The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off) - by Thirith
Thirith on 8/2/2025 at 18:34
While we did start today's session with a surprisingly heated battle over an outpost of ours (the radio tower that AAF has kept taking back, then we took it back, then they took it back etc. etc.), the rest of the session was almost uncannily successful. First we took one of the three remaining airbases (sadly losing the tank that henke took in to soften up the opposition, because the AI gunners decided they didn't want to fire on anything softer and squishier than another tank, so the enemy's AT units blew henke up), then three resources points with almost no opposition. We went in, each of us with eight or nine AI units, and we saw almost no opposition. Whenever the enemy sent in helicopters with reinforcements, we took those out.
Which doesn't mean that the rest of the campaign will be easygoing, but realistically speaking it's just a matter of time now - and we've got all the resources we need to throw at CSAT. One large peninsula left, two airbases, and we'll have won this rebellion of ours.
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Upcoming Antistasi sessionDate: Sat 22 FebruaryStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
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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 22/2/2025 at 17:32
Another fun session with henke, Jeshibu and demagogue.
It's amazing how much faster we are at taking enemy bases, in no small part because we've got the equipment and our AI is better by now, but also because there seems to be less opposition - and we no longer have much to fear from helicopters bringing in reinforcements, as our AI takes most of them down. It's just so pretty to see a troop transport blowing up and expelling a bunch of enemy units, all with laser sights active... In night vision, it looks wonderfully disco.
Today we took a bunch of bases and radio towers, mostly only dying once when henke, dema and I tried to approach the remaining radio tower. There was one road block in the way with the best AAF machine gunner ever: we were pretty much mown down before we even saw them, while Jesh was safe across the bay sniping guys at the base. Even like this, once we'd respawned and returned to where that road block was, there was barely any opposition left (thanks in no small part to Jesh's sniping).
We then relaunched the server, since there seemed to be some kind of connectivity issue, and decided to take one of the remaining two air bases that we have to take in order to win the campaign - and while henke sadly blew up in the armoured vehicle he took to the fight, largely because his AI gunners were oddly gun-shy, the attack itself was remarkably easy, with us picking off most of the defending units from a distance. Even the mortar team, which had been our constant terror earlier in the campaign, didn't manage to do much damage, so after 10-15 minutes we'd taken the air base.
The last air base is at the very NE point of the map, with a couple of bases in between, but we might be able to sneak past them and finish off this campaign next time. It was a good game, but I'm also ready to complete this particular uprising, which we started just about a year ago...
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Upcoming Antistasi sessionDate: Sun 9 MarchStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h in the Netherlands and Switzerland / 17h in Finland
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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 9/3/2025 at 19:05
Since henke couldn't make it today, Jeshibu, demagogue and I decided not to assault the final airbase. Instead, we took a couple of enemy bases and factories - and at this point we're experienced enough, have good enough equipment and more than enough money to get AI squads to join us, we're at a point where we have pretty good chances to begin with. If anything, the main challenge of today's game was server issues resulting in some odd rubber banding, but that mainly affected the enemy. As did a weird physics glitch that caused a bunch of downed enemy units in the distance to stretch their necks and heads higher and higher until they looked something out of
The Thing. (I hope that Jesh can post his Steam video here.)
All in all, though, we're ready to finish this campaign, and we're in the best possible place to do so next time.
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Upcoming Antistasi sessionDate: Sat 15 MarchStarting time: 3pm UK time / 16h CET / 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 15/3/2025 at 16:49
WE WON.
Henke, Jeshibu, demagogue and I met up today for the final game of our Antistasi campaign. We had one more goal: to take the final airbase, which was in the hands of CSAT. Before we could get started on this, mind you, we had to repel an attack by AAF (who knew they were still around?) on the very first airbase we'd taken, but that was pretty easy: we took out half a dozen helicopters with reinforcements before they could even land. Sure, some jets managed to get through and bomb us, and we did lose a Gorgon armoured vehicle, but still: easy.
Which the last assault wasn't: it turned out that the place was well armed and that CSAT tanks are deadly. Within a minute, we were all down, and then we settled in for the arduous business of throwing wave after wave at them. And this is where we remembered that we had a hundred tickets for air support, so we bombed the hell out of the troops at the base. Which was less easy with the tanks, but we did take one of them down like that (I think)... and as the second tank was circling the base, henke sneaked in and took the map point, which meant victory for our noble cause. It took us long enough, more than a year, but it was worth it: Antistasi, while not perfect, is a very cool campaign mode and made for a pretty different Arma experience.
Where to next? Dema's running an Antistasi game of his own on a German map, Weferlingen, that comes with Cold War-era equipment, so some of us might join him in this occasionally. There's also a mission mod I want to try out, The Forgotten Few 2, that might be good for a game every now and then. And there's Arma Reforger down the road, once it's had some more updates and is possibly a bit cheaper. But it's quite amazing: I've got 792 hours of gameplay out of Arma 3 so far, mostly in coop with the TTLG crew, and apart from the occasional meat grinder, cheating AI and weird-ass bugfest, I've really, really enjoyed it.
henke on 15/3/2025 at 16:57
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
This was actually the first time I captured the flag of any of these bases. My character's arc during this campaign was that he had to overcome his fear of flags and capture one, and when he finally did, it was the one that liberated Altis. What a satisfying ending!
Thanks for hosting and setting everything up, Thirith! It's been a great campaign. :thumb:
Thirith on 18/5/2025 at 15:47
Yesterday, I joined demagogue in 1940s France, taking up arms (or, to be concrete, crappy shotguns) against the Nazi occupiers. It's still
Arma and Antistasi, but the Normandy map and the very different weapons (we were positively celebrating once we got single-shot bolt-action rifles) gives this a very different vibe. Also, not sure if it's the AI or something else, but we did surprisingly well and succeeded in taking out a 20+ Wehrmacht outpost while holed up in a two-story house. Admittedly, some of the Jerries insisted on taking themselves out with their grenades, and we immediately lost the outpost, but still: a good start.
If anyone's interested in joining our occasional Antistasi Normandy sessions, let us know. In addition to the regular
Arma mods for Antistasi, this also needs the (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1175380/Arma_3_Creator_DLC_Spearhead_1944/)
Spearhead 1944 Creator DLC, which does currently cost about USD20, as well as a couple more mods. Also, we probably won't play as regularly as we did with our main campaign on Altis, but still, if anyone needs to kill some Nazis, this is the place to do so.
