US Navy Seals in Vietnam war

[eversman]

I'm just making mission that player is seal team leader and must capture NVA officer when..... maby a campaign... i think.
I knew that this isnt't very original idea, but i reed many books and articles about seals in vietnam and now we got Nam Pack 2...
Seals was doing "intresting things" in Nam. Player could be for ex. seal advisior in PRU unit or "Eldest Son" project.
Whats your opinion???

[Buzz]

Sounds cool, I started on a MP series of missions a while back that was about a group of seals that were inserted into nam and had to march down this path to get to a town, and as every mission progressed you were gaining more and more of this part of vietnam up to the final mission where you have to assisinate a VC officer, but i got the first mission done, the final mission done, and, as my friend put it, a very random and disorganized second mission that looks like I threw it together in about 5 minutes. (i did)

[Black Operative]

What about the player beeing a Navy SEAL who volunteers for SOG at the beginning of the campaign? This would also make up a good "excuse" for introduction things as the player is completely new to that unit. I'm currently reading "SOG- The secret wars of America's commandos in Vietnam" by John Plaster, and SOGs conducted awesomely daring missions, many of them so risky that you don't believe they even thought about going in. SOGs did many captures, capturing enemy soldiers "along the way" or if their primary objective failed.

[eversman]

Yeah, thats could... eeee... must be good. "Eldest Son" is one of the SOG projects. For me both "standard" seals and this attached to SOG perform dangerus missions.
But, Black Operative, you talk that player is new in SOG. If he will advance in ranks and what type of mission will be doing???

[Black Operative]

Yeah, thats could... eeee... must be good. "Eldest Son" is one of the SOG projects. For me both "standard" seals and this attached to SOG perform dangerus missions.
But, Black Operative, you talk that player is new in SOG. If he will advance in ranks and what type of mission will be doing???

I still haven't read "The element of surprise" by David Young (covering Navy SEALs in Vietnam). But I didn't intend to say SEAL missions in Vietnam weren't just as dangerous as SOG's missions. And I haven't read anything about Eldest Son in "SOG" yet. What was it about?


I have the following types of mission in mind:

1. Reconnaissance
Finding supply caches and/or bases including the objective not to get spotted (otherwise the enemy will be alert and reinforce the guarding forces at the base so a US follow-on attack is made impossible- or something like that. Anyway, the mission is failed)

2. Sabotage
The typical thing, assault enemy location, blow up important things there

3. Pilot rescues
Now THIS is my speciality.   I have lots of ideas on what could happen to the player's SOG team.
Also, having more than one Pilot rescue in the campaign would not be unrealistic as there were MANY helicopters and fighter aircraft shot down over Vietnam.

4. Some special missions within the main stream:
4.1) The player's team got spotted on the last mission, fled at first but is now encircled by the enemy or trapped by natural obstacles like a river or something. They must defend their current position against a numerically superior (you as a Vietnam books reader know what "numerically superior" means! ) enemy.
4.2) The player's whole team got killed or captured during a firefight in the last mission. The player's radio doesn't work as he is in some valley (this was really problem), so he has to get onto some hill to call for an evac bird. Of course the terrain between him and the hill is crawling with NVA searching for him.
The things mentioned under this point would be implemented best in the beginning of the campaign --> when the player is still a team member and not leading one itself. His first mission as team leader is the raid of a POW camp (and the rescue of his captured team mates), where he discovers that they both have been executed in the POW camp. So for the next mission he becomes team leader, getting a new assistant team leader and a new radio operator under his command, plus of course about five local mercenaries (you heard of the "Nungs" or Montagnards"?).

5. Body recovering
A sad part of SOGs missions. Sometimes after an RT had been bumped by enemies and taken casualties in a firefight, SOG went out on helicopters some time after the battle and tried to find and recover the bodies of their dead team members if they were not able to do this during the battle.

6. MIA searching
Let's say contact to an LRRP team got lost. An SOG team is sent in to find them. The player is only given the LRRP's last reported location and direction where they were supposed to be headed. We could make some mission out of this, couldn't we?  


SOGs often captured enemy soldiers, and most times they did that it was not their mission objective to do it. So to depict this realistically- and also to give this campaign a small, just a small, "unique touch"- you could try writing a script that covers this. This is possible with every single enemy soldier on the map (can certainly be done).
I have an action in mind that pops up in the action menu if you get within a certain range of an enemy soldier (living of course). When the player uses the action, the player soldier shouts "Drop your weapon" or  "Freeze" or something like that. It is randomly decided if the enemy soldier gives up or aims at the player instead. If he gives up, he does an animation like hands above his head until the player is REAL close to him (about 1-2 meters). Then another action pops up that says something like "Capture POW". On activating this action, the captured soldier joins the player group or just follows the player group, using the trick General Barron also used for his "Custom Formations Script".
You could also think of making the AI SOGs able to take prisoners like this, but setting up something like this in a script is way beyond the limits of my brain and maybe also beyond the limits of OFP.

Man, this should be in "Scripting: Ideas" by now...

[Buzz]

You could also throw in a mission where your in a chopper, as the gunner, and have to shoot at the enemy troops while their shooting back at you. One of those type things, sort of like the scene in full metal jacket, if u have seen it. The one where the guy says "How can you shoot women and childeren?" and the gunner replies "Thats easy! Just don't lead em as much." Except have the enemy shooting back at the chopper instead of just running for cover when you come by

[bigdog632]

i would love to see some SOG missions
i read a book on these guys they had it goin on

[Homefry31464]

This is a great idea.  Would you use the SEB Nam Pack?  

[eversman]

In my opinion Nam Pack 2 is required ;D

@ Black Operative
nicccccccccce man, very nice

you ask about "Eldest Son" project, so...

It was a CIA project also named "Italian Green" or "Pole Bean" and it depend on planting special ammunition (single bullets or fuly loaded magazines) in to VC chaces or just dead bodies witch rifles. When someone try ues this ammo and shoot, bullets exploded
and killing that man. That was not only bullets, also mortar shells and even solider flashlights to (!)

BTW
sorry about bad english  :-\

[Black Operative]

Hehe, I read about Eldest Son in my SOG book during the weekend. ;D Thanks anyway, ev'! I think that it would be best to make ONE mission out of the stuff of Eldest Son. My mission concept:

Objective 1: Place manipulated ammunition in an NVA ammo truck in a field supply depot.
Objective 2: Take out an enemy perimeter patrol and put sabotaged ammo into their pockets.
Objective 3: Reach LZ and extract.
Objective 4: Don't get spotted during this mission. If you are, NVA will know where all their bad ammo comes from and won't eat the cover story anymore (you know, the Chinese being responsible for that ammo and so on).
Could become something that also features "traditional" BlackOp elements.  

Btw, I've also read something about a real mission that involved some blackopish sneaking. An RT team led by an SOG captain approached an NVA bataillon's night camp. Two SOG soldiers sneaked into the camp (which took them SEVEN hours), placed a so-called Nightingale Device (makes shooting and explosion sounds, used to divert the enemy to a faked combat zone; device can be timer-triggered) and sneaked out. Two hours later the device started making hell of a lot of battlefield sounds directly in the camp, making the NVA soldiers shoot at their own because they thought the enemy was inside their camp.
We could make a good mission out of that. The Nightingale Device could easily be simulated, for there's the "combat ambience" environment sound.

I take back what i said about SOG taking "many prisoners". In fact, during the entire war SOG snatched fewer than fifty enemy soldiers from Laos or Cambodia. A successful snatch was the greatest thing an SOG soldier could pull off, and the reward was a ride to Taiwan for the soldier, a 100$ bonus and a Seiko wristwatch for all the americans in his team, and also extra cash for the mercenary tribesmen of the team (they usually got about  60$ per month).
Still, we should implement this feature, but making it really difficult to get a POW to the LZ alive. The snatched enemies run away and things like that.

[Black Operative]

Oh and yet another thing flashed into my mind: We could build up some atmosphere and make the player want to play on by 1) introducing her/him into the world of SOG commandos in Vietnam (explaining and using terms like "One-Zero", "Hatchet Force") and 2) telling the story of SOG in Vietnam, this of course only in the notes section, having the player character write about his personal opinions about what happens around SOG.

btw, there was a major raid on a POW camp that involved three platoons with air support. The mission got totally screwed up, with I think one platoon completely sent to hell by numerically superior enemy forces near their LZ. This could be about mission #3 in the campaign, showing the player after two successful missions that SOG's missions were definetly not always easygoing and success for sure. Unfortunately, this operation was of course not conducted by recon men, but by a Hatchet Force (=raiding company). We could strive a bit from reality here, but wouldn't the player get suspicious if he's drilled on recon, stealth, silence,... and then sent in with 3 platoons on 12 helos to see himself in a firefight against 1000 VCs?  

[PathFinder]

Hey guys

sounds like you might have something going. I'm willing to help out if you need it.

[hooahman]

Guys, currently Hooah! Productions is working on a Vietnam campaign, so if any of you guys want to join e-mail meat deltateam8@yahoo.com.  Eversman is psrt of the team also.

[eversman]

Oh and yet another thing flashed into my mind: We could build up some atmosphere and make the player want to play on by 1) introducing her/him into the world of SOG commandos in Vietnam (explaining and using terms like "One-Zero", "Hatchet Force") and 2) telling the story of SOG in Vietnam, this of course only in the notes section, having the player character write about his personal opinions about what happens around SOG.

Black Operative this is the best idea that i ever read, realy !!!!!!!!!!
This campaign could be so realistic. If for ex. we have a misson that player must completed couple objectives. Player do it just like he wont, but in notes  he could read how this kind of mission was completed in Vietnam - maby a true story from one of mission completed by SOG operators.

[Black Operative]

Black Operative this is the best idea that i ever read, realy !!!!!!!!!!
This campaign could be so realistic. If for ex. we have a misson that player must completed couple objectives. Player do it just like he wont, but in notes  he could read how this kind of mission was completed in Vietnam - maby a true story from one of mission completed by SOG operators.

Hell yeah thats it, EVERY mission in the campaign is based on something that happened in reality! We use standard font instead of the hand-writing-type font in the notes section (so we can write a decent account on what happened without filling 10 pages of notes). And there we say something about the background our mission is based on ("During Operation BRIGHT LIGHT, SOG recon teams..." in this style, just like the stuff we both love to read!  ;D).

HEY, another idea, we could make these true stories a small "reward" for the player (most OFP players are interested in SpecOps, I realized  ;D): For example, we let the player play mission #1, don't write anything about the real background it is based on. Once the mission is completed, the campaign goes on to the second mission, and in the second mission's notes section the player can read about the background that mission #1 was based on. This way we also keep the surprise of a mission: Imagine a mission that involves an NVA ambush- should we really tell the player that he's gonna run into an ambush on this one?   )