[VS] After Action Report

[EsotericReverie]

Post all your glorious reports from the battlefield in this thread. I'll start by cross-posting a small piece from yesterday's desperate defence of Indar:

Thanks everyone for a wonderfully tense night on Indar! We were down to just a single territory and on the verge of losing our perpetual continent lock at several times during the night, but we made a "truly stalwart defense" for the will of Vanu, first at Copper Ravine/Valley Storage Yard, and later at Scarred Mesa Skydock (what a place for a fight!) where we shrugged off epic armoured assaults and wave after wave of galdropping MAX-crashes.

When I logged off at about half past midnight GMT, we had rallied and taken back more than 40% of the continent, in part due to the Hydraffe we did on the east flank, and thanks to the major distraction that Scarred Mesa turned out to be for the enemy.

Good job everyone!

[Wardancer]

I am almost afraid of checking the map today. I was on until 2'ish GMT and we had pushed the NC back to howling pass and was all the way up to attacking Mao before they rallied and had us back to the biolab again with many territories flashing around us. Good fun, did not get stuck into the fight at the skydock though. They really need to do something about the rendering/lock on issue. That really is the only reason why it is possible to hold that place at all. But then again, letting us take it and fortify it was their mistake.

Best moment of yesterdays battles was probably Bravo squad charging down to copper ravine with 8-something maxes running down the mountain side guns blazing. We died pretty damn fast but we racked up a lot of kills

All in all it was an epic fight for Indar with many outfits working together and the leader chat being used by quite a few people having a laugh about the situation and trying to figure out a way to break out.

[Wafflynumber]

Indar will be ours. One day...

[QuantaCat]

I think the most awesome thing to say ever was to "conserve resources, no tanks, so we can buy sundies later on".

I loved last nights fight, mostly because we could safely ignore the TR in the end, and retake lost territory.

[Orius]

How many times have they tried and failed their attacks now? And our global pop % plummeted after the rotation, to boot. How embarrassing for them.

[Boris]

How many times have they tried and failed their attacks now? And our global pop % plummeted after the rotation, to boot. How embarrassing for them.

We do not allow ourselves to be bested by that rabble.

[RIDEBIRD]

Vanu was amazing last night, really. It was very nice to see that we actually can hold out against a much, much better organized NC and TR (working "together" no less). RPS had no small part in that either.

[QuantaCat]

Vanu was amazing last night, really. It was very nice to see that we actually can hold out against a much, much better organized NC and TR (working "together" no less). RPS had no small part in that either.

Im pretty sure that RPS was the only organised outfit to actually do mass cappings in the end, just before I had to go. Im just glad I noticed that TR was completely cut off by NC, so it was silly to retake that post no matter what, if theyre not going anywhere anyhow.

[Yargh]

By the time I retired for the night things had calmed down massively and Indar was safe once more.
Out of curiosity I joined up with the largest open VS platoon to see what they were doing: vainly attempting to take The Crown, repeating failed mag drops, dozens of tanks, over and over. Utterly pointless.

As for the main assault. I was most impressed with the sheer scale of it: seemingly endless streams of vehicles and troops, waves of Galaxies dropping Max suits. TR and NC trying quite hard not to killl each other for one night... And we held them all back, for hours.

[Bankrotas]

Yeah, we kinda screwed up. It's sad that some NC don't see beyond their own feet.

[EsotericReverie]

At one point, Copper Ravine was almost taken, before we managed to kick the invaders out and retake it before the next wave arrived. A good feeling to break that cap.

[Danny252]

Im pretty sure that RPS was the only organised outfit to actually do mass cappings in the end, just before I had to go.

That's why I love being a Giraffe - every week, there's at least one evening where it feels like we've managed to save the collective arses of the VS.

[RIDEBIRD]

My favorite moment of last night was when we were holding Jaegers Crossing against BRTD and the immense tank line of ES and some other outfit.

We were totally fucked. We would for sure have died, but we held out for like 2 minutes, when Freyr finished capping. Suddenly - spanish men. All over the place. MDK came raining down, all 60 of them, in pods, firing rockets as soon as they landed, obliterating the tank line in five minutes with help from us.

It was glorious and one of the finest moments in PS2 I have experienced.

[Wardancer]

My favorite moment of last night was when we were holding Jaegers Crossing against BRTD and the immense tank line of ES and some other outfit.

We were totally fucked. We would for sure have died, but we held out for like 2 minutes, when Freyr finished capping. Suddenly - spanish men. All over the place. MDK came raining down, all 60 of them, in pods, firing rockets as soon as they landed, obliterating the tank line in five minutes with help from us.

It was glorious and one of the finest moments in PS2 I have experienced.

It looked freaking awesome from my vantage point over on the west side of the road. First hearing all the "Holy crap theres so many tanks!" "Do not look down on the ice, we are screwed" and just after that seeing the sky light up with drop-pods... so many drop-pods.

[Orius]

Strike from the skies, brothers! Steel rain!

[Yargh]

Yargh spends some more time cursing the usage caps on his internet connection...

Still, I'll be back from tomorrow.

[NickWhite]

That was indeed a moment to savour. I grow quite fond of this game sometimes. Also, the general teamwork just before that moment. I felt we were part of a multi role army, steamrollering south like we did. It was all amazing to witness.

I thought, the VS getting the act together? Is this a dream?

[EsotericReverie]

Very good job everyone on the inaugural night of TACGIR!

It was very nice to lead you all into the frontlines, though I had not expected to lead neither a squad, nor the platoon as a whole. Given the circumstances I must say it went well beyond expectations! I had not formulated any concise plan or goal for the night, something I want to stress that I think every platoon leader should do.
After some initial confusion, we started by galdropping on the NC, who were close to our warpgate and continued pushing them on the western flank. In an hour, we had taken all NC territories down to Hvar, and steamrolled a couple of NC-vs-TR fights too.

Memorable moments was the glorious capture of Indar Comm Array, where NC was fighting TR, and RPS rolled in like a stormfront, crushing them both. Charlie did a great job on the highest roof, doing area denial for enemy air, while alpha and bravo pushed the ground forces off like bulldozer. A while later, we had reached Hvar, where the NC put up quite a fight, especially around the western tower. Again Charlie took to the high ground to take out the enemy air, while alpha held the point and bravo did an admirable job holding the bay area clear. We tokk Hvar after some very intense fighting and moved on south.

In the end, we underestimated the organisation and force with which the NC would respond to our assault of Indar Bay Point, and failed to reinforce in time. Our assault was finally broken by an overwhelming force of infantry from the base, and armour from our backs.


Timespan: 16 April 2013 from 20:30 to around 22:00 UK time

Continent: Indar

Goal of the operation: improvised; pushing back an NC offensive on the Western flank

Participants:
Three full squads - overwhelming attendance! More than expected, certainly.

• EsotericReverie PL from ca. 21:00
• Ridebird SL, ? RO in Alpha
• MrEclectic SL, Zekone RO in Bravo
• Grible SL in Charlie, Esoteric acting RO

What we did well:

• transportation and redeployment was quick
• orders mostly concise
• focused on enemy weaknesses, flanking well
• dedicated AA battery squad at Indar Comm Array worked very well
• we hit Indar Comm Array and later on Hvar Tech Plant like a force of nature, wiping out both NC and TR at both locations! We took on a force at least twice our size at Comm Array and beat them to a pulp.

What we need to improve:

• PL needs to formulate a goal for the operation
• prepare better for assaults close to enemy WG
• do we need a dedicated PL?
• better air support, see below
• having PL acting as RO in a squad is not a good idea
• failed to use the main group properly, they got stuck at Allatum when the others were at Indar Bay
• more coordination actually between squads (this could work better if we don't also platoon lead)

Things to try next time:

• quick evaluation of situation periodically
• have squads work in pairs, SLs sit in channel in pairs and coordinate movements, PL gives orders to each pair of squads as one unit, maybe try running without radio operators, instead keeping the command chatter down, and split into 2-SL-channels?

Discussions on air support squad. Loki wants to push for an air squad. Coordinating this with

[zekone]

I had loooots of fun this evening, ROing for Bravo squad. Took me a while to get into the role, but I certainly enjoyed the hectic pace. From my aspect, I felt a bit useless to my squad, as I was focused more on ROing, but I'm not sure whether that's a common thing for RO's or just because I was new to the role. I also had a bit of trouble picking out RO and PL chatter over the squad chatter, though I don't know if there's anything to do to help with that (or even if RO's will continue to be useful if we end up doing two pairs of SL's in joint communication).

Many thanks to Eso for PLing, and MrEclectic for being very supportive of me in my first time ROing!

[GinSoakedBoy]

P

I had loooots of fun this evening, ROing for Bravo squad. Took me a while to get into the role, but I certainly enjoyed the hectic pace. From my aspect, I felt a bit useless to my squad, as I was focused more on ROing, but I'm not sure whether that's a common thing for RO's or just because I was new to the role. I also had a bit of trouble picking out RO and PL chatter over the squad chatter, though I don't know if there's anything to do to help with that (or even if RO's will continue to be useful if we end up doing two pairs of SL's in joint communication).

Many thanks to Eso for PLing, and MrEclectic for being very supportive of me in my first time ROing!

I've also found it difficult to listen to both sets of chatter and then passing on the message to the SL and it being heard.

I was only on at the beginning when things were still a bit hectic but I thought that squads could have worked more closely together. It felt like while we were working on the same objective we were just zerging really. There wasn't any cohesive squad movement, covering each other etc. Also, when more than one squad was at an objective everyone just kind of got jumbled amongst each other.