Operation Steel Sunday Feedback

[Noskire 123]

Thanks to all those who joined the operation today, and especially to webbie and OrionSync for really making it all happen. It was organised at quite late notice, so wasn't perfect, but that's my fault - along with a glitching keyboard. 

Anyway, post your thoughts - what did you like/not like, ideas for future operations etc...

[Guardian 45]

I thought the mission was pretty well done from the objective aspect, and how most people worked together. 

The consutructive feedback I'd give for future missions would be to assign people to distinct squads - and have an admin be loud and do it because there were a couple people trying to outdo Noskire and OrionSync which made it confusing for some people. And also lightning everyone else who tried to go near it from outside the event because we had the Side Squad(TM) try and compete with us and get pissy when the event participants didn't do what they wanted. 

Small points - and they're not related necessarily to how the event was run.

But the mission was well done, and Orion and Noskire did well. So thanks for all the effort you put in and let me know if you need help planning the next one.

Cheers, Gentlemen

[War Machine 40]

In my perspective, it was really fun having a bit of MIL-SIM experience in the server; although, we are not that organized due to the fact that first, at least most of us don't have that kind of military experience and second, there are people who are actually gate crashing, I could say that it is quite enough fun for me.

Yes, I'm also guilty about not getting the right command from the team lead, either I don't quite understand what they want me to do or it's just that I'm not that cut out for the chaos of the battlefield. And yes, I did AFK, I had to bid my farewell to my cousin because he's going to fly to Dubai this afternoon.

Anyway, I'm that Asian guy with a ****ed up characters (/^w^)/

[Zombine45 177]

A few points that i felt were lacking: Communication, planning, mission.

Communication: The second squad, for the most part of the op had no idea what was going on or what our purpose was, we were calling out targets (Tanks that were flanking us) and were flat out ignored, marking things on the map and then having people yell "WHERE?", having the command structure on the front lines wasn't a very good idea.

Planning: Now i understand that the op was put together on short notice and i'm taking that into consideration. There wasn't much of a plan of attack other than "Roll up on them with a convoy" which failed miserably immediately. Having everyone in separate vehicles, with minimum crew for them leads to everyone ditching their vehicles as soon as infantry need to dismount, we could have fit the entire infantry contingent in one HEMMT. Splitting into squads should have been more uniform and even, people needed to swap roles. It was a bad idea to bring the  tank destroyer instead of an actual tank.

Mission: The convoy immediately engaged enemy MBT's from long range, losing the Marshall spectacularly. (Which was respawned by zeus, don't do that) Putting everyone onto the same comm channel just made things a cluster**** when 6 people talk at once and i couldn't hear anything. There was so many enemy T-140's that i lost count after 10, a tank factory doesn't have combat ready tanks. The para troops dropping directly on top of our infantry was a bit ridiculous. At the end of the mission everyone was so focused on clearing the compound that they didn"t know they were being surrounded by two enemy MBT's (Linking back to us calling things and being ignored).

The things i've described are not mil-sim, if you think this level of coordination is mil-sim then you really need to sit down and rethink your life.

Overall it was still a lot of fun, but i think it could have been a lot more fun.

[Bread 18]

Well...

 

At the start was a bit of a cluster **** when it was being organised at the assembly point, it really needed someone to tell everyone to shut up so staff could direct us to what they wanted us to do.

The vulnerability of our armour didn't really feel like it was there as they came back after being destroyed (excluding the first marshall death I assumed they prob came from base, I didn't pay attention to if they got spawned in) - I believe it would be better for these players to not be able to bring another vehicle back thus forcing them to play smarter. These vehicles should be an important asset we need to be careful with, which is completely chucked out the window if their destruction has little impact as another vehicle is just going to take its place.

I agree with Phalanx on the issue of people from outside the event, if you're trying to run an organised group for an operation people from outside shouldn't be allowed to be anywhere near it.

I do think there was too much heavy armour spawned against us, I believe it would of been more suitable to have vehicles which infantry could reasonably engage against with their AT ( I don't know if we had any AT specialists with heavy AT to deal with the t-140's)

[War Machine 40]

1. Since we got the option at the HOME button which is "radio management", I suggest that group 1 should be in the Alpha channel, group 2 in Brave,... We could just use the group chat channel as substitute for side chat.

2. Each group must have at least a squad Lead, a medic, an AT rifleman, and an engineer. The rest are optional. All in all, a standard of 6 to 8 men in each group.

• Squad Lead/Team Lead - are in charge of taking command.
• Medic - are solely in charge of keeping everyone alive, your revive priority is your assigned group and the others second.
• AT rifleman - are in charge of blowing up enemy vehicles
• Engineers - your focus is to use explosive or stachel charges to blow up stuff that requires to.

3. We might as well consider a group uniform.

Example:

• Group 1 - CTRG Stealth Uniform (Rolled-up) and Combat Helmet (Black)
• Group 2 - CTRG Stealth Uniform and CTRG Stealth Helmet
• Group 3 - CTRG Stealt Uniform Tee and Combat Helmet (Black)

Edited January 6, 2019 by War Machine

[decibel_spl 76]

What needs to happen from my experience on the communication front is as follows:

• Dedicated squad radio channel delegated through the group function as normal.
• One dedicated command channel to allow squad leaders to talk to each other
• One mass group channel that everyone is assigned to for briefing and mission purposes, and only used by infantry for highly critical communications

This radio structure ends up being the exact same as what is on arma default with command, side and group radio. They need to be used as they would normally be used.

As for the missions, today's one was fine as far as a mission goes, but I feel as though it needs some sort of dynamic which separates it from I&A. Such as, something that would have made it interesting would be sending in a forward recon team far off in the distance to assess what the situation is. In the case of this mission, here's a structure that would have made it good:

Recon team discovers a strong overwatch of the open lands to the North of the base, with an attack helicopter patrolling. In response, we left the convoy far back and went most of the way on foot, staying out of sight of the overwatch and the attack helo. Some foot patrols along the scattered buildings and small town, maybe a light technical driving around as well.

Simply it just needs something that makes it feel like we're fighting the enemy rather than a bunch of ais cooped up in their base in their safety circle which is basically what the AOs tend to be.

I appreciate all the work that the zuesers are doing, I'm glad it's starting back after it finishing quite a while ago.

[War Machine 40]

3 hours ago, decibel_spl said:

What needs to happen from my experience on the communication front is as follows:

• Dedicated squad radio channel delegated through the group function as normal.
• One dedicated command channel to allow squad leaders to talk to each other
• One mass group channel that everyone is assigned to for briefing and mission purposes, and only used by infantry for highly critical communications

 

This one's better than mine, I think...

[Noskire 123]

First of all, thank-you to everyone for the feedback thus far, and to all that were involved in the operation.

The event was not intended as a pure mil-sim - there are two or three reasonably popular mil-sim servers in Australia/NZ:  where you will be directed as to what uniform you can use, what role you can play and some very strict ROE - and potentially you will play without firing a shot over a 3-4 hour period during the op. Those servers average about 20-25 players for operations. The StrayaGaming server yesterday was maxed out at 70 players.

The communications error at the start of the mission was entirely my fault. Whilst squads were previously arranged, my in-game comms were glitched at the start of the mission (I even ripped out my CapsLock key to try to fix). Luckily OrionSync jumped in to take the lead - and webbie did a great zeus job.

I hope this doesn't put you all off further operations - again, any feedback is appreciated.

Nosk

 

[Zombine45 177]

@Noskire Now i don't want to start an argument here, but make some clarifications.

Basic coordination is not mil-sim, I don't care what uniform you've got on or what gun youre using. But when you set out knowing there's going to be lots of enemy armour and not a single person is an AT specialist, you're going to have a bad time.

People on I&A seem to have this belief that anything other than complete independent chaos is milsim, that basic coordination is some monster that's going to steal all your fun. If you don't have fun when working as a team with other players, having varied roles in the group to deal with changing situations, then i'm sorry but arma isn't the game for you. It seems to me that everyone treated this like just an I&A side mission than an actual operation.

Yes i know this isn't what I&A is about and yes i know KOTH exists. But to have a "Coordinated" operation and abandon teamwork is silly to me.

This hasn't put me off at all, i intend to come back for more ops in the future. Like most people said, it was still fun.

I also now see that you were more responding to War Machine's post than mine but my points still stand.

[Noskire 123]

@Zombine45 I get your point, and I agree that working as a team makes the game more fun and immersive. As I said, my comms glitched up the event. The plan was to have two infantry squads, a tank platoon and an overwatch (which no-one was keen to do).

I disagree regarding that the operation wasn't coordinated to some degree - @OrionSync was managing Alpha and Bravo squads.