fact that we ran into a very unexpected complication that had a lasting impact from the get-go: the loss of one of our vital radios and one scout. This severely limited the ability of Deployment Group to conduct their operations independently but we did our best and ensured communications with commands via yelling over the river. While it wasn’t perfect I am surprised how little miscommunication happened along that game of telephone: Clarke-Xerxes-Churizo and back. Mother was a great help to keep the team organised during this operation as I was constantly running back and forth several positions to keep track of what is going on with command, the outgoing artillery strikes and enemy movements. I was also very happy to see that people took the briefing warnings to heart and really looked out for each other, always checking on positioning, spacing and wether or not somebody was shot. The main thing I would have done differently was to be more aggressive and take positions slightly ahead (but away from the road) to have better eyes on enemy movements, however due to a lack of a radio we would have been completely cut off from any comms with the rest of our troops and that could have spelled disaster in the long run. It was in the end due to said lack of visibility that I made a miscalculation in taking a position that I felt was a good location for a quick assault and retreat maneuver on an enemy team moving on our Eastern flank - at least I was the only one paying for that error and the rest of the team had intel on how close the enemies have already gotten to the engineer team.
Our Preparation
Due to the fairly short notice of us participating we weren’t able to properly prepare for this mission and the fact that it was a fairly stationary scouting/defense mission aided us in performing as well as we did. But a more mobile mission could have been much harder to complete without said preparation. So I’ll recommend the following before the next Recce Op:
- At least one prior mini-op. On the Southeast Angola 1974 map with the Recce repo to get a proper feel for the terrain and to get more used to a lack of our usual comforts. Ideally copying the same weather conditions that will be present on the next Recce op. To be clear, I don’t think we should try to copy the actual Recce op and play it in advance, that would be a bit unsporty. Any scenario with the same weather conditions will do.
- A dedicated planning session. All predetermined element leaders get together on the server and draw the plan on the map together. This live meeting will serve to ask as many questions and possible and develop a plan more naturally. Not everyone likes participating in the forums and this way we can ensure all leaders are fully informed what we are planning to do and how to execute the plan, especially if things go wrong.
- Improved calendar slotting. We had a few people complain that we can’t for example reserve the medic role. The calendar slotting offers several colours and symbols. For next time we will assign a colour per element (and post that coding on the calendar entry) and make it possible to reserve each role individually. If there are more roles than combinations we will at least ensure that the specialised roles are available to reserve (leadership, medics, engineers etc.)
- Assign in advance our own call signs. We ran under the assumption that we should utilise their call signs to stay authentic and get a better score. However that is not the case and we can pick our own call sign structure. For the next mission we should assign dedicated call sign prior to the mission.
- Don’t get cocky. We did very well, that is true. But we can always be better. Yesterday was our A-game, next time we’ll bring A+.
Recce Gamers
Finally here are my recommendations for Recce Gamers to improve the organisation of the event.
- Ensure a dedicated mod testing server is available min. 48h prior to the event. If the IP is in South Africa and the ping is terrible that’s fine as we only need to connect to the game and spawn in base to see if we get any error messages. We do not need to play there, just assess our mods.
- The game server IP for the actual event should be communicated min. 24h prior to the event. This ensures that all our members know the event will indeed happen (we had joint-ops in the past where this was an issue) and all our members can be informed via the website, forums and discord.
- We should recommend A3 sync to Recce Gamers. Steam mod lists have a nasty habbit of messing with CBA and ACRE files in a way that is not always predictable. Yesterdays op was in part delayed due to the server setup issues on Recce’s side but also because several of our members in the end had to delete and download from our dev repo instead of Steam due to technical issues. We can provide them with our setup guide and some tips on how to rename folders (no spaces for example) so we can exact match their repo and set it up on our server with ease. A3Sync is also widely used in almost all organised Arma groups so I believe we would not be the only ones appreciating that switch.
- We could offer them to use our stamina modification (with credit to us of course) as well as CNTR. It could boost our image by being referenced on their site as helping them with mods etc. and we could use a stamina system we are more comfortable with. I assume though that they will not be interested in the stamina system mainly because it is not fully realistic, however CNTR might be something they’d like to use.
To nuance the mod situation yesterday:
I’ve only touched the Steam mod collection and manually found the mods used in the OP. They worked flawlessly.
Recommendation for RECCE:
- Make sure the mod collection has an actual preset so people don’t have to manually scrape together mods in their modlist for the OP.
First off I really enjoyed this mission from beginning to end, for example at the beginning just hearing the ai singing while trying to gear up as you would do in real life or at least close enough to real life that is, gave that realistic vibe not sure if that makes sense but, whole well lol.
For me being part of the engineering team was certainly different as it was the first time I ever had to clear mines in an opp environment and control ai as well. I think the communication was very good in by having Clarke speak to Xerxes who well then talk to Churizo then he would speak to me if I needed to call back our engineers.
The most enjoyable part was clearing the mines while having motor’s firing on us and having an enemy soldier ingage with us, which me and Xerxes took no hits to my knowledge which was a surprise to me also we had very good communication between us during the de mining and throughout the opp. Last of all I would like to thank the RECCE guys for making this opp and I hope we get a chance to do it again in the near future.
I’ll follow Clarkes three segments:
Our performance:
I think our performance was great considering everything.
We were only supposed to have four radios for 5 teams (including CO) and due to issues we had 3 radios. We proved ourselves to be flexible by adapting.
Our observation and recon teams inserted perfectly and moved out ahead of schedule, showing that they knew exactly what to do and what gear to get.
Deployment and engineers moved up to the bridge and got into a position relatively fast and we got to building. Due to previously mentioned issues we didn’t have radio comms and had to rely on a system of runners. Less than ideal but we made it work to great efficiency.
After the bridge construction we started getting hit by mortar strikes. Despite this the teams adopted a large spread and continued on the objective, getting into cover when the mortars came in.
Meanwhile recon and observation worked tirelessly to provide me with targets for arty and keep eyes out for BM-21 strikes.
We were very speedy overall, finishing in around 2 hours for what was supposed to take 2,5.
Some mistakes:
I called in the support ELANDS and they both got absolutely wrecked. They are not heavy armour and without player operation can’t support us.
Our preparation:
Good considering the short notice. For all improvement points I agree with Clarke
Recce tips:
Announce server IP further ahead of time.
Provide more spectator slots
Update/improve the stamina system.
Maybe move the mods to A3Sync
How many artillery rounds (roughly) do you think we ended up using? Johan mentioned making sure key targets (e.g. the FOB on the hill) we fully destroyed, would we have had enough ammo to put 10-20 rounds on those sort of targets?
[user avatar=“https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.enjin.com/821401/site_logo/small.png” name=“Xerses”]606558[/user] my answer would be probably… I didn’t keep count during the mission. Mostly I tried to use minimum shells to keep a healthy reserve. That FOB on the hill definitely received more than 10 rounds, due to the nature of hills though arti shells are not that effective there.
Here is the Recording of Recons POV of the mission
Link
Below are timestamps for easier editing with Times and descriptions what happened at that time.
26 min: loading in and gearing up
38 min: Gearing up complete, started to insert
42 min: landing at Recon Insert LZ
44 min: cutting fence insert
55 min: arrival at Recon OP
1:05:00 : Observed EI FOB, marked
1:11:00 : Shells landing on FOB, adjustment made
1:20:30 : OW Pos changed
1:24:20 : BM21 Observed, marked
1:33:30 : BM21 Shells sent to location
1:35:00 : Shells landing, not destroyed BM21
1:36:00 : More shells called in on BM21
1:37:00 : BM21 Active, fired salvo
1:37:30 : Shells on BM21 landed, destroyed
1:45:30 : Shells called in to observed Arty Radar
1:47:30 : Shells landed, missed radar, adjusted
1:49:00 : BM21 Spotted, marked, shells called to location
1:50:00 : Rounds sent to BM21
1:51:00 : Rounds hit, BM21 destroyed
1:58:50 : Bridge build completed, Recon ordered to Exfil
2:03:40 : Taken contact, single enemy, Recon shot in leg.
2:05:20 : Contact marked, arty called in to cover retreat
2:07:40 : Continuing retreat
2:08:30 : Shot at again by same EI, continued to treeline
2:11:30 : Observed sentry before fence, soft contact, being engaged from sentry from East
2:11:45 : Shot in leg by sentry, disengaged and bandaged.
2:12:00 - 2:19:30 : Snuck past last sentry, advanced to fence
2:20:00 : Fence cut
2:20:30 : Leg damaged, limped to exfil
2:22:20 : Arrival at Exfil, linked up with Command to exfil
2:26:00 : Arrival at base, mission end
Update: We won!