[AAR] Tue 10 January 2012: We All Died

[Nullkigan]

Missions:

• Halted
• Cocktails
• Force Ten
• Cordon Bleu
• Surgical Spirits

I hate you all and I think it showed. Tonight featured truly extraordinary amounts of death. Plenty of new and returning faces made sure we had lots of bodies to build a fort out of. Sadly nobody was left to BUILD said fort.

Halted went well. Armed with Lee Enfields (and one AK-47 per squad), we had to engage superior numbers of better equipped forces, then escape after causing a certain number of casualties. We all died.

Cocktails saw two teams of players duke it out. Usually it's one sided, but the defenders won with two survivors, even though it was ~12:9! I myself put bullets in at least three people (only got one kill, sadly) before being executed by Comrade Traitor Wolfenswan.

Force Ten was a bit of a cluster. I'll work on optimising the mission for multiplayer more. After a few false starts we did get an older version running... only for it to turn out to be night. We all died. Repeatedly. As the creator of this mission, I was satisfied.

Cordon Bleu is another hard one. Unusually we managed to break through. Sole survivor Head lives to tell the tale of glorious victory. Until I send the commissars round.

Surgical Spirits would have been a victory if not for scripting errors. We went into it knowing it'd be a test though, and would have otherwise won.

Again, thank you to everyone who turned up and apologies for the mess during Force Ten. See you next week for more death (or maybe victory, we'll see).

[Unaco]

Force 10 was epic, once we actually got everyone in and got playing. I'm not going to write a post on it, but I'll share these screenshots... I killed the Commander and got the Golden Gun again! And then got shot.

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/63...034D6217A0F87/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/63...CCB9F8792E51D/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/63...033BC16D03B87/

Also, apologies to Harlander. Didn't notice I killed you until someone pointed it out from that screenshot.

[evilbobthebob]

Time to write an AAR and pretend I was useful!

Halted

My experience of this mission consisted of not being entirely sure if I was following my squad at any time, watching what I assumed was my FTL die, then hiding in a building until I looked out of a window and failed to shoot the enemy looking at me through it. That was ok though, because everyone else experienced much the same, I think.

Cocktails

The mission began with someone nearby to me throwing a grenade at their own feet, requiring the attention of the medic and delaying our exciting drive in the Lada. My squad had already driven off (see: Halted and my incompetence at following FTLs) so I waited until the unfortunate grenade lobber had been healed, then hopped into the back of the nearest Lada, driven by a different FTL (I think). After an uneventful drive, we arrived at the drop off, got out, and I finally met up with Alpha: the suicide charge squad. As soon as the attack order was given, we raced up the hill to the mansion. My FTL told me to lob a grenade over the wall, so I proceeded to bounce one off the wall instead. Then the FTL was injured (I think it was wolfenswan...) so I stood guard, not realising that I could actually perform first aid for a good five minutes, while the rest of the team attacked the mansion and died. After finally reviving the FTL, we sneaked round the gate to revive another squadmate, followed by a swift jog up the hill to the other gate. Up there by a tree we found another injured team mate so the FTL went to revive him. I covered the gate, noticed movement, shot wildly, but the movement shot back and I was incapacitated.

Force Ten

Once I finally got into the mission, I found myself around 500m from the rest of the team and armed with a M249. "Excellent", I thought, "This'll be like playing support in BF3". How wrong I was. I caught up with my squad, but still failed miserably to actually follow my FTL (which was nullkigan, I think). [NB: I know that the spacebar will identify people, but I had completely forgotten at the time] We advanced down the road, sort of, taking fire from both sides. I failed to find anything to shoot. Then nullkigan accidentally gave me command of the squad so I did the only sensible thing and ran about like a headless chicken until I found a building to hide in. I watched a couple of squadmates die or become incapacitated, and resolved to go out and kill something, or at least make it out of the building. So I rushed across the road to a cafe or something with a glass lower floor. I looked at my map and noticed an enemy marked. Putting the map away, I looked up, saw the enemy, tried to shoot him through the glass, and got knocked out. Ten minutes later (maybe, I lost track of time) I noticed that I happened to be in the house where all the other knocked out guys were being dragged. I was saved! Miraculously I was revived, and went outside to see if there was anything to shoot. Unfortunately, there wasn't, until I noticed something in the distance, fired a few bursts at it, then got knocked out by something else.

Overall it was great fun, but I really need to work on actually being part of my squad...

[Nullkigan]

Panic, gunfire and death. Exactly what I like to see.

You can't actually spacebar scan with the current server settings (which makes rangefinders useful again), but as a couple of people have mentioned trouble with identifying squadmates I'll look into it some more tomorrow.

STHud alleviates things (see the mods thread), and on a number of missions you should see a flag on the map screen telling you where each squad leader is, but neither one is newbie friendly.

[evilbobthebob]

Yeah, I used the map on a few occasions when I was completely lost, but it's a bit dangerous in a lot of situations. I'll look into STHud.

[Siddin]

Panic, gunfire and death. Exactly what I like to see.

You can't actually spacebar scan with the current server settings (which makes rangefinders useful again), but as a couple of people have mentioned trouble with identifying squadmates I'll look into it some more tomorrow.

STHud alleviates things (see the mods thread), and on a number of missions you should see a flag on the map screen telling you where each squad leader is, but neither one is newbie friendly.

I recently installed the TrueUser on-screen GPS mod, but that didn't work in this mission. I believe that would also greatly help, at least for scanning the immediate surroundings.

[harakka]

I recently installed the TrueUser on-screen GPS mod, but that didn't work in this mission. I believe that would also greatly help, at least for scanning the immediate surroundings.

The TrueUser GPS mod only makes the ARMA2 standard GPS feature less visually bulky, it doesn't actually change anything in the way it works. You can still only display GPS (Right Ctrl+M) if you have one in your inventory.

[SirQuijote]

I think there is an option in the "difficulty" settings that switches on the labels on friendlies. It's probably forced off by the server. I think turning that on, along with some other "newbie-friendly" options would help in knowing where you are and if you're shooting in the right direction :D
I know it detracts from realism, but I would like to suggest that at least in the first couple of missions we play with these options (friendly tags, extended HUD info, etc) on so we the noobs at least have a clue of what's going on and who we're killing :D

[Wolfenswan]

I think there is an option in the "difficulty" settings that switches on the labels on friendlies. It's probably forced off by the server. I think turning that on, along with some other "newbie-friendly" options would help in knowing where you are and if you're shooting in the right direction :D
I know it detracts from realism, but I would like to suggest that at least in the first couple of missions we play with these options (friendly tags, extended HUD info, etc) on so we the noobs at least have a clue of what's going on and who we're killing :D

Try a few of the suggested mods. Especially the sthud. Otherwise I'd recommend against toning down the difficulty as it'll just get you used to arbitrary helpers that you won't have any more sooner or later. It's normal to be confused as fuck at the beginning and hardly shooting a bullet (and if so, hitting friendlies). Just roll with it and after a few sessions you'll improve.

[Comrade Commissar]

I can confirm that. After playing with ARPS for a while, my shooting skills went from beyond terrible to "Know-who-to-shoot".

[Roods]

Another classic evening involving lots of painful deaths. I took the liberty of FRAPS'ing our attempt at Force Ten, a mission which is rapidly becoming my favourite on the server despite, (or probably because of) the overwhelming odds stacked against us and the prospects of almost certain death:



Also on the topic of not having friendly labels, I agree that while it is somewhat confusing at first you DO get used to it surprisingly quickly; this is coming from someone who's spent many years playing MP with pretty much all the helpers on.

[Nullkigan]

In the interests of accessibility I have re-enabled HUD=1 for the server default difficulty setting. This does bring back that horrible crutch called spacebar scanning, but makes things easier on the new guys.


E: Roods, check out the guide to using mumble. You'll get half your screen back if you fine-tune the overlay a little ;)

[SirQuijote]

What's that "spacebar scanning" thing??

[kataras]

Pf this makes me wish I had more time to play on Tuesdays or during the week...

Spacebar scanning is pushing the spacebar and then that sort of circular reticle appears which you can hover over humans or vehicles and it tells you their class or model but more importantly if it is friendly or not.

Or you can do like me and shoot first, and then when you find out it was a TK, pretend you don't know who did it...

[Harlander]

Pressing spacebar gives a reading of the distance of the point you're pointing at - it'll also display the names of any units pointed at, even (I think) if they're hidden.

[harakka]

The more important feature of HUD=1, for new people, is the squad leader indicator on HUD. This should help in knowing who to follow and where to be. Remember this only applies to missions played on the default difficulty level on the server, playing on veteran/expert will still have most of the helpful things disabled.

Also keep in mind that space scanning will only reveal information on units your unit / squad has spotted and knows something about: scanning a distant unit, friend or enemy, may give no indication of anyone being there at all until you whip out the scope / binocs. Though especially on Chernarus you may be able to spot things with space scanning before you actually have a visual, thanks to the game not taking all the foliage into account.