The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off)

[henke]

Good session, even the part where I surprised a trigger-happy Jesh and got myself a mighty ass whopping.

[Thirith]

Great session - thanks to henke, Jeshibu, Malf and Sulphur for joining!

We started with Hotel Sahrani, set on the Arma 1 map of, well, Sahrani, where we had to interrupt a conference at an ugly hotel. It wasn't easy, not least since there were machinegunners and snipers all over the hotel roof and balconies, and we ended up having to go through the hotel room by room, floor by floor, to clean it out. It was gruelling but we managed in the end.

Second mission took us to Takistan: PMC: Hostage Rescue. Since we were already there, though, we also took out a warlord at the same time. Takistan's a very unique map with its deserts, green patches and collections of huts and compounds, and the Takistani insurgents put up strong resistance, to the point where we first died on our way to the hostage. I watched an insurgent first wound henke, then, after waiting for Malf to approach in order to patch henke up, put a bullet in henke's head and take out Malf. We did finally manage the second time around, though the escape chopper had a mind of its own... so, after it failed to take us to safety, Malf put it out of its misery with a well-aimed RPG. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Finally, we cleared out Alikampos (Firefight: Alikampos)... which first proved more difficult than expected, since henke dropped out due to network issues - and he was the guy with the AT weapon! The enemy MRAP's grenade fire kept us pinned down, especially Malf, but then Jesh made a heroic run for a downed AT soldier, got his rocket launcher and took care of the MRAP. Hooray, and congrats to Jesh for the great final shot of the session. (My money had been on him getting shot to bits by the MRAP, but on balance I'm also happy with this result.)

And that was it for today. Next Arma session should be in two weeks, but I will confirm soon.

[Jeshibu]

Thanks for hosting again, Thirith! Here's the other end of that gif.

[henke]

Hahaha, wonderful.

[Thirith]

It was a fun session; I think we lucked onto a couple of missions that worked well (rather than just 'they worked well - for Arma'). They also adapted well to the actual number of players, which is rare. I'm thinking I should have a look at the missions I've got that are set on Arma and Arma 2 maps and make more use of them.

[Thirith]

As promised, here's the confirmation of the next session. Individual reminders to follow by Steam PM.

The next Arma 3 coop session:

Date: Sat, 12 October 2019
Time: 3-6pm UK time

As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's on Steam.

Please note that I'll be away most of November; there might be a game on 2 November (to confirm after the next session), but then there will be a break of at least four weeks - so make sure to get your fill of Arma beforehand!

[Thirith]

Weird session today, since some of the missions did some strange, strange things...

We started with Seek & Destroy, a mission set in Takistan. This one was pretty simple; our weapons were more than a match for the Takistani insurgents and we were able to take them out from a distance. Still, the mission didn't exactly end after we took out the IEDs and ammo crates, so we had to call it manually. The next mission, though, Sandman (set in Zargabad)... it started by crashing Malf's Arma, then... henke's, I think, so we had to restart. Once we did, everything seemed to work... except we were invincible. Falling from ten metres height? Didn't kill us. Being blown up by multiple satchel charges? That blew us onto roofs, but we were fine. Also, we didn't find the warlord we'd been sent to apprehend, so in the end we just made a big pile of satchel charges and blew 'em all up. Wee!

The final mission was also weird, but fun in its own way: A Normal Day (Altis) took us on a patrol where we had to check civilians, some of whom had guns. We also had to check some buildings with bad guys and blow up an enemy ammo truck. Jesh and henke dropped out on the way, but they helped Finally, we found some bomb codes and had to race to three blocks of flats to disarm bombs. When we got there, we first had to survive an ambush, but I finally made it to one of the bombs, tried a code... and blew up. Malf: same thing. Dema was the last one standing, and even though he followed the instructions exactly, his code also didn't work, so our "normal day" patrol ended with all three of us blown sky-high.

Still, much fun was had. Thanks to henke, Malf, Jeshibu and demagogue for joining!

The next Arma 3 session will be in three weeks, on Saturday 2 November, at the usual time - and then I'll be away until the beginning of December.

[Jeshibu]

Good fun again! Here's some of Sandman:

[henke]

Hahaha, yeah that was great.

[Thirith]

And here's the proper announcement:

The next Arma 3 coop session:

Date: Sat, 2 November 2019
Time: 3-6pm UK time

As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's on Steam.

By the way, demagogue and me, we (most likely) solved his problem with Task Force Radio and TS3, so next time we should be able to play with regular radio and directional audio. Here's hoping it'll work, because I find that especially when we're navigating an environment like a city or a compound, it really helps me to be able to hear where everyone is, or if they're far away so they need to use the radio. When everyone sounds the same wherever they are, regardless of distance and direction, it feels oddly impairing. I'm actually surprised not more coop games do some version of this: directional chat, lower volume as you move away, and switching to a radio sound effect once people are further away.

[Jeshibu]

I probably won't be able to attend. You guys have a great time!

[Thirith]

Aw man... Sorry to hear it. I'm hoping the next session after that one will be on Saturday 7/12, since I'll be away for just over three weeks. Our first real holiday this year - and one that includes jumping out of a plane and trying to remember which button opens the parachute, which is quite fitting.

On a different note, would the regular players be willing to add a couple more mods perhaps? There are a few mods that provide additional units and maps, which would in turn give us access to some interesting missions. At the same time, especially map mods tend to be pretty big. I wouldn't want to add 10+GB in one fell swoop, but I wanted to know if people here could imagine adding a couple of GBs to their Arma installation.

[Thirith]

Quick heads-up for this coming Saturday: we just switched to winter time last Sunday, so it's possible that the time difference is temporarily different for some of you. If you're planning to join, make sure to check what 3pm UK time translates to this coming Saturday. Also, keep in mind that afterwards there'll be an entire month (!) without Arma-y goodness.

[Thirith]

Nope, today the gods of Arma weren't with Malf, henke and myself. The first mission, a dynamically generated one set on Zargabad, was fun enough - mainly because we got killed very quickly and then just used the toys on the map, the tanks and helicopters, to have some fun. The mission type might work well with a larger group, or with us making better use of the hardware at our disposal, but as it was we had 15-20 minutes of sandbox fun before we got bored of getting killed over and over again. Pretty explosions, though!

We then moved on to Caravan Raiders (Altis), where henke did his best to lead us to victory. We were supposed to ambush a convoy and steal one of the three vehicles, an unarmed MRAP. Problem was: the convoy didn't come. After about ten minutes, a sole armed APC drove by (after killing our one AI team member) at a speed of perhaps 2 m/s. We took it out and decided to take the fight to the enemy. We jumped in the pickup truck and drove towards where the convoy supposedly began its journey. The first APC we drove past, we took out with two shots from my RPG; the second APC returned the favour and we all bled out in the pickup truck.

We ended on Operation Greensmoke (Stratis), where we found a small contingent of enemy units occupying a ruined building. We thought we were stealthy, but they soon knew where we were and took me out with a bullet straight between the eyes. Malf survived a bit longer, but the crack shots also took him out. Henke lasted about ten minutes, firing at them from twice the distance we'd been at and getting a few of them, while Thirith and Malf, the living drones (i.e. the two of us in spectator mode), tried to tell him where they were hiding. Still, he had little chance against half a dozen elite units and in the end they found him and killed him.

Sadly, they weren't the best of missions for a small group (well, the last one was designed for three people, but if you die before it's even started properly it's not all that much fun), but as always it was still good fun hanging out on the battlefield with the TTLG crew. Thanks for the game, guys!

As mentioned before, I'll be on holiday and will only be back at the beginning of December, so there's a break until 7 December. Till then!

The next Arma 3 coop session:

Date: Sat, 7 December 2019
Time: 3-6pm UK time

As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's on Steam.

[PigLick]

I think I may have to have a nap on Sat afternoon, I keep falling asleep before its time.

[Jason Moyer]

I'll eventually be back to play, but I've been working marathon hours the last few months and generally I need to be there around the time the sessions start, unfortunately.

[Thirith]

Sorry about the sucky timing on my part. Hoping that the two of you can join again before long. Happy to send some caffeine pills to Australia, PigLick!

[PigLick]

Good thing is by the next session I should be on holidays so that will be a lot easier.

[Jason Moyer]

The session times are perfectly sensible, it's my work schedule that's kinda shitty.

[Jeshibu]

Arma 3 DLC's on sale. Any opinions on its single player quality and usefulness in our co-op sessions? The ones I'm missing now are Laws of War, Jets, Tac-Ops Mission Pack, Tanks, and Contact.

[Thirith]

There’s always a slim chance content from the DLC will turn up in a mission I’ve downloaded, but we haven’t had the dreaded in game advertising for a while now. I think you should be fine without the DLC. Contact is a bigger one and includes a new map, but I believe there aren’t any official coop missions that come with it. At this point I think that some additional mods would be more likely to come into play than the DLC you haven’t got.

[Thirith]

This is a reminder that we're returning to the Arma battlefield this coming Saturday, at the regular time.

Also, quick question to everyone: we could fit in another session before Christmas, on 21/12, but this might be quite close to Christmas for some or most of you. Who'd still be around and available for some Arma on Saturday 21 December? Otherwise I'd suggest that we make 7/12 the last game of 2019 and continue in January, probably on 11/1/2020. Let me know what you think.

[Jeshibu]

I wouldn't be able to make the 21st, but I'll probably be around for January 11th.

[Thirith]

By the way, in case anyone's interested, there are TCs of the original Operation Flashpoint and the Red Hammer add-on for Arma 3. In addition to the CUP modset that we're using, they also use the RHS mods, which are enormous but apparently pretty good. They're among the mods I have on my radar for how we could potentially expand future Arma sessions.

Cold War Crisis (i.e. Operation Flashpoint)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil.../?id=756113314

Red Hammer
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil.../?id=857463749

[henke]

I probably can't make it to tomorrow's session.

Blow up some MRAPs (or yourselves) for me.