My First Mission with the UEE Pathfinders

 Good morning, I'm Timbur and today I teamed up with the UEE Pathfinders to do an operation, this is what happened. 



We started out at Port Tresller to compete in battle 25 vs 25, player vs player. Since this was my first time with the Pathfinders, all I needed to do was get myself to the correct spaceport ahead of time and have the designated armor loadout.

The start up time was fairly well organized but it still took about an hour to get started. This is par for the course for player made content. 

The operation was simple, capture three caterpillars and bring them back to our forward operating base, which was just two cutlass reds a few kilometers from Point Wain Aid Shelter. The Cutlass and Caterpillars were marked is 'indestructible' as per the operation rules, personally, in the future I'd like to see these handicaps removed. 

My role in this was to serve aboard the Aegis Hammerhead as a crew member of the largest ship in the fleet to be deployed today. With six size four turrets each with four size four Rhino laser repeaters, and the latest improvements from CIG on how the turrets target, the gunship is very deadly when deployed in the right manner. 

My only worry was that the enemy would provide enough targets for us to shoot at.  

And they happily complied as we shot down a number of their ships. 

My team was quickly able to secure the airspace over the operation area, but early in the game the opposition actually stole two of the three caterpillars right from the beginning, then it was only a question of if they could hold them. Meanwhile Our team was only able to secure one caterpillar. 

The hammerhead was relocated over the enemy FOB to 'bring the rain' and the turrets made quick work of any enemy players sticking their head out of their respawn points on the Cutlass red. Shortly after our marines moved in a captured a caterpillar. 

After securing two caterpillar, we were now in the lead, and the team made the choice to go for the last caterpillar. Which was now full of the enemy opposition waiting for them.  

Despite the opposition the team breached and secured the caterpillar, even with the defending players having the upper hand. 

After all three caterpillars were secure it was then just a matter of securing the airspace. The opposition had a few clever plans to ram the hammerhead, first with a sentinel, then with another hammerhead, then as a last ditch effort they drop cyclones from the air and drove in. All attempts thwarted by the UEE Pathfinders.

To end we formed up in an escort wing and flew off with the three caterpillars in style. 

A few thoughts of improvements on this operation:

From an operational standpoint it seems like we could have fielded more marines and opted for less fighters pilots. The airspace was very secure during the entire operation. If we had run into a more serious ground combatant it would have been fighting an uphill battle to re claim the stolen caterpillars, if not impossible. I understand how securing the airspace was the priority, and it makes sense, if you control the area you control who can enter or leave . But after the area was secure it seems like we could have afforded to divert more crew members to the fight. Or better yet, we could have started out with more marines on the ground to secure the objective. This lack of agility may be a problem in the future for the Pathfinders. Also, the fact that we didn't secure the objective quickly in the beginning could have lost us the operation if the opposition was more competent. 

If I was on the opposing team I would have stolen two or three caterpillars and them jumped out with them. Staying in orbit would have made it impossible for the Pathfinders to board and recapture the ships, though slightly in the grey on the rules. The rules stat the ships can't hover over the ground, but they don't say anything about not leaving the AO, in fact in a real scenario this would be the priority for the caterpillar pilots. To abide by the stay on the ground rule the Caterpillar pilot could jump out and then have landed and hid them at a random location on the planet if they wanted to be more technically in the rules, as they only state that the ships can't be "left airborne." However, once the ships are drifting in space and out of sight of the other team there is no way to verify if you're complying with the rules. Whoever controls the objective in this case controls the outcome. For example, With two or three of the ships captured you are preventing the other team from winning and you would only need three players onboard to defend the ship, one per ship to fly, the rest of the team could have been devoted to clearing out the AO of ships, in the time that remained. Team members could respawn at Port Tressler, and head back to the AO as needed. Also the team without the caterpillar would be split, do they send out ships to find the caterpillars, on a wild goose chase per say, or defend the AO. Even if the AO couldn't have been secured the 'industructible cats' rule would have made it easy for an alternative way to win. Right before the operation ended, you could just land the caterpillars in your FOB and win the battle. The opposing team could even land the Cats upside down and with limited time on the clock it would be nearly impossible to board, recapture, and flip the ship to transport them back to our base. 

One thing that we could have done but we didn't was to use our air force to better secure the three objective caterpillars. Since the UEE Pathfinders controlled the airspace it would only be logical to also secure the caterpillars, even if they were manned by enemies. We had the airforce to do this, but we didn't use them correctly. For example, distortion and EMP weapons should have been utilized to hold down the Caterpillars in place. Essentially disabling the ships with non lethal damage. An effectively placed EMP could power the caterpillars down until our marines could secure the ship. The caterpillars were close enough to each other that a team of three sentinels could likely use it's 2km EMP range to hold all three at the same time. I would cycle out the emp's so they hit the cats every minute until the marine team gave the go ahead. However, if we couldn't afford to deploy three crew members to securing the Caterpillars with Sentinels at least one sentinel could have slowed them down. It might have also been advisable to deploy a mantis to keep ships in the area preventing their escape. This would have made more sense than the eclipse which spent most of the time sitting idle or out of the AO. Also, due to the current chaff/flare gameplay, torpedo ships like the eclipse are useless versus anyone that can press the chaff/flare key. 

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