Mission: CASTILLO
It had reached half past and nobody had joined the game, so I thought I'd start up Castillo and see if I could reach the air support. I sprinted for a hummer, sped through the forest and made it through the enemy cordon (only just- a few bullets spanged off my armour and a shell shook the earth behind me as I went over a hill).
After threading my way through forests, fields and a couple of roads, I saw that Greg had joined the game. I then saw "Greg was killed" a couple of times. I felt a little guilty that I'd left him to face the hordes alone, but there was no going back.
When I reached the airfield I found Greg! I don't know how he spawned at the airfield (maybe it was the closest spawn point to the other player(s)?) or how he'd been killed twice.
At the airfield was a smorgasboard of air power: an AH-1Z chopper and several fixed wings: A-10, F-35 and an Av8 (the VTOL one). I jumped into the AH-1Z, Greg took the guns and we lifted into the air. It was awesome fun floating over the beautiful forests and villages. We found some enemy tanks and were moving to engage them when we were blown out of the sky.
We respawned back at the castle and were killed a lot- the enemy had taken the respawn point, so we restarted.
At this point Gavin joined the game (by proxy- his son David started off), and we had a surprise appearance from Plancake. We all then flubbled around for a while trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. We picked up rocket launchers and didn't know how to equip them (there are a couple of different ways), people joined but didn't have mikes, or didn't know how to type chat... it was total chaos, and the enemy rolled right over us. I also discovered that "multiple lives" must mean "you can come back if a teammate revives you". Moving around by twos is going to be critical.
Highlights of that part for me included:
-Finding an APC out the front of the castle! I took the wheel, David took the guns but we were rocketed into oblivion before we could do any good.
-I took out five guys and thought I was doing pretty good, then I saw the server stats and noticed that Plancake had taken out THIRTY SIX! I assume a couple of his rockets hit APCs or something. Or he's just awesome. I saw a lot of explosions in the field to the east, it looked like he was scoring long range rocket hits.
-Being on one side of a wall and seeing the helmets of three enemy soldiers go past on the other side. They were running along together and talking to each other. Unfortunately I couldn't hit them at the angle they were on.
The moral of the story with Castillo seems to be that it asks the impossible, we need more men. And to block the entrances with hummers and apcs, then rain death from the battlements. There's also a spot where two walls don't quite meet where you can pop off a lot of infantry.
After a lot of this chaos it was clear that everyone was sick of lying around on the ground, so I suggested a new mission. I'd downloaded a cool sounding POW breakout mission but couldn't find it in my menu, so I went for Insurgent Airfield.
Mission: INSURGENT AIRFIELD
Those dastardly insurgents had some air assets at an airfield, we had to take them out. A Blackhawk dropped us off about a click from a radio tower, our first objective. We hiked through the forest and up a hill toward the tower when we suddenly came under fire and took casualties.. There was total confusion for a second, nobody knew where the fire was coming from. For lack of a better plan I told everyone to shoot at the tower, which we did, and that turned out to be where he was- his body fell like an extra in a western. I felt pretty good about that for a couple of seconds until his mates flanked us and we were wiped out to a man. About then was when Christian came in.
Dammit, we had to take that hill.
On our second try, I investigated the ammo boxes we'd been left and found a great sniper rifle.
SPLAT halted at the bottom of the hill this time, and took up positions. I shot the sniper off the tower, and the main force of the enemy came down the hill at us. We were set, they were skylined, and SPLAT cut them down like chaff.
"Is that it?" said Gavin, holding position.
There was one way to find out. I took point, everyone else moved up behind me. I'd started to crest the hill when I was shot. I then discovered that when you've been shot you can switch your POV to any of your team (when you're *killed* you can switch your POV to any of the enemy!). I thus saw multiple members of SPLAT:
1)Crawl up to me .
2)Think they'll take out the threat before reviving me.
3)Go a little bit past me and get shot.
This was rinsed and repeated until we were all dead :) I was screaming into the headset for people to drop smoke grenades and drag the wounded back, but when you're hit nobody can hear you (the reason why some arma players use ventrilo or teamspeak).
Third assault. This time Plankcake suggested a flank attack. He took the main force around to the north. Something weird was going on- I'd made him squad leader but his name didn't come up on the cursor. Poor Christian's computer also kept kicking him out and he had to come in again and again.
Greg and I went to assault the hill to open them up to Richard's attack. He had a sniper rifle, I had an assault rifle with a better scope. We overconfidently tried to pick off the sniper from extreme range, and had exactly as much success as we would have in real life. We crawled closer.
Just as I shot the sniper I heard a vehicle approaching from the north. It came under fire from Richard's force, but I couldn't see what happened because there were a few insurgents close by. By the time we'd finished them off and I could get over to Richard he was dead (and logged out).
Around that time Gavin had to go and Christian had to leave so he could take a cricket bat to his computer. Greg and I were left and the hill was still untaken. We had to avenge our comrades!
This time instead of going straight up the hill we skirted to the left (south) and spiraled up it. I resolved not to die this time with grenades still on my belt, threw them toward the tower and led the assault. And was cut down again. Greg made it up there, apparently cleared the top of the hill, climbed the tower to look around and was shot. Fortunately he ALSO fell like a western extra and so an AI was able to revive him (and me). We'd taken the hill!
Greg and I had no way to blow up the tower, and the AI wouldn't listen to us, so we left them there and headed to the airstrip by ourselves. We noticed a patrolling car with a .50 cal in the back. I saw that it stopped for a moment at a T-Intersection, so Greg and I spent AGES following the tree line down and getting into position to attack the car. We buried ourselves in the bushes beside the road. Soon the engine could be heard getting louder...
And he mowed both of us down before I even saw him.
"That went well" said Greg.
And we left, vowing to return.
(Plancake's POV):
Well, my experience was pretty illuminating.CASTILLO
When soloing this mission I had previously tried a couple of tactics to take out the tanks. Primary one was to swap whatever weapons I was carrying for a Stinger and 2 missles, run like crazy out the side of the Castle down to the edge of the forrest and try to target the T-90's inbound. Unfortunately in practice it's much harder than that. Whenever I've targetted a T-90 with a Stinger the missile has missed the tank (don't know why, must investigate locking on target somehow). So, from there I switched to targetting the BMP's that were in the camp and took two out (+ their 6 crew!). Then I started taking up a vantage point in the top of the tower to see if I could hit the T-90's from there, but couldn't. But I could target more artillery and ground placements! That's where the 36 kills came from - cannon fodder!I reckon from the top of the tower early on in the mission I could take out at least 2 T-90's en-route if I can work out how to lock on. Then from the top of tower I also believe with a decent MG you could sweep the approaching hordes of soldiers. But, there are hordes and hordes of them. I'm tempted to try and edit the mission to reduce the amount of insurgents to a reasonable level... stay tuned...
INSURGENT AIRFIELD
This battlefield made me feel tired just watching my avatar run for miles to get to the first hill! (Oh, btw, if people are using WASD to control movement, W = Run, double tap W = Sprint - until you're too buggered to sprint or you try sprinting up a hill carrying a 30kg pack and mg! What a wuss these guys are!)Anyway, first time around I saw guys getting cut down, dropped and took Cav's advice and sprayed the top of the tower with the SAW... cutting down the man at the top (sorry for the pun! - and in all likelihood it wasn't me who hit him, but anyway, never let the truth get in the way of a good story!). Then I saw Cav and others get hit, spent ages crawling up to him to avoid getting shot, selected "Revive" from the menu, only for my dumb avatar to stand up to administer first aid! Fool! A bullet to the side of the head ended that little manu (which is my text chat shorthand way of writing maneuver, which I can never remember how to spell in the heat of the battle! - to text chat in game, btw, type "/" and the chat box comes up - can't do anything else while typing - except get shot!).
Second time around I was Team Leader! This means I get to shout random commands to people who's typical response is "Huh? Who? What? Where?". Anyway, I manage to herd my group of cats (cats as in directionless, ownerless, disobedient creatures [yes, I know one saved your life Cav, but they still have staff, not owners] not cool guys from the 70s!) around the north side of the hill. Things were silent on the voice channel apart from Christian talking to himself, and no one responded to my text chats. Then I saw a guy running across the field off to the south, heard the sound of a motor and saw a truck head up to the hill. I tried to fire a few shots at the driver as he careened past, but failed. With no responses to my chats and it getting late and a trip to the supermarket waiting, I decided to logoff.
No comments:
Post a Comment