Sunday, March 13, 2016

Arma 3 Mission - Blocking Position SPEAR

I have just uploaded a new mission at the Arma 3 Steam Workshop.





The link to the mission is:

Blocking Position SPEAR.



This is a single player mission.
Arma 3 requirements: plain vanilla Arma 3 (it may require the helicopters or marksman DLC, not sure).
Player requirements: this scenario is best enjoyed when the player knows how to command a fire team and to use indirect fire and CAS support.
Duration: 45-60 minutes.
Difficulty: Easy.


Scenario description: your NATO fireteam is on point for 2nd Platoon. 2nd Platoon is on a maneuver to the enemy's rear to block his withdrawal towards the south. Your mission is to clear two enemy observation posts (OPs) and then facilitate 2nd Platoon's intended blocking position. Your mission ends when 2nd Platoon arrives at the intended blocking position or when enemy forces are completely destroyed.







This is version 1.0 and may contain some errors.

Your comments are appreciated.

Cheers,

6 comments:

Anonymous said...


Random feedback:

Player spawn slightly above the ground and his team spawn in just ½ a second later.

Where is the rest of 2nd Plt? Could be nice to have them visible somewhere behind you and specify that they are too busy packing mines and AT weapons, to help your team clear the way :-) Perhaps have the player as a FAC/FAO team that are ordered to clear the OPs, so as to conserve the fighting strength of 2nd platoon to occupy the blocking position? And give the teamlead a laser designator for the laser-guided bombs.

Called in CAS on Hammurabi before clearing Darius. When Hammurabi was destroyed I was immidiately tasked to block enemy forces, which does not seem intentional? Once Darius was cleared Task Hammurabi was activated again? Clearing the enemy withdrawing gave me a message that the mission was complete and it ended sometime after that. I only had objective Darius as completed during the debriefing.

I spotted the withdrawing enemy when moving on Darius and called artillery on them. Don´t know if this is intentional, but could be helped by having the enemy move through the depression directly south of their starting map marker to 106195 before moving on Galati?

Mission took 16 minutes for me, but of course I never moved to Hammurabi.

I really like these simple, plausible missions. You are no special forces, you work in concert with other units (at least on the map), and the mission tasks clear. Good work!

JC said...

Thanks for playing it!

You pulled a nice one with your play, man.

Those are very good ideas you put forward. Sorry about the finicky trigger happenings and back and forth. It never occurred to me that somebody would clear Hammurabi before Darius, that's why the triggers went crazy. Fixing it would be beyond the reach of my meager talents, but it is clear that you destroyed all the withdrawing ENY forces and that's what counts (i.e. screw those "task completions"! :) ).

I intentionally left the 2nd Platoon out of comms. I like that element of uncertainty, although I recognize it plays a bit over the top considering the player is "on point".

Anyway, depending on the amount of downloads I will update the mission.

Cheers,

Ben said...

Really enjoyable mission. Agreed with Anon's general statements, I took it a lot slower though at around 36 minutes of play. (Some infantry scattered south of Hammurabi/The blocking point so I had to clean them up before moving to block).

I set up in the house near the blocking position and the view from there to the street the OPFOR infantry move through is really nice, one criticism/possible improvement would maybe have some small detachments pouring through the town with different way points, if only to avoid the situation I had where the AI was moving into a kill zone for the final fight and being decimated by my fire team. Perhaps if artillery/CAS bombing runs are used on the bases before they approach the town with more caution knowing that they may be intercepted?

Either way, thanks for sharing.

JC said...

Hi Ben and thanks for your comments and for playing the mission.

You have very good points. I had not planned for the multiple approaches that people may take to play ... Which is very rewarding in a way. I always like to see how players approach the problem at hand so differently.

As for the routes taken by the AI, yes I agree. I wanted to convey a hasty withdrawal, almost a routing. But there is plenty of covered/concealed approaches. I will work on that based on the amount of downloads the mission gets.

Cheers Ben, and keep playing these awesome games!

Anonymous said...

I loved this and your last mission.

SPOILERS****

This one got me twice. The first time, as soon as my squad crested the first hill, they opened up on OP Darius. Buncha damn Rambos out there! I thought we got them all in the initial shootout, so we basically ran up there. A guy carrying an MG popped around the corner of the hesco and shot me. Game over.

The second time through (a day later), I calmed down a bit and approached with more discipline. Went over that first crest, holding fire, and let a couple rounds of cluster munitions soften it up. When the smoke cleared, the objective was accomplished.

At that point I had intel on an apparent survivor with an MG (that same a-hole?!) on the other side of Darius. I called in another 2 rounds of cluster munitions. We skirted the right side of the hill with no need to go to Darius. OP Hammurabi came into sight, so I called for air attack with laser guided bombs. The A16's flew over but never dropped. Then tried dumb bombs with the same results. I'm not sure what I did wrong there but air was useless. Several rounds of HE finally did the trick. Pop pop pop! That effin' survivor of 4 rounds of cluster artillery came up behind us. Luckily we were able to take him out quickly with small arms.

Then came the task of cutting off the retreating infantry. We ended up on a great overwatch just NW of Galati. I waited and waited but could not see the enemy even with my fantastic vantage point. I thought I'd wasted too much time so started huffin it to Hammurabi to try to catch them as they slip out or set up ambush if we beat them there. 100m from Reaching Hammurabi, we saw the enemy squad running in front of the church. They saw us running across the hill with zero cover and the firefight erupted. There were more than I was expecting, with maybe dozen running as a unit. I saw 8 or 9 go down before I was hit with a lucky MG blast.

I had a great time playing this one!

tFS

JC said...

Hi tFS and thanks for playing it.

It's an honor to have around here, man.

I noticed that CAS doesn't work very well on OP Hammurabi. The AI pilot can't manage to drop the bombs. I don't know why.

Cheers,