15 FEB; Event AAR

**TheBigC** · 02-15-2009, 08:21 PM

Go ahead and post up all the good and bad things about what went on during the event here in this post.

Now For me personally here are a couple quick points:

I thought the comms went very well. IMO opinion we can run a event without teamspeak. If we are using radio discipline on a fairly well laid out mission we do not need all these crazy channels.
The leadership was top notch. I hope everyone saw how one person was able to control the squad leaders then the SLs were able to control thier people. Hats off to all of you who stepped up to the plate, especially Carver- really nice job!
We definitely need to work on the whole use of tanks in a mission. We had more people injured by the blast than anything else.
The time frame was a little off. We were expecting 2 missions to go over 4 hours, but one mission took 3.5 hours so it kinda got really long.
I need to make sure I inform everyone better on the MODs we will be using, I made the wrong assumption everyone knew.
Players showing up late. I told you we would lock the server, even so we did accommodate people crashing and allow them to come back in.
Smoke kills!! All missions for the weekend event will have to be modified to compensate for the smoke in the vehicles. That crushed the server every time one was popped.

Overall, I had a blast!! Thanks to everyone that participated, especially some of the external clans I saw that joined us.

Lets see some awards write ups coming out of this one, there is definitely plenty of candidates!!

Thanks for a good time!

**static** · 02-15-2009, 08:28 PM

Sry to of missed the Event. On the Plus side I now have a Healthy Baby boy 7Ibs 10oz and a future Arma 3 teammate

**Jeepo** · 02-15-2009, 08:35 PM

Congrats mate!

And I will work on my videos tonight and get them up ASAP!

**Xmaster** · 02-15-2009, 09:06 PM

Originally Posted by static

Sry to of missed the Event. On the Plus side I now have a Healthy Baby boy 7Ibs 10oz and a future Arma 3 teammate

Congratulations Static. We forgive you....for this time.

**Igor** · 02-15-2009, 11:13 PM

Sunday Event AAR
15 1600 FEB 2009
~50 people?

Leadership
PL (HQ Element) – Steven Seagal
B (Inf Squad)- Blackdog
C (Inf Squad)- Spriggan
D (Inf Squad)- Beta
E (Inf Squad)- Bamboo
F (Armored Forces)- Oakley

Mission: Airport Raid by the BIG C
Island: Ace Freya

I was part of Echo Squad

What was supposed to happen:
Steven began briefing people
• His intent was to secure the checkpoint south of the Airport first
• We were to move SE, secure each attack point, and attack the CP (the flag) from the south
[media]http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/4309/36745295go0.jpg[/media]
• We were to form a convoy to move along “route red” which was marked with red WP#’s
[media]http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/1740/54285483ry5.jpg[/media]
• The order of movement in the convoy was to be the Abrams tank, followed by the strykers, followed by the HMMWVs.
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5774/picture045ud0.jpg[/media]
• To secure the attack points, the INF would disembark and clear the towns, while the armored vehicles provided support
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4287/picture063uv2.jpg[/media]
• The same procedure would be used to clear the checkpoint and the airfield, the infantry would assault and the armor would provide cover
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/2789/picture161tm3.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4381/21547149zd4.jpg[/media]
• After defeating the check point, we were supposed to move across the bridges south of the airport and seize the airfield with a similar approach, armor covers assaulting Infantry

What actually happened:
• Began mission
• Loaded up on ammo/equipment
[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2006/picture020cv7.jpg[/media]
• Mounted vehicles
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/6040/picture029cx3.jpg[/media]
• Convoy began to assemble and get in order of movement
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4845/picture042gv7.jpg[/media]
• Convoy began moving along “route Red"
[media]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/249/picture048mb4.jpg[/media]
• Convoy spotted enemy at first attack point and armor began to engage
[media]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3039/picture052jy6.jpg[/media]
• Convoy remained mounted and move to bridge
[media]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/6614/picture062cn6.jpg[/media]
• Like planned, vehicles moved to bridge and INF dismounted
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4287/picture063uv2.jpg[/media]
• Abrams destroys a BMP
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/5250/picture067tc8.jpg[/media]
• Dismounted Infantry begin moving over bridge and establishing a foothold in the town
[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5494/picture073ue1.jpg[/media]
• Vehicles crossed over
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4043/picture078yw6.jpg[/media]
• With support from vehicles, cleared town
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/6599/picture089sp5.jpg[/media]
• Assemble convoy at next WP
[media]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/9499/picture100xa9.jpg[/media]
• A civilian man was hit by a vehicle, we treated him
[media]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7705/picture101al7.jpg[/media]
• Got on bridge
[media]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2977/picture110dm9.jpg[/media]
• Tanks engaged Inf in city of Hel
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4056/picture119in4.jpg[/media]
• Infantry dismounts, crosses bridge, clears town
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/6740/picture129wt6.jpg[/media]
• Again, vehicles cover and follow
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/631/picture135bu3.jpg[/media]
• Our Hmmwv trips a IED, which blows up and kills me

[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/916/picture132ne6.jpg[/media]
• Echo tasked with transporting respawns back to the fight
• Shilka spotted on hill to North
• Infantry order to dismount and locate and destroy shilka
• Abrams destroys Shilka
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3691/picture138tg3.jpg[/media]
• Reconsolidate on WP9
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/6619/picture142fd5.jpg[/media]
• Ordered to mount up
• Take sporadic fire
• Order of movement remains intact
[media]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/448/picture144cr6.jpg[/media]
• Suspicious car spotted and destroyed
[media]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/3430/picture155jg3.jpg[/media]
• Infantry dismounts and clears city
[media]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4883/picture158ir4.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/443/picture163zi1.jpg[/media]
• UAZ counter attacks from east, is destroyed
[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/3588/picture176of8.jpg[/media]
• Stryker1 takes rpg fire and is damaged
• Steven tasks INF with find and killing Rpg team
• Steven begin getting sitreps from SLs
• Stryker is damaged, but usable
• Echo loses a HMMWV, 2 KIAs
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8910/picture180nq8.jpg[/media]
• IED blows on Echo, 3 KIAs
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/260/picture182qu0.jpg[/media]
• 2 more IEDs blow on echo, destroy other 2 HMMWVs
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3694/picture188vv1.jpg[/media]
• All 3 Echo HMMWVs destroyed
• Steven decides to move forces out of city
[media]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6220/picture195sa5.jpg[/media]
• All forces are order to reconsolidate on RP Doom North of town
[media]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7789/picture204gs6.jpg[/media]
• Respawns were loaded up at base and transported back to the front
• Additionally, supply trucks: ammo, repair, and fuel, were moved to RP Doom
[media]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9213/picture216ww3.jpg[/media]
• Bravo tasked with reconnoitering Checkpoint
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7024/picture219wa6.jpg[/media]
o Recon Report:
o 2 BMPS
o 1 T72
o 1 UAZ
o 1 Med Tent
o Trucks
o INF
o MG Nest
• Supply trucks are left at RP Doom
• All elements except bravo are mounted up
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/1576/picture228gl5.jpg[/media]
• Recon moved to WP13
• Steven orders us to linkup with bravo at WP13
• Infantry dismount, advance through woods, armor goes to WP13 and provides support
[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2673/picture229ml6.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/6996/picture233di5.jpg[/media]
• Began pushing up, some casualties reported
• Armor engages enemy armor
• Cleared OBJ
• Consodilated on OBJ
• Inf begans crossing bridge
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/2015/picture240gr5.jpg[/media]
• I am drafted by Steven Seagal to go get supply trucks and move them up
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9237/picture243gy7.jpg[/media]
• Inf and Armor cross bridge and begin attack on airport
[media]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7955/picture247yj8.jpg[/media]
• Charlie, Bravo, and Echo squads are decimated at their waypoints
[media]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7329/picture250uu2.jpg[/media]
• All remaining INF are to fall back to RP Alamo
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/4525/picture271xp1.jpg[/media]
• Abrams pushed up and is destroyed
[media]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/548/picture332ks7.jpg[/media]
• Respawns are ordered to attack airport via Western route
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/5563/25304346qe9.jpg[/media]
• FRAGO, attack on W cancelled, move on original route
• Enemy armor moves ~100-200m North of RP Alamo and engages survivors
[media]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/1418/picture267ns2.jpg[/media]
• BMP shoots at me
[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/5954/picture294ij9.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/7121/picture295tg1.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8611/picture296sw2.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2718/picture281wu2.jpg[/media]
• Jav gunners and armor knock out enemy armor
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/4116/picture326dg9.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/1809/picture329tr4.jpg[/media]
• Steven gives us a new plan
[media]http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5374/picture350vb7.jpg[/media]
• Infantry is to assault through with support of armor from NE
• Enemy is seen on the far side of bridge to the East
• Armor/Infantry engage and destroy them
[media]http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/2146/picture367dz3.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9576/picture369ln1.jpg[/media]
• Infantry rally and begin assaulting
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9600/picture376lg8.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4595/picture379fn5.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/420/picture384js2.jpg[/media]
[media]http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1701/picture387ha9.jpg[/media]
• Armor establishes SBF position, but continues on a little too far, Steven orders them back slightly
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9829/picture393kl6.jpg[/media]
• Continue on and assault
• Destroyed the buildings
[media]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3929/picture400gm8.jpg[/media]
• Victory

Key Issues –
• Sustains
1. PL – Steven Seagal did an excellent job leading. His communication was good, he didn’t hesitate, and he made tactically proficient plans and decisions.
2. Foxtrot Sqd, the armored vehicles, did very well supporting the Infantry during attacks
3. Reconsolidations after actions on Objectives were good
4. Recon of the Checkpoint was exceptional, good job Blackdog
5. Markers on map were adequate for the most part
6. Side channel chatter was minimized
7. Resupply points were near the front
8. Getting back into the fight after you died was handled satisfactorily

• Improves
1. Squad Leaders need to direct their people a little bit more
2. Ensure that people stay away from IED prone areas, after we (Echo) hit our first IED, we continued on in the town and hit two more.
3. There was some confusion on where the infantry squads should go, a couple of markers showing the general vicinity would have helped
4. We took fire on a couple of occasions because people were not pulling security when the convoy stopped
5. Some vehicles were wounding and killing friendlies. At least one friendly soldier was run down by a styrker and a couple of people were hurt/killed by tank SABOT rounds.

Closing Comments

Overall, I think this event went very well. I had a lot of fun, and I know it can be a hassle to handle so many people. Good job TG. Thanks for the event.
-IGOR
[media]http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/875/picture081ci0.jpg[/media]

**Miles** · 02-15-2009, 11:54 PM

Great AAP thanks Igor. I didn't manage to drop a single enemy contact the whole mission. Next week I really need to get some.

**Sam Hoy** · 02-15-2009, 11:58 PM

[media]http://www.x-plane.org/home/samhoy/4324.jpg[/media]
[media]http://www.x-plane.org/home/samhoy/2e3.jpg[/media]

**Dslyecxi** · 02-16-2009, 12:26 AM

In no particular order, some thoughts on the session.

Mission:

It was good to see that the Cobra and A-10 weren't used. I don't think they would have added much to the mission.
Mission was designed for a smaller playercount and struggled to run on the server. At the start, it looked like the server was making maybe 2-4fps. It got a bit better towards the end, but for a good period of time it was obvious that the mission was beyond the server's capabilities with such a playercount. I counted 315 enemy infantry and 154 civilians at one point early in the mission. Including tanks/bmps/etc, and friendly forces, it was a very steep spec for 40 players to be in. All told there were over 570 units in the msision towards the start.
IEDs aren't much fun, gameplay-wise. Having vehicles and people randomly explode without warning was frustrating to experience and watch. It seemed like some of the IEDs exploded multiple times as well - possible scripting/trigger issue? I didn't recall there being mention of IEDs in the mission briefing, either, but I could be mistaken.
No body removal appeared to be in use. This could have probably helped the server handle things a bit better as time went on. Considering that the mission was 3+ hours long, having body removal after 30 minutes would have been reasonable.
The AI did not seem to be up to snuff in some of the areas. I got the impression that many AI units were simply waiting around while we shot up their nearby buddies. I don't know if this was a UPS thing or what, but it seemed a bit "off" at times. It didn't seem like the infantry enemy put up anything resembling a good fight until the last airport area - the towns prior to that were a real pushover, apart from random IEDs. Perhaps this is related to the fact that the server FPS was so low at the start?
Mission duration was rather long. I think it would have been more interesting to do several more focused hour-long scenarios, versus one extended respawn-oriented mission that stretched the entire three hours.
Compass was disabled. This made a lot of contact reporting and general tactical talk significantly harder to acheive. If it's a bug, it'd be nice to have it addressed for future sessions like that. If it's a design issue, the question would be - why? What's the intent of that?
Weapon/ruck/medic/ammo crates at spawn. I didn't understand this part. There were many people who geared up with whatever they felt like, not even pretending to stay within their defined roles. We had numerous medics with M107s, grenadiers without grenade launchers (typically with a scoped rifle instead), and pretty much every person on the server had at least an ACOG sight. It made me wonder what the point of having designated marksmen, snipers, etc was, when anyone could take anything they wanted to from the crates right off the bat. I was really surprised at some of the people I saw doing this, too.

General:

Losing two of the squad leaders immediately upon mission start (Spriggan and Beta), and (afaik) not having them be able to rejoin, was frustrating. I'm sure it was even more frustrating for them. It seemed like other people were allowed to JIP later, so it became confusing as to why squad leaders, of all people, were not able to JIP.

Tactics:

Convoy interval was very, very tight most of the times I saw it. Towards the start, every time the Abrams would halt, you would see three or four Strykers pile up behind it with maybe two or three meters between each. Had a vehicle been hit at a point like that, it would have resulted in a chain reaction that probably would've wiped out the better part of the convoy.
In ACE, you really have to make sure a downed enemy stays down. When doing our town clearings at the start, there were a few instances where people almost were killed because an enemy who they thought was dead woke up and took them under fire.
Movement generally seemed competent aside from the convoy/vehicle issues. Reinforcements were brought forward fairly promptly.

Comms:

Having VON being the only voice communication method used resulted in a constant unnecessary stream of conversation being heard by a large percentage of the playerbase. The constant presence of recon reports, PltHQ talking to squad leaders, etc, made it difficult to use VON at the squad/fireteam level. Moving the command-level (SL/PltHq) chatter to TS would have resulted in a much smoother experience at the squad/fireteam level. I ended up tuning out most of the VON by the last third of the mission because I simply could not listen to PltHQ talk to the SLs/vehicles while at the same time trying to scan for targets, fight, move, and listen to my own team leader.

Now, with all of that being said, it was an decent session. It played out the way you would expect a normal unscheduled session to play out, but with a bit higher of a playercount.

I think the main problems stemmed from the mission itself. This is not to say it's a bad mission, but rather that it has some issues that would need to be addressed to deal with such a turnout.

Most of the behavior I witnessed from individual players was solid. My squad leader, Bert, did a good job even though he had not initially been slated to be said SL (Spriggan, as noted, crashed at the start). Our teammates did a good job as well. It seemed like a very easy mission for the most part, aside from the brief period of slaughter that occurred near the airfield. I suppose some of that could have been due to the respawn - there were only temporary periods of low strength, after which a new wave of reinforcements would show up to the fight via HMMWV and such.

If I could change anything about the session, it would have been a different mission (well - multiple missions), proper integration of Teamspeak into the voice structure, and a JIP system that ensured that key leaders could rejoin even if they crashed right at the start of a mission. Those things alone would have completely changed how the mission went, from my perspective.

All in all it was an interesting experience. Hopefully the lessons learned from it can be leveraged to make the next one even better. It's good to see TG returning to the weekly session concept. If it gets better from here, great. If not, I'm sure plenty of people will still enjoy it anyway.

**Miles** · 02-16-2009, 01:17 AM

I don't have as much experience as you guys do with these kinds of games, so I try and keep myself from making too many comments since they risk being un-educated ones. But I have to agree whole-heatedly with Dys on the subject of the VOIP/Comms usage.

I had a very difficult time hearing and understanding my SL (Bert). I think with the amount of players we had we did a great job of keeping down the unnecessary chatter, but even the necessary stuff was too much. It seemed to me that almost every time Bert was giving an order, I couldn't hear him because someone else was talking over him. Being an inexperienced player, I tend to rely on my SL/TL even more to give me good direction and that was hard to do.

Someone mentioned (was is Steven Seagull?) that SL's should try and make good use of the command interface to try and cut down on comm usage. Maybe that would help. I understand there are some technical reasons that can make TS a pain for some people to use which is too bad. I REALLY hope Bohemia addresses this in ArmA2 and gives us more flexibility with the voip channels.

**Blackdog1** · 02-16-2009, 06:35 AM

Comms are an interesting issue.

Personally...as soon as the command net kicked in, I stopped briefing my men to listen, just incase the reported information affected my squad. All experienced squad leaders do this and there is no point trying to talk on direct or group when PCO is talking. It's not ideal but if another unit is reporting "Lead be advised, we can see alpha group about to walk into a T72" and the Alpha team lead is trying to brief his guys "Ok...lets get into this village and....god dammit, I cannot brief with all this noise on the comms..." the comms may just save their units lives. The system is not ideal, but it can be used very effectively with discipline.

I enjoyed this mission enormously and thank everyone for taking part and having a really good fun session here at TG. We are not here to disect the mission into tiny pieces as that simply does not tie in with what TG is all about.

So long as everyone enjoyed themselves, then today was a good day. Look forward to next week, when you may find some lessons learned and a slightly different flavour.

I would like to thank SS for his PCO leadership, he did a great job as did all the other Squad leaders and players alike.

Well done all, look forward to our next big session on TG.

Finally.....many congrats STATIC.....truly great news, well done sir!

**jex** · 02-16-2009, 08:35 AM

Great AAR Igor.

Unfortunately my PC being so old and slow, I had to bail. I tried to stay in but after 30mins at around 5fps I couldn't take it anymore.

We lost both our TL's in Delta who couldn't rejoin for some reason. We did type it about 10 times but the mission was started - a little more time could have been given to allow them to get back in.

Next time I think a PW might be a better idea to stop pubbies joining.

Organising all the teams was pretty quick which is great. Here's the objective, get your teams there in this fashion, move out. Nobody likes waiting around so good to see we got moving pretty quickly.

**WaterIsPoison** · 02-16-2009, 11:29 AM

You need to get more people to download the mission before hand. Having 60+ people all trying to get the mission kills a lot of people.

**Dslyecxi** · 02-16-2009, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by WaterIsPoison

You need to get more people to download the mission before hand. Having 60+ people all trying to get the mission kills a lot of people.

At start, the mission had 43 or so players. ArmA has no problem at sending out a mission to that many players. What did you see that made you think otherwise? ArmA will send the mission out to x-many players at a time, which will result in those at the map screen seeing some players as yellow/green (loaded to the map screen), while those who are still receiving will be gray. The fact that those receiving players are gray is not an indication of any fault in ArmA, it's simply an aspect of how the mission is distributed.

**WaterIsPoison** · 02-16-2009, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by Dslyecxi

At start, the mission had 43 or so players. ArmA has no problem at sending out a mission to that many players. What did you see that made you think otherwise? ArmA will send the mission out to x-many players at a time, which will result in those at the map screen seeing some players as yellow/green (loaded to the map screen), while those who are still receiving will be gray. The fact that those receiving players are gray is not an indication of any fault in ArmA, it's simply an aspect of how the mission is distributed.

From what I remember, I saw at least five people disconnect when I reached the briefing screen. Granted, I don't know the specifics of the ArmA netcode; just an observation.

**Dslyecxi** · 02-16-2009, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by WaterIsPoison

From what I remember, I saw at least five people disconnect when I reached the briefing screen. Granted, I don't know the specifics of the ArmA netcode; just an observation.

I would be inclined to believe that they disconnected for reasons unrelated to the mission transfer. From personal experience, you can have quite large missions with 50+ players and be ok. It may take a minute longer to load everyone, but generally it won't cause a given percentage of disconnect/crash.

With that being said, if it was ID'd as an issue on TG, a reliable repro method would be useful for submission to BIS as a bug.

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