The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off) - by Thirith
Thirith on 6/10/2024 at 17:42
Nice small-scale session today, even if henke and dazza couldn't make it. We started off by moving our HQ closer to the front, and since we've now shacked up in the industrial district of Altis the rent is also lower. Dema, Jesh and I then grabbed an MG guy and we took a helicopter to the northernmost enemy outpost. From a few hundred metres away, we took out all the bad guys we could see, then we moved in, cleared out the two huts and took the outpost - which prompted a counter attack that included an armoured vehicle with a fuck-off MG on top, so things got pretty hairy. We'd packed anti-tank weapons - but the high-tech stuff, and sadly this doesn't do particularly well at distances under 50m, where a simple fire-and-forget RPG would be better. We lost the outpost twice, but in the end we kept it - not least thanks to Jesh, who first defended it against the infantry units moving in and then drew the attention of the armoured vehicle, so as that one went after Jesh I could finally use the AT weapon I had, blowing it to bits.
We then moved on to a base at the far side of Altis, this time with more AI to help us. The base was at the top of a hill, so we drove to a nearby hill and started taking out the base soldiers from a distance, including the machine gunners on the guard tower overlooking the base and the hill. While Jesh and Dema continued covering us, I went in with the AI units, and we soon took that base - so the enemy sent not one, not two, but three tanks our way. Since we were up a hill, the tanks couldn't just rush us, and we were pretty good at picking off the soldiers from the tower we'd liberated - but we didn't have enough AT weapons to take out the tanks coming at us. While Jesh and Dema stayed on the tower, taking out enemy soldiers trying to sneak in, I went and looked for some RPGs or similar. In the meantime, I think the AI had taken out one or two tanks (with a little help from us), but the last one kept opening fire whenever we peaked out, but I finally found a (decidedly low-tech) RPG on a dead soldier, made it to a rock overlooking the slope on which the tank had come to a halt, and I took a shot - which hit, but at first nothing happened other than the tank popping smoke, so I was convinced that it's armour was too thick and we were fucked.
Then the tank blew up, lighting up the hill.
All in all, a good session, even if it was just three of us. And I'm looking forward to another game of Antistasi in two weeks, on Sunday 20 October.
Thirith on 20/10/2024 at 17:32
Fun session today with Jeshibu, Demagogue and henke. We started off by taking the rest of a peninsula to the south of Altis - and on the way there things almost escalated when we ran into a roadblock that realised we were up to no good, but we took them out and then grabbed the (admittedly small) outpost. What helps a lot by now is having some AA guys in our team, because they have become pretty good at taking out transport helicopters bringing in reinforcements. In the meantime, though, the enemy took back a radio tower we'd liberated a month ago, so we split up, each recruited an AI squad, and we moved in. Compared to earlier sessions, all of this was remarkably simple, so we got cocky and decided to make a move on the last enemy outpost still left on the peninsula. Henke and I went in from the west, Jesh and Dema came from the north and east - and somehow the latter two got killed horribly, but because they distracted the guys at the outpost, henke and I were able to sneak in and take the picturesque little church where they'd holed up. Again the enemy sent in some helicopters to retake it, but our AA guys took out one of them and forced the other one to land, and we then picked off the surviving reinforcements.
So we thought: let's finish the session with a simple supply run. These are pretty much beginner missions, but they can help you take villages and towns. They're what we did most of the time the first few sessions we played Antistasi.
And this one nearly killed us. Well, it did kill us: the enemy, who was pissed off due to all of our outpost shenanigans, sent in armoured vehicles, and they, together with (embarrassingly) some local law enforcement, pretty much pinned us down in the town's gas station and killed us whenever we peeked out. I held out the longest (mainly because I was down but not dead, so the enemy ignored me), and in the meantime henke, Jesh and Dema respawned. I did manage to revive myself and kill the police units that had taken us out with their measly little SMGs, but the remaining enemy had taken hold of a roadside machine gun emplacement, so the battle continued for a while longer. When it finally abated, we did succeed in delivering the supplies, got out of there and soon after the game told us that the town had joined our side, so all's well that ends well - but fuck, that was by far the harshest battle we'd had today.
And what's next for our intrepid heroes?
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionsDate: Sat 2 November
Starting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
Thirith on 2/11/2024 at 18:21
Fun, smaller-stakes session today with Henke (committing biological warfare, breathing COVID viruses all over Altis!) and demagogue. We took two smaller outposts. The first of these proved to be more challenging than expected, mainly because the enemy threw an MRAP and a tank at us, but after a wee bit of dying and respawning we still made it. The second outpost was almost like shooting fish in a barrel: it was on one side of a bay, and we sniped them from the other side. I don't think any of us even went down once - though once we'd taken the outpost, the enemy shelled us from a nearby airfield. (We got our revenge at the end by stealing one of the tanks and a transport truck from the airfield.) In between, we also attacked the enemy soldiers in a nearby town, hoping to make it join our cause, but sadly our efforts weren't quite enough for that. Still, I enjoy a good bit of urban warfare in Arma every now and then.
For the next two sessions, I'd suggest Sunday 17 November and Saturday 30 November, so...
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionsDate: Sun 17 November
Starting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
Thirith on 17/11/2024 at 18:24
Great, successful session with henke, Jeshibu and demagogue today. We planned to attack a factory on a hillside, but there was also an enemy outpost on that hillside, which could've easily meant quick, horrible death over and over. To begin with, I set up a couple of AT positions approaching the hill, so they could help us defend against the APCs and tanks that the enemy was certain to send against us, and then we split up: Jesh took his squad to attack from the west, henke and dema attacked from the south, and I placed an AT vehicle with some AI gunners and then joined the fray. It didn't take too long before we'd taken the factory, and the various AT groups along the southern edge of the hill kept us safe from vehicle counterattacks. We then continued towards the base, which we also took relatively quickly, so in less than an hour we'd taken two map points.
We then decided to do some guerilla shit in a nearby town that hesitated to join the rebellion, but while we did take out a lot of enemies, they then sent in an APC that quickly made mincemeat of our AT guys. After an arduous fight, henke managed to distract the Gorgon and dema took it out, but not before we'd been mortared a bunch of times.
Since this barely moved the needle with respect to the town's support of our glorious rebellion, we then finished on something different: we found that in the SE corner of the map of Altis a town had joined us because we're just so damn cool, so we took a truck of guys there and attacked another hillside base, taking it surprisingly quickly - and while the enemy then sent a counterattack of three choppers our ways, our AA took out one of them and we picked off the enemy units dropped off by the other two helicopters. In the end I almost felt bad for AAF, because this time round they were so clearly not a match for us.
Anyway: we've now got the entire western part of Altis and we've established a foothold in the southeast - so next time we'll try to take the small airfield that's there, and then we can begin to take the rest of the map from that side.
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionsDate: Sat 30 November
Starting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
Thirith on 26/11/2024 at 06:10
And in addition to the Antistasi session this Saturday, I want to announce the final Antistasi game for 2024:
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionsDate: Sat 30 November and Sat 14 DecemberStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
Looking forward to two more good games this year, taking as much of Altis from AAF as we can!
Thirith on 30/11/2024 at 18:48
Another successful session with henke, Jeshibu and demagogue: we took an airbase (with few losses, other than Jesh's AI squad, which was mortared to kingdom come), followed by attacking and liberating two radio towers - though this one was tougher, with Jesh getting napalmed at some point (it seems that Jesh took the brunt of the enemy's firepower today) -, and finally we took a resources point in a quarry. Our AI is now at a point where they're pretty adept at taking down helicopters bringing in reinforcements and even fast movers doing bomb runs, and today we even had one of the AI team members take out an armoured vehicle that tried to attack us (in the past these have been a regular pest, taking out all of our AI and forcing us to try some attacks several times).
While the hilltop radio towers were still relatively tough, the thing that hurt at least my ego most was a measly little roadblock on the way to the quarry: henke saw it and drove the truck carrying most of us off the road, and we got out quickly - but then an AT guy at the roadblock blew up the truck, taking those of us with it who weren't at enough of a distance. Other than that, though, we're at a point where AAF is so much less of a threat than at the beginning, it's almost ridiculous at times. I think we took the airbase within ten, fifteen minutes.
Thirith on 15/12/2024 at 18:21
Upgrading my server PC to Windows 11 mucked up the port forwarding (long, boring story), so yesterday's Arma session didn't happen - but I found out what the problem was and managed to get it to work, so henke, Jeshibu, demagogue and I joined up today instead for the final Antistasi game of the year.
We started off by taking a radio tower near a town complete with an enemy base and a seaport we were hoping to conquer, and that first attack went really well, with our AI cutting down the opposition. Things did get a bit more complicated when we moved on to the base which, even though it was small, put up a lot of resistance - and then the enemy sent in two small but nonetheless deadly tanks that cut up our squads. Eventually I grabbed one of the bigger tanks we'd 'liberated' in an earlier session, and Dema took out one of the tanks with a well-placed RPG hit, which helped us take the base and the seaport - and seeing this, the town joined us without us needing to do anything else... though a jet that came in to fuck with us killed the tank I'd brought in. RIP, you were a good tank.
We then decided to take a small seaside base as a palate cleanser - and on the way there, we first ran into a roadblock, which took out at least half of our AI comrades... and once we'd taken down the roadblock, another plane zoomed overhead and bombed us, just for good measure. We still took the base itself - but in the meantime, the enemy had attacked and taken one of our bases a dozen klicks away, so we finished by taking way more units than was strictly necessary and taking back that hillside hill... and this time: no tanks, no jets, no bombardment. It's as if the enemy had got all of its spite out of its system by that point.
Not quite sure yet when we'll continue our Antistasi campaign in the new year, as it depends on holiday plans that aren't 100% made yet. I might try to organise a session on 4 January, but I'll confirm this at a later stage. In any case, thanks a lot to the gang for another fun game - and next year, Altis will be ours!
Thirith on 4/1/2025 at 23:03
Thanks to the usual gang - henke, Jeshibu, demagogue - for a fun, successful first Antistasi session of the year. We started off by targeting a big enemy base near the city we took last time; I expected this one to be difficult, seeing how large the base was, and it did have several towers with machine gun emplacements, but with Jesh and dema sniping the guys in the towers and several AI squads, we took the base in a little over half an hour... so we got cocky and decided to take on the largest airbase on Altis. I mean, that thing is so big, it includes multiple map points we needed to take. This one was a harder nut to crack: we did die and respawn at base and the western-most map point changed owners a couple of times, but especially with henke and later Jeshibu taking a tank to the battle, we did eventually prevail - though it didn't help that while AI gunners do reasonably well in the tanks when it comes to taking out infantry, they are shit at prioritising taking out enemy tanks and armoured vehicles.
In the meantime, the enemy decided to use the fact that we were focused elsewhere and took a hilltop base that had changed hands a few times already. We'll probably start by taking that base back and manning it with two dozen AT soldiers, in the hope that they'll repel future attacks. Anyway, we've taken about 2/3 of the island from AAF, which means that before long they'll have to give up - and then we'll be facing CSAT, which is stronger and has better, more modern equipment.
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionDate: Sat 18 JanuaryStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
Thirith on 18/1/2025 at 23:01
Aw, man... The browser ate up my post about today's session, which was gruelling in parts but still fun and definitely successful. We took back a mountain base that the computer had retaken from us last time, and we expanded our territory. We did lose a lot of men in the process, though, and a tank that Jeshibu steered into the thick of things, but it was worth it, I'd say.
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionDate: Sat 25 JanuaryStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
Thirith on 25/1/2025 at 18:36
Shit just got real.
After months and months of facing up against AAF, the military supporting the government of Altis (which I think is probably not the nicest of governments, because otherwise we wouldn't be rising up against it, right?), today we came up against CSAT, the invaders - because they decided that we needed to be taught a lesson, meaning that they destroyed one of our towns. We had a chance to defend the town, but sadly we failed, and much of that town is now a heap of rubble.
Which means we're in the endgame of our campaign of Antistasi, which we started last February. AAF is a husk of its former self, but CSAT is on the attack. We need to take the remaining three airfields on Altis, and then we'll have won the game, but in the meantime CSAT may start any number of punishment missions against our towns.
In spite of that loss, today went well: we took a factory and several bases, including two CSAT bases, and these days we have enough money to recruit mainly a mix of AT and AA units, so we're also much better than we used to be at taking out attacking armoured vehicles, helicopters bringing in reinforcements, and even jets moving in to carpet bomb us. It never gets old to see a bunch of helicopters coming in from the distance and our AA guys firing several rockets at once. It's not particularly efficient, and they often run out of ammo if there's a third wave of attackers, but we take out the first two waves pretty reliably.
Quote:
Upcoming Antistasi sessionDate: Sat 8 FebruaryStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
Quote:
What's Antistasi?It's a persistent whole-map mission in which we play a local resistance on a map where the local military is fighting an invading army, and we take on both of them. Doing small sorties and missions, we slowly gather resources to take on bigger and bigger targets and converting the island to our cause, town by town. Or we get shot to bits trying to race past a checkpoint in a battered old pickup truck. We'll see.
What will you need to join?* An updated installation of
Arma 3 (possibly including the
APEX DLC, depending on which map we want to play on)
* An up-to-date TeamSpeak 3 client
* The mods in (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148668505) this collection, all fully updated
* Here's (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306) a list of
optional mods tweaking your
Arma 3 visuals and sound
On the days of the Antistasi sessions, I'll get the server for
Arma 3 and TS3 started beforehand and will send everyone who'd like to join the IP and password at the beginning of the session. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of you ready and willing to liberate Altis/Stratis/Malden/Tanoa!
