'Welcome to TG, Jabes' - it was with those words that my SL signed off after one of the most exhilarating and defeating PR experiences in my career.
I warmed up on HOG 24/7 waiting for friendlies to come in. Total shit show, example VOIP - Enemy @ Alley way straight NW of your position Inferno. See his dot proceed in a NE fashion, pretty much walking into getting blindsided. I state as much over VOIP, I see his little dot on the map stop and turn and look either direction, like god just spoke to him and he has no idea. 'Just going to disregard the enemy less than 40m from your position NWW?' I see him stop again, his little dot rotates both ways looking back and forth miming 'Who the fuck is talking to me? Is there another Inferno on this server? what the -' and then I see his dot go flat line and taps out immediately. Its with that rusty taste in my mouth that I left HOG for greener pastures.
Niall and I loaded into a server, AAS on Dragon Fly. I was really looking forward to playing that map again, with its forested hills and centralized urban area filled with tank traps, I loaded in to see that our team had lost horribly to the superior tactics of the OPFOR.
Muttrah was loading up next, and with a heavy sigh, i was back into the breach.
Mumble was rocking. VOIP rocking. Vent rocking with Niall on it and boosted 200% All of these channels setup on different PTT keys used to be confusing, now its natural and only subject to the occasional synapse misfire.
I loaded in as USMC. Niall loaded in as MEC. We couldn't unbalance the teams and lame the server, because we weren't playing in a lice infested shit hole with a nearly unenforceable code of conduct. but the holy fucking grail of servers, the one thats always 64/64, Tactical Gamer, North America.
Niall struggled a bit with the new PR Mumble server change, however, he got logged into it and assigned himself to the correct team before he got booted/banned (Achievement Earned: Connect to Mumble and get in squad before getting booted). Mumble was a bit of a stumbling point for Niall in this deployment, all I can say is that it gets better and more manageable. That said, post-game chatter on Mumble was a deafening cacophony of .
Our squad dropped in west city trans by GrapeWhiteOwl. We capped nearly immediately with the help of another squad and slowly transitioned into assault across the street. Niall and I did not collude at all, he rolled into a squad on his side and we both used mumble and VOIP to communicate with our respective squads and teams.
We setup in a set of T buildings right across from the gas station north of the west city. Big 4 lane street and a Stone wall with two breaches one east one west between us and the gas station. As we filled into the building, I appraised our Squad Kits.
1 SL (TG Fox)
1 AR (spellrm)
1 Medic (Me)
1 Specialist
1 rifleman
1 HAT
As medic, I was ordered to watch the stairs and keep a hand on my mouse at all times. Bored out of my mind and 3 deep into Miller High Life time, I started babbling on Mumble with my squad mates. SpellRM was a squadie that had followed me over from HOG Muttrah, he was a capable sort and was also using mumble on the HOG server, so this guy is pretty decent.
My squad mates were up top, they were walking around and constantly moving. They started taking long distance pot shots at first and couldn't locate the incoming rounds immediately. I knew my time to shine was imminent. Beer sweat dribbled down my trigger finger, soaking my mouse pad, I took ao moment to wipe it down, if I lost the stairs, the only one to blame was myself. Seconds crawled like hours. I popped my map open eagerly and often, hoping to see a friendly go down nearby the map, and get a clue on how close the enemy was.
All the outgoing fire and movement from our squad on the roof had lit our T building up and was drawing the MEC moth's closer and closer to us. I saw a friendly squad disappear from my tactical map, to my north east, and knew the moment was nigh. I reported MEC Contact SE and East of our position. It was obvious they'd be hitting my stair case and not roping up or any bullshit like that.
SL and AR went down up top, both were resuscitated somehow, maybe another medic died up top? no idea really, AR bounded to my position, I healed him up and he setup across from me as he caught his breath, SL healed himself with patches. After about 1m30s, AR bounded back to the roof.
There was no time for target recognition, I saw brown face with an upside down salad bowl strapped around his chin and let out a 3 round burst from my rifle. One round hit him in the shoulder, the other two lodged themselves into the concrete stair case over his shoulder. 'FUCK' lost the drop, lost the shootout. I'm prone, He's standing up. This is the last time I'm setting up watching the stairs from this angle and with this much squad chatter going on. As my vision went black i depressed the trigger in panic'd bursts, trying to hit him in the last spot I'd seen him in. As I sprayed the stairs down and cue'd mumble I took another grenade to the face.
I wait and bleed out, reporting the enemies' loc and letting my guys know their medic just bit the bucket. I could still provide some watch on the stairs and let them know what I was seeing.
Rather than ex-fill the SL decides to hole up and defend it alamo style. He chastises one guy who taps out with a quickness. Eventually they come for my kit, by that time, there is just too many of them and we don't have any supporting fire. We lost the building, and we reorganize across the street at a FOB. Quickly, we're getting pushed out of West City and after our squad all respawns at the FOB south of north city West City is already grey and nearly lost.
As we died one by one, we respawned one by one. I held at the FOB For my SL and most of my squad had already deployed like lemmings.
Spell, Fox, and myself gathered around, Spell went to perform overwatch on our flank to the south. We noticed the MEC were trying to jump up on a box and take a circus shot at another squaddie running by. Fox threw a couple nades and I secured our other flank that borders the mountains, near the gas station that I had referenced earlier.
Fox went for a weapon switch on his nade to his rifle, we had squaddies go down around the corner I was watching (one of the boons of being medics is the 3D spotting you get when a team member goes down) and POP... POP POP.. POP POP I let out 5 rounds and dropped him.
SL rounded the corner quickly, not wanting to give the enemy any time to take the advantage nor find cover and he dropped the rest of their squad. I stood back and hid behind cover while he finished them off. As we took down their squad a BTR came speeding into the scene at Mach 3 and thunder pummeled us into oblivion. Dead-dead. The satisfying SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSFtttt THUNK of a friendly LAT punishing the BTR followed my body hitting the turf of some poor sucker's back yard.
Punch out and respawn. This time the SL rallies us as we are quickly losing our front line.
As we're standing around playing with ourselves outside of the FOB the, as we turn the first corner to leave the alley where the FOB is setup (North/East of that Gas Station) enemy comes around the corner and blasts our SL. I am waiting for suppressing fire/smoke to get our SL up. Me, our SL and another guy. someone gets me up, I swap kits with him to get my medic back, I get up the guys that went down and SL is AFK. So, he gets fucking bushwacked again. Finally we rally up, SL is up, everyone is together, we cross that 4 lane street and sure as shit mortars or nades or some shit starts making real big explosions all around. Not sure if it was armor on the hill or what.
I res'd our SL again, then I run the fuck away, and watch as HE rounds pepper the area I was just standing in. Real Life calls, so I have to take a break for 5 minutes and when I come back I'm dead.
SL and squad is giving me shit for our wipe, which, we were going to fucking wipe anyways. Way too many dicks up each others ass to have made a successful defense there with or without a medic.
back at the docks and again, its just me and SL. Spellrm comes-a-running with his AR and starts humping my leg. I get the fuck away from him as his AR next to me is just a bad combination.
We try running across the docks back east as the enemy is all over the docks flag and we fucking wipe en route.
back to the Essex, we're just getting fucking rolled at this point. We make a landing and get out, i'm on the far side of the boat and have to swim around and am the last one out of the water. I see the grenade incoming before everyone else and as I'm a little behind them (lolswimming with 50+lbs of gear) they all eat shit. SL throws smoke, I fix him up, then we revive a couple of guys and we're make it real fast into some crates. I pop a couple of guys en route, bringing my score to 3-6 and thats when the enemy takes up position on the 2nd level stack of a 3 level stack of crates.
This MEC asshole takes out my buddies Fox and Spellrm, and I'm determined to get him down. I'm hurting pretty fucking bad, but I still crouch and can see him, so I take him down and then his buddy pops up and starts playing peekabo with me as well. he gets me even as I reposition myself to 'surprise' his peek-a-bo act. We wipe again and respawn at docks. By now the map is fucking over, sirens wailing in the distance.
We ended up pulling best squad, I was, I think 3rd or 4th on my squad with 3 kills and 6 deaths and a gang of team work points. My SL was happy to earn best squad but way less than pleased to have lost 290-something to 0.
While this experience wasn't filled with win, what made it awesome is that total immersion positional audio that mumble gives you. When a squad mate opens his mic, I hear that he's to my left/right and then I also hear the sound of incoming rounds or outgoing rounds to my left/right. That is tits. On VOIP, its not directional and you don't get that same sound from the speakers.
In my experience, eventually you dial in all your communication levels to mix together well. The monkey wrench in this is going to be the asshole that joins with his input level way too high in BF2, he'll end up having you scramble to turn everyone down in VOIP. FYI, if your little microphone icon turns red or yellow in game when you PTT, your mic level is too high for the in-game voip, try moving one of those unmarked sliders to the left, I can't remember which of those unmarked sliders under audio is your output level.
Niall left and I was on my own, it was about 1130 or so and Lashkar valley came up. the enemy bee-lined for our first known cache and took it out without killing more than a squad of guys. Next they bee-lined for a hidden cache and I threw up my hands in disgust. I don't think they knew where that hidden cache was, I think they were just going around searching villas, but it was pretty fishy they got off to such a killer start.
I drove the SPG around and ran a squad on Lashkar, with how intense and the impending return of my wife, I had to log. Nothing was going to match that Muttrah TG experience. I definitely have a new favorite server.
