Games

Breaking the new Training Grounds

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Got to play ab it solo on the new TG#1, didn’t want to have a slot opened for m e on PG#1 just for a couple games.

Latency and Ubisoft proved to be both friend and foe as usual, finding a tango standing on top of a table didn’t throw my aim off any. Put a burst square in his mid section (~4rnd), saw him jerk from the hits but died with no rounds hitting him 8=), even got shot (even with my cam jerking) in another round without getting injured from it lol.

RvS is a pile of horse crap, how on earth could any one dare ship a game like that. The amount of buggy doors and corners, even in the professionally created maps is tremendous. If I worked on Raven Shields development team, I think I would’ve resigned from the project rather then let my name go on the credits…

And much to the games credit I appeared to shoot a tango through a wall 🙂

RvS is the only game you can have a threat at 2 metres, put 5 rounds into a group smaller then a stomach, and have all 5 rounds hit the wall directly behind the tango ^_^

One thing I really like about RvS though is the admin functions, way better then SWAT4. Even with the Gez Mod RvS has a better admin system, but the code is even worse on stability.

It’s also nice that I can turn off my reticle and just use the weapon in the player characters arms as a reference instead. Engagement distances in RvS are usually short or long, often within 10 or 15 metres unless they are far away: far enough that an assault rifle is preferable that is.

At that range, aiming without iron sights or cross hairs is pretty easy.. With a little pratice even targets at ~20-25 metres are doable. The more you know your weapon the easiser it is, like me. I could use the MP5A4 blind folded in RvS, I don’t even need to look at the bean counter any more.. I can feel how many bullets have been fired.

I wish I could play SWAT4 online with the reticle off, the cross hairs are a nicer blue then RvS’s red and actually do reflect your aim and accuracy. In Raven Shield, I’ve always disregarded the rets as having any thing to do with point of impact, they mean almost nothing… So why bother using them? I train with both rets on and rets off, been a few months since I turned them on.. Now I’m starting to be able to chuck grenades with the same accuracy as with the rets off.

In SWAT, you rets show a lot about how your point of impact will be. I’d still like to go without them though because really you shouldn’t need them unless the enemy is far or you need a more precise shot. And in that case you should be using the weapons sights any way, not the shitty zoom-focus on the aiming reticle that RvS and SWAT4 use any way.

One thing I like about firing on Full Auto, is complete control of the trigger. Want one round? Easy, need 20? Ok no problem. Typically I fire 2 to 3 rounds per burst and will increase to 4-6 rounds as necessary to bring down the tango. It’s very easy to fire off a few sets of 2-3 rounds, much better then firing off like 5 rounds in a single burst.

SWAT4s MP5 lacks full auto and the UMP and AKM have their rates of fire set to pathetically unrealistic values. All weapons in SWAT4 were balenced on the grounds that a modifier of 1.0 Burst Rate Factor == ~600 Rounds Per Minute (RPM).

Following that line of reasoning, the M4A1 is given a burst rate factor (BRF) of 1.5, roughly equal to 900 RPM. The real M4A1 Carbine has a cyclic rate of fire between 700 and 950 RPM as far as I know, a good balance for a game. The AK47 will kill you in one round if fired from a suspect (1-2 if you are shooting them), while you need 2-4 rounds with the quick firing M4.

The UMP on the other hand has a BRF of 0.55 yielding approx 330 rounds per minute. The UMP is supposed to have a rate of fire on par with 600 RPM, making it horrible unbalanced, except by it’s powerful cartridge in SWAT4.

However the burst rate factor is handled I doubt it reflects well on real life. I remember for a Mod, I once recalibrated all weapons in SWAT4 to use real world bullet mass instead of the overweight rounds in SWAT4… Which was a left shift of two or three digits kind of off track, heck it would be like shooting grapefruit instead of bullets lol. luckily the weapons were already calibrated for the real world muzzle velocities.

Recalibrating the game settings to model real world factors, based on Unreal Engine units was totally destructive. Resulting in a long stream of dirty tricks to get the bullets ‘lethal’ again. I always knew the systems they used were horrid for modeling real world ballistics but when JHP rounds are going so fast the pass through a target without doing any damage and kept going until they hit some thing impossible to penitrate in the game engine, YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A PROBLEM !!!! The JHP ammo was more FMJ like then the FMJ ammo was after that test haha.

I’m no expert in physics but it doesn’t take much understanding to tell the Unreal Engine as configured in SWAT4 is worthless, retarded at best for any dream of realistic shooting.

I’d love to study physics some day, that kidn of stuff interests me. But I know as long as I’m living here, with my family around trying to learn any thing ‘interesting’ in that regard would be a headache and learning as good as in one ear out the other.

Just like in games, give me a sniper rifle, a mark to shoot at, and a secure firing position, and I’ll hit the mark. Give me some thing I’m interested in, a proper working environment, and I’ll inhale the fucking thing!

Give me a sniping position with every SOB and his dog trying to blow it sky high and I probably will be to busy to hit the mark, same case living here….

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Been learning a lot about TeX and LaTeX lately, my brain is like a sponge…

Some how I don’t think I’ll ever use a word processor again, TeX/LaTeX beats XHTML/CSS for working on content without getting in the way, and imho it automates more of the menial tasks better. I couldn’t stand getting proper printout with all the cross-word processor + cross-pc issues involved… So I eventually took to using XHTML instead, I’m fluent after all. I have a large répertoire of computer languages to choose from, I just hate PHP…

I need to take some time to generate a PBI of TeX Live 2007, not much left to do before then and most of that can probably be sped up by scripting. For deployment though I’d rather like to split it into two packages, if the compression ratio is similar, should result including a ~250MB and ~300MB tar.lzma file (1 in each pbi) rather then a huge ~500mb one. As far as the documentation goes, there is not to much net savings to strip out languages, unless it really strips down to just English and made an English and ‘multinational’ docs module. For me, it would make sense to keep the ‘big ones’, English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, in a standard install and doing that would be no real saving so far as I can tell.

Got a start for trying to get organized with the SSMs, they are basically a week behind me as far as being able to get things in sync but that’s unavoidable.. In the mean time I guess I should concentrate on the Sgts. I’m glad we have Blade and Noer a foot again they’re both dedicated workers, Blade well better late then never hehe.

The recent unpleasantness with ]SD[ on our SWAT servers is annoying me. I honestly don’t care if we ban every last one of them or shake their hand, there’s more important business I need to look after. I just follow orders, no more, no less. From where I sit, it is a Majors department to deal with it not an RSMs so I’d rather like to stay out of the hub bub. I’d also not have to cram any more forum posts into RAM between working hours.

The SOP Rewrites, I don’t think are going to progress any this week with both SSMs largely out of the loop until next week. Another large section is ready for SNCO Review, in the mean time I can try and look over the other stuff… Just a matter of free time.

I’ve now transitioned almost 3GB in all from my home directory over to the OpenBSD system working as a file server here: effectively fulfilling it’s purpose of integrating my home directory across my desktop and laptop. With some time to test out the permission settings, I may soon move my code directory there as well. With luck maybe I’ll have some time to *finally* get the bloody printer setup rather then sitting there gathering dust, good thing I rarely print.

I still need to organise my music files and rebuild all of my playlists but hey, at least my music folder is neat again. Life really would be a bit easier if I didn’t have to have most of my files available on both systems, to avoid having to boot my laptop to get to stuff. I’m tired of having to choose between booting my laptop, taring the files, scp’ing them over, and having to switch from desktop to laptop. I get 90% of my work done from my PC-BSD laptop yeah, but I like to work on the system I’m in the mood to use, not play chair-jockey.

And to top it all off my brain has been wandering off drastically lately, I suppose it beats being miserable though. I don’t really want to think that much about it right now, I’d never get any sleep other wise…

Found a music video of one of the songs that was on the last CD I bought. Which shows where my minds been drifting off to lool. Is it a wonder some friends wonder if I ever loop up from a compiler?

Works got to get done… How that effects the rest of my life, well..

Snakes and Tree Frogs

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Metal Gear Solid 3: Trailer



It’s a shame that The Boss had to die at the end in order to complete her mission for the USA. It’s no wonder that “Big Boss” would betray his country in later years, after all MGS3 basically amounts to the lot of them being screwed over for ~20 Billion. I’m axious to some day see Metal Gear Solid 4, and I wonder if the aging Solid Snake will himself be,

“Loyal to the end”

Hmm, found a copy of the intro music from Metal Gear Solid 3 posted on YouTube:



It’s a bit of a funky track but it kind of grows on you after enough hours of working Snake through the jungle hehe.

SOPs and the screaming running dashing SNCO team

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A relatively full day…

I’ve spent most of the day working on the SOP rewrites with my peers, I wish we could have them done in days… but I don’t know if we could pull that off.. or if I’d still be standing afterwards.

We got a major section done, I’ll read about what the other SNCOs have to say tomorrow. I need to get the Preface, Intro, and RoE fixed tonight and we got maybe 5 sections done today. Tomorrow, I guess a review of the next two parts with there assoicated (~6) sections.

Rasa and I spent most of the day in my office, when he dropped for the night he said it had been 5 hours… I barely could tell :

I only know two ways of doing things, sit on my duff or work till I drop… No in between. I guess maybe I do tend to take things to extremes but how else to get’em done?

And Ma hasn’t been feeling good so I’ve been hoping, skipping, and jumping a lot whenever she needed something. Next time I say I’m going to do some thing all day even if I get a sore ass — I’ll keep my mouth shut lool. Despite the hyper business, headaches, and multitasking (~5 chat windows, 3 browser tabs, music, etc) it’s been quite productive.

My family generally knows my own SOP, if I love you I’ll do *almost* any thing short of breaking most of the Ten Commandments. So nothing I can do on that matter lol.

At least I’ve been sleeping… Instead of going to bed like 0700 in the morning it’s been more like 0430 which is a lot better. Honestly I’m not sure what is worse, knowing it’s an all-nighter when a British radio station is in the middle of the morning Zoo or your own regular radio station starts doing the morning on the way to work stuff !!!

And I did eventually make it into TG#1 for a little Rvs, The Baroness got me in and being the [SAS] Magnet she seems to be. We soon had a nice couple of rounds, JB, Random, Spawn, the pubs and I think even Valroe joined the fray after I left.

Snake Eater

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Been playing through Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater of late, could probably have it beaten by breakfast time but I’m not interested in losing sleep over it (more then any thing else).

I left off just after Snake loses his eye and gets chucked in the cell.

I know perfectly well the hardest part of the game is the end lol. Snake gets the living crap beaten out of him when he’s captured and loses his eye trying to protect Eva. But that still leaves escaping the cell, destroying the Shagohod and Volgin. Including the run for ya life of them all.

Eva steering the motorbike while Snake deals with the army on their tails. While the character of Eva is arguably a great combination of beauty and ability, being almost skewered to death and bleeding out wouldn’t leave any one fit for combat.

Getting through the jungle with her in tow and the “Goon squad” is probably the single hardest part of MGS3, I remember the first time I played through it. I some what regretted that I never had time to pick up the M60, I found the light machine gun one night playing but was never able to get it later (forgot to save!). At least for Round #2 through the game there is The Bosses Patriot 🙂

Basically a weapon that makes the Colt Commando look a bit bigger while still clearly being an XM177 (prototype m4) family member. The C-Beta mag also has unlimited ammunitions so it’s as good as an M60 loool. Which will be good because the running firefight is one time when it will come in handy.

I’ve played the Metal Gear Solid games a long time, in fact MGS4 is one of very few reasons I’d ever care to get a PS3. I didn’t get into MGS to much until the VR Training missions game was released. I think my completion was like 295-297 missions or some thing like that. I got to be lethally proficient, training harder to fight easier :-). Metal Gear Solid 2 was great fun and I loved the additions. Although I think the plot could have used a little more work (seeing the twists coming).

The only problem with MGS3 is your stuck in the middle of a jungle and I’m used to sneaking in an urban environment. Spent most of the ‘classic sneaking through enemies, most of MGS2 mugging guards for dog tags and throwing them overboard xD. But MGS3, ambushing and knifing as necessary. The loss of the high tech sneaking suit and nano technology from MGS/MGS2 is not really a problem, it only made life easier sneaking through guards. And in MGS3 you get the next best thing, all the other high tech gizmos. Motion sensor, AP Sensor set to vibrate, not as good but handy from time to time. Considering MGS3 takes place in the 1960s it would probably have been as space age as the gear from the first Metal Gear Solid, but it still is just dead weight. From binoculars and a MK23 SOCOM to Thermal Goggles and a Knife 😉

The Jungles just not my bag for sneak past without dropping any but it’s a good game. It’s also great to see the legendary “Big Boss” in his youth. It’s quite a sad story though, I remember after finally completing it the first trip through.

It was nice to know that Snake and Eva got some time alone, without hundreds of soviet infantry on patrol. Especially considering how much the characters were put through, including Big Bosses eye… Kind of sad really but I think it makes it easier to snipe lol. And it ends with the cold hard facts, Evas betrayal, The Bosses real mission, and that the real aim of the ordeal was nothing more then to secure the Philosophers Legacy.

The story of “The Boss” is a sobering one, yet she was loyal to her country to the end. Is it really any wonder that after being granted the title of “Big Boss” for his success during Operation Snake eater that he eventually turns?

It’s been a long time but if I recall correctly, when Big Boss betrayed the Solid Snake we’ve all enjoyed destroying Metal Gears as. He was trying to create a warrior state with sufficient fire power to insure there independence or the destruction of any threats.

I look forward to MGS4 and the rest to come, and I wonder if Solid Snake will share Big Bosses final fate.


Day 1, the new doctrine

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Well I’ve gotten almost absolutely nothing done but it’s been a generally peaceful day, rather then a hectic one. I’m really not looking forward to work tomorrow either :-(, Mondays is afternoon to evening.

Still pushing “personal best” records for operating on a minimal of sleep. I don’t really have much problem, never really have been comfortable any way. What I miss at night I make up for the next day if necessary 0.o

Managed to get all of my pictures transfered to the file server by way of my desktops card reader. Only to end up having to take a few more later lol. Our cameras documentation does a bad job of assuming that your only ever going to use it with there Windows software but once the camera is set up to use USB/Mass Storage rather then USB/PTP it’s easy to use it 🙂

Just hooked it up to my laptops USB port and powered it on, simple FAT16 mount operation. The only problem though is only root can mount my da devices : so I’ll have to fix that later in devfs.* files.

My laptop has a card reader but sadly it doesn’t work with FreeBSD :-(. I still need to transfer the kernel over from my test machine to the test FreeBSD 7.0-Release install here so I can test one of the drivers… If that doesn’t work I need to look at trying to write a driver or give up on my dream of using my spare SD Card for file transfer :@

Coco and Willow

I still need to learn about touching up photo’s in GIMP, don’t think the dogs like being photographed lol. Then again I don’t really like being *in* pictures either, haha that reminds me of a picture of my Dad. He was working on the van, sticking his tongue out in disgust at Ma coming by with the camera <_<.

Spent some time in TG#3 kicking in with Flashbangs after lunch. Been at least a week since I’ve had a serious round but the rust don’t build that fast when you’ve had as many ours in the virtual shoot house as I have… Noah ran a Live Op this afternoon on TG#1; Most people were a bit disoriented that Wiz had team radar and team names disabled, we don’t usually train that way although we go in without team radar on Live Ops fairly often. I was like, ok he’s standing near our AoR, he’s holding a G36K, and he’s got a stock armpatch, and he more like Noer then JB so I knew who to follow.
Without the team names on it’s hard to tell who is who but between equipment, armmpatach, body language, and mission plan it is not impossible to do so in a tight element.

It was a good operation even if it went to pot fast.

The plan was that Wiz, Noer (EL+TL), and Me would move up to the first van and cover. While Bravo team (Ambu, JB (EL), and Noah) moved around the side alley to the store room. The tangos heard Bravo moving across the front door (our Point of Entry) and they blew the door out with a frag on us.

Noer ordered Bravo team to move in with Flashbangs and clear to store front while Alpha was to take over there AoR out back. So Wiz started off running and we dogged it to the west side of the map gunning down threats as they came. Not sure how many casualties were on Bravo but in Alpha we only had maybe one man injured (Noers Arm :).

We did a quick bang entry into the store room, passing along the left office wall. Our person of interest (1 of the hostages) came running out fleeing. I ducked my head into the room to see if there was any threat, because I might have to cover 90 degres to it’s left. Looked clear, was about to report that there was a second room inside over comms when a tango waltzed out. Put a burst of shots his way and as usual for RvS, none did squat, he ran through the bullets into the back room. And gunned down a second hostage and I could see the gun of another tango in there flagging around the corner 🙁

Live Op Failure.

It was nice to get to see *some* of the inside of the mission. I knew the map because I used it for Live Op “IRA Sting” like last year. But I spent that Live Operation out side with a Snipers Rifle rather then in a cushy TOC when the first entry team was gunned down by the get away driver 0.o

We might have failed the LO but it was well executed IMHO. Noer planned out the assault and coordinated the teams before we moved out and all we had for floor plans. Was a sketch (not very detailed) that Noah did of the area on a piece of notebook paper.

When that front door went up in smoke we had to do some thing, he sent in the closest team and swapped the AoRs to compensate. Taking us from a stealth infiltration to a dynamic blow and go. I think he did a fine job, it’s just that one of the hostages didn’t make it out :

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Today we had Observation and Marksmanship training, did a little bit of a lecture at the start to make sure that the recruits new what we were doing as far as observation techniques. And then we did a few drills, not to different from what you might find at the US Armies Sniper School.

I took the Sgts with me to set up our ‘improvised’ shooting range and had Cpl Sniper lead them through one at a time to shoot at the targets we setup.

At Blades great idea they also had to call Tango Spotted; Threat Neutralized with the V-Commands when seeing and finally hitting a target. After that they had to give an account of it, number of targets and of what types, rounds, occasionally even if they saw the SNCO’s or how many hits.

We hide varying numbers of stuff and in differing spots to keep it a bit balanced. We also shot at them to make it a bit harder ;-).

After that I set up a single target down range and started patrolling. While each shooter took a turn (rotated by Cpl Sniper) to come sneak accross the tarmac, find a suitable firing position (enforced by Sgts Blade & JB) to fire from as indicated. Hit the target and sneak backout without being seen by me. Few people actually pulled it off but several got close…

The hard part was convincing Blade and JB not to kill them at will lol. I try to make things hard during training but I still try to keep it fairly doable for the Rcts… Most of the times any way hehe. I remember one of my training exercises in SWAT4, the Element almost failed each one and lost in the majority of it. But the exercise had been carefully crafted to push them to the limit, those missions were designed to be close to impossible.

Afterwards we did a tango hunt on one of the better sniping maps we had available working in sniper-spotter teams.

I hope people enjoyed it but I think I might have bored one of our poor troopers half to death :. I figured Observation & Marksmanship would give people a chance to do things we don’t do often in training, must of our time is focused on CQB (Close Quarters Battle) after all.

One thing that was quite nice is we had some team work going for a change. I’m quite used to managing things solo, 95% of my other training sessions I didn’t have help with. I liked today though because I had Blade and JB helping (yes I tend to sort names by Alpha 8=) )and we were able to contribute both our ideas to making things a better training session.

I hadn’t originally planned on taking 3 hours to do it but the afternoon was cleared in advance. I try to keep things moving quickly as I can while having to communicate with multiple people (questions/synchronization/etc) in the midst of it all. Usually when I schedule training I try to clear as large a time block for it as I can, because I don’t like to cut people short.

I don’t expect others to do so though, I do it because I find it works best for me. And I try to set the time frames so it is well balanced for the people involved… With [SAS] we currently have members spread across the America, Belgium, Canada, England, Denmark, Germany, and Norway just to name those that come to memory ! That’s including like up to GMT-4 to GMT+2 time zones or worse.

That’s one reason I try to keep a quick pace, I also don’t like to bore or tire people to much with an all day thing. Although I think the best trainings I’ve done in the past usually were over when we had all passed out :

Hmm, I remember when I was a Recruit. I’d join TG#1 and hook up with Rasa and Leon and we would train. Then an NCO would pop in for a bit and train us, like Relish coming in for 30-45 minutes to start us on some Dynamic Training. Then he’d pop off and we’d keep going as our time zones permitted us to. Really, we probably spent more time training together then with the NCOs lool.

Now’re days, were are probably not much better on the organizational level but there is a much better NCO -> Rct connection. Most of the things I ever learned in this business [so to speak] came from a mentors guidence or from the experience of training on my own. I remember Rand and Wiz played a big part in the former and the latter makes up 90% of things I’ve learned since I was given my Recruit Tryout.

Darn, I’m getting old… Hmm I think Miles was the first one we used the new procedures on.

R&R The Training Way

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Having been successfully stress-increased for the day I hit RvS Custom Mission mode for a little time to cool off. I set it to MP Peaks and took a Walter WA-2000 sniper rifle loaded with .30 Magnum FMJ and a MK23 SOCOM .45ACP with JHP ammo for self defense. 3 Flash bangs and 3 Smoke grenades, meaning 5 magazines of 6 rounds + 1 in the pipe for my Walter and another set of 4 12 round magazines for the sidearm plus one chambered.

The first round I maanged to have a turkey shoot, they kept coming to see where I was hiding only to be gunned down. The volume of the Magnum cartridge drawing more X-Rays to there doom… then I got overrun and flanked trying to retreat under fire to the nearest dead ground. I made a quick run but still got shot in the ass as the enemy ignored the smoke screen.

The second round, I got compromised just moving into position and ended up with about 4 or 5 X-Rays on the hill line itching for hairs.

Within about 1-2 minutes I had expanded as good as 3 magazines from my Walther and I was starting to worry about X-Rays coming around from behind. I worked up the hill and started picking off the enemy, working slowly to the winter lodge.

With about 3 rounds left and maybe one full mag left between me I took fire on the way. I knew with a group of X-Rays aware of me and an active shooter after me with a sniper rifle; you stand, you die.

So I decided again to redeploy but this time I did it the *right way*. I downed the nearest threat, pulled back and puffed a smoke between me and the incoming column.

Then ran like hell for the hills behind me, turned around and drew a bead on the incoming X-Rays. A few more down and off running further back to the bridge and another smoke grenade to screen my retreat. One tango gimped me but I managed to leap from cover to cover: taking position, suppressing, smoking, and running like hell to do it all over again until I limped myself back to the dead ground the bridge passes over.

At least two X-Rays close, one bought it from my current magazines last rounds as he tried fragging along with his teammate. Slung the rifle and slide out flash bang for shock value. The .45 sidearm coming out to finish the job… No point running when you’re already at the most secure place in town eh?

Took down the last threat, reloaded my Walther and moved on with the last 2 or 3 rounds loaded. Moved back to the lodge on one leg finding only one enemy left. who took shelter inside unaware of me.

Closing in with rifle ready, threw a bang into the lodge and went in with my MK23, 2 X-Rays down and the lodge was secured shortly. Back outside I checked the corner to see a shooter dashing close.

Slapped back into cover and went ready with the last of my sniper ammo, one miss and two hits as he lobbed a frag and readied to shoot me before it even blew up !

Good thing I was behind the wall and a pile of logs hehe.

A proper way of retreat though, puff the smoke to screen it. Move away, get some ground, fire back, rinse and repeat until contacts broken or you get a spot to fend them off from. With a proper 2 or 4 man Element it would actually work better. Because you could have a fire group suppress the enemy while a maneuver group jogs it to cover; switch positions with the fire group leaping next as they reload. While the maneuver group lays down the cover fire.

This video shows the concept very well in my humble opinion.

I’m used to doing it in pairs… not solo. Because it was impossible to run full out and fire at an enemy to my rear the smoke was really an essential part of trying to break contact alone.

Now having some one next to me with a nice SAW would have been a good combo with it though 😉

Dynamic Coffee Break

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A little test of XFire’s Video BETA feature. The original is about 2.49GB of AVI file but the image quality is equal to my game. This ones been converted to a 43MB VCD compliant MPEG file and uploaded to my photobucket profile (uses flv/flash)

My dynamic coffee break on the MP Presidio map. I think this is a good enough example of pace — Dynamic is as fast as is safe, if you’re not safe you are going to fast. If you can go faster without losing safety, you’re to darn slow. The video is however not an example for others, it’s a demo of what can be made from the video capture in xfire 😉

A pretty typical kit for me, Eddie Price (UK; SAS) character, H&K MP5A4 9x19mm FMJ; Sig Sauer P228 9x19mm JHP; 6 Flashbangs; Light Green BDU. All weapons without attachments and the crosshairs off.

Click To View

This is far from a perfect run, I see at least 9 or 10 things that are just obvious fowl ups on my part. Lucky for me being an RSM does not mean you play like a God… lol. I wanted to take a video to see if I could use XFires video system for training purposes without having to ‘get’ a camera man to video for me.

Technically this was just fooling around but some of the obvious errors every one can see are:

/* note: timer is from counting up from 0, as in WMP. */

  1. reloaded in the nude, missed the door button
  2. overly exposed while deploying flash bangs (box room 1min in)
  3. Forgot to slice the corner at top of the stairs (I was being flanked and in a hurry)
  4. Again I greatly exposed myself while deploying the bang against the enemy on the stairs / foot of stairs.
  5. missed bang upstairs (1:49) and demonstrated poor aim. Throwing grenades accurately without the reticle enabled is sadly one of my big failing points during my own trainings…
  6. I didn’t check the corner before entering crevice on top of the back stairs (2min in) — I could’ve been shot in the back of the head.
  7. 3min in, didn’t know what I was doing before I got to my point of entry (double door, bang diversion + rush other). You can see the moment of hesitation as realization hits me
  8. The back ally (3:50), I took the most exposed route to improve my accuracy for fear a side-sweep would let one of them get behind me. In the end the next group of X-Rays basically had me pinned down in a very bad position (4:20).
  9. Very poor accuracy overall for an [SAS] Member — 50% or 54/108 (rounds on target / fired)

Most times I reloaded I was a bit ‘lite’ on ammo. I’ve used the MP5A4 long
enough in RvS that I can ‘feel’ my shot groupings out so I know when I’m
reaching a dangerous level of remaining rounds. The bean counter is helpful for statistical purposes lol. Although ideally one would want to reload around 14~16 rounds instead.

A hostage and a hard case

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It was a round of Island Estate on Hostage Rescue and unfortunately I was the last man. I had used up my 3 Flash bangs, one getting to the second floor from the stairs in the lobby, one in securing the room/balcony/bathroom area up top. And another in securing the upper hostage in the bathroom overlooking the pool.

Extracting the hostage I went back and checked the room joining the piano room and courtyard together and figured, “crap no bangs” so I jogged back upstairs. I figured if I would have to storm the lower hostage without tactical aids, that end would be the best.. Worst case bursting in and shielding the hostage if one of the tangos would flee rather then shoot…

Crossing the pool room I heard a tango, drew my second kit and realized I took frags instead of gas. Usually I’ll carry 3 Bangs, 3 CS/Tear Gas in Raven Shield or 6 Bangs but for some reason I had 3 Frags. So I said what the hell, lobbed one in the pool room and took it down.

Moved on to the bottom of the stairs right next to the courtyard hostage… MP5 locked cocked and ready to rocket. I figured to have the best chance of success I was going to have to use a frag. It might kill the hostage or injure him but it would at least give me a fair chance of getting inside alive.

I rolled the door open, careful not to flag my muzzle around the door jam as I got the grenade ready (pin out, spoon thing on). I knew there was a partition in the middle of the room and Raven Shield sadly always places the hostage behind it with the tangos walking around the room. I bounced the frag carefully off the wall so that it would land just far enough to hopefully be far enough behind that partition that it wouldn’t kill the hostage, RvS is that way lol. Realistically I would’ve expected shrapnel to go through the partition and injure the hostage at a minimal.

I stormed in after the frag, MP5 up taking down the tangos. There was two behind the hostage, using him as a shield as it happened. blew the one away with a stream of deadly taps and kept the last burst going until the final suspect was down for the count. Circled around (I was still in front of the hostage) and kicked in to the side bedroom with the hostage trailing me and gunned down the last threat. With like 2 rounds left in my MP5, I drew my Sig P228 and ran like my pants were on fire with that hostage all the way to the LZ before any threats could pursue us from the courtyard. I was not going to press my luck poking my head out !!!

The room looks like this, the X was where I put the Frag, the H is the hostage, and the T’s are where I found tangos.

_____________________________
|           me     [stairs] |
|___[door]__________________|
|               |           |
|              H        T   |
|               |         T |
|        -------|----[door]-|
|         X     |           |
|               [door]      |
| T             |           |
|               | T         |
|_____[door]____|____[door]_|

I was standing right next to the kneeling hostage when engaging the two tangos in the one room. So I guess you could say I used the human shield against them lol. The tango in the other side room I took care of by flanking around the partition and in through the door from the side where I placed the frag (X).

Some of us older troopers in [SAS] have thought about using frags to clear the room like that, but from the opposite side of the room. I’ve even done it once but this time I was really shit out of luck, I contemplated restarting the round for a moment but decided it was not my way, and kept going till the end.

To be honest, I don’t want to have to EVER DO THAT AGAIN !!! Clearing hostage rooms with frags is crazy. But hey, when you’re between a rock and a hard case why not go down with a bang? Uhh frag lol.