My Personal Feedback on Blacksite

[wharkins2005 2]

THE GOOD:

1.  The AO:  Holy crap that place was insane.  A massive AO complete with every single airsofters ideal playing style.  Woodsball, Long Range, Multistory buildings, cqb, room to room fighting, rolling terrain offering varying lines of sight, and even point blank engagements. The top half alone was a separate AO and quite honestly, those buildings were so large and so different that each one was a separate AO as well.  Its like the movie inceptions except its an AO withing and AO within an AO...mind blown.  Pretty sure everyone will agree that the fighting at that one starship on day 2...and we all know which one i'm talking about...was stupid fun...that was a 4 hour firefight from hell with heavy fighting in court yards, stairwells, balconies, and hall ways. Now I haven't played the GTI AO before but I've seen lots of videos and it looks pretty similar but still completely different.  

 

2.  Play Style: I know that roles like Marksman, snipers and LMG's get pushed aside in certain AO's because the rules prevent them from using their weapons indoors or at close range, and most AO's that offer up that style of gameplay are not good enough because the range advantage those roles have are irrelevant b/c the AO isn't big enough and basic M4's can still get range lmg's, marksman, and snipers...but not at blacksite...in fact...i'd say that if your squad doesn't have HWS, LMG, and Marksman roles filled...you are at a disadvantage.  We had a HWS guy with us running tag rounds...and he was raining fresh hate down on cost all weekend long.  We also had a marksman and two lmg's and we all got put to work.  Average engagement distance for me (LMG) was about 100-200 feet, with a couple right at my 60ft MED, i also had to draw my pistol a few times as well.  The only other AO that really offers that much variety of role play is Copperhead...but copperhead doesn't have massive buildings that can hold 4 platoons worth of people, three stories high, with multiple stairs, balconies for snipers, rolling hills for cover, woods for sneaking around, or rolling hills for cover.  This AO is a legit MilSim dream come true.

 

I've attached to scale images of Copperhead, Faded Giant, and Blacksite AO's just to give those that weren't there an idea of what you are dealing with here.  Couple of things to note:

a. There are woods roughly 1/3 the size of all of faded giant that are perfect for fighting in.  

b. The buildings at blacksite are comparable to the in size to the main building at GTI.

c.  The lines of sight are as big or bigger than that of Copperhead, but the terrain also offers the ability to close distance and deal with snipers, marksman, SSW and HWS.

d. what you don't see is how elaborate some of those buildings are.  The northern most building actually has an open air area in the middle with offices that go from the middle to the north and south sides.  Those starship buildings have balconies, a few dozens rooms, long lines of sights, 3 stories tall, deadly courtyards, windows with great view points for spotting, machine rooms, long halls, etc. making the interiors comparable to GTI or Guardian Center.

 

THE BAD:

This isn't really bad, just the stuff that I think needs to be improved on for future Blacksite events (and there better be future blacksites...place is too crazy to not do it).

1.  The AO:  While it's awesomeness can't be translated for those who weren't there, there was one major short coming for UFS...the two closest buildings to us were about a quarter mile away but CoST could just walk across the street to their nearest building...while I think the CoST spawn is fine, I think it would be nice if UFS had a couple trucks to help move troops a tad faster.  I found we (UFS) often won those initial engagements against CoST, but b/c we had to travel so far to and from the FOB, reinforcements almost didn't happen.  If a CoST player and UFS player started walking from the Starship closest to UFS FOB back to each of their bases...CoST would make it to theirs before the UFS did and subsequently got back into the fight faster.

2.  Number of Players:  While i think this was one of the largest number of tickets y'all have sold (roughly 250 vs 250+) that place is so dang big you could probably push those numbers to 300 vs 300 maybe even more if the interest is there.  

3.  While transports would be nice, each faction with one armed truck would also be helpful for both sides.  Because of the terrain, parking lots, and roads in place...limiting all vehicles to paved surfaces i think would be very balanced.  Adding in movable barricades to both sides to block enemy vehicle movement would also be a way to add more strategy to this AO, as well as a Mobile respawn.

4.  While this was the first year and the mission was simple, this type of AO offers so many different types of missions from search and rescue, to defensive, to offensive, conquest, intel snatch, stealth, etc...this AO's possibilities seem limitless right now, and i think were under used for the first Op.  Again, i know its a new AO and y'all are feeling it out.

 

Thank you AMS for bringing an OP to my home state of Alabama, and I look forward to playing at more blacksites in the future.  This was my first AMS event and I can safely say it's the only MilSim where i got my moneys worth.  Thank you.

[JMONEY 6]

I agree with everything Wharkins wrote, good and bad.

 

I have one detail to add that is only a small gripe. There were some stalemates that we experienced on first floor entries where the doors had a section of thin vertical window panes next to them; typical of many school-type entryways. 2 opposing factions could see each other so neither side would make a move because you are able to see what the player on the other side of the window is about to do. I felt that it impeded the flow of the game. Maybe it's worthwhile to black out windows like that? To clarify I am not suggesting removing large windows from play, especially on 2nd and 3rd stories.

 

It might be cool to have more windows on 2nd and 3rd stories open to allow for elevated gunfights between buildings and vantage points to targets on the ground. There may be some angles that would have to be excluded for safety and to prevent items whether guns or grenades from falling and hitting someone from that high up.

 

This was my first milsim event and I was extremely impressed. The gun battles were out of control and pyro added a whole new dynamic to the gameplay. I will be back guaranteed. One of the things I enjoyed was being able to really leverage the specialty roles like designated marksmen and other support to make a push successful. Huge thanks to those who put on the events and all of those that were able to attend.

[BJShan 0]

This AO was fantastic and I hope another event can be run here in the future. I would agree with the above statement about the number of players, at times we simply couldn't find people to engage, I think an extra 50+ on each side could be easily sustained.

 

While I agree that COST had an advantage on the buildings in the north, UFS had a pretty sizable advantage in the wooded area and the southern buildings, all in all I think it balanced out well.

 

This was only my second event (Ironhorse 2 was the other) and I honestly think I prefer this location over the guardian center. It had the perfect blend of urban/woodland/open field. And I can't stress enough how nice it was that the FOBs were in the middle of the AO instead of at the extreme ends. This event also felt much more "real" as far as faction organization. At IH2 our squad only received 2 objectives, both of which took around 10-15 minutes to complete. Now in all fairness It think it was a squad breakdown more than an organization issue at IH2, we were mostly a group of randoms. But in this one we always seemed to have something going on, even if it wasn't the most exciting, there was always some plan in place, some objective to accomplish (Special thanks to Yuck and Whiskey platoon).

 

I guess my biggest complaint would be the number of blind man calls in the early part of Saturday. This is not the fault of AMS but rather players not paying attention or doing stupid stuff. Play smart and most of that stuff can be avoided.

 

Really looking forward to (hopefully) run this place again.

[WafflesOfWrath 1]

This was my 3rd op, and I was used to Op34 and Op34:II, which were mostly urban/CQB AOs. Black Site offered much more varied gameplay and terrain as an AO and as such was very fun to play on. There was plenty of elevation, many different buildings to clear and plenty of woods to allow for longer engagements. As far as just the terrain, A+. Totally awesome AO.

Sportsmanship or the lack thereof? My squad played with honor and respect, and I'm happy to say I didn't personally witness any underhanded behavior or BS from either side. Props to the boys in green AND tan for that. I heard talk of frustration and some bad stuff on both sides but it must've been minor since I didn't see it firsthand.

I guess the only real gripe was... the steamroll?

My squad barely got to do anything because the UFS were so quickly corralled into their FOB, but I *still* had fun. I drove 12 hours each way to be at this op and I'd happily do it again. This is even though I didn't see a single live UFS soldier or even have to change out a magazine for most of day 1. Something tells me that it wasn't just CoST being super saiyan Neo-in-the-matrix badass that made the event so one-sided. Some planning has to go into the spawns and positioning of objectives, but AMS has demonstrated that they learn and improve on each AO with every event. The staggering of the deployments on Day 2 was a really quick step taken in the right direction and showed that the staff knew what was up. Combat controllers did their job and there were many hilarious suicide charges from both sides near the UFS FOB. American Milsim has proven to me that they know how to run fun, engaging events and provide knowledgeable staff, so I'm not too worried. I have no doubt in my mind that the next op at this AO will be a little more balanced. 

I met an awesome squad that lives near me and got a great workout. I got to stop chairsofting and actually GET OUT to a sick-azz AO and shoot pellets at people. Two thumbs up as usual, and I'm looking forward to the next 12-hour drive (nuts, I know)

[Headshot 5]

I didn't see an AAR thread so I'll go ahead and start one. I know civil war is practically breaking out on the UFS FB page but for my AAR I went ahead and made a small video. Seemed easier and everyone can hear my tone about these things that made the event what it was.

 

AMS staff I left a few ideas for you, for future events. Please watch and enjoy

 

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BA-_72ytbco