FIRSTLY....
Great mission Snake.... truly superb...
Secondly.... If I see someone tearing strips off another player in a
TG server...
there will be hell to pay. A couple of people needed their ass kicked today for some of their responses. The difference with
TG, is we simply dont call out crap about other players across the comms. YOU WILL KEEP THIS CIVIL GENTLEMEN or as some have found recently, you will face consequence.
This leads me to my next point. Today's event was a classic example of WHY TS is not a satisfactory replacement for VON. Due to the way people have to seperate out into their squads, only the commanders can chat to each other and all squad leaders did an excellent job on their radio comms.
However.... one particular player ended up getting stranded thick into enemy lines and basically ended up 1 man versus many... unfortunately there are only so many bullets one man can carry and so he did what anyone with half a brain did, and grabbed an enemy weapon. Ordinarily in VON you can announce as such, and I believe I saw said player type at least once that he had to grab an enemy weapon as he was surrounded and trying to retreat.
Unfortunately those who didnt see this and obviously couldnt hear him, instantly assumed he was lone wolfing and generally firing an enemy weapon to cheese people off! and the comms started to lose all communications discipline. Said player is a longtime regular here and the berrating that occured was not neccessary or constructive.
So....my advice to all is to consider that the comms are not ideal right now, and if something seems strange, go through the channels of command and find out if a friendly has grabbed an enemy weapon and where he is. THEN..instead of shouting about him... GO HELP HIM!!!!! even if he is part of another squad.
So.... in short...said player should have alerted all "better" that he was in trouble, stuck behind enemy lines and carrying enemy weapons... those who were affected nearby need to keep a calmer head in the midst of a battle and NEVER, I repeat NEVER start calling players out as log as you wish to play on the
TG servers.
So that closes that incident and no more needs to be said.....
As to Echo....(Weapons team) which I was SL of and consisted of 22nd members, Viper, ChiefBoatsRet, Python1, and Sturgis.
At the very start of the mission, someone had an unfortunate discharge of a rocket and my PC decided to crap itself.... I was dumped to desktop...
I then rejoined and my team was ready and we boarded a helo and seemed to be sat on the ground for quite a while. My initial thought with regard to the squad departures was that we might become like sticks in the wind and slightly scattered... which is what happened. This would be my only criticism of the CO, who otherwise did an excellent job managing a large mission with many squads. Having all the squads depart together ight have kept things more cohesive from the start.
Once we were airbourne, we landed at our assigned LZ and soon after the helicopter dusted off, I crashed again to desktop.... GRRRRRRRRRRR! Getting a little annoyed now, advising to Command that my 2IC Viper was in charge of Echo and that I would try to get back. Echo was then instructed to move and unfortunately, as I was carrying the only map in the squad... it was extremely hard for the team to head accurately to where they needed to be, but they did well. I then rejoined and was just leaving base in Helo again when ..."Crash" back to desktop.....
I was just about ready to call it a day, when I chatted to INQ (Top fella) on the editing channel of TS and he asked if I was running any addons....??? Now having never had a crashing problem before, this was the first time I had been online to play while using the "Jon's Editor Update mod" running in my shortcut. I had used this to place some objects on my latest mission. Well here's is some advice... REMOVE IT BEFORE PLAYING ONLINE FROM YOUR SHORTCUT!
Once I had removed this, I rejoined the game and bingo...no further problems.
Once I caught up with my squad near LZ Tango, there was a full firefight ongoing in the woods with my squad covering and retreating as per the CO's request who was also nearby, to fall back to the friendly camp nearby.
Once I got Echo gathered up, we fell back to the camp having taken several kills and not lost anyone, to rearm. Once we were rearmed, we were ordered to head to a nearby LZ Smokey. Looking at my map I saw a path that went through a tree line that provided cover and we moved out at the double. (This being relative while carrying .50 cals). As we approached our RP, we suddenly saw contact to our left about 200 meters away. They were unaware of our position but it consisted of two infantry squads. We fell back to set up with line of sight of a ridgeline and monitored for a while. They were not heading in our direction, but probably back toward the friendly camp and the CO.
This was when I decided to call in our first fire support mission from "Steelrain". Once the go ahead had been given by command, we set the co-ordinates and proceeeded to move to a position of cover to watch the inbound rounds, ready to adjust as needed.
The rounds fell spot on and most of the enemy squads were destroyed and we had set up the .50cals to cover and mop up any stragglers... job done..
It was clear there was a path being taken by enemy so we had a superb overwatch position of that treeline at a nearby building. Once we secured the area we called in an ammo supply drop. It was almost a firemission on our own heads, but was quickly rectified!
Once ammo arrived, we set up the .50 cals and one of the gunners decided to go take a leak (Python) just as he did so, three more enemy squads were back on the attack path and crossing our field of fire. His response was "holy crap, I go to take a break for a second and all hell breaks loose again!!"
to which he jumped back onto the 50 and started letting rip into the treeline again pinning the enemy while I called in another fire mission. While the artillery got diverted to another target, the air support from Browna was absolutely spot on! Good job mate!
Once we had cleared up this area, we moved as per commands wishes into the main combat zone to give support.
Again, this is where things became a little confusing... we had multiple different squads working at different objective areas and we were actually heading to a location that already had friendlies in it. Thus their could have been a higher risk of FF incident. It seemed this became a bit of a squad race to clear objective sites, rather than a formal frontline with many fronts. However, the enemy HQ was located, as we were moving we were jumped by another enemy squad in a valley and close quarter contact. The MG's were set up and the enemy squad was quickly destroyed...
We then moved to the high ground were we saw friendly forces assaulting the final hill and enemy HQ.
This was quickly achieved and the mission ended. I have to say, my teamates did everything that was rquested of them, on the spot. The teamwork between the gunners and the assitant gunners became a very slick machine that had the 50 cals set up and broken down in a matter of seconds, providing some seriously heavy firepower on the enemy infantry.
I enjoyed the mission a great deal and Echo did not lose a single casualty to conflict.
Comms were the greatest issue with todays event, but this is simply learning how to get the best out of TS. Other than that, the humour was running high in the 22nd squad!
Good times!
BD1
(expect a pm concerning that soon 
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