Operation Flashpoint - FDF mod - Lumessakahlaajat

[Vartuoosi]

Welcome all to Vartuoosi's tales of mild interest!tm

I decided to go on a little nostalgia trip through Operation Flashpoint and had the idea to showcase the greatgrandfather of Arma 3 to you guys.
In this showcase I will play different SP missions and do AAR's about them. It'll take the format like my previous Arma 3 AAR's(meaning screenshots and text written in broken english).
So without further delay I present to you:

This mission uses the Finnish Defence Forces modification and takes place on 1.12.1939, the second day of Winter war.
My job is to take a patrol behind the advancing Soviet forces and to conduct recon and general mischief.

Here is the map of the operational area

My first stop will be Aluekätkö 1 at the northern part of the area. It's an equipment stash used by long-range patrols to resupply and rearm, set up in preparation of the Soviet invasion.

From there we'll head to south/south-east to K-piste 1. There we'll set up camp and unload our heavy equipment.

Once that is done, all that is left to do is to head south and go nuts. The job is to find Soviet command posts, artillery, supply units and take them out of action.

For fire support I've been allocated three platoons of heavy mortars with 200 rounds, that means nine 120mm heavy mortars. Considering the massive equipment shortages the Finnish military suffered during Winter war, my eight man patrol has just deprived a whole division or something from their indirect fire support. Better make this one count.
(Though Tampella had designed 120mm mortars already during the early-mid thirties, FDF didn't get any because lack of funds. Production was started after the war began and first 120mm mortars were received by the FDF just after Winter war. So the only reasonable conclusion is that these mortars were procured by using time travel.)

To be continued when I get around to actually playing the damn mission.

 

[Vartuoosi]

Part 1 - War-torn Winter Wonderland

After the mission begins, first thing to do is to meet with our commanding officer who'll brief us on the mission.
On the way you can meet these guys listening to the radio. In a nice touch by the mission designer the radio broadcast is an actual wartime broadcast, in which the reporter is strafed by Soviet fighters while recording and he continues on to describe the air attack as it happens.

Moving on we come across a watchtower with an AAMG on it. The guard manning it tells us that he heard a sound of a plane's engine, then an explosion after which the engine sound stopped.
Do I smell foreshadowing?

Finally we meet up with the major (Not that major, you dummies). He goes over the mission, which I already did in the first post so I'm not gonna repeat it. More importantly those two guys on the left join my patrol. They are a radioman and a forward observer. Those two are important since they are needed to call on that heavy mortar support.

Behind the major is some skis, sleighs, a binocular periscope and heavy weapons. Two 81mm mortars and a Maxim M/32-33.
I pack the MG and the mortars in to one of the sleighs. I actually don't remember how to use those mortars but I'll take them along just in case.
Because of the way the skis were implemented into the game they handle in a hilariously ridiculous ways. That also means the AI is completely unable to use them in any sort of effective manner.
So I'll be taking the skis to drag one of the sleighs with all the equipment while rest of the team moves on foot.

Time to move to the weapons cache.
My team has the following weapons; three men are armed with bolt action rifles, one of which has a scope, four guys have the M/31 Suomi SMG and I picked a LS/26 LMG and a flare gun for myself. Most of the guys also have one 2kg satchel charge(called pile-up charge's in the mod) for anti-tank use, just in case.
I also packed some extra guns, ammo and explosives into the sleigh.

Right after leaving the cache, I notice something on the ice. Looks like a plane.
Come friends, there's a mystery afoot!

Well mystery solved. It's a crashed I-16.
But wait! There is no pilot. Looks like there is some investigating to be done after all.

After searching a nearby island, we find the pilot. After some yelling the pilot decides to surrender.
As indicated by the subtitles, the player character's first action after securing the prisoner is to call him an "ugly bastard". That's not very nice.
Now what is ugly is his hat, just look at it!

Time to do some backtracking. We head back to the cache with the prisoner. There we meet a patrol who has come to investigate the crashed plane and let them take the pilot off from our hands.
Time to continue with the mission.

Looks like the sun sets...

...and the moon rises.

When were closing on the shore where we'll infiltrate the Soviet rear (NO! Not that kind of rear infiltration, you pervs!), I take out my binocs to check out the area. Looks like there has been some fighting earlier here. I can spot a couple wrecked T-26 tanks and some bodies.

It looks clear so we move closer. Just when we hit the shore these guys show up.

They are getting awfully close, but in the end don't notice us and eventually move away.

I wait for a while to let that Soviet patrol get some ground between us. When I start moving again I notice a live tank crewman next to one of the wrecks. He also notices me and points his Nagant revolver at me but I'm quicker on the draw and put a couple of rounds through his head.

I quickly check some of the bodies in the area. Turns out this dead officer has all sorts of interesting looking papers.
YOINK!

When we are nearing the forest where K-piste 1 is, I can hear several pairs of feet crunching in the snow in front of me but can't see anyone.
Eventually I catch a glimpse of someone entering the forest and shortly after someone starts a fire.

There is a Soviet patrol camping out in the forest and they are way too close to K-piste 1 and need to be dealt with. Also I'm pretty sure the every man's rights don't apply to foreign invaders.

I'll finish this update in the next post since I think I'm nearing the image limit per post.

 

[Vartuoosi]

Part 1 - continued

Ok, time to bring the hammer of justice on these guys hard. And by hammer of justice I mean couple of magazines worth of 7.62×53R rounds.
Luckily these Soviets make things easy for me since they are bunched up quite nicely around the campfire.

Looks like we still have a couple of runners, but my squadmates take them out with accurate burts from their SMG's before I have a chance to reload.

These guys now can get warmed up real good in hell.

After this smooth ambush I continue to show of my considerable skill in everything by spending the next 10-15 minutes trying to find my skis and sleigh. I forgot where I parked them.
After finding my stuff we head deeper into the forest and set up camp at K-piste 1. I also setup the MG just incase but don't bother with mortars since I still don't remember how they worked in game and we already have mortars on standby.

Next, it's time for my patrol to become the terror that bumbles in the night.

 

[Septic Limb]

Keep'em coming, nice to have a good laugh while drinking my morning coffee.

 

[Vartuoosi]

Part 2 - Excuse me comrade, do these mortar rounds seem explosive to you?

Looks like our first target. There's some buildings and campfires in the distance.

There seems to be a truck convoy and some T-26 tanks

How about we test out those mortars.

Niiiiiiceeeee...

But turns out it's not totally sunshine, lollipops and mangled Soviet corpses. We are actually very lacking in the mangled corpses department. The power of those mortars is really underwhelming, you can see in the video an explosion happen right at the feet of one soldier and he just get's knocked down and stands up and runs away. So all that barrage did was kill a few guys and put the rest on alert.
Turns out you shouldn't send mortars to do a job meant for artillery.

But The Soviets now being on alert isn't that big of a deal since the AI in OFP has really bad nightvision.
Remember to eat those carrots!

One of the T-26's is manned so I sneak up to it and stick a demolition charge onto it, while my team covers me from some nearby bushes.

I also get a better look at the convoy. There are some howitzers in the mix.

KABOOM!

 

[Vartuoosi]

Part 2 - continued

Time to deal with the infantry

They

just

keep

running

into

my

line

of

fire

Wow, what a bunch of lemmings.

I move among the trucks to look for survivors. I also grab a SVT-38 from a dead Russian since I used up all the ammo for the LS/26. I did pack extra mags for it in the sleigh but it's back at K-piste 1 and the gun's high rate of fire combined with the small 20 round magazines isn't really working out.

 

[Vartuoosi]

Part 2 - continued

I nearly get my head blown off by a machinegun burst. A KV-1 little bit down the road is guilty of this attempted murder. I move closer to it and throw a 2kg at-charge at it.

Well that did jack shit.

I slink back to my team and get some more explosives from them to stick on the tank.

HAHA! Suck it!

With the destruction of the KV-1, this convoy is dealt with and it's time to go look for more trouble.
Also next time we try out some of our spoils of war.

 

[Vartuoosi]

Part 3 - Tank goodness

Looks like our next target is just about 500m+ away. Let's take our new T-26 and go say hello.

I drive inside the camp with the coax blazing

These guys don't seems to give a damn that a tank just drove in middle of their camp guns blazing.

Curses! This one fellow foils my plan to brutally murder him by ducking. I can't depress the gun enough to hit him. Well played.

Turns out he isn't such a smart guy after all. Soon he stands up and I'm able to proceed with operation Brütal Murder.
The camp has a couple of damaged tanks and repair trucks. I could repair those tanks and swipe them but I'm too lazy to do that.

I go search for more targets. After wandering for a while I spot a fire in the distance and move to investigate on foot. The T-26 is painfully slow and it's also noisy. I also swapped the SVT-38 for a DP-27. Nice touch by the mod team, they actually animated the spinning magazine cover.

I found an artillery battery. I decide to call a mortar strike to soften the target a bit. Spoiler alert: the mortars still suck and don't cause any casualties even though the barrage was spot on.

I decide to get close and dash to a couple trucks parked near the guns.
These guys were either huddled together for warmth or in middle of a group hug when the mortars interrupted them. Anyway they make an excellent target for my LMG.

One artillery battery out of action.

I get the tank and go cruising for more stuff to wreck.
Soon I spy another artillery battery and a some trucks on the road.

One of the guns is manned and I have bit of a duel with it. Looks like in this case T-26 beats a 122mm howitzer.

I move into the camp and clear it with the coax mg easily.

After this I spend quite a long time looking for more stuff to blow up but couldn't find any. Either I missed something or some trigger is messed up and the mission wont end/continue properly.
I used the endmission command to get a list of my kills for your viewing pleasure.

I feel like I made bit of a disservice for this mission with the tank shenanigans, since it's quite atmospheric and good behind the enemy lines action. I like this mission a lot, only thing it's lacking is somekind of a random enemy patrol in the area you are operating. And that's quite a praise from me since I generally find these covert behind the lines spec ops stuff to be rather cliche and boring.

In summary: Very atmospheric mission about a long range patrol into enemy rear areas which after capturing a tank devolved into a silly rampage.
But isn't that what Operation Flashpoint/Arma is all about in the end?