Zeus Mission: Operation Resolute Justice

[Zombine45 177]

40 minutes ago, Fitz said:

However, only Orion and Webbie were Zeusing for that mission. Noskire doesn't have it, and I was just playing it out normally. 

Ah, i didn't realise, sorry. Someone said there was four at some point and i just took it as fact.

As for what happened with the general, Demon was asked to come in and sweep the town and secure the general, i personally never saw the general and by the time i actually got to the crash site (Got caught up deactivating some mines), his objective had failed (I'm assuming he was killed).

Edited January 27, 2019 by Zombine45

[Farqman 86]

Fitz, you say Noskire doesn't have Zeus. But with Achilles, you can make anyone Zeus. Not saying that happened, just that it is possible for people not whitelisted, to become a Zeus

[Fitz 1239]

1 minute ago, Farqman said:

Fitz, you say Noskire doesn't have Zeus. But with Achilles, you can make anyone Zeus. Not saying that happened, just that it is possible for people not whitelisted, to become a Zeus

I disabled that and a bunch of other unneeded/OP tools in Achilles. 

[webbie 186]

Just a point of some of that stuff @Zombine45.
In zeus Orion and I did plan a fair bit in advance what was to happen but as I reiterated we are limited to by what can be preplanned so it does kill the fps which tbh it did anyway (hence a dedicated event server). Also in Zeus Orion and I cant see each others actions at all times and we manually sync the entities which again caues the server fps drop. 

We had a bunch of preplaced structures enroute and tbh they werent difficult to counter. Im unsure what happened with the AT unit because they actually barely had line of sight and were a significant distance away but again it was an unfortunate series of events. I think due to the OP state of titans for missions we will need to avoid Titans. 

This is a big point from me I do not specifically place forces in behind players and never have, assets will often be placed 500m+ on a flank and more than often they are unseen and in this instance it will appear that we have placed something behind you. I always use a forward momentum approach to zeus.

As mentioned we can't pre place lots of stuff purely due to server resources.

As for the paratroopers that's when we had 30+ randoms drop into the town and a large majority of those were killed in the air. As for the mission fail evac at this point it was redundant so overwhelming the evac was the intention.

My prerogative as zeus has always been this: To provide a varied and fair difficulty for resistance.

Having even numbers from an enemy stand point is pointless because AI are pretty much dead after a few taps while players can not only be revived but also have  reduced damage.

I will point out we were unaware that the friendly AI could not be moved and so at the time couldn't understand why no one was trying to protect them. In future we will do some testing to iron out those issues.

At the end of the day it was a learning curve for all of us and to be honest having a dedicated mission space will enable us to create a scenario earlier on rather than try and counter the whole server population of 60+ players without having to check whether the server fps has dropped off the face of the earth. 

On a final point I always want you to succeed at the objectives. IT IS NEVER my intention for the mission to be a failure.
It is in no way shape or form fun for me to just kill everyone.

Edited January 27, 2019 by webbie

[Bread 18]

6 hours ago, Zombine45 said:

Ah, i didn't realise, sorry. Someone said there was four at some point and i just took it as fact.

Even if there was 4 though that shouldn't even matter, it's not the number of people performing the zeus role it's going to be their actions.  Of course if you have 4 people constantly spawning in things its not going to be great.

However you can also have them working with the spawned AI, as we know AI can react stupidly to situations so having people assist in the AI making smarter decisions wouldn't be a bad thing, as long as the the people using zeus keep in mind generally they should only be making calls from what information the AI would have.

[decibel_spl 76]

Okay, so here's my points from the recon team:

Our initial plan was to go sneak up to the biggest hill in the area with a castle on top of it that's less than a kilometer from the suspected crash site with no intelligence whatsoever - it was no wonder we got wiped out at the start. The second time we inserted, we were observing the so called observation point for quite some time. We couldn't go quickly as we were only an effective 3 man, lightly equipped team (UAV was holding back) and one surprise encounter could take us all out. By the time we were actually in position to provide over-watch and reconnaissance of the AO, everyone else was already in contact and well into the mission. It's very hard to try and provide any sort of recon when we're essentially inserting when everyone else is or when we only have 10 mins to recon the whole area. As for Fitz' remark to no intel of the squad that Angel had behind them, we couldn't even see Angel's LZ let alone anywhere SW-W of the town itself from our position.

What I propose needs to happen, (granted already said in the TS debrief) is for the intel team to go in at least 30 mins, almost an hr before everyone else. Doing this, they can insert safely, move to overwatch safely and wrap around the AO to gather full intelligence before any other boots are on the ground. As pointed out by BigRed, actual recon teams sometimes get in the field days before the main force enter.

I also found fault in the plan for a 3 man, lightly equipped recon team to infiltrate the castle and gather intel / kill the commander. Were we a recon team or a specialized strike force? My intentions was for my team to not fire a bullet unless we were under direct contact or fire.

I feel the intelligence/recon team need to have a specific set of goals defined in the pre-brief for them to be most effective.

It matters nought, but it does have to be said that the only objective completed in the mission was by us with 4 people.

Edited January 28, 2019 by decibel_spl

[Guardian 45]

I imagine I'm about to be torn apart for this, but I also want people to keep in mind that it's very easy to look at things in hindsight - and to tear apart how everyone else has done it because you have the perfect solution. Some good work was done by several people, and in the end a few of us made mistakes (Myself most certainly included) which aligned to result in a critical mission failure. 

Our Zeus' did well given the circumstances and they've been hung enough and issues raised in this forum have already been raised and agreed upon in our after action reports within Teamspeak.

 

As the overall commander - I would like to acknowledge my failings for a lot of the decisions I made based on information I had at the time. In hindsight I would change them, but there are decisions which at the time I firmly believed were the right call and I stand by their execution and at times, subsequent failure.

The Recon Team: Admittedly, my field of expertise is not reconnaissance nor sniping nor overwatch - in reality or game. I admittedly made a token decision on where to place the recon team which ultimately resulted in their immediate demise and limited usefulness throughout. The plan for visibility on the south side of town was for Demon to observe the south side and report. There will never be a perfect OP that will not be scouted by the enemy. I should have taken this more into account. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of @BigRed and @decibel_spl in persisting with my failed recon plan. 

The Transport: I had made prior arrangements to transport each callsign into the AO - initially this was for a Blackfish to insert Demon to near their AO to prevent the long drive. However with a lack of qualified pilots for this on the day, the decision to drive was made to get the mission moving. In future, I need to peg down pilots with experience earlier and ensure they know they will have a pivotal role - and include them in the planning.

The Loitering Helo: This decision was made based more on real-life scenarios rather than in-game ones. The overall plan involved Demon setting up a cordon and Angel then immediately deploying into the town to achieve surprise, violence of action, and simultaneity. However when one was delayed, the other was too. And when the latter was then delayed I had to further delay the former. While realistically, this may have been a feasible course of action (Not necessarily the best one), I didn't factor in the in-game effects of boring somewhat impatient (and rightly so) players. 

Zeus Co-ord: In future, I think it would be better for the commander to liaise with Zeus so that they can both war-game accordingly. In these scenarios the NATO Commander gives up their gameplay to coordinate squad leaders; and as such them knowing what Zeus is about to do isn't the worst thing in the world. It's how the squad leaders react which identifies where the magic happens. I should have made contact with Zeus in this instance.

 

As stated I take the majority of the responsibility for the failure of this operation. @Farqman I did have several General Garrison moments, and several moments in the aftermath where I was kicking myself for my decisions. But as stated, I made them with the information available and as I stated above. 

The important thing is that we learn - and don't hang our Zeus, Squad Leaders and other teammates for some epic work that they put in, to the point where they're afraid to try and lead because of the backlash they've faced or seen others face. This doesn't mean don't give criticism - but make sure it's constructive. This is not in reference to any particular post or reply - but just something to keep in mind in the future.

If I lead you again, I will make these improvements in the future. 

Kia Kaha, And May the Force be with you.

[Farqman 86]

Don't mistake what has been written as being overly critical.

This is all constructive criticism. This is all relatively new territory for everyone. The only way to improve is experience which will take time.

 

Don't forget you are playing on a public server, things will ALWAYS go wrong. You could have the most fool proof plan in place, and something will still go wrong.

Black hawk down, and Lone Survivor are movies based on real world operations. Something will always go wrong, despite your best efforts. 

Despite everything, I'm sure there is many people including myself, that are looking forward to future operations. 

[War Machine 40]

As a member of the recon team, this is our flaws so far:

• We don't have medic/paramedic in the team at the beginning of the mission which really had caused the demise of the whole team.
• I got disconnected due to my weak internet connection.

So far, we did eventually got a medic, which was me. I was really weary that I might get disconnected in the middle of the game.

What I've learned:

• In my opinion, every squad must always have a medic.
• If ever you are going to play a pivotal role in the game, like being a medic, an AT rifleman, or being the squad lead, YOU must have better internet connection. We can't risk losing you just because you got disconnected.
• If you know that you might leave the game anytime soon due to some reason, play a less significant role.
• As a medic, you must not rush enemy positions because you're the last person that everyone wants dead. I learned it because I got killed while clearing the castle in search of that enemy sniper, somewhere on top of the castle and I have to be rushed back to base.

"If ever I was a liability than an asset to the whole operation, I deeply apologize for that."

Edited January 28, 2019 by War Machine