Coridon

I'm going to cheat and copy and paste most of my post from the 1stMIP team forum, haha...

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I don't remember which side won each round...in fact there's only a couple where I can say with certainty which side won. The last two!!

I don't remember all the maps I played...I think Mashtuur was just me (SL) and Aculle (Engineer) and we ended up collecting some more guys and defended Backyard for USMC the whole round. I think we may have lost the flag at the very end but my memory is hazy...I know we successfully defended it almost the entire round and the guys in the squad with us did an excellent job following orders.

ATOM we were USMC again and performed an unsuccessful HALO on the chinese airstrip. When it failed I jumped and landed on the roof of the warehouse East of the flag (in between two hostile flags) and when I told A2 to fire at a buggy Mosely rightfully said that we were undetected as of yet. We let them leave, we took the airstrip, Dark Vipers squad defended and we executed another great move in capturing the flag directly to the East of the airstrip. The last three minutes degenerated into a fragfest with an enemy transport helo dopping guys on top of us but this map was one of my highlights for the night for me.

Sharqi was the last round I SL'ed and originally we defended Hotel but somehow that MEC attack helo was kicking the snot out of us. We then defended Surveillance and I moved North to see if I could hear anyone trying to pass by and when I heard a vehicle I ordered Bravo (Canuck and Drunk) to clear them out, only to find it was BIZZARO 1stMIP squad, haha!! I felt like Darth Vader saying "All too Easy..." when you were all down. Commander kept changing orders and I talked to him a lot and helped get many of them altered so we weren't constantly in motion.

I commanded on Clean Sweep and even though we didn't win I think it's a challenge just to keep from getting wiped off this map, so it was a "morale" victory!! BTW, Duke, does MEC have a transport helo? They might need one on this map otherwise it's really tough to retake Western flags once they've fallen.

Abu Dabi Grunt SL'ed and we all waited to spawn on him and by the time he loaded we didn't have any flags, oh my!! Eventually our side captured one and we were able to spawn but that was a short short round of getting kicked in the face.

Great games and hope to see a lot of the familiar faces Thursday night!!!

Dark Viper

O forgot to mention the first 2 times my squad captured the airfield and nobody spawned to help us defend lol. I found that you can drive a humvee up the west hill but you can't drive a DPV up it, strange I know.

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|TG-33rd|Dark_Viper

Coridon

That's because there were no squads to spawn...I think at that point the USMC had all of the flags but one, so everyone else was pretty busy!! I must have really dawdled because by the time I had the Blackhawk off the carrier USMC was just smothering China on that map.

When TacMod first came out, I saw nothing but slow, cautious advancing, which really stood out compared to the arcadey run-n-gun of vanilla (well, you saw this too, but those players disconnected quickly). Now there's starting to emerge a mix of slow + cautious AND blitz.

Last week I minimized on Oman to find the SL teamspeak channel because I didn't think we'd get hit right off the bat. Unfortunately, the 7th rolled us over while I was "away". I made sure to watch out for such attacks last night and I actually saw quite a few of them. It's refreshing to watch both methods of attack starting to work if successfully executed (plus a little luck is always necessary).

ChIck3nL3gz

I left in the middle of Sharqi, it sucked because the (MEC) Irregulars (Squad 1) had a coordinated attack with squad 6 on the construction flag. I've got to say the two coordinated attacks we had ont he construction flag were my highlights of the evening. First time I split myt squad up into two fireteams. Jmaker and I went east while the rest of the squad went west. I ended up changing the plan half way through when I saw the perfect opportunigty to lay down covering fire for both advancing squads. Near the gate on the one side (the side with the pipes) I managed to take out 4 of the opfor while both my squad and squad 6 advanced. We took the flag, then it was taken back from us but then we managed to take it back a second time and thats when I had to leave.

Coridon, that was also squad 1 (Irregulars) at the airstrip on ATOM we were defending the Airfield Entrance when I had noticed you guys took the airfield itself. So we launched wave after wave of offensive to dislodge you guys from the flag. That was a weird map for me because I had been in squad 1 for most of the game then I heard Asch over VOIP ask if Squad 4 had to be one man. So I opened the SL screen to send the occupant of squad 4 intot he Irregs squad and it turned out that I was the only person in squad 4. I have no idea how I got there, I never consiously left squad 1. I must've been playing like that for 10 minutes and I had been using VOIP thinking that my guys were hearing me. It was definitely weird.

They were definitely really great games last night and I can't wait for tomorrow night.

On a side note, we need to start using the SL channels on TS. They work rather effectively to coordinate between squads and the CO. I jumped in the OPFOR channel even if I wasn't an SL and acted as the radio man. If we could get more people to use them it'd make for some awesome battles.

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[volun][drill]
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SmokingTarpan

I only played for Mashtuur before I decided to call it quits for the night, but I noticed this as well. Didn't seem so much as a mix of slow and blitz, but rather that the overall pace has quickened. There was a lot more chatter to the effect of "get it done NOW" being shouted out over the comms.

My squad had a few decent crawls before we were disbanded and folded into another, but overall everything we did seemed to be overpowered by the fact that either other OpFor groups moved too fast for us to move into position to be of aid or the USMC squads were collectively steamrolling us.

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[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

Santa

Funny thing happened in sharqi. My squad was on D at the city entrance and i was looking into the UCB to spot armor. I noticed a lone sniper in the middle of the street, 10 yards into the UCB that wasnt even moving. I walked up to him and assumed it was the CO, and was probably asch. I jokingly asked on teamspeak, "Can we kill COs in the UCB?". Asch quickly connected the dots and when he came out of his CO screen he seemed a bit surprised and quickly got killed.

SgtDuke

Great games, indeed, last night. There were at least several rounds with nail-biter endings where control and bleed kept going back and forth until one team finally edged out the other. I think those endings, where your final assault/defense is "life or death" and everyone is playing with the utmost caution, are fantastic.

I'm pretty sure that I have never been involved in as many multi-squad coordinated attacks as I was last night. It was exciting to see two or three squads simultaneously attacking a CP from different directions and supporting each other by providing suppressing fire, distraction, flanking fire teams, etc. Excellent job by the commanders and squad leaders for orchestrating all of this, it was a great experience.

Coridon

For me it boils down to "twitch" skills. I think in vanilla you can group a pick-up squad together and throw them at a CP and depending on who's defending they stand a great chance at success, so it's almost futile to come up with standard ways to attack, etc. Having every move observed combined with the amount of firepower (air + armor + artillery + small arms) usually gives the advantage to twitch + luck over meticulous planning...that's what's arcadey to me...

But in TacMod, for the most part, a defending squad usually has a "Plan B" if things go wrong so an attacking squad has to plan ahead to defeat their oponents and their contengency plans outright; combine this with an increased spawn time and twitch plays much less of a factor.

To usually be successful attacking in TacMod means coordinating everyone in the squad, not a "bodies on the flag" generalization. Whether this is rapidly executed or slow and meticulous makes no difference to me so long as it ends in a flag capture. These are more like "plays" that you have in sports; something really complicated can be executed rapidly with everyone knowing their role to play is not arcadey at all, but this approach isn't as effective in vanilla BF2 as it is in TacMod. I think in-house squads have an advantage in this regard (practice), but so long as the SL's in a pick up squad have a firm grasp of TacMod and medics do their job I don't think it's rocket science for the other pieces to fall into place. I've played with some really great pick-up squads on multiple occasions during TacMod (last night on Mashtuur I led a non-1stMIP squad for instance and enjoyed it thouroughly).

CHARGE CHARGE CHARGE!!! = arcadey

Pre-planned, well coordinated, just as rapidly executed tactic = NOT arcadey

They might look and smell the same in vanilla, but the former stinks in TacMod...

Pvt_Meister

It looks like Tacmod is becoming what I was hoping it would. I was only able to play in 3 games last night but the mix of caution and blitz was fun.

My first game was Mashtur with J.Canavar as SL. It took me a few minutes to get used to the Alpha and Bravo fireteams (and John's accent.. lol) but after I was used to listening for Bravo 1 I was able to move as directed with a reasonable amount of effectiveness. After that I left the squad because more MIP people wanted in.

The next map ATOM was a bit of a challenge as I don't know the map and when Chic3en moved to squad 4....see his post above... I became squad leader which I'm not experienced at. We had a hell of a time swaping that airfield flag with the enemy which was frustrating but still pretty fun. We got on the barrell wall that runs down the side of the hanger and crawled most of the way. It was pretty cool to be creeping in on an enemy then make a mad dash to take em out. The most frustrating part of that map was I think Santa using a F35 to hover near ground level and use his cannon to spray our spawn point.... My squad had a discussion about there being a new rule for Santa to only be allowed to use his knife... lol... no guns, no planes but this probably wouldn't impact his effectiveness.

I had to leave on the next map to make dinner so I missed out on it but while I was there I realized that when TGers make up a squad in Tacmod it seems that there is a lot better/more communication then when the TGer's are in Vanilla..... I think maybe everyone takes it a little more seriously.

My one complaint is that I'm getting 1 shot killed from a M16 that is very distant but I can't seem to hit with any reliability with the support gun. Of course it could be my lousy shooting but it appears to be effective beyond a certain range but in CQ's it is almost ineffective.

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Meister

Steeler

You weathered that Bravo position well, Meister. 1st protocols can be a little blistering at first, but they are not so difficult once you get used to listening to the regular commands. Overall, it was a good night.

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perry

Yea, that disbanding was disappointing and made me quit in the middle of Mashtuur. I was in the mindset to do some small squad work and did not at all like the idea of switching in to a larger squad in the middle of the round.

I came back a little later and played in the chopper for the rest of the night.. Choppers still need work.

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NorCalRoach

With exception to my medic paddles not working most of time, last night’s TAC mod rounds were a blast especially with the extended death bonus taken away. Thanks goes out to Asch, E-male and Hambergeler for stepping to the CO position for the three maps I was able to play. Supporting us with supply drops and the limited intel you were able to provide us was extremely valuable. I was on Snail’s squad for ATOM and had a good time defending the northern frontier area with a tank against Clawhammer’s ineffective assaults lol. At one point I swear I caught Clawhammer peeing in the rock outcroppings with the rest of his squad, I think they were each trying to spell their names again. I immediately felt it was my duty to stop this sort of activity by putting a few tank rounds into the group.

For the Sharqi map, our squad was primarily tasked to hold the construction site which we were successful initially, but were effectively dismantled with the other team’s coordinated assault- I blame it on my medic paddles. It was an exercise in patience for us trying to repel the assaults and retake the construction site after it was secured by the other team. Our CO, E-male, then tasked us to work together with other squads to secure the Surveillance Post and contain the opposition in the construction site after we established bleed again.

Operation Cleansweep, James and a few others on my squad were able to secure the refueling facility enabling our team to establish a foot hold on the island. Lauren (a.k.a L.Intinklu?- Swedish for something or other- sorry for always butchering your name bro) Bommando, Tao and the others did an awesome job defending the Refueling Station from the initial counter assault and was also instrumental in taking the communication center as well as assisting the other squads in a coordinated assault on the Small Airstrip. Hambergler stepped up as CO half way through to give us much needed supplies and dealt with my constant harassment for info and orders. All in all good times.

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SmokingTarpan

Heh, I was wondering where you went. Yea, it was disappointing, but it's what the CO needed and requested. We weren't getting a whole lot done by that point when it came down to it, for several reasons, and Sassy managed to help bring things pretty close at the end of the round. Kudos to her for making a hard call.

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[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

JMJ

We had a full 7th squad before the server crash, but after the server crash they all went into different squads (despite us all being on the same team). I was left to kinda lone wolf it (and stumbled upon knifing John CANavar). When I got into a squad with some 7th guys I was promptly auto switched after being killed. Turns out the other side had a worse squad situation than the team I was switched from. I decided to bail after that. I did enjoy it for the time I was there though.

ChIck3nL3gz

Yeah, sorry about that Meister. I honestly have no idea how I got into squad 4. I never left squad 1 it just auto-switched me into squad 4 and the only reason why I noticed was Asch asked if I needed to be in a one man squad my response to him was, "How the hell did I get in squad 4?" and quickly changed back to squad 1.

And the discussion about Santa only being able to use his knife ended up going back and fourth between him not being able to use any weapons at all (which included the kife) and that a special mod should be made for him where he has to use his fists. No weapons, no vehicles. Just Santa on foot with fists.

I don't agree with you on the M16 kills from a long distance. Yes, they suck but I am able to take them out with the support kit from a distant. I was taken out last night by (I beleive it was Dark Viper) with his M16 and I respawned (on ATOM) at the Airfield Entrance hopped up on the wall near where I had spawned (this was the time I somehow got in squad 4) and fired short bursts at his position. I eventually killed him. I knew I was hitting him because after I'd fire he'd get up and move, then come back. I'd fire again and he'd get up and move then come back. I did it a few times and eventually one of my hits killed him. It is much harder to hit anyone with the support kit at a great distance but it is possible. I also managed to clear off an entire rooftop on Mashtur earlier on in the evening from inside the building behind the mosque. I took more than my fair share of hits and ended up laying on the floor out of the enemy's view until an MEC medic happened to wander into the building because I had 2 bars of health left.

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