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I have mixed feelings about ending the mission early as well.  On the one hand, as Alwarren stated you never really know when a mission will trigger enemies to come or when something else might happen on the way.  On the other hand, for both the people who died early and those left over, running a huge distance with no action is not fun.  Like Doveman said, at least those of us who died could alt-tab and do something else in the meantime, hehe.

In any case I think a 3.5 km walk without any hope of stealing a vehicle was way too much, even if there were enemies at some point, it still would have resulted in a long span of running only.  I honestly wonder if the mission maker locked those trucks on accident...they seemed to serve no other purpose than to tease you with transport.  Tongue

I think we avoid ending missions early (unless obviously bugged of course) and just chalk this one up to a mission with a design flaw.
I don't mind about not ending early. I can always talk and walk at the same time and I usually alt tab and do something else anyways. I was sugggesting for those who may not like waiting if there are any. Fair enough.
We played a mission of my own where after completing the objectives we were left with a 4km walk back to base. I spawned in a civi truck so we could drive.

I think that would be a good compromise as you can still run into any objectives/enemies that are hidden but without walking for half an hour.
Yeah, I would say that's pretty reasonable.
Operation Al Shadaa

People should start using FHQ Task Tracker instead of BIS built in modules because, they break for tasks and briefings. Guys please look at the ground or hold fire because accidental friendly fires can be annoying, and remap your grenade key away from G... Anyways, mission would be nicer if there were more patrols, some vehicle patrols (whats the point of having launchers without some vehicles), a little shorter, and get rid of the excessive ammo crate everywhere. Excellent shot with the PCML Alias, you got the boat from about a kilometer shot. Bravo Left Alpha Right was also a nice formation.
Operation Al Shadaa

Right of the bat, as Phantom said, lower weapons when we're briefing because incidents like this won't happen then. Also, rebind your GODDAM (sorry for shouting) grenade keys. If you ever played Arma 2, then your grenade key SHOULD NOT be 'G'. Use double-tap 'G' or something else entirely.

About the mission, I thought there were three major issues with this: The BIS module not working, mission being way too long (I checked, it took two hours) and way too little in terms of inter-camp patrols. A vehicle or two would have gone a long way, and lose that goddam Virtual Ammo Box.

Other than that, very charismatic and competent leading (*cough*) and overall well done. It would have even been better if Alpha's boat hadn't been friendly-fiired to shit, but at least we had no casualties, and I should have ordered HOLD FIRE as soon as I saw the second patrol boat sinking. The naval combat was pretty cool, though Smile

Hackers

First, about the mission. I was a bit divided on it. It was too long (as the first one), and pretty cramped with extra tasks which I usually find a bit distracting - defending the outpost was fine since it fit, but the civilians - not so much. Enemies were too concentrated around hotspots, not enough inbetween. Overall, I kind of liked the mission, but it isn't something I would want to replay. Also, I hate big teams, I really think people should split groups up into fireteams and command elements. In absence of this, the best bet for the teamleader is to assign colors and a leader for each colored team, and treat them as a fireteam. Much easier to handle, and would IMO worked better in urban combat, since we were always pretty bunched up.

Something else which seriously annoyed me about this mission was the lack of discipline of the players. Nobody took any note of sides, nobody tried to stay in formation, people were running off from their team, or not reacting to orders (Doveman had to tell people three times to disengage and regroup). This has, IMO, two major reasons. #1, people want to rake up kills. #2, people think they know better what to do.

Concerning #1, I would like to remind these people that this is a COOP game. Meaning "co-operation". This isn't about who kills most. This isn't about who spots them first so he can get a few extra shots off. This is about cooperation, and I would like to keep it that way.

Concerning #2, IF you think that you know better, there are two options: 1) Propose an alternative plan to your teamleader. He might either go along with it, or keep to his own plan. However, the teamleader has the final say. 2) Next time, take the team lead yourself. You will start to notice that keeping overview isn't all that easy if you have to take care of a number of extra people besides yourself.

Combat Research

I made the grave mistake of lingering too long by that first watchtower which cost us three guys. I developed tiunnelvision during the firefight, I should have realized much earlier that the position was getting too hot.  The rest worked alright, until I got shot on top of the tower by the reinforcements.

And that goddam water in the crater always makes my screen go dark.

Anyway, I like the mission, and look forward to trying it again.
I'll comment only the missions i took part in.

Operation Al Shadaa

As AL first time said... lazy scripting. Ammo boxes around spawn, not to many things to do in between objectives, which could make sense if you think of them as hideouts not as camps, but they were looking as well established small bases. Poor choice in choosing location and general settings, i'd imagine a hideout somewhere in mountains or woods, underground, underwater or somewhere deep in a deserted town or castle.
Maybe with a transport helicopter at our disposal and objectives more scattered and better locations this mission could work.
As it is, mission too long, poor scripting and editing, i wouldn't play it again.

Hackers

For me it was fun once we left the spawn area where Magic Boxes(as blackrose call them) read Virtual Boxes were at our disposal. I hate those as i hate having infinite lives, ammo or health in ARMA.
AL is right about big teams, maybe this was the main reason we were so undisciplined, was hard to tell which orders are for the whole team and which are for a single person or squad and when under fire or you have danger close is pretty hard to focus on what you hear... tunnel vision... tunnel attention.
One of the reasons the split in squads failed was the script error that made me leader at some point and i would've asked for command but i knew i can't stay until the end of the mission.

Giving the settings, the map, i'd say this map has potential, but as it is now i wouldn't play it again tho, is for beginners.

Anyways, i like playing with you guys, i'd play even ALTIS life with you if i had to Smile, so i'm pretty happy about our last session. See you next time!
(06-13-2014, 01:57 PM)alias link Wrote:AL is right about big teams, maybe this was the main reason we were so undisciplined, was hard to tell which orders are for the whole team and which are for a single person or squad

It's possible to separate a large group into individual fire teams and assign them another radio channel. Like, say, "Team red, switch to channel 2"
Operation Al Shadaa

I wasn't much use on this one as I'd picked a high zoom sight without any nightvision, so once it got dark I had a choice of being able to see nearby unscoped, or able to see the enemies who were mostly some distance away with my rangefinder!

Then I was a bit over eager and fired my PCML on the enemy boat before Alwarren told me to, just as it went behind land so my rocket just went straight into the ground. At least I didn't blow up one of our boats with it!

I almost opened fire on Alpha's boat myself to be honest, as they all look alike to me via Thermal and we'd just sunk one enemy and I knew there were at least two but happily for me someone else made this mistake first and Alwarren was able to call cease fire before I joined in and made it a hat-trick of cock-ups Wink

Hackers

Things went a bit wrong as soon as we got to the friendly checkpoint. As there wasn't much room behind it and I wanted both vehicles to be effective, I ordered my vehicle to move through the checkpoint at which point we were promptly blown up. After I was revived, I had no command bar (and thus no fireteams) and my radio was on the wrong channel, so that explained why everyone was ignoring my commands until I sorted that out when we got into the remaining vehicle.

Anyway, I don't really see the lack of fireteams as an excuse for not following orders (once my radio was working again) or giving feedback. Several times I was calling people to regroup by name and still had to go and get them before they took any notice. There was very little audible confirmation of orders or any other comms a lot of the time as well. I'm not going to name names, either those who were exceptionally bad or good, as I'll probably overlook some people and it will seem like I'm criticising or praising people selectively.

I think I only got the command bar and fireteams back once we were in the target town and I should have assigned a leader for Red team then, although I wanted to keep everyone pretty close and moving through roughly the same area of town, so didn't want to give them to much autonomy to move on their own. If I'd had the command bar/fireteams before then, I might have left a team overwatching the town whilst the other team moved in but I couldn't really keep track of them without, so needed to keep everyone together.

Perhaps if the command bar is going to switch to someone else and not come back to the original leader when revived, it would be better not to revive players. I thought I was dead anyway and I'm not sure it makes sense to revive someone after they've been blown up like I was.

I was rather expecting some RPG attacks from the hills or something once in enemy territory but as Alwarren says, most of the enemies were concentrated in hotspots and there weren't even any enemies in the buildings just before the enemy checkpoint. We still had to check them just in case but it gets pretty boring doing so when there's nobody there.

Combat Research

I died pretty soon at the first tower on this one. It was fun watching the rest of you fight on though and you did a good job of clearing out the area, although when, instead of your extraction, two helicopters full of reinforcements arrived, I felt a bit sorry for you  :o There was one sneaky guy in the last tower that kept his head down until you spotted him clipping and there appeared to be an officer, wearing a flat cap and sunglasses, standing on one of the edges not moving at all but at least one of you ran right past him, so maybe he was civilian and unarmed.

I think in our case with escaping on boat stealing enemy boats, it is best not to use thermal and just go with regular nightvision and zoom in to see if the soldier riding in the other boat are wearing CSAT uniform or not. Boats are easy to spot and enemy boats aren't very good when it comes to unloading lead. They fire small shots. On the other hand, players can easily choose to unleash hell upon an enemy boat on sight.
(06-13-2014, 09:42 PM)Phantom link Wrote:I think in our case with escaping on boat stealing enemy boats, it is best not to use thermal and just go with regular nightvision and zoom in to see if the soldier riding in the other boat are wearing CSAT uniform or not. Boats are easy to spot and enemy boats aren't very good when it comes to unloading lead. They fire small shots. On the other hand, players can easily choose to unleash hell upon an enemy boat on sight.

It was also my fault, I knew the enemy boats were sunk so I should have ordered to hold fire to avoid this. Lessen learned from it.
The Bomb

I died pretty early on, but the mission was a success either way. Getting fired on early, we didn't really have an idea what the inside looked like, so this quickly devolved.

A Man of Faith

I was killed by a friendly inventory grenade (PLEASE everybody remap your Grenade key), after which Knight took over command and did a good job terminated prematurely by a bullet to the face. The deciding factor for failure was that both Bravo and the mortar team got completely stomped into the ground by a single hunter. I don't really know how that thing could get so close without anybody noticing, but once Bravo was down to two guys, the mission was as good as lost.

Flycatcher

Great job overall, bravo even gained the hill. Unfortunately the plane had already flown off, and the mission should have failed (need to point this out to Varanon). Misha was in charge, and he more or less ignored all the APC's, which seems to have worked quite okay. Bravo got pinned heavily at the factory, though, so it couldn't come to Alpha's support when they got slaughtered.

Too bad, we were pretty close to cracking this one.

Saboteur

Everything went according to plan, except for the last stretch. Team Green did a commendable job with mining the road, ridding us from the APC. My plan was a feinted attack from the south, drawing off forces from the camp so team Green could go in and plant charges. We even managed to take out an isolated missile soldier and get his RPG-42 (Good job, Horus), but for whatever reason, team Green was discovered (would like to hear how) and Red had to turn around and try to save them, which prompted one of the enemy to jump into the helicopter and use its Gatlin gun to decimate Red team. I didn't stay around, but I suppose that the mission was a fail.

All in all, good games. I really enjoyed the evening, although the number of broken missions was... abysmal Smile
(06-14-2014, 10:18 AM)Alwarren link Wrote:It was also my fault, I knew the enemy boats were sunk so I should have ordered to hold fire to avoid this. Lessen learned from it.

Heh, nice of you to take responsibility, but it was my fault entirely, can't really expect of the leader to predict every single mistake, and prevent it before it happens (I guess since we already have shamans, we could ask BI to add combat psychics as well Smile ).

The thing is, we were holding wedge formation for most of the fight, so if I saw a ship more then 100m away, their front towards us, it was the enemy. The problem is, it seems we broke formation somewhere near the end of the fight without me noticing, probably due to narrow field of view of the gunner (though I should've turned it off to maintain situational awareness).

So when I saw another boat far away, heading straight at us, I immediatelly opened fire... Normally I would think twice before opening fire like that, but my concentration was pretty wrecked at this point, mission was really long and uneventful for me, and having 35 degrees in the room didn't help either, so yeah, sorry about busting your boat! Big Grin
Yeah the reason I broke formation was that with broadside both guns could open up on the enemies (front and rear). I knew that I was a bit far away, so that is why I should have ordered to hold fire, since I had seen both shops sink...

But yeah, it's one of those situations that shit hits the fan easily, and we were lucky Smile
Flycatcher


Even if we failed I now have idea how to do it next time. I wanted Bravo to stick with us to shield us from APC's. Flanking over to the north of objective was ok, but we were too close to patrol bellow the base and they spotted us, resulting in entire base being alerted. That's when we lost half of the Alpha. But had we flanked even more to the north it wouldn't happend but encounter with APC's would be more likely. Actually, I wanted to get rid of them but they were either far away or on the move. We were facing infantry all of the time, till one sneaky APC came from behind and that was the end of Alpha.


Bravo inadvertently helped us with their attack on the base from the west. This way each group had to deal with less enemies as they were split and maybe disoriented, but they were still pouring from the hill like an avalanche.
Anyway, tricky, but doable.