Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

(04-27-2015, 11:31 AM)Outlawz7 link Wrote:Sorry about the sneaky RPG-26 guy, that was a bit cruel [...]

I liked it, even though we unfortunately lost people there, but a nice little ambush brings some diversity ^^

(04-27-2015, 02:42 PM)Variable link Wrote:Right! Forgot to write about that. That was one hell of an epic moment. I was sure all of McGregor's tank team was burned inside its tank, and I even acknowledged my team that there are no friendlies around that area, and when Outlawz insisted, I used the binocs and saw a Russian MG gunner suppressing an infantry squad that was moving up on him. That was amazing to watch. It was Etzu returning to the tank to retrieve McGregor's LR radio! As Unnamed said, we provide suppressive fire and allowed him to regroup with us. Eventually, he was one of the remaining four survivors of that bloody mission.


As promised during the mission - For exemplary performance in the field of battle, for retrieving his CO's radio and regrouping with friendly forces while facing overwhelming enemy opposition, I hereby grant Etzu the CiA bug out medal:



Seriously, we need some cool, funny, CiA medals that we will grant each other on the Debriefing Thread.

Huzzah! First, I'd like to thank the man above. My manager, the crew and staff -- couldn't have done it without everyone's help. Last but not least, you guys, the audience for making dreams like this happen!

Ok what did I miss last night?

(05-01-2015, 08:04 AM)Variable link Wrote:Ok what did I miss last night?

Only the best missions we've ever played 



But seriously go enjoy you vacation

RHS: Lost Squad

First attempt went smooth, second not so much. *shrug*

;D

Fight Another Day

I joined teams with Varanon, two three-man teams in same spot just adds to the comms clutter. I think it went well despite most of us getting killed since we beat it on the first try.

Foehammer
We should try simply landing in the south side of castle and get Charlie out of there, Apache can kill the crashed heli and provide cover.

The second attempt went well until BMPs rolled in and killed the Apache. The gunner killed Blindog right after Alpha moved off the LZ (check with friendlies before opening fire?), joining up with Charlie went well until BMPs rolled in and shot the hovering Apache out of the sky and a little later one of them rolled up on us and slaughtered Alpha and Charlie.

Also, never go to those two holes in the western wall of the castle, someone always dies there because its exposed while you can't see crap because all those bushes cover the Russian approach.

Kavala Coin
Leading my own mission, argh.
Thankfully the enemy positions were random so I didn't have to struggle with not knowing.

On Alpha's side it went well, rolled up and down on the streets of Kavala until we had enough intel to start searching for the caches, only lost the AI somewhere.

Fuel Effects
I hope everyone enjoyed the little shows I set up like aircraft flying over, random artillery, the benevolent repair truck, firefight with friendly forces at the end and the hornet's nest that was Gorka. 

I had fun as Zeus, tried not to kill everyone, game did start getting laggy for after the 45 minute mark though, I guess it was all the adding and removing of stuff.


TFAR
I think we discovered that all group leaders stay on channel 1(?).

I have to say that although having alternate channel set up for you is great, it's a headache until you actually need to communicate on it (usually when most of us are dead and we need to find the survivors  ). I disabled it both times on Foehammer so I could focus on squad comms while being the medic.

(05-01-2015, 08:53 AM)McGregor link Wrote:Only the best missions we've ever played 
But seriously go enjoy you vacation

hehe worry not, I have some non-touring time here so I manage to get some internet time and check on my favorite guys.

CSI Blufor

If I had a medal to give, it would go to Matrix_7 for an outstanding performance against overwhelming odds. You nailed it, man

I think we should up the AI precision a bit, they seemed a bit on the low side, and it was especially visible in this mission.

Elicit Diversion

Great mission, good execution, except that the BTR-80 pretty much wiped out almost the entire NATO team. Our final stand was commanded very well by Den, after all team leaders were dead. Those pesky Russians kept us running for our lives more than once.

As the medic, I had a lot of work.

The way up the hill was murder. Once we got spotted, they really seemed to be everywhere. Some good firefights there.

Foehammer

We made it, but I will be honest - it felt like cheating to me. I left it unchecked (not marked as completed). There's a general lesson here, at least for me. I personally do not play to tick off missions from the list. I play for the experience. Playing Foehammer like this was successful but not an experience ot write home about, and I find it wasted on such a cool mission. It worked like this, but I feel it shouldn't be done like this. We have made it to the base a couple of times with the Black Hawk wreckage still intact, so I don't see why we could make this with the Apache still in the air.

I might be alone with this opinion, I don't know. I don't mind trying a mission a hundred times, if I have a good time doing so, and I always had a good time with this mission.

Glowing Desert

Good job on this one. That gust of wind was a pretty neat surprise, although I feel we shouldn't have survived being tossed almost a hundred meters through the air. As I wrote already in the mission thread, the two things that I thought would need fixing in this mission is remove the weird effect (FOV is already quite limited) and add proper tasks (we had no idea whether we got everything or not)

I also noticed that there is still a general issue with people reacting to commands. I said so last Thursday after we played the tank mission on Desert that if your CO orders you to disengage and move, you are to disengage and move, not stick around for minutes trying to squeeze a few shots off. It was like this again in this mission, and as someone that leads this is VERY annoying behavior, and contributes to my dislike of the leader slot.

Another thing was a very devastating friendly fire incident. There are I think two contributing factors to this. a) Bravo did not say that they had captured a vehicle. and b) the shooter did not ID his targets. I think this underlines the importance of communication, and also why I think that everybody should be on the alternate channel to hear long-range radio, because if Bravo had announced they are in a civilian truck, this would have been immediately known to everyone on Alpha.

However, it does not free the shooters from checking your targets. This was a civilian truck, unlikely to contain CSAT, and it was open, so our guys were quite clearly visible (not least because we were all wearing pilot helmets). Please don't shoot out of reflex. Take a second to make sure you KNOW what you are shooting at. We were lucky that someone actually survived the explosion of the truck.

Valley Clearance

As Misha lost connection, I suddenly saw his HMMWV appear directly in my face, no way I could evade it. The explosion killed us all. At that point I was too tired to stick around for another try - I apologize for that.

All in all, a very enjoyable evening, but now I clearly understand what pains Variable has to go through picking missions for the 14-16 player range - it seems to be almost impossible. We need more missions in that range, more so since this seems to be the number we are consistently getting to these days (which is good )

As for communication...
I know it was said before but a good practice will be to confirm the order or ask for confirmation when is critical at least.
I checked the recording for the desert mission where i was told that the leader told me several times to move, however i only heard him once in the radio, dunno if he was using a different channel or it was just a radio key problem on his side. In this case asking for confirmation would've helped to make sure that given order is received.
This is aplicable in a slow paced action tho.
In the heat of the action could be difficult to have a fast response with too many things requiring attention. For instace when i got the order to move i was giving bearings and doing damage assessments for my gunner and took me like 4-5 seconds to switch from commander to driver seat and move while i acknoledged the command over the radio.

Foehammer


I agree it felt like cheating, I let be driven by other players suggestions although in heart I felt that I would rather die in castle while fighting than extract without even getting out of the chopper. We were even lucky to survive as missiles were fired at the extraction chopper. So, yes, mission complete, but only technically.


Glowing desert


As I did testing together with Alias I knew what was ahead, and I was waiting to see the reaction of the other players to being lifted and thrown through the air. I think everyone has become vigilant after that, expecting more crazy surprises.


Bravo, did ambush some vehicles, but we retreated before the tank convoy arrived, just as we thought our job is finished.


I'm sorry for the friendly fire incident, as I didn't announce that we are coming with a truck. Fortunately, no one died.


The rest of the mission was still fun with many ambushes along the escape route. I think it was a pretty good mission, although with removing "the mask effect" it can be even better experience without losing the atmosphere.


Valley Clearance


I gotta do something about timeouts. I don't know what could be the cause still. Because it most often happens at the start of the mission, sometimes I also lose TS, and vice versa. It could be that I have short connection disruptions which programs may overcome. I could try reinstalling al the addons to see if it helps, my rpt is flooded with errors.

(05-04-2015, 01:50 PM)alias link Wrote:As for communication...
I know it was said before but a good practice will be to confirm the order or ask for confirmation when is critical at least.

It is NOT the job of the commander to ask for confirmation. Confirmation should be given automatically by the receiver, and that is the issue since more than once the commander actually HAS to ask for confirmation.

Quote:This is aplicable in a slow paced action tho.

It is applicable everywhere.

Quote:In the heat of the action could be difficult to have a fast response with too many things requiring attention. For instace when i got the order to move i was giving bearings and doing damage assessments for my gunner and took me like 4-5 seconds to switch from commander to driver seat and move while i acknoledged the command over the radio.

I disagree. Especially in the heat of action, it is mandatory and of utmost importance that the commander's orders are implemented immediately, since they usually have better oversight of the situation. Even if you are doing something else, confirm the order and try to implement it as quickly as possible.

(05-04-2015, 01:58 PM)Misha link Wrote:I agree it felt like cheating, I let be driven by other players suggestions although in heart I felt that I would rather die in castle while fighting than extract without even getting out of the chopper. We were even lucky to survive as missiles were fired at the extraction chopper. So, yes, mission complete, but only technically.

I wasn't blaming you Misha, I am not blaming anyone. I just voiced an opinion on the matter, and everybody is free to disagree with that You were thrown into that mission, and everybody was giving their advice at the same time without giving you much of a chance to read the briefing or get an idea on what this is about.

(05-04-2015, 03:57 PM)Alwarren link Wrote:It is NOT the job of the commander to ask for confirmation. Confirmation should be given automatically by the receiver, and that is the issue since more than once the commander actually HAS to ask for confirmation.

I agree, the confirmation should be given automatically, not requested. If you receive an order, especially if it's specifically aimed at you, just say "Copy" or "Copy, <repeat order>". That is standard radio protocol.

Alias, you've been ops leader yourself. You know how difficult it can be, while being a subordinate "just" requires you to comply. You don't expect the ops leader to keep track of all this while the subordinate has an easy job, do you ?

Agree with you guys.
But the problem is when for some reason the order is not received/heard. Asking for confirmation when you don't get a response can clarify that. For leader, would be painful to do that all the time, IMO at least when is critical the leader can ask back.

Asking the same thing five times is IMHO enough in terms of "asking confirmation"

CSI Blufor

(05-04-2015, 12:19 PM)Alwarren link Wrote:If I had a medal to give, it would go to Matrix_7 for an outstanding performance against overwhelming odds. You nailed it, man

nothing to add there.

Lost squad

well..... if you cant see shit better check your instruments  .... lesson learned

Foehammer

I think you are alright Alwarren, we had a leader who didn't know the mission but told him everything we knew from all tries and used gaps we could not have known about had this been the first try. We just played through rehearsed motions.
From the other tries we learned lessons like not to have a chopper hover stationary over enemy troops and that you can land a blackhawk inside the castle perimeter, from this one we learned nothing.