3 Commando Brigade

NATO Hellcats

True dat.

To be fair I am usually a "more with less" person. So in the current scenarios this would be overkill.

Sorry to hijack your thread but on the conversation about people loading out as a one man army what we need to do is "steal" the scripts that are run in Tactical Battlefield that once you have selected your role lets you modify it to add different items but not change it's fundamental load-out eg.  It's almost all in place due to the weapon selection thing in the VAS box.

One of the reasons that we do not see people on the public server taking realistic loadouts is that the forces they are up against are not realistic either.
Since when, in real life, would a 4 man fire team or 8 man section be sent into a remote enemy town known to be crawling with 3-4 times enemy infantry and 10+ tanks/apc's?
So why do we have such unrealistic forces to fight against? Because it's fun.

Once in a while it's nice to move out as a lightly armed (realistic) patrol and just walk through the fields and villages, only coming across the odd insurgent here and there. It's quite a different experience, not full of booms and bangs, but still tense and atmospheric in it's own way. But not generally to the taste of the average joe-public.

This then changes the way air support is required and employed on the public server. Keeping the thread marginally on track.

Personally, I don't think there is a realism issue with having one dedicated AT man in the squad with a heavy launcher and a handful of others carrying one shot AT-4's. That allows an 8 man team to deal with one / two pieces of armour, plus lighter skinned vehicles. I have more of an issue with pilots / medics running around with AR's, RPG's or Titan launchers, and everyone being a medic. That is more game breaking for me.

Yep. Agree totally with the above sentiment in regards to the public server. 80% of the time it's a rag tag group of us heading out to a random town (with quite a few drop in players mid way through); often without any support vehicles - be it air or ground. Hence the need for some flexibility on what we can and cannot equip. In addition, it's generally a conscious effort for a lot of us, to not rely heavily on Armour or CAS - due to the simple fact that it's not fun for the guys on the ground. Unfortunately it's somewhat of a catch 22 on the public server: Bored pilots = Infantry having a good time / Pilots having a good time = Bored infantry. 

However don't get me wrong - I'm all for specified roles on the private ops (and any organised impromptu OP on the public which we have on occasion).

In regards to giving the pilots something to do on the public; wrangle up a medic or engineer - put them on your door guns, and cruise around as a light CAS/Transport/CSAR crew. We've been doing that lately and it's led to some enjoyable evenings.  

+1
Also Pilots can also provide not only troop but also equipment/ammo transport. So instead of requesting a RTB just to get some ammo, it might be a nice to simply request what you need and get it delivered to you.

Howl,

I think that case is purely a symptom of the public server and the general everyday attendance we get on there.

I've been on the pub fairly consistently most weekdays for the last 8 or 9 months - and we generally have 4 or 5 regular 3CB members on most weekday evenings, with the additional 1 or 2 semi-regular drop ins (and the odd random pubbie). So on the average night, there will be roughly 6 of us at the beginning of an OP and maybe 2-4 additional guys who will pop in (me being generous with numbers here). Hence the need to not really restrict the kit which we can take out with us (primarily being AT/explosives) as we're generally not sure if we will have (competent) CAS or armored support. If we limit what ground can do, we're essentially buggered from the get go - "An infantry unit with no organic antitank weapon is either retreating or overrun."

Ultimately it doesn't come down to better AI (which would be awesome, don't get me wrong - I'd love that - and it would help a great deal) but a consistently busier public server. If we could rely on ALWAYS having one pilot purely for transport, and one for CAS, then yea - would make for a fun evening. But as it stands, the pilots on the pub are having to re-task to transport every time someone dies or logs in - thus it makes it difficult for us to rely to heavily on any orbiting CAS. Same goes for armored support. 3 rolling in the tank, with 2 or 3 running alongside on foot. Just not practical. 

As I've tried to initiate a number of times - I'd really love to see more larger scale 3CB midweek ops on the public server. 

Please don't get me wrong - I'm not against air/armour support on the public server (check my videos - I'm like a giddy 10 year old when the A-10's do their thing) - I'm against limiting/restricting the infantry to have to rely on it... because unfortunately, most evenings, we really don't have the headcount to.

Imho, there is a magical solution to all of this: Zeus/MCC. With that, you can create missions that "fit", as well as give the AI a significant boost of 'common sense'. 
If you're just 3-4 players, Zeus can remove (most) heavy armor assets from the AO, or just create a new MCC mission outside of the ALIVE zone (without the insane amounts of armor that ALIVE generates).
Zeus/MCC can also be used to significantly boost the 'strategic' intelligence of the AI - firstly by giving command to GAIA, which will flank, patrol, reinforce, etc and secondly by giving the occasional AI-command here and there to create extra tense situations for the players.

This *does* however require somebody who is 1.) able to operate zeus/mmc effectively and 2.) willing to do so
Doing "advanced Zeusing" requires you to take a back seat or even stay at base entirely. It will obviously also totally spoil any surprises/etc. 
I'm very grateful to Apollo for the many times he has invested his time into improving other's experience, and we need more people that are able and willing to do the same.

Military doctrine 101: if you're on the offensive then need to need throw in sufficient resources to gain overwhelming superiority on a limited front (typically greater than 3:1).  In Arma terms given the limitations of the AI this ratio can be reduced, but you could argue that it soon becomes "unrealistic".  I agree with Apollo and Arka, we simply do not have the players to get this sort of numbers to run "realistic" scenarios on a weekday.  

So we use force multipliers in terms of loadouts that push the boundaries.  But ultimately the aim is to create an engaging environment, which in the majority of cases I think you succeed.  From comments made following various ops, there seems to be a general feeling that people prefer ops that are challenging and intense.  If you think back to ops you remember, then those with a challenge usually feature highly.  Last nights scenario that Howl ran was a case in point, a very engaging intense skirmish.  Virtually no armour and limited  CAS..  I'm not against CAS but when it becomes the big easy button it removes the challenge and the engagement.

Personally I would be more than happy to drop the AT and spend time trying to work around the rear of a piece of armour and disable it in other ways, but I'm not convinced the AI is sufficiently developed to make this a reliable technique in terms of playability.  So we fall back to relying on AT.  

Alexander made a good point about MCC/Zeus.  The missions that have been created on the fly by Apollo, Serjames, Toweley, etc have been significantly more engaging than relying on ALIVE, primarily I believe because they have been customized to provide a challenge for size of our force.

If you're looking for a possibly more fulfilling role for air, then in my opinion we should consider using more resupply and medivac.  Evrik's daring medivac from the top of the construction site a couple of weeks ago is a prime example of where air was absolutely necessary.

As a slight aside, the non-disposable PCML and the low encumbrance of the titan system makes the situation a little worse, in my opinion.  If we only had access to disposable PCML and heavier titans, then the amount of AT in a squad would naturally fall.  The consequence is a greater need for resupply and/or light CAS without actually mandating or restricting play style. 

Alive generates lots of armour only if that's what the mission designer set it for; it's configurable. The Altis mission has it set quite light so that we can determine the amount of armour using MCC/Zeus based on player count at the time.