The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off) - by Thirith
Thirith on 11/9/2017 at 15:28
Nah, that's wildly exaggerated. They're fun!
... though I recently played in a session where a chopper blew up because an infantry unit ran into it...
Thirith on 23/9/2017 at 18:28
And now some more detail:
We had five people joining for today's Arma session: TTLG regulars Jeshibu, Malf, Sulphur and myself, and Lord Penney, who brings much needed Arma experience to the table.
Not that this helped much... We started with a quickish adversarial I'd put together; we already played it last time round, but this time I added a helicopter and a minefield around the village to add a way of winning (escape in the helicopter) and to make sure that people don't wander off to a different corner of Altis, open a corner shop, fall in love with the beautiful daughter of the owner of the corner shop and raise a family. However, Lord Penney had the clever idea of using the helicopter as a decoy, sending an AI to fly off... and crash. Which meant that the game still ended with a drawn out 1v1.
Then came a mission of Lord Penney's, first led by me, which meant that we pulled an Admiral Ozzel: taking our truck too close to the village we were supposed to clear. We were wiped out pretty quickly, after which we restarted under Jesh's command. He was smarter about it - but what can you do against several dozen of Arma's Finest?
After we got wiped out again, we tried a mission I'd been putting together. I won't say too much about the mission itself, but I will say that I may have overdone it with the patrols... Malf's cries of "I just walked past a window and got shot!" still ring in my ears. Malf took an aerial shot of the place to show how outmanned our last survivor Lord Penney was. On the plus side: the game didn't actually slow down much!
On to Defend Kamino, which I thought might be, well, if not easier then at least fairer. I stopped thinking that when the game, which had equipped us with rifles, started attacking us with armoured vehicles. There we were without any AT weaponry... I guess we could've placed mines and other explosives, but if we don't know what will attack us and from where, it does become a bit difficult. And I swear that our artillery used us for target practice as well...
So we quit that one and finished on a mission where we had to clear Alikampos, the site of that first adversarial we'd played. It was still tough, but it was as if Arma had suddenly decided to play fair. What helped was that Lord Penney took the lead, and it shows that he has many, many years of Arma experience. We didn't get through Alikampos unscathed, losing Sulphur along the way, but we did finish on a victory. Yay!
Next Arma session will be in three weeks' time (i.e. 14 October). Hoping to see some of the others there as well!
Thirith on 26/9/2017 at 09:23
Actually, ignore that last bit: as I won't be around on 14 October, the next session will be a week earlier:
Quote:
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 7 October 2017
Time: 4-6pm UK timeAs always, I'll be online a bit before 4pm to set up the server and check who's on Steam. I'll try to launch the server with a lobby mission 15 minutes before the session starts, and I'll post the IP and password on the Steam group, under the Events tab.
I hope that's okay for everyone and we'll all have recovered from the meat grinder by then. As always, I'll send around reminders on Steam.
Thirith on 7/10/2017 at 17:55
Thanks to henke, Malf and Lord Penney for today's mission - Sulphur was also going to join but didn't manage due to power outages.
The mission - one we'd previously played but not finished - was tough but fun. The easiest part was rescuing a civilian hostage who wasn't really held captive anyway, because as we approached the hut where they were keeping him he just ran off into the woods. Next we blew up some... antennas? antennae? Anyway, this time we actually brough some explosives along, which helped. We then tried to be smart and sneak up on the town where we were supposed to blow up a helicopter by running up a wooded hill... which is where the whole goddamn CSAT army decided to descend on us, pinning us down in a graveyard, of all places. Once we did make it to the town, we soon found ourselves facing two MRAPs - or, as I like to call them, armoured bastards. Henke took care of one of them and Lord Penney, in a heroic display of fuckthisshittery, blew up the other one with an explosive charge. The helicopter soon met the same fate, so our last task was to take an airfield and secure it against the counterstrike.
Which would've been a lot easier if we'd realised that there was an ammo box right next to the hangar where we could rearm, because we found ourselves dying, respawning miles away, grabbing some anti-tank weaponry, getting back to the airfield, firing a shot, dying, respawning, etc. etc. In the end the game didn't even have the decency to trigger the ending, because there sure as hell weren't any tanks, attack boats or infantry left on that airfield, other than us.
So we decided to end this glorious, gory epic with a duel: henke against myself. I won, though only after shooting Malf who was acting as the ref, so perhaps I actually got disqualified.
Anyway, here's what was left of the hangar after we blew up the helicopter inside it. Picturesque, no?
Inline Image:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/885379696624535973/C7DB92D3DC62927BB700C1B643C79E013FA094FB/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|1024:576&composite-to%3D%2A%2C%2A%7C1024%3A576&background-color=blackNext faceoff with the armoured bastards: Saturday, 28 October.
Tony_Tarantula on 10/10/2017 at 14:37
So I've got this on my wishlist, and I'll drop it the next time it shows up on sale.
I'm kinda out of practice (Was in a staff job, then business school, now finance) but I can show some of the basic tactical movement techniques and squad battle drills used in real life. Disclaimer is that unless they've improved the AI vs. Arma 1 most things work better PvP than PvE. But that said at least in Arma 1 and Operation Flashpoint were good enough simulations that real military squad tactics work well.
Thirith on 10/10/2017 at 14:45
I appreciate the offer, but since we're playing two hours every 2-3 weeks, I'm not sure how feasible it is to do drills and the like. It's not what I want out of the sessions, at least. Yes, it's fun to improve at cooperating, but at the moment I think it's more realistic to do so while doing missions rather than using the time to train.
What's been working well is that one of the people playing has a lot of
Arma experience, and when he takes the lead it makes a huge difference. Other than that, though, I'd rather point people in the direction of (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDc8QnD-E5o&list=PLQEd6zRLOafWtrQ4EAYKl6z23hvCLYgW6) dslyecxi's video guides and hope that they check them out and take them to heart.
henke on 11/10/2017 at 05:17
Indeed. You're welcome to join, Tony, as long as you can chill out and not take the whole thing too seriously.
Tony_Tarantula on 11/10/2017 at 18:35
Not my intention, I simply don't have the time or energy to spare for that. For reference, a "Battle Drill" is a technical term that just refers to a doctrinal response for specific situation. A lot of them are literally as simple as Fire team 1 moves into cover to suppress an enemy element, Team 2 moves around to flank, and then they charge through while Team 1 shifts their fire to the side to avoid friendly fire and catch any "squirters" that react by moving away from the charge. It's not as relevant for PvE because the AI doesn't react to those tactics realistically. PvP however, not only do players react realistically to that but a lot of them are familiar with real world squad tactics and will use them against you.
I was thinking more I could just take 5-10 minutes and explain some basic, real world techniques that soldiers use to move under fire.
Neb on 11/10/2017 at 19:47
Gotta practice your serpentine if you wanna be pro.
[video=youtube;cC0keDGobck]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC0keDGobck[/video]