Operation: Red Out - March 5th '06

[Zorak]

Between loaner guns and new players without their own gear, three of my AEGs were on the field by the end of the day. It would have been four except that I wasn't about to loan my best SR-16 to someone who's managed to break two SR-16 bodies already. Not to point fingers or anything, Shade, but the sport isn't actually about jumping up and down on your replica.

[Shade]

zorak said:

It would have been four except that I wasn't about to loan my best SR-16 to someone who's managed to break two SR-16 bodies already. Not to point fingers or anything, Shade, but the sport isn't actually about jumping up and down on your replica.

;D Just the Blood God's way of convincing me to metal up.

[Gestapo]

Thanks for the criticism guys. It will really help us make the next event better.....

[Munin]

In addition to Jacko's comments about goggles, I too saw a number of safety and rules violations throughout the day. I saw only three instances of what I would consider intentional cheating. One of those was a blind-fire by someone inside the embassy. Everyone knows that blindfire is a no-no, and people still do it anyway. That one irks me more than anything else. The other two were clear instances of people not calling their hits. In the worst case, I shot a guy over the roof of a car. I could only see his head in profile, so I shot him in the side of the face. I saw him bring his hand up to his face (in the proverbial "ouch! that hurt!" motion), drop out of my LOS, then come up 10 seconds later firing like nothing had happened.

I also heard from a friend on the other side that they happened across a pile of cards in the woods. Those cards were all tens, aces, and face cards. That's just not cool, and is an example of extremely poor sportsmanship on someone's part.

That said, the woods were open enough that they encouraged long range engagements, and at long ranges it's really hard to a) tell if you're actually hitting your target, and b) tell if you're actually getting hit. I was shooting at one guy near the bus at extreme range. I'm sending bb's WAY out there. I can actually see them bouncing off his butt/back. And he's just standing there, talking to his buddy like nothing's happening. But this was probably 70+ yards, I was shooting 0.25's out of a stock gun, the guy was pretty chubby, and he was wearing a thick sweatshirt. There's no way he could have felt the bb's at that range, so I wasn't terribly bent out of shape about it. No harm, no foul. I was just wishing I had frostee's APS-2 (but then again so was he). I saw a lot of guys fire wildly into an area and recite the old saw of "That guy's not calling his hits!" To which I usually replied, "dude, I there's 40 yards of brush between you and him. How can you be sure you're even hitting him?"

And this brings me to what I saw a lot of - unintentional cheating. This is the situation where rules aren't followed out of malice, but rather because people don't know any better. I lost count of the number of times I saw medics pull a card on someone and say, "okay, you're good to go in one minute," then scamper off to heal someone else. Or pull cards on several guys at once. I tried to call people on it every time I saw it, but I know that it was an endemic problem, simply because people didn't understand the medic rules. Actually, I got a medic killed by keeping him honest. He had moved up to heal me, and when he was about to move back, I reminded him that he needed to wait with me. Unfortunately, about 45 seconds in, he got shot. Whoops! So now we're both still casualties. Fortunately, good teamwork on the part of our squadmates pulled us both back where we were both able to receive medical attention from another medic in a safer area.

Or when guys in our respawn area were like, "okay, we've been here for our time, we're good to go." At which point we (re)informed them of the clock rule - and made them obey it. As it turned out, it was fortuitous that they waited, as it let us roll up en-masse behind a big group of RA guys heading for the embassy.

Or at the end of the game when we were all down to about 10 rounds each and made a suicidal charge just for the sheer amusement value of it. One of the guys near us dodged behind a tree and said, "wow, that was close. That one bounced off the brim of my boonie." when Hado and I informed him that that meant that he was hit, he was incredulous. "What, I'm out because it hit the brim of my hat?" Yup. Any part of your body, your clothing or your gear is a hit. That's not rocket science, and I know the kid wasn't trying to cheat anybody on purpose, but he was in effect cheating because he wasn't familiar enough with MIA hit rules.

And this is the kind of thing that leads to frustration. If I'm shooting at a guy and I see a shot bounce off his hat, (or his mag pouch, or canteen, or whatever) and keep shooting, I'm going to be a little miffed. I'll usually give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't feel it, but if I hear him talking to his buddies about how "that was close, they hit my hat" and he doesn't call himself out, I'm really going to get miffed.

A lot of guys think that they're way better shots than the really are, especially at extreme range. And a lot of guys don't know what constitutes a hit, and don't call themselves out when they should. The result is a feeling of "those guys are cheating." I actually heard two players say, "I'm going to stop calling my hits. If they can cheat, so can I." I let them have it, saying, "I don't care if they're calling their hits or not. Be a better player than that." I don't ever want to be seen or thought of as a cheater, and I don't want to be associated with cheaters. If you're so frustrated that you're ready to cheat to make a point, just do everyone involved a favor and either a) contact the organizers and report the incident, b) just leave the field and cool down, or c) both.

There was one common theme in virtually every instance of unintentional cheating, however - the age of the perpetrators. I didn't see any adults screwing up the rules or causing problems, largely because adults take the game seriously, actually listen to the rules briefings, try to understand both the rules and the spirit behind them, and understand that just because it looks like their pellets are headed in the general direction of the bad guys doesn't mean that they're actually hitting anything.

One thing I want to make very clear - I had fun at this game. I enjoyed getting out, shooting people, getting shot, running out of ammo, making mad dashes, assaulting hilltops, and playing in a "target rich" environment. I want to thank the folks who put a lot of work into this game, because I know (from my own experience hosting OPs) just how much work it is.

But I think that the overall enjoyment of the game was hampered by the level of the players. While the game was fun, it was paintsoft. Sometimes paintsoft is exactly what the doctor ordered, but the difference between a paintsoft game and what we refer to as "big boy" events it night-and-day. For those of you young folks who are interested in MilSim events, be advised - the kind of shit that I saw at Red Out would get you booted from a serious MilSim event in short order. If you don't even have the attention span or courtesy to give the organizers your undivided attention during the rules briefings, you don't even belong on the field. If you understand the importance of diligent observance of the rules and have the attention span to still be reading this post, then there just might be hope for you yet.

[Livonia]

yeah, after we (MEU) extracted the ambassedor MEU had no point in the game anymore.

i did notice a lot of cheating at first, then i realized that i kept shooting at people who called out but didnt put their gun up or anything to signal they were hit.
There was a point where about 17 RA rushed a man on MEU, and he was holding his ground untill a guy with an AUG stuck his barrel through the bunker and shot him, a lot of people were complaining abut him cheating but myself, gestapo, and vmax were watching from under 20 feet away and saw/heard no bb's hit the guy who was "cheating".

If anyone wanted to know who I was, I was the guy with the long hair working at the chrono (thanks for the speed loader Zorak) with the digital bdu on. I wielded a AUG with scope and phantom kit.... and a bright blue battery E-taped on the side of the stock ;D

[O'Dwah]

I noticed a lot of safety issues also. Right in the middle of a firefight, one of my teammates took of his goggles and started cleaning them. I called him on it, and he told me it didn't matter because he was behind a tree.

Overall though I had a very good time, especialy for my first event. But like Munin said, a lot of what happened on and off the field, made the game a little less realistic. And I tried my best to abide by the rules, and follow the MilSim aspect.

I would love to go to another game, but a lot of the MilSim games. Such as Irene, are for 16+.

[gman]

livoniairsoft said:

yeah, after we (MEU) extracted the ambassedor MEU had no point in the game anymore.

1) *CONFIDENTAL*
Will be briefed on the day of.

2) Retrieve the Ambassador and successfully exfiltrate out of the hot zone (Bonus if Crew is all alive)

3) Retrieve valuable Helicopter equipment, and destroy the rest.

4) *Optional* Aid the DF in fighting the RA

We could have used the help

[Gestapo]

It would really helpful if you guys made a list of things to improve on.

What I have right now:

1: Before event, have a safety breifing and hit rules, one thing we left out
2: Have the event organizers spread out evenly across the teams to check for cheating and safety violations
3: More objective for each team
4: Less people, deffinitly

We really want to get into game organizing and want you guys to keep comming out and playing with us.

[O'Dwah]

gestapo762 said:

It would really helpful if you guys made a list of things to improve on.

What I have right now:

1: Before event, have a safety breifing and hit rules, one thing we left out
2: Have the event organizers spread out evenly across the teams to check for cheating and safety violations
3: More objective for each team
4: Less people, deffinitly

We really want to get into game organizing and want you guys to keep comming out and playing with us.

Or more people with a simpiler objective, not so many twists and turns. At the end it was basicly just a big team on team battle, no real objective.

[Gestapo]

Those twists weren't really planned, and people just wanted to screw stuff up.

[thedevilsmen]

I think I have to agree with everyone on this, there WAS a lot of cheating going on. thats for sure. Way to much screwing around which did make it less lifelike. We should raise the age limit to 16 I do believe due to the lack of maturity expressed by many newcomers, excluding myself and some of my team. I loved how there was so much action and so many peple, it felt very realistic and was a ton of fun picking off people at 150-250ft away with my sniper. I also agree with an easier objective many of us where confuseda bout what to do, especially when the we found out that some of the MEU where spies and if the MEU switched sides or not.

[Munin]

People wanted to screw stuff up because they were frustrated at not knowing what their objectives were. We had no idea about the missile silo, radio gear, etc. We were told to stomp the weapons cache boxes flat as we were walking out to the field. Our "insertion point" ended up being the RA team's respawn point. Something tells me that that was not planned.

When people have no idea why they're defending something (or attacking something) or what goals they need to accomplish, they improvise. And they usually improvise in the way that lets them get into the thickest firefights, because no one likes to sit in a bunker all day.

[Zorak]

Objectives and scoring should be clearly defined and matched to the style of play and audience of the event. This event and audience were paintsoft, but changing objectives, units changing sides, brainwashing, and so forth are all advanced milsim stuff.

If I was going to plan an event for that audience on that field, I'd think about copying the basic format of Hell's Survivors Michigan Monster game, where each team gets points for each minute that it holds a key objective.

Radio frequencies should be preallocated by team. I'm going to write an article on radio use in airsoft this week.

Medic rules need to be posted well in advance and beaten into people. Respawn rules shouldn't be too much harsher than medic rules. IMO the twenty minute respawn was too short and the one minute medic healing time was too long. I'd prefer ten minute respawn and semi-random medic healing time, or maybe just two minute medic healing.

The support guy concept was frustrating. It'd be better to let people dump BBs and reloading tools somewhere on the field, perhaps near their "home base" areas.

I like uniform rules for determining which side people are on, but if you aren't going to use those, colored armbands are functional. The uniform rules for this event weren't functional. If I saw a guy's head, shoulders, and arms, and he was wearing woodland, MARPAT, or OD, I couldn't ID him at all. I'd have to either call out to him or try to get a look at his pants to see what side he was on. Both of those actions are tactically bad for me.

[Matt (Achilles)]

Yeah I agree with Zorak on the Camo part.

IT was hard to tell what team you were on, we should have either made the restrictions tighter, or armbands/headgear should have been used.

[Toothbrush]

I am glad to hear many of you had a good time at the event, however I will not say it was flawless. I firmly believe a good deal of the confusion spans from people changing the OP while it was going on, but I feel that has be discussed enough so I will leave it at that.

Every comment so far is greatly appreciated, if I (and the other who planned the event) don't hear what went wrong then there is no possibility for improvement.

Personally, I would love to have another OP in the future. However I feel it will be essential, among other things, to hold people to the scenario and rules. If we want advanced things like team switching and brainwashing, etc, great, but everyone needs to know about it before the game and well defined rules for it need to be in place.

I would like to apologize for any confusion or upsetting events that occurred. I am glad most, if not all, of you enjoyed yourselves.

Again, thank you to all those who attended.

Toothbrush

Edit: In all honesty, I think SEMIA may have bitten off more than we could chew with this one. None the less it was a learning experience for those involved in the planning of Redout. Hopefully, when/if SEMIA has another OP, we will be better for it because of what happened at Redout.