PMC Ops Kunduz Week 1 24/04/2020 @ 17:30 UTC

[MidnightRunner]

Mission Name:

PMC Ops Kunduz Week 1 

 

Server Details:

IP: 136.243.150.72:

Port: 2302

 

Mods Required:

Arma 3 Preset PMC OPs.html

 

TS address: ts.ahoyworld.net

TEAMSPEAK MISSION BRIEFING FOR ALL PLAYERS WILL BEGIN AT 17.30 UTC

Expected Mission Length: 120+ minutes (may go over or under expected mission length)

 

Player Slots: 30 (6 Teams of 4,  command, and vortex )

 

 

Situation

Newly arrived in the area we have established our main base of operations known as "the Warehouse". We are primarily contracted by the US DOD to operate in the region. They will provide tasking for the company when needed, we may also avail of any open contract on insurgent leaders as we see fit. While finalising our readiness in theatre we get word that a trail has been found for a local mid level insurgent leader, "Ahmad Zubair Kuhestani". Intelligence has placed members of his immediate family in the area, it is therefore likely that Ahmad is nearby. You are tasked to search the area and find where Ahmad is hiding. HE is then to be captured alive and brought in to be handed over to US forces.

 

 

Assets:

1 x MH-6M Littlebird

1 x AH-6M Little Bird

1 x UH-60M

Various ground transport and support vehicles

 

Friendly Forces:

US Army 

Afghan National Army and Police forces

 

Enemy Forces:

Insurgents and non allied tribal fighters 

 

Civilians:

Civilians are concentrated around towns and villages.

 

Mission

 

 

Using the intelligence gather search known locations of Ahmad Zubair Kuhestani's family and find any trace of his location. Use this information to track down and capture Kuhestani.

 

 

Execution

Objectives:

Finalise mission readiness

Search identified area for signs of Ahmad Zubair Kuhestani

Find and capture him alive

 

 

Movement Plan:

At Commanders discretion

 

Rules of Engagement:

Armed personnel may be engaged on sight.

Civilians are present in the area so collateral damage is to be kept to a minimum.

Only buildings clearly being used for a military purpose may be engaged.

Civilian life must be protected (Hearts and minds)

 

Optional Tasks:

Provide any necessary support to civilians in the area.

 

Admin & Logistics

 

Resupply:

At the commander’s control, assets are available at base to facilitate this.

 

Reinforcements:

Unlimited

At commanders discretion, transport assets are available.

 

 

Command & Control

 

Command:

Overall command lays with codename "Overlord" who will set objectives and ROE.

Operational control on the ground lies with the Platoon Commander.

 

Communication:

Radio channels are set for each element and can be viewed as part of the Diary accessible through the map . Platoon has limited discretion for change but structure is to be maintained.

 

 

 

[WinterMute]

Any chance of a map of the general field of operations?

[Lindi]

Do we also get playing cards with the faces of the terrorists were hunting?

 

Looking forward to this!

[MidnightRunner]

@WinterMute you've been spoiled by Janxol. 

 

@Lindi im afraid I don't have the Ps skills necessary for that haha

[Gambit]

@WinterMute Since the whole terrain is 5kmx5km, i dont think we need a detailed map

[Noah_Hero]

49 minutes ago, MidnightRunner said:

@WinterMute you've been spoiled by Janxol.

@Lindi im afraid I don't have the Ps skills necessary for that haha

@WinterMute Since the whole terrain is 5kmx5km, i dont think we need a detailed map

If you need help, then just let me know and I'll make a nice looking map (and not just an ugly editor-screenshot with the UI overlaying the grid-numbers, etc.) like I am always doing for the MSO (like the ones in this post for example: https://forums.ahoyworld.net/topic/14389-campaign-six-altis/?do=findComment&comment=126899).
Just send me like an approximate drawing of the AO (can just be an in-game drawn like or whatever) and tell me if you want anything marked out.

 

And same goes for the playing cards. Just tell me what face the guy should have and how important he is (i.e. what card you want him on) and I'll do the rest.

[Lindi]

The playing card itself isn't that important. I was just thinking if we are hunting HVTs we'd need to know how he/she/it looks like!

[MidnightRunner]

@Noah_Hero cheers, I make take you up on that offer in the future.

 

Don't worry you will have a clear description of the HVT for PID purposes.

[Minipily]

Let's go bag us a Jack of Diamonds.

[Noah_Hero]

1 hour ago, Minipily said:

Let's go bag us a Jack of Diamonds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film)

[ansin11]

Right, feedback.

Comms, Chaos & Coordination: That was just bad luck. Nobody could have predicted that this mission would attract so many players.

Team Size: So in my unpopular opinion, teams of four work well for this PMC setting. It felt nice and cozy in Alpha, communication was far better than it is in the big squads and breaching / CQC was organized, which, despite the best efforts of many during previous OPs, is usually not the case. Not having a medic / autorifleman / engineer on every team also seemed perfectly fine. It was just that the approach to the OP and the setup of the OP itself was not quite right for four man teams.

Mobility: Too much. For a map of this size, there were too many air assets.

 

My suggestion or my approach if I had to repeat this OP:

• Trim Vortex down to one pilot for reinserts and resupply.
• Keep the four man teams. No CLS team, no FAC.
• Make the mission ground / vehicle based (with one vehicle per team).
• Add more environment. Civilians, maybe a friendly or neutral road block, some (armed) third parties, some interaction with locals, just some things to keep players engaged and on edge before any firefights start.
• Split the playerbase across several simultaneous theaters and tasks once the number of players allows for it. Faced with only a handful of poorly equipped opponents at a time a four man team will be just fine completing an objective on their own.

This would slow the mission down (reducing chaos) and allow for some cool teamwork while also increasing the amount of action / entertainment every individual team has.

For example, Alpha and Bravo might be operating together, complementing each other's capabilites (specialist roles) to complete one objective. In the meantime, Charlie and Delta are in a different town, completing a different objective, surrounded by civilians just going about their daily lives - until the CHADS get ambushed. They are now in a lengthy firefight with insurgents throughout the town while scrambling to complete their objective. No support - just guns and bandages.

Make the OP less of an open war with constant fighting and more of an unstable neutral environment. There's no need for constant fighting to keep the players entertained, just force them to keep eyes all around them expecting to be shot any second. Give them some hairy situations like a blocked road in a built-up area and everybody will be sweating profoundly just because two locals had a car crash.

Remove military assets such as CAS helicopters, instead let the CHADS rely on their beards, improvisation and a piece of hightech equipment or two (for example the 'satellite'). After all, CHADS is a for-profit PMC not the USSOCOM with a billion dollar budget.

Adjust the objectives accordingly: The CHADS are there to make money, not win the war. Your company needs to move several petabytes worth of data from A to B? No problem, CHADS got you covered. Personal protection or security? Yep, we got it. Cash in on a bounty? Sure, why not, we've got a convoy in the area. Your business has lost a valuable asset of questionable legality in a contested region? We can help you search, just pay the price.

That's the kind of setting I personally would expect from a PMC OP. Today's mission seemed more like a poorly coordinated special forces raid.

 

Unfortunately this is probably too much workload for a single Zeus, I do realise that. But feedback is feedback.

[kman]

1 hour ago, ansin11 said:

So in my unpopular opinion, teams of four work well for this PMC setting. It felt nice and cozy in Alpha, communication was far better than it is in the big squads

 

I agree totaly, that small team feels more coordinated than big squads usualy do, especially since team travels between objectives in 1 vic.

But I would still go with 5 or 6, just to reduce overall number of units. @Gambit mentioned, that he was not receiving much position-reports, but I feel that if me and other six teamleads tried to update him regularly, the command net would be unbearable.

 

PS: for vics, HMMWV with gun seats 5, Jackal seats 6

 

PPS: Gambit did rly good job considering number of units and BLUfor tracker off.

[SiegeSix]

15 minutes ago, kman said:

PPS: Gambit did rly good job considering number of units and BLUfor tracker off.

But you did have a BlueFor Tracker in your inventory and I noticed too many removing it... it serves a purpose.

[kman]

11 minutes ago, SiegeSix said:

But you did have a BlueFor Tracker in your inventory and I noticed too many removing it... it serves a purpose.

Wait, we did ? Do you mean like that old mod adding PDA that can be shown/hidden ?

I haven't used that one for so long, I forgot it even was a thing.

 

I believe I seen it go to disuse when Bohemia added those little windows (I believe it was around Tank DLC) that can display map-cut, radar etc..

[SiegeSix]

1 minute ago, kman said:

Wait, we did ? Do you mean like that old mod adding PDA that can be shown/hidden ?

No. It was a non-useable object called "BluFor Tracker" you had on you. The ISR Operator (me) would see you as an individual with a green square, nametag, unit and everything. That's what made the ISR special here. He could see every guy and what team he belong to.

 

Essentially, everyone EXCEPT the ISR operator can't see each other, that's where the communications part panned out. But the BluFor tracker made it possible for me to not only save Alpha a lot of time clearing compounds, but also saving Delta from a potential danger, Echo from missing that one armed combatant and even confirming the HVT's location.

Because some of the friendlies lacked this tracker I saw them as a grey square (the same as everything else (unarmed or armed combatants) was), I had to zoom in really far (each zoom is 10 meters and it starts at 300 meters, so you can guess how many times I have to go before I can visually confirm it's friendly). 

 

That tracker let me, as your bird's eye, let me see what where who and what team were where . It allowed me to distinguish foreign from friendly and it even let me track the HVT as he drove off in his blue range rover with white roof, that he ditched next to the house that he hid in with two armed combatants. This was also what helped save a potential Norris 2.0 scenario with the MG on the outside walls of the compound.

[Norris]

 

[SiegeSix]

8 hours ago, Norris said:

 

I love how at 16:00 you thought it was the HVT

19:13, so that's why I saw two pilots 

[ansin11]

Edit: Read this comment as an extension of my previous comment.

 

Once the objectives are distributed among teams the command net should become cleaner all by itself because every team is mobile on itself and movement and attacks no longer need to be coordinated with other units.

Example: Alpha's task is to pick up a VIP at point A and provide him with safe passage to point B. At the same time, Bravo and Charlie are working together on a different objective. PC can now leave the execution of the assigned tasks up to the corresponding team(s) and take on the role of a dispatcher, organising reinforcements and reinserts, collecting status updates and passing on intel from the ISR Operator.

At that point you could change comms if you wanted:

1. You could split the command channel, leaving Alpha and Vortex on 30 (because Vortex needs to be somewhere, not because they are working together) and moving Bravo and Charlie to 31. The units on 30 now don't interfere with Bravo and Charlie coordinating their combined efforts and Bravo and Charlie in turn don't need to ignore calls related to a mission they are far away from.
2. You could leave command channel on 30. Bravo and Charlie merge to one SR channel and can now talk about their objective as much as they like and neither Alpha nor PC need to hear (and wait for the call to finish) that Charlie is moving to flank the enemy on the north-eastern side of town.

 

Communication within the team (at least the one I was in) was easy and largely happened without radios. Watching @Norris's video shows me that the command channel and the map were flooded because @Gambit was forced to coordinate three helicopters and five (or six?) fireteams in what essentially became three consecutive assaults on enemy positions, a task that is evidently not well suited to four man teams and also a task that I personally would not expect in a PMC campaign.

So, if @MidnightRunner is willing to adjust the objectives and the setting, then the player in PC is able to (and should) leave the approach to each task up to the assigned team(s). And then, in turn, four man teams with limited access to specialist roles may well turn out to be a lot of fun and very effective.

Edited April 25, 2020 by ansin11

[SiegeSix]

4 minutes ago, ansin11 said:

Alpha's task is to pick up a VIP at point A and provide him with safe passage to point B. At the same time, Bravo and Charlie are working together on a different objective. PC can now leave the execution of the assigned tasks up to the corresponding team(s) and take on the role of a dispatcher, organising reinforcements and reinserts, collecting status updates and passing on intel from the ISR Operator.

That's exactly what happened.

Inside the briefing tent, the first thing Gambit said was: "You guys just do your thing out there and I'll be on long range."

 

6 minutes ago, ansin11 said:

You could split the command channel, leaving Alpha and Vortex on 30 (because Vortex needs to be somewhere, not because they are working together) and moving Bravo and Charlie to 31. The units on 30 now don't interfere with Bravo and Charlie coordinating their combined efforts and Bravo and Charlie in turn don't need to ignore calls related to a mission they are far away from.

Alternatively, they can just switch their SR to their respective squad freq to coordinate? Two teams that is within 200-400 meters of each other doesn't need to use the long range to communicate, they can just switch over to talk to them.

 

7 minutes ago, ansin11 said:

You could leave command channel on 30. Bravo and Charlie merge to one SR channel and can now talk about their objective as much as they like and neither Alpha nor PC need to hear (and wait for the call to finish) that Charlie is moving to flank the enemy on the north-eastern side of town.

This is gonna create problems.. Now Bravo is on the west side and Charlie on the east. They are doing their own searches, when a guy suddenly screams ""CONTACT IN THE BUILDING," and everyone is looking frantically at every building. The way PC operated in this OP was simply just the "Dispatcher," nothing else. He even went to me several times telling me "these guys constantly ask for me." The objectives were laid out the tent, and the objectives were up the teams to finalize. 

 

The only concern I reckon actually could be improved there, was the team could automatically assume they would need to move to the next squad point (A1 -> A2, B2 -> B3).

 

11 minutes ago, ansin11 said:

Watching @Norris's video shows me that the command channel and the map were flooded because @Gambit was forced to coordinate three helicopters and five (or six?) fireteams in what essentially became three consecutive assaults on enemy positions, a task that is evidently not well suited to four man teams and also a task that I personally would not expect in a PMC campaign.

Gambit became flooded on Command, because, as mentioned earlier, there were too many teams either confused as to what to do, or was simply relying on the PC to tell them what to do. In reality, the only thing Gambit would have to worry about is the teams' requests, reinserts, helicopter comms (which I found Gambit switching SR to avoid flooding LR) and making plans on the fly in terms of updated tasks.

 

16 minutes ago, ansin11 said:

So, if @MidnightRunner is willing to adjust the objectives and the setting, then the player in PC is able to (and should) leave the approach to each task up to the assigned team(s). And then, in turn, four man teams with limited access to specialist roles may well turn out to be a lot of fun and very effective.

No. In my opinion he doesn't need to change anything. Even from an ISR Operator's point of view, everyone had something to do, and they all did something. Even those that got shot.

I reckon with a CLS team you can move past an injury faster, that will help gameplay.

But don't blame the structure for the clutted LR chatter. When the PC explicetly says as the first thing in the briefing: "You guys do your thing, I'lll be on long range," then it falls down on the Team Leaders who relied on the PC too much.

 

Now that's my opinion.

[ansin11]

@SiegeSix don't worry, I don't think @Gambit (or anyone else) did a poor job.

I'm just trying to give @MidnightRunner a good idea of what I personally believe would make these PMC OPs more enjoyable - hoping that he may find some of my input useful.

[WinterMute]

I enjoyed the mission, it was good having a walk through of Enhanced Movement etc.

 

Most people have already said things I've thought, to a point. I don't think the structure of the squads was bad necessarily. 4 man teams is fine. I think the noise on LR can be solved by only speaking when spoken to, except in emergencies - and the job of setting that rule comes to the PC in the briefing (and I think this problem was only properly visible in hindsight). Use the downtime (When you run out of objectives) to patch wounds etc, and await further instruction. With LR being less noisy, hopefully PC will have extra capacity to keep the plan coming.

 

Helis were used weirdly for the initial insert. Could have driven HMMWV's to those LZ's. I am assuming we have wildly superior equipment and are massively outnumbered by relatively unskilled (ok, skilled enough to survive the war preceding this scenario, but not formally trained) Opfor with Soviet Army Surplus weapons. Would be cool to have had a hot LZ in a confined space (I trust a lot of the pilots involved to be able to fly the little birds up a duck's arse if needed, so this would be no bother to them) - these could be chosen with intel from the Eyes In The Sky - and then work outwards from there. I don't know if you can structure a mission to make that the obvious solution to the initial insert, or whether you need an absolute psycho PlatCo.

 

The CLS heli idea would see some properly intense LZ's brought into play.

[MidnightRunner]

Hey Guys,

 

Thanks for all the feedback, it means a lot that you take the time to send it in.

I will make sure to take it all into account when re editing the mission file this week.
I'll update on the changes later in the week.

 

Thanks again,

Midnight

[RiverWolf]

Midnight, car bombs are needed and were used by the enemy, I think it will add to the atmosphere of war in op.

[SiegeSix]

11 hours ago, RiverWolf said:

Midnight, car bombs are needed and were used by the enemy, I think it will add to the atmosphere of war in op.

@MidnightRunner, if you got the Achillis on, you can add suicide bombers!

[Xwatt]

4 hours ago, SiegeSix said:

@MidnightRunner, if you got the Achillis on, you can add suicide bombers!

they don’t say very appropriate things when they go boom afaik