XBox: Like a real war

Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

You guys play on the XBox or on a PC? If on the XBox, do you have XBox Live!?

My gamer tag is lastort. Want to play sometime?

 

Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

Yep. Not very much recently (too busy), and I've never played online (tho I did used to play TONS of Quake III online).

As an aside, it might surprise some of the hawks here to know that in high school I considered applying to the Air Force Academy, did apply for both Army and USAF ROTC scholarships (got the AF one, but failed the Army physical fitness test due to injuries sustained in a car wreck 3 days earlier). The local Marine recruiter practially followed me around all day. (Gave the Navy the cold-shoulder because I was terrified of trying to land on a frickin' carrier.) In college I was in AFROTC until it came down to commitment time, and I balked because despite my all-time unit high-score on the flight aptitude test, I barely missed out on the then vision requirement (I have 20/40 correctable) and didn't want to wear a uniform to push paper all day. I considered switching to the Army to either fly helis or command armor units, but didn't because I had no scholarship with them. I also seriously considered joining the Army reserves after 9/11, but didn't because it would've killed my then-girlfriend now-wife due to stress. I currently work for a small defense contractor at a major US air base after turning down a post-college job with Lockheed-Martin. So, I'm certainly not anti-military - I just really think this one is a very bad idea.

Also, my pops earned an appointment to West Point in '66, but failed the physical exam (vision), and is currently a life-long civil employee at the same air base I work at. My grandfather was a logistics officer in the Army during WWII in the Pacific theater. Band of Brothers was probably the best thing I've ever seen on television.

Anyway, aside over. Back to the war discussion.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

XBox Live! rocks. It is incredible.

OK, I'm back on topic.

 

how about counter strike? i am good at that one.

i like to be the spy/scout and kill people with my knife

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

FWIW, USMC jet pilots also have to carrier qualify.

Same exact thing happened to my dad 2 years earlier (he got into all 3 service academies but his vision was terrible, ended up going to Navy OCS after college).

BTW, how in hell did you finish Ghost Recon without any casualties? That's one of the hardest games I've ever played--I still can't beat the last mission, most of the others took me at least 5-10 tries before I could complete them with an acceptable number of casualties, and that's on the easy level--and I breezed thru every version of Rainbow 6 and Rogue Spear I ever played.


Alex

 

If you ever want to play a great tank game pick up Steel Beasts. Great game. BTW, the eye requirements are or were the same for rotary wing pilots in the army too. My last year at West Point I wanted to branch aviation. I maxed out my pilot exam and my flight physical went fine except for my astygmatism (sp?). I had 20/20 vision but my astygmatism was right on the cusp. They warned me that I would have 3 other flight physicals in OBC and that if I failed any of them I would be transferred out of aviation and into another branch that met the "needs of the army". Needless to say, I decided to forego aviation. Good thing too, in the middle of OBC my eyes went over the threshold and (no offense to anyone) I might have ended up in Transportation, Chemical or some other branch that held my interest slightly more than watching paint dry.

 

What'd you end up doing?

 

Recon baby! PS2 myself, but been rocking the missions lately with a friend. You want a challenge, try taking only guys with MP5s.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

He wanted me to enlist. Which I sure as hell wasn't gonna do, especially with the Marines.

His vision was horrid, until he got that Lasik recently. Took a couple of hacks at it, but he's about 20/40 now himself.

On a few missions it took more than one hack at it. The final mission where you have to take out the armor column crossing the bridge was the hardest by far. The oil refinery (was that Desert Siege? Can't recall...) and the UN valley support missions were damn tough too. My biggest hint is _NOT_ to always proceed in the order specified by the mission objectives. Additionally, I usually took one assault team, one sniper, and one heavy fire support team, with variations depending on the specific mission (stealth, no heavy gunners; demo, attach a demo expert to the support team; and in a few rare cases scrap the sniper altogether).

If it makes you feel any better, I've never gotten past the damn Prague Opera House in Rogue Spear. I always botch the assault on the main chamber and can't kill all the terrorists before they wax a hostage. In Rogue Spear I always had to redo missions. The damn recon mission where you plant the bugs in the spa must have taken me 50 tries.

I guess I just do better in the on-the-fly style missions.

Actually, one of my favorite GR missions was the one where you snag the general in the swamp. A couple of guys with MP5SDs and a steady hand...

 

I was an armor officer that cadre'd into Air Defense because of a lack of 2LT slots. If I hadn't been as big a smartass as I was I would have avoided those 200+ area tours and graduated higher in my class. My wife says I should have met her sooner. I was dean's list and a model cadet my last 3 semesters there. Funny, that was about the time I started dating her. You don't get to go out and visit the outside world if you're on the area and so I straightened up quite nicely. As a funny aside, I still have the shoes I used to wear when I walked on the area. I walked so many miles in those damn things that there are holes in the soles of both shoes, heh.

 

> If you ever want to play a great tank game pick up Steel Beasts.

Seconded. Although I am more of a Flanker 2 person myself.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

Can't you "carrier qualify" without actually having to land on a carrier? I know there are land based meatballs and simulation has advanced so much that in civil aviation a pilot can get type rated for specific aircraft with only sim time.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

What, you didn't want an all-expenses paid vacation to beautiful Parris Island?

See, I hate laser eye surgery. Not only did it make my grandfather go completely blind (he was diagnosed with an eye disease similar to glaucoma, got laser surgery about 12 years ago when it was still sort of experimental to try to fix it, and it made the problem a lot worse), but now thanks to PRK I'm going to have to compete with everyone who has a few thousand bucks to plunk down when I try to get into flight school (I have uncorrected 20/15 vision).

Yeah, on the last mission I always take my guys up to the Russian hideouts next to the bridge, kill all but one of the guys hiding there, the last one gets away and snipes all my troops when I go hunt for him.

The UN support mission was tough. I didn't think the oil refinery was that bad, if it's the one I'm thinking of.

Oh I don't go in the order they give you. I usually just split my team up into 2 3-man teams, each with an assault, a support, and one other (depending on the mission). I hardly ever use snipers, only remember doing it on the mission where you get the diplomat's son out of the POW camp (I would just attack the first tower, stick the sniper up in the top, and take out the bad guys I could see, which would draw more out, and you could take most of them out this way).

I didn't think the Prague Opera House was that bad (pretty similar to the US Capitol mission from Eagle Watch), the trick is to bring silenced weapons, take out all the terrorists outside the room where they're holding the hostages, and then storm the hostage room with all your guys at once, from different directions.

The recon missions in all the games are bitches, tho. I hate those because you can never tell when you've been spotted, and all of a sudden the mission will just end for no reason.

That was a pretty good one, I thought it was pretty hard considering it was the first mission tho (took me at least a dozen tries, the one after it took only 2 or 3--as opposed to the original R6 game, where the 2nd mission was one of the hardest in the game). I liked the one where you have to infiltrate the submarine base.

A great mission from the original R6 series is the Big Ben one from the Eagle Watch expansion pack.


Alex

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is it OK to panic now?

They do have land-based meatballs (and Navy/USMC pilots use these and trap wires even when landing on a runway to keep their skills sharp), but I'm 99% sure that you have to actually land on a carrier in order to carrier qualify.


Alex

 

year group please?

where were you stationed when you found out you got detailed - two of my Platoon Leaders got detailed and were ticked (bad policy but I understand the reasons)?

I am sure staring at central area on your many round trips gave you a new appreciation of the world - me - I used to chomp on Tony's pizza while on room tours -

 

YG94

I was assigned to Ft. Riley, 1st ID 2-34 Armor but was detailed out to 4-3 Air Defense. I got to Ft. Riley just in time for all the RIF's to start and for most of 1st ID to start closing down. We shut down most of 4-3 and then moved the rest to Ft. Stewart to become part of the 24th ID. I had a pretty bad training accident at Riley right before we moved which effectively ended my career.

Yeah, central area and I knew each other pretty well. My roommate for second semester plebe and all of yearling year was a century man too and we'd usually end up splitting a Stromboli from Shade's on Saturday after we finished our tours. Word of advice to future cadets out there, never try and get in a pissing contest with your TAC, you lose. Most vivid memory of walking tours was during the nor'easters in 92. I remember it was so damn cold with so much snow on the ground that they made us walk 15 mnutes and then take 5 minutes inside. So you'd run inside and the CQ's in Ike barracks would have coffee and hot chocolate ready for all the area birds. You'd gulp it down and try and get warmed up before running back out. Damn it was cold. Area tag was also interesting. What company were you in? We switched companies between yearling and cow years so I was in A1 and then B1.

 

C1 all four years - 81'

Yea TACs could be pieces of work - my yearling year the A3 TAC was a guy who had won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam - he had a few screws loose and always had that far away look in his eyes. His MH write up sounded like something right out of the movies.

what was your major? I taught there from 92-95.
At least you started Armor - I was in 11th ACR (Fulda Gap) and 3rd ACR (Fort Bliss) ... Two of my LTs got "detailed" to AD and MI - Great officers, but they were not happy.
what happened with the training accident?

 

The TAC who I had a run in with was name Richard Brudzinski, FA. I think that's how you spelled his name. Anyway, this guy really did not like me and my roomate and like idiots we chose to make it a problem instead of being smart about it. It turns out the guy wasn't the greatest officer in the world anyway. A few years after we graduated he was passed over for the third time. The straw that broke the camel's back was something that happened at NTC I heard. He was the XO for a FA batallion and had gone missing during their NTC rotation. They couldn't find him for 3 days and eventually they found him sleeping somewhere or another. That's as much as I ever heard.

I majored in Computer Science. What did you teach btw?

I was in a training accident in a Bradley. I was in the TC position and we had stopped our track on the side of a hill. It had been raining for the better part of two weeks and the ground was pretty saturated. I was up out of the turret and looking around with my Bino's and the side of hill collapsed causing our Bradley to rollover. I dropped into the hatch (saving my life) but ended up dislocating my shoulder and tearing my bicep off the collar bone. I also tore the acl in my left knee which had already been partially torn during an accident at jump school my cow summer. The docs said I was going to be non-deployable for the better part of a two years and the army decided to offer me an early out instead of keeping me around to rehab. My battery commander intimated that I wouldn't make it past 1LT because he'd have to rate me lower than the other guys because of my medical status and he encouraged me to take the out for that reason. I reluctantly did. Funny thing is, a lot of my classmates ended up getting out in the next couple of years anyway because of all the RIF's.

 

To finish the story. I ended up going to work for TRW in their army systems department because I felt I owed it to the army to do something army related for the balance of my commitment. I left TRW a few years later and have been doing software stuff ever since. Volunteered to go back in after 9/11 but I doubt they'd take me back unless because of my medical status unless the ************ really hits the fan.

 

see PM