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AAR: Bridges, 26 September 2009
First off, there won't be too many names since my role in this mission was so focused on myself, basically. As one of two engineers in this mission, I didn't have too much interaction with anyone besides Falcon (who performed the commander role) the Battalion Engineer (played by Nightbridge?), and the medic (played by Indy).
Mission kicks off after a nice, quick plan that made sense, complete with a fallback position should everything go to doodoo (which it eventually did). I look around to get my bearings, then head off quickly to the ammo point to grab one or two more satchel charges. After doing so, I run to the regular bridge and wait for further guidance, as I had never played the engineer and was not sure where exactly to place the charges to ensure the destruction of the bridge if it came to that. Nightbridge planted his three charges on the railroad bridge and ran off to begin the sandbag emplacements. The crazy AI who were evacuating from the north began to attempt to drive around the bridge instead of over it for some reason (apparently me standing there was an insurmountable obstacle). A bus carrying civilians touched the 5 inches of water in the coastal flood plain that the bridges cross and detonated. Apparently the water is laced with nitroglycerine.
I sustain heavy injuries from the random blast, but am quickly healed by Nightbridge and Falcon. I run back to the ammo point to grab one more satchel to finish properly rigging the bridge to blow. Once that was complete, I guess I missed the part about the mission having limited sandbag emplacements, as I added two positions to the fireteam 2's position to give them more cover, which meant the weapons squad got the short end of the stick (no more sandbags!).
The attack commenced shortly after. I ran to the aid station / ambulance and got healed up, and then moved to an overwatch position to keep an eye on the bridge. The railroad bridge had already been detonated (I assume by mistake, something I almost did because the mouse-wheel menu is a little cluttered, easy to hit the "touch off 6 bombs" option). The first wave of enemy soldiers were squashed relatively easily, but we began taking more losses as the BTRs showed up. I called out a few spot reports to Falcon detailing the position of the BTRs in proximity to the final bridge. I assume we began taking heavy casualties, as Falcon gave the command to destroy the final bridge and fall back to the farmhouse to the west of the factory. I went downstairs from my overwatch position, discovered someone badly injured and healed them up quickly. As I moved into the factory I noticed that fireteam 2's position had taken heavy casualties and smoke grenades had been tossed out to give concealment to rescuers attempting to recover the injured and drag them to safety to be healed. I sprinted out towards the furthest sandbag emplacement to grab the final guy, but I realized too late that the smoke hadn't bloomed enough to hide me from the BTRs that were still rampaging. I grabbed the casualty (was he dead already?) and began to drag him back, figuring it was too late to do anything else. I heard something yelling for me to fall back, heard the snaps and cracks of rounds zipping by me, and then got chewed up and killed.
I spent the remainder of the round as a raven. The survivors put up a good defense at the farmhouse, taking some more casualties from the chopper that hovered over the position and zapped anyone in the open. The chopper was eventually grounded and the rest of the team spent a large amount of time holed up inside one of the warehouses. They eventually pushed out and regained control of the town, destroying multiple enemy soldiers and even blowing up a BTR that managed to circumvent the destroyed bridge without blowing up in the nitroglycerine water hazard. It was determined that the end point was somehow bugged and the mission was determined to be a minor BLUFOR victory.
Criticisms: I didn't like the fact that certain players were exploiting the AI system to repeatedly respawn in the mission. I hope that it doesn't happen again despite the temptation. If you die and the mission creator has not made the mission JIP, then stay dead to maintain the flavor and tension of the mission.
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