After action report 26.01.13 MSO Session VG & Lambs

[Jager]

Ninja 1 ( Cas pilot / transport )

Started off from the air base with my kick ass pilot Eclipse002 providing CAS / Overwatch from the air, and kept at it most of the night.

On the first objective of the evening our transport element Outlaw with duke at the helm managed a crash landing near hostile territories and we were able to lend at hand, cleared most of the area and flew in with repair vehicle so they could get air born.

When eclipse called it a night I swapped to jets and functioned as a relay for CMD and Outlaw while taking out some contacts in our flight path.

Second objective I provided CAS on call before I ended the night with the lovely Paladin.

I can't speak for the ground element but things seemed to work quite well, our coms system seemed functional for this scenario.
In short I had a blast, the only "bad" thing I could mention was the time it took before we got rolling but as I discussed with Savage we can fix that with presets at the base / fob so gear selection goes quicker.
Once we got rolling I feel we had a good progression.

That's it for me, looking forward to hear the stories from the ground forces ;)

My point of view should be up sometime tomorrow or monday.

Edit
Will upload footage when it's done rendering.

[Dumbfoundead]

Yeah, I had a great time with you guys today hopefully we get to do something else !

[=VG= Gaz]

I had a Great time with you all tonight, I enjoyed watching the lambs guys moving in while we were providing overwatch, I thought the way they were moving up and flanking was great. The numbers really helped the mission, I cant thank my squad enough for the amazing game i had, Ingo, Speirs and Sparky, They all listened to all my orders to the letter, They all gave opinions at the correct times, and got the job done well. I liked the way everyone was independent to the best of there abilites.

The command structure was Good considering it was all thrown together within the morning, Glad it all came together aswell as it did! And im happy the comms between my team and poff was efficent as far as i could tell, and had a good time with you guys attached to us latter on Lupago and Rev. Was quite interesting too see you two sitting there going "Oh hey Gaz! Where is everyone?" Randomly on a roof top in the middle of a city...

I think we just need to speed up the time it took to get out on the op, and a select few need to listen when they're being talked to little better.

[=VG= poffadder]

Group shot of the two squads outside the chemical factory.

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

!cheers

[Ibux]

AAR

[=VG= Eclipse002]

Super event guys.
L.A.M.B.S are very effective.
Great job gunning the Apache Jager.
We kept our cool and dodged several heat seeker missiles.
Great job of the outlaw pilot who managed to crashland the blackhawk on two occasions saving all on board.
We were not in the middle of the action but i think it must of felt good to ground forces their was a gunship over their heads up in the sky.
Cant wait to go out on mission again.

[Jager]

Upload started 12,8 gb should take me a few hours but it'll be up today.

[=VG= Calv]

Overall it was fun, would be nice for this to be a regular thing, think the rest of the Lambs guys would appreciate the extra training too.

Couple points:
* An hour to get moving = too long. Having equipment presets while handy wouldn't have reduced that time. Seemed to be mainly tech/mod issues so hopefully it was a one off thing. In future if similar happens I'd suggest just beginning basic ops or recon with whatever teams are ready to avoid having everyone hanging around.

* Vehicles: Not sure what the situation was like for the other teams, but for Fox 1/2 having to retrieve our vehicles after clearing an AO was a pain in the arse. Also seems to be a waste of firepower having mounted guns parked up doing nothing. Ideally 6 man teams when using vehicles would be nice, which would allow a driver and gunner to remain in the vehicle while still having a team to clear buildings, however that would require the mission to be edited etc so probably more hassle than it's worth.
Easier option would be to combine Fox 1/2 into one team/vehicle, and which would give us two 3xman teams for clearing, and allow the vehicle to stay in range for fire support.

Overall though it went pretty smoothly, Fox comms were good, the two teams worked together clearing pretty well. Was minimal contact within the towns but the teams were generally parallel to each other so cover fire would have been quickly provided if heavier contact had occurred.

Highlight of the night: Taking fire from Dahab as the lead vehicle, and taking a sharp left to cover just as an RPG is fired, resulting in a near miss and the vehicle behind taking it in our place. :D

[whiztler]

Fox 2-2

Hopped on as gunner and we headed out to our first objective, approx 5 Km north-west of the base. We parted with our vehicles east of the objective and moved in on foot. Fox was ordered to clear the south and west of the objective. We engaged few hostiles. Air/ground support had already cleared most of the objective from their positions.
We headed back to our vehicle and moved further north to attack and clear the next objective, a town build around a hill. The vehicle was hit by an RPG after we opened fire on hostiles from the road whilst en-route to the objective. After we were patched up we engaged the town clearing house by house. The fact that we had air support and ground over watch resulted in minimal friendly casualties. After a few more searches and the occasional run-in with an IED, we went on a mission to find and destroy a chemical plant. The AO was far north west. A Chinook provided transport and at about 1200 agl we halo-ed into our next shit storm. Once we patched up the unfortunate that were wounded after the drop, we headed NE towards the objective. We engaged several foot mobiles and started clearing the town. We took a few casualties, but nothing too serious. After about 80 mins the objective was secured and the chemical plant destroyed. End of mission.

Great op! VG and LAMBS worked together really well. The VG support proved very efficient as at times Fox 2 had nothing to engage. All threads were eliminated by air and ground support.
Liquid proved once again an excellent FTL with clear directives and solid motivation. The various IED's liked Liquid as well :)

I am looking forward to the next combined op. Perhaps we can make this a regular (monthly) event?

=W=

[LiquidTracer]

Fox 2 FTL AAR

Loaded into convoy as second vehicle, proceeded to first AO. Dismounted and proceeded on foot, declared clear before firing a shot.

Returned to the vehicles for the next round of AO roulette! we took some fire coming into the town to the south, but support had our cover down to a T so we were able to push into town. Fox 2 as a rule cleared left side of town roads and stuck to the left and Fox 1 cleared the right side, I felt this worked really well for us and we cleared the AO in a counter clockwise movement in good time, stopping only briefly to take a bit of friendly fire (was to be expected at some-point) no big deal. Foxes then declared the town clear returning to our vehicles (parked too far away, pant-wheeze-gasp)

Fox 2 took a friendly RPG to our vehicle on the way to the next AO, no big deal as of course because we took our RPG-immunity jabs before leaving our operational HQ. A lengthy heal later and Fox 2 were moving again and followed Fox 1 into a good assault position for the town. Fox 1 crossed the open ground first and got to hard cover but by the time they made it we came under heavy fire to our Left flank and we were forced to dip back behind the ridge. Support managed to disrupt or murder the fire long enough for us to charge into position and begin clearing our section of the town. A IED report later and the town was secure "Ok Fox 2 watch out for that IED, its at the crossroads in tow.......BOOOM" turns out that wasn't the only one.

Bomb-squad Fox 2 then played its part in the securing of an enemy Chemical Factory. Our Halo Drop went "Swimmingly", we reorganized as now we only had 1 squad on our net:
So we became Fox 1.

Now being 6 man strong (when did that happen 0.o ) we slowly line-formation-ed those compounds to death and began to spot contacts to our north east. Our support entered the compound accompanied by a rather welsh sounding operative, who couldn't be classified as a supportive presence in his life, so therefore is separate for the purposes of this AAR!

We were ordered to stop holding up the war (or something equally Scandinavian), so we began to use the hardcover to sneak up to our objective compound halting only when our cover turned into 200m of open terrain with full sight-lines.
I requested that support put down a bunch of suppressing fire and we followed it up with a burst fire from our position and i ordered half the squad over death field, once back to full strength we cleared our first objective compound and continued south to the main town.

We hit major contact 300m north of town and took fire from a quickly developing 180 degree arc NE-SW with little cover to be had. 2 of our guys got downed (and one got disconnected 10 minutes prior) and left with 3 guys at a half cover wall running out of smoke grenades and taking accurate fire ourselves. Luckily the rest of the crew bailed us out and managed to get our wounded up as the rest of the fire team pushed up to better cover and finally we returned to full strength and assaulted the first courtyard and the mosque in the middle of town.

Castor got reunited with his squad and now back down to 4 members we began to return to our normal patrol pattern which of course meant hitting our second IED. Recovering and regrouping at the petrol station and charging valiantly across open ground to assault another compound straight east of our objective always pushing west as we went taking a few casualties along the way.

The support teams cleared the factory, group hu..g... picture later and it was farewells and explosions as the chemical factory went up in flames.

Awesome night guys. really enjoyed it and I think we might have to make this a common occurrence. once a month at least?

FOX 2/1 FTL Chief BOOMsquad Operator out. (wall of txt AAR)

[Jager]

AAR from Sjaba

Had a nice time despite the weird start up issues and having to leave early.
Was nice to get some proper FTL training again.
Secondly nice to meet some VG guys.

AAR.
FOX1 team:
Sjaba
Calv
Nixxen
ReV

We headed out as the lead team, and at first RV FOX disembarked and started a flanking manouver towards the first city.
The reason for the extra flanking was due to uncertainty about our support team. At this point i was not sure if they in fact where able to cover us so i took a safe approach.
This lead to somewhat slower movment then HQ wanted so we speeded up and started a quick search of the village. An IED was found and avoided.
Due to HQ breathing down our necks demanding speed my men suffered some lounge capacity issues and we where forced to take it slow back to the cars.

When ready and back in the car we once again set out to city nr 2 and this time we instantly where caught under fire at RV, due to some poor radio coms ( i think) we did not manouver out of the fire, but instead had to stop/ disembark and take the fight. Luckely it ended well and we started bounding/ flanking towards the city.
FOX 1 had good coms with FOX 2 and where able to progress safely and quickly while clearing bulidings at HQ orders.
Thru the city we only meet sporadic and limited numbers of enemy so it all went rather quickly.
Fox1 came under blue on blue fire and FOX1 actuall went down, but our skilled medic rushed to the sceen and quickly got me back on my feet.

After a quick RV with Fox2 we continued the search and found a POI and reported this to HQ. Soon after i had to leave and CMD was given to Calv.

FOX1 AAR, End

Comments:
* The pre planning took IMO to long for an unknown reason.
* For that many players a more "army" approach is needed IMO..Ie demand control and disiplin from teams to avoid confusions.
* My team was working great, considering we where using LAMBS drills with one in the team who never played with us before.
It shows how good and adaptable the simply patrol routine is as long as its followed and maintained by disiplin.
* MSO seemed to work well, but did experience some LAG, ( might be only me)
* Personally i would have cut down on the available equipment so that gearing up becomes more easy..but this is a respawn map so who know how much stuff one might use

Im happy to join a VG event again and i think the combination of a LAMBS squad and a VG Squad worked well.
This is also something that can be implemented in LAMBS campaigns, given the missions are prepared for it


Sjaba...

[=VG= Gaz]

To second both of Calv's points - The time it took was agonising, but seeing as it was a last minute thing its rather understandable. I hope we can role out faster next time.

and another point - The Cars were a pain for us aswell ( Ryder One at least) We were constantly having to run back to find it, at one or two points it did prove usefull though, but the assault teams must have had a hell of a time going back and forth to there them..

[=VG= Calv]

Jager LAN_WROTE ...

AAR from Sjaba

* Personally i would have cut down on the available equipment so that gearing up becomes more easy..but this is a respawn map so who know how much stuff one might use

It could be useful to have a "main" crate with just basic western weapons in: M4s, M27, Mk16/17. Could help newer players that become overwhelmed by the huge weapon choice.
Though in all honesty I don't think there was that much delay caused by people gearing up. Other than the occasional confusion of finding which crate a specific item was in.

[peppie1025]

Outlaw 1

Crew:
Pigeon (Pilot)
StarchyDuke (Replacement pilot)
Peppie1025: Crew Chief / radio operator

Started off by transporting some troops (who got left behind because of technical difficulties) to the AO. Most of the troop/cargo ops went down without any incident with the exception of the following scenarios:

Scenario 1:
We were flying some troops in to the AO. Pigeon was at the controls and suffered some technical difficulties which resulted in the loss of the 2nd Blackhawk and all souls on board.

Result:
Because of the technical difficulties, Pigeon was forced to resign his flying duties to StarchyDuke. I couldn?t fly either because I too suffered the same technical difficulties as Pigeon so I was the crew chief and was tasked with radio comms between Outlaw, CMD and Ninja.

Scenario 2:
We were hauling troops to the AO with the Medevac Blackhawk while all of a sudden took heavy fire from what I believe was either an M2 or DsHk. Relayed the message to Ninja and Duke made a successful emergency crash-landing which saved all souls on board. I called it in and Ninja happily provided cover from hostile forces nearby.

After 15/20 min, Ninja brought the Chinook with a repair vehicle and we managed to repair the downed Blackhawk. We inserted troops at the AO and whilst flying back to base, again took heavy fire and made yet another successful emergency crash-landing right outside the base.

NOTES:
*Hauling cargo with the Blackhawk seems to be glitchy. Lost the 1st Blackhawk due to this issue.
*Not sure what was the issue with the HALO jump was but might be wise to consider different altitudes (ASL/AGL)
*Vids will be uploaded once they?re done.
*Great flying by Pigeon and StarchyDuke and fire support by Ninja1.
*We should do this more often!

[=VG= Calv]

peppie1025 LAN_WROTE ...

*Not sure what was the issue with the HALO jump was but might be wise to consider different altitudes (ASL/AGL)

Lack of experience mainly, nobody was sure what the minimum safe altitude was. We had suggestions from 200m upto 500m. Seems people survived after opening at 450m, so would probably say that 500m should be the limit just to be on the safe side.

[Jager]

A joint OP involving VG and lambs has been bouncing back and forth in my head for quite some time but this event was something of a spur of the moment thing, planning wise so I'll take blame for some of it :p
Squad and radio layout was setup in the hours before the actual session.

A MSO mission and a premade mission is slightly different, mostly because since in a regular mission you got a more information about what to expect during the mission and the squads can gear up while the ftl's, sql's and command lay out a plan for the evening.

Slow rolling start
While the majority was setup with mods and ready to play around the start time others were not, so for future ops it might be a good idea to set a warmup start time and a actual mission start time. (late people will be late, but the squads will have some time to talk before the mission, also we'll try and work out a squad layout sooner)
Once mission time is passed we roll no matter what and the later comers or people with tech issues can JIP, looking at the turnout last night it's not a problem to reinforce the active forces on the ground by air transport.

SOP
Looking at some of the AAR there was some incidents of FF, they do happen but most of them can be avoided, am I 100% sure that's hostile? and if there is doubt one does not simply fire. In other case we might have cases of indirect FF and that does happen.
One can talk a lot about SOP for ages, but nothing beats practice so if we pull more OPs together I think we'll get sorted.

[Jager]

http://youtu.be/6jpFDlpsYNk

[=VG= Eclipse002]

2hours of epicness !lol

[=VG= Nvram]

Funny but for the next time please remove Thermal Sights

[peppie1025]

http://youtu.be/2H2l8tC--20

[=VG= Outlanders]

peppie1025 LAN_WROTE ...

http://youtu.be/lnHAQfpBM4U

!2cool

[=VG= Murderface0151]

would have loved to join in with this, miss playing with you guys a lot. good to see lambs guys here, may i extend my warmest welcome

[=VG= SavageCDN (Inactive Duty)]

Thanks to all the players that showed up I only was able to join at the end but even the one task we did was huge fun!!

Big thanks to those that were involved in the last-minute planning and setup... considering we had less than 48 hours notice I think it went quite well. More advance notice means more time to work out technical or mod issues before the event.


Some possible suggestions for next time:

Faster startup time - assigned kits? Something like @LEA or @RSLO to allow players to select pre-done loadouts?
Force 1st person view outside vehicles?
More iron sights less TWS? Restrict the available weapons?
Make sure all players have st_hud loaded to facilitate squad play
Remove SMK key from server so players cannot join with it loaded (causes issues)

Also please post any suggestions re: mission like faster respawn times on choppers? more tanks? get rid of CAS?
What do you think of the wounded/death messages? They can be turned off.


I know there are some good mission makers in LAMBS we should discuss working on this and future event missions together (for joint OP ones that is)


OH I'm also working on a pre-event start deathmatch mission so we can kill each other before wanting to kill each other. Think minivans, missile launchers, and concrete jumps. !senile

[=VG= Calv]

SavageCDN =VG= LAN_WROTE ...

Thanks to all the players that showed up I only was able to join at the end but even the one task we did was huge fun!!

Big thanks to those that were involved in the last-minute planning and setup... considering we had less than 48 hours notice I think it went quite well. More advance notice means more time to work out technical or mod issues before the event.


Some possible suggestions for next time:

Faster startup time - assigned kits? Something like @LEA or @RSLO to allow players to select pre-done loadouts?
Force 1st person view outside vehicles?
More iron sights less TWS? Restrict the available weapons?
Make sure all players have st_hud loaded to facilitate squad play
Remove SMK key from server so players cannot join with it loaded (causes issues)

Also please post any suggestions re: mission like faster respawn times on choppers? more tanks? get rid of CAS?
What do you think of the wounded/death messages? They can be turned off.


I know there are some good mission makers in LAMBS we should discuss working on this and future event missions together (for joint OP ones that is)


OH I'm also working on a pre-event start deathmatch mission so we can kill each other before wanting to kill each other. Think minivans, missile launchers, and concrete jumps. !senile

Startup time: Don't think assigned kits is necessary, far as I could see everyone was equipped and ready and just waiting to be given orders within 5-10mins. Issue seemed to be some tech/organisation stuff (which considering it was the first time and fairly last minute arrangement not that surprising), and waiting for everyone to get into the game. Obvious solution in future is just to send the teams out when they're ready. For example Fox1/2 were ready pretty quickly so could have gone ahead and done recon/clearance and called for support or pulled back when heavy resistance was met.

1st Person view: Lambs guys usually play mission on Veteran anyway which removes 3rd person altogether so wouldn't make much difference to us.

Sights: Probably more effort than it's worth editing each of the weapon crates to remove all the TWS etc. Much easier for the commander to just give the order to not use TWS weapons, and have the FTLs enforce it.

Wounded messages: While not exactly realistic, I would probably leave them on for the moment, if only to highlight friendly fire incidents.