[AAR] Biggest, Meanest Comback Ever (My Perspective In F-16) 56k warning
Posted: 2009-02-04 11:41
This is the story of how we came back from almost certain defeat. I would like to say this is my version of events, so its probably blatantly exaggerated. That said, guys in my squad or on this server please correct my order of events or facts or whatever.
Thanks to Alex6714 for staying awake and staying alive, while helping keeping the enemy planes all dead like.
Thanks to Nick for the lasers and the constant spamming of useful information.
Three things I would say caused this epic win.
1. Constant intel on enemy aircraft and ground forces.
- Enemy aircraft repeatedly destroyed in 2 minutes or less. Both spotters split up to cover 2 main areas that the enemy would come from. Located and killed jets within a few minutes of takeoff. Intel is everything.
2. Rapid destruction of SAM sites before they were able to move into advantageous positions. Allowed complete destruction of them without them even getting a shot off the vast majority of the time.
- done by taking high speed "glances" of likely positions of terrain. Most pilots can guess the areas I am referring to. But there are 5 key routes AA will always be on Kashan, and 5 places they will never be. The basic rule of removing AA is that each "dumb" AA has a 100% PK (probability of kill). Each "smart" AA is 50% PK. Mobile AA is 100% PK, and static AA is 50% PK. If they're smart and look for aircraft, you'll die half the time, cause they'll see you first all the time. Oh and you know the AA is smart if it sees you before you see it.
ie) AA (smart) 50% PK * AA (static) 50% PK = 25% PK
But to quote the great Philosopher Yahtzee:
If its dumb then its as hard as killing a Hamster in a speedbag.
And if its dumb and moving then its as hard as killing a Hamster in a speedbag full of broken glass.
Since you don't decide who is in the AAV, all you can do to maximize your chances is? Yup, hit it when its moving. And so while waiting for a lase works when the enemy doesn't kill your spotter every 5 seconds, this guarantees the AA is static, and way more lethal. Worse yet, always waiting for a laser will usually mean that the enemy can mass forces uninterrupted, which generally results in them being much more effective. As in you let A group of Tunguskas mass together and get good vantage points you're in for a major headache. Use lasers when available, but if there isn't one for whatever reason, then you still have to be able to get on with it. There's more stuff you can do to maximize your chances but those stay with me.
3. Lack of resilience on OPFOR's part.
- After each thumping, the other team would just get mad and disconnect letting us counter attack. Lucky for us. Watch their team shrink in the following pictures.
Game starts off promising enough. Me and some buddies in a squad. I grab the F-16. One guy with a laser to find enemy forces, one guy in Linebacker to point me at enemy jets, and of course bush whack them given the chance.
The Round Begins
Round starts with my AA spotter in E4, and my ground spotter a few hundred meters away covering south. I grab the F-16 and take off fast. I loiter at 3000m while I wait for the enemy jets to appear.
For the first hour we repeatedly fend off more and more concentrated attacks. I first to use guns against a BMP overrunning my spotter. Our team is largely immobile infantry units, and it didn't take long for the MEC to figure that out. All we can do is watch as the MEC outmaneuvers our hapless squads. My AA spotter locates the enemy jets and gets me a good intercept, killing the MiG-29, and a minute later I get the Su-25. At this point we only had 2 tanks to stop the MEC, and they're waiting 2km south near South Village.
The Round Goes Pear Shaped
Multiple T-90s, BMPs, and AAVs approach north village as our team tries to gather some more suitable weapons. The A-10 is lost on an attack run against north village. I locate the SA-19 when I see a missile launch miss a chopper. I fire dumb AIM-9s into the site putting it out of action. I fire guns and AIM-120s at tanks, killing one. My laser spotter is a few hundred meters south getting into position, and can't laser the moving tank. I located it again near an oil derrick. I have to ripple fire my bombs from 500 feet at low altitude (gambling there's no AA). The tank is damaged. I land and reload my weapons.
Our A-10 respawns, and we have a few near midair collisions all throughout the round. The enemy SU-25 began hitting us in NV at this time. Looked like it got off a few LGBs I think, but my spotters as usual give me a good reference and the missiles do the rest.
The Alamo 2.0
I am orbiting overhead at medium alt over outpost, waiting for the flag to turn. This is a basic tactic that you use when you don't have a spotter. The second a flag ever turns EVER, everything with wings should be shooting everything that goes boom into it, and the OPFORS AAVs should be seriously spamming missiles at anything they see. If you are on the ground and you know the enemy has jets in the air, and you can kindof hear one above you in the distance, and the flag is turning gray: Get off the flag! Just leave 1 or 2 guys there or however many it needs to change. You'll see why in a second.
By this time our team has been pushed out of north village, and my spotters had either been killed and back at main, or retreated. The second I see the flag go I make a low pass over a likely hill by about 500m west of outpost. Sure enough an AAV is right there in my pipper. I squeeze off a few rounds and it goes off. I gamble that he was alone, and ask for an attack marker on the outpost. I shoot all 6 missiles, and both bombs on one pass, trying to get the paveways on the road, and the missiles into the structures and likely pieces of cover.
The result was over half their team being grayed out (I took the pic as an afterthought when they had mostly started respawning). It was the last attack we'd see for awhile.
I'll remind you that up to this point the US has been outnumbered significantly, as the losing team disconnects as we find out later.
Just as I think that we've turned this around, our main flag goes.
OH SH**
Many expletives and groans are heard over voip, and I immediately head north and strafe the flag hard. I order the A-10 to fire everything he's got at the flag while I land. Thankfully, it was just a few foot soldiers on the flag (not a Tank), and I immediately RTB and reload.
It just occurs to me that our team can't respawn. So major pucker factor atm. And there's about 8 of us. However our AAV and spotter are alive. Outpost isn't taken. And we have a tank and IFV rolling to the flag. But most importantly, our A-10 and F-16 are still up and doing serious damage.
I have to basically argue for the remaining 1 or 2 tanks to make a beeline for the main base (they had been at south village the whole time. How the MEC tanks missed them going to outpost is beyond me).
The Counterattack
FINALLY the flag turns back and you can hear everyone in VOIP and in chat going "SPAWN QUICK EVERYBODY SPAWN! OMG HOW DID WE DO THAT??" Can barely hear myself think.
I am shocked at how fast we had dedicated Mech Inf, Tanks, and trucks zipping south. They were on the flag and setting up before I even reloaded.
At this time I was flying East/West searching for enemy vehicles, but I had to move off to engage enemy aircraft so I wasn't on call right now. Our A-10 was already committed near north village to defend US main. I probably could have timed my reloads better, but tbh I had no idea how long our main base would be up so it was really "Take off, fire everything fast, land, Takeoff, fire everything..." etc.
So Then THEY Counterattack...
Of course the MEC got their act together pretty fast. Between sending a lot of transport helos and trucks. The had 2 T-90s a BMP and and one or 2 Tunguskas make a banzai charge on MEC oupost. They located our positions and hit our tanks pretty hard. Our infantry was in cover by that time and building fortifications so it didn't completely fall apart. But they eventually flanked us to the south of the map, completely surrounding and overrunning our positions. Our tankers I don't think were expecting them to come from EAST of the map, so they must've gotten jumped.
My AAV guy was dead from tank fire now, but luckily my spotter had a laser. During this exchange, our communications were tactical, precise, and used exact military terminology:
"TANKS LOOK CAS TANKS LIKE 2 OF THEM. WAIT ANTI AIR PULL UP!"
"well where is it??"
"Um on the fla- WAIT ANOTHER TUNGUSKA PULL UP"
"ISN'T THAT A ROCK??"
"WAIT um Yeh- er um"
"NICK ITS A ROCK"
"ROCKS DONT MOVE"
"WHAT wha?"
vvvvvVVVVVVVVvvvt(my M61A1 impression)
"DUDE ROCKS DONT EXPLODE"
This went on till I either ran out of ammo or targets or both I forget which. For soft targets guns were great and the MEC were pretty exposed so if they approached my spotter or stopped, he could stick them and that was that. Either way our blackhawks moved our troops fast enough to exploit any lull in the fighting so we were in good shape. The Eastern side of the map was under control so it was a matter of moving from empty flag to empty flag.
To his credit our second A-10 was quite good. He could find the tanks really fast and stop them before they managed to do anything significant. I remember at one point we're by MEC outpost and there's a firefight going on and me and him are racing to get this BMP. We fire guns, passing inches over each other. Not sure who actually got it. That's side effect of competition, you know its gonna get done fast.
Eventually the MEC got maybe 1 or 2 planes off the ground, so it was nice knowing the ground stuff would be taken care of so I could just loiter and pounce on the enemy air and SAM sites ad nauseum without getting all tangled up with "Ok please type the grid of the target, look come on just type the grid of the target. Don't worry its not hard.".
"MARKING WITH LASER NOW"
"MARKING WITH LASER NOW"
"MARKING WITH LASER NOW"
"SENDING LASER TARGET NOW"
"SENDING LASER TARGET NOW"
Half the time the only way you can located anything is by guessing which blue icon is facing a target and trying to match the "Sending laser target now" sound to the flash. I don't even wanna think about it now with the arrows removed *shudders*.
I wait at high alt waiting for the tri-hourly visit from the enemy air, and luckily they are flying low, slow, and close together. Easy to find for the spotters, easy intercept, easy shots. I reload, and start looking for the typical response from downed pilots: get AAV, get revenge. Of course it comes through south village to oupost. Easy to find. Only concern is that when they travel in pairs, you might egress right into another one, so you always wanna head directly to a hill to break line of sight or straight up.
Breaking Out
So an hour or so later and the map looked like this.
And their team looked like this.
We're just having an absolute ball at this point. But as we approach their main, the opposition stiffens, and it takes additional flight time between attacks lowering our tempo significantly. Worse yet, our supply lines are rather long and we don't have the means of supporting them. So the game turns into a stalemate waiting for the bleep to finish them off. Not a flashy ending, but a happy one:
Final count was 73 - 0 (Probably more since fragmentation doesn't count).
I would have to say that for me this was an utterly flawless round. I have never done this well before, and probably won't again. Our team imo was very good as well despite the initial setback. The main issue was our tanks were not set up very logically so we got outflanked early on. Though I personally blame it on us being outnumbered 15 - 28 or whatever.
Needless to say we were rather PR'd out.
Thanks to Alex6714 for staying awake and staying alive, while helping keeping the enemy planes all dead like.
Thanks to Nick for the lasers and the constant spamming of useful information.
Three things I would say caused this epic win.
1. Constant intel on enemy aircraft and ground forces.
- Enemy aircraft repeatedly destroyed in 2 minutes or less. Both spotters split up to cover 2 main areas that the enemy would come from. Located and killed jets within a few minutes of takeoff. Intel is everything.
2. Rapid destruction of SAM sites before they were able to move into advantageous positions. Allowed complete destruction of them without them even getting a shot off the vast majority of the time.
- done by taking high speed "glances" of likely positions of terrain. Most pilots can guess the areas I am referring to. But there are 5 key routes AA will always be on Kashan, and 5 places they will never be. The basic rule of removing AA is that each "dumb" AA has a 100% PK (probability of kill). Each "smart" AA is 50% PK. Mobile AA is 100% PK, and static AA is 50% PK. If they're smart and look for aircraft, you'll die half the time, cause they'll see you first all the time. Oh and you know the AA is smart if it sees you before you see it.
ie) AA (smart) 50% PK * AA (static) 50% PK = 25% PK
But to quote the great Philosopher Yahtzee:
If its dumb then its as hard as killing a Hamster in a speedbag.
And if its dumb and moving then its as hard as killing a Hamster in a speedbag full of broken glass.
Since you don't decide who is in the AAV, all you can do to maximize your chances is? Yup, hit it when its moving. And so while waiting for a lase works when the enemy doesn't kill your spotter every 5 seconds, this guarantees the AA is static, and way more lethal. Worse yet, always waiting for a laser will usually mean that the enemy can mass forces uninterrupted, which generally results in them being much more effective. As in you let A group of Tunguskas mass together and get good vantage points you're in for a major headache. Use lasers when available, but if there isn't one for whatever reason, then you still have to be able to get on with it. There's more stuff you can do to maximize your chances but those stay with me.
3. Lack of resilience on OPFOR's part.
- After each thumping, the other team would just get mad and disconnect letting us counter attack. Lucky for us. Watch their team shrink in the following pictures.
Game starts off promising enough. Me and some buddies in a squad. I grab the F-16. One guy with a laser to find enemy forces, one guy in Linebacker to point me at enemy jets, and of course bush whack them given the chance.
The Round Begins
Round starts with my AA spotter in E4, and my ground spotter a few hundred meters away covering south. I grab the F-16 and take off fast. I loiter at 3000m while I wait for the enemy jets to appear.
For the first hour we repeatedly fend off more and more concentrated attacks. I first to use guns against a BMP overrunning my spotter. Our team is largely immobile infantry units, and it didn't take long for the MEC to figure that out. All we can do is watch as the MEC outmaneuvers our hapless squads. My AA spotter locates the enemy jets and gets me a good intercept, killing the MiG-29, and a minute later I get the Su-25. At this point we only had 2 tanks to stop the MEC, and they're waiting 2km south near South Village.
The Round Goes Pear Shaped
Multiple T-90s, BMPs, and AAVs approach north village as our team tries to gather some more suitable weapons. The A-10 is lost on an attack run against north village. I locate the SA-19 when I see a missile launch miss a chopper. I fire dumb AIM-9s into the site putting it out of action. I fire guns and AIM-120s at tanks, killing one. My laser spotter is a few hundred meters south getting into position, and can't laser the moving tank. I located it again near an oil derrick. I have to ripple fire my bombs from 500 feet at low altitude (gambling there's no AA). The tank is damaged. I land and reload my weapons.
Our A-10 respawns, and we have a few near midair collisions all throughout the round. The enemy SU-25 began hitting us in NV at this time. Looked like it got off a few LGBs I think, but my spotters as usual give me a good reference and the missiles do the rest.
The Alamo 2.0
I am orbiting overhead at medium alt over outpost, waiting for the flag to turn. This is a basic tactic that you use when you don't have a spotter. The second a flag ever turns EVER, everything with wings should be shooting everything that goes boom into it, and the OPFORS AAVs should be seriously spamming missiles at anything they see. If you are on the ground and you know the enemy has jets in the air, and you can kindof hear one above you in the distance, and the flag is turning gray: Get off the flag! Just leave 1 or 2 guys there or however many it needs to change. You'll see why in a second.
By this time our team has been pushed out of north village, and my spotters had either been killed and back at main, or retreated. The second I see the flag go I make a low pass over a likely hill by about 500m west of outpost. Sure enough an AAV is right there in my pipper. I squeeze off a few rounds and it goes off. I gamble that he was alone, and ask for an attack marker on the outpost. I shoot all 6 missiles, and both bombs on one pass, trying to get the paveways on the road, and the missiles into the structures and likely pieces of cover.
The result was over half their team being grayed out (I took the pic as an afterthought when they had mostly started respawning). It was the last attack we'd see for awhile.
I'll remind you that up to this point the US has been outnumbered significantly, as the losing team disconnects as we find out later.
Just as I think that we've turned this around, our main flag goes.
OH SH**
Many expletives and groans are heard over voip, and I immediately head north and strafe the flag hard. I order the A-10 to fire everything he's got at the flag while I land. Thankfully, it was just a few foot soldiers on the flag (not a Tank), and I immediately RTB and reload.
It just occurs to me that our team can't respawn. So major pucker factor atm. And there's about 8 of us. However our AAV and spotter are alive. Outpost isn't taken. And we have a tank and IFV rolling to the flag. But most importantly, our A-10 and F-16 are still up and doing serious damage.
I have to basically argue for the remaining 1 or 2 tanks to make a beeline for the main base (they had been at south village the whole time. How the MEC tanks missed them going to outpost is beyond me).
The Counterattack
FINALLY the flag turns back and you can hear everyone in VOIP and in chat going "SPAWN QUICK EVERYBODY SPAWN! OMG HOW DID WE DO THAT??" Can barely hear myself think.
I am shocked at how fast we had dedicated Mech Inf, Tanks, and trucks zipping south. They were on the flag and setting up before I even reloaded.
At this time I was flying East/West searching for enemy vehicles, but I had to move off to engage enemy aircraft so I wasn't on call right now. Our A-10 was already committed near north village to defend US main. I probably could have timed my reloads better, but tbh I had no idea how long our main base would be up so it was really "Take off, fire everything fast, land, Takeoff, fire everything..." etc.
So Then THEY Counterattack...
Of course the MEC got their act together pretty fast. Between sending a lot of transport helos and trucks. The had 2 T-90s a BMP and and one or 2 Tunguskas make a banzai charge on MEC oupost. They located our positions and hit our tanks pretty hard. Our infantry was in cover by that time and building fortifications so it didn't completely fall apart. But they eventually flanked us to the south of the map, completely surrounding and overrunning our positions. Our tankers I don't think were expecting them to come from EAST of the map, so they must've gotten jumped.
My AAV guy was dead from tank fire now, but luckily my spotter had a laser. During this exchange, our communications were tactical, precise, and used exact military terminology:
"TANKS LOOK CAS TANKS LIKE 2 OF THEM. WAIT ANTI AIR PULL UP!"
"well where is it??"
"Um on the fla- WAIT ANOTHER TUNGUSKA PULL UP"
"ISN'T THAT A ROCK??"
"WAIT um Yeh- er um"
"NICK ITS A ROCK"
"ROCKS DONT MOVE"
"WHAT wha?"
vvvvvVVVVVVVVvvvt(my M61A1 impression)
"DUDE ROCKS DONT EXPLODE"
This went on till I either ran out of ammo or targets or both I forget which. For soft targets guns were great and the MEC were pretty exposed so if they approached my spotter or stopped, he could stick them and that was that. Either way our blackhawks moved our troops fast enough to exploit any lull in the fighting so we were in good shape. The Eastern side of the map was under control so it was a matter of moving from empty flag to empty flag.
To his credit our second A-10 was quite good. He could find the tanks really fast and stop them before they managed to do anything significant. I remember at one point we're by MEC outpost and there's a firefight going on and me and him are racing to get this BMP. We fire guns, passing inches over each other. Not sure who actually got it. That's side effect of competition, you know its gonna get done fast.
Eventually the MEC got maybe 1 or 2 planes off the ground, so it was nice knowing the ground stuff would be taken care of so I could just loiter and pounce on the enemy air and SAM sites ad nauseum without getting all tangled up with "Ok please type the grid of the target, look come on just type the grid of the target. Don't worry its not hard.".
"MARKING WITH LASER NOW"
"MARKING WITH LASER NOW"
"MARKING WITH LASER NOW"
"SENDING LASER TARGET NOW"
"SENDING LASER TARGET NOW"
Half the time the only way you can located anything is by guessing which blue icon is facing a target and trying to match the "Sending laser target now" sound to the flash. I don't even wanna think about it now with the arrows removed *shudders*.
I wait at high alt waiting for the tri-hourly visit from the enemy air, and luckily they are flying low, slow, and close together. Easy to find for the spotters, easy intercept, easy shots. I reload, and start looking for the typical response from downed pilots: get AAV, get revenge. Of course it comes through south village to oupost. Easy to find. Only concern is that when they travel in pairs, you might egress right into another one, so you always wanna head directly to a hill to break line of sight or straight up.
Breaking Out
So an hour or so later and the map looked like this.
And their team looked like this.
We're just having an absolute ball at this point. But as we approach their main, the opposition stiffens, and it takes additional flight time between attacks lowering our tempo significantly. Worse yet, our supply lines are rather long and we don't have the means of supporting them. So the game turns into a stalemate waiting for the bleep to finish them off. Not a flashy ending, but a happy one:
Final count was 73 - 0 (Probably more since fragmentation doesn't count).
I would have to say that for me this was an utterly flawless round. I have never done this well before, and probably won't again. Our team imo was very good as well despite the initial setback. The main issue was our tanks were not set up very logically so we got outflanked early on. Though I personally blame it on us being outnumbered 15 - 28 or whatever.
Needless to say we were rather PR'd out.
