Wind and Waves
P.O.W. and image generously contributed by Ben Katz
<<May 16, 1998>>
You glance around, breathing in the fresh spring air. It is a perfect day, and you are sure that this will be a perfect fight. Your position couldn't be better. A whole 15 elite troops, well trained and mannered, had been hand picked by your superior for this fight... A pity you wouldn't have the chance to command them this time. You do know your comrades well. But now of course that doesn't matter. You are perfectly content to hold the position you control now. The ridge was much higher than the surrounding terrain. And what’s more, you had a perfectly weathered stone wall in front of you, with holes for you to look and fire through into the valley below. This stone wall extends around the length of the ridge. Your brilliant comrades had decided to go on the defensive, as this battle was merely for fun: Whichever team got wetter, lost.
Down in the valley far below, a wall of trees divided the gently sloping plane into two large sections. Across the second field, lay another stone wall, with a drop off directly opposite the side of the wall. The perfect defense position. Except of course, where the stone wall had fallen down, leaving an awful gap in the wall. That’s where you come in. Situated upon the far away ridge, you have a perfect view of your base and the valley below. Your Job: Simply to look and watch. If any enemy troops were sited, you were talk into your walkie-talkie to the troops inside your base. If any scouts came along, you would deal with them. You raise your CPS 3000 into the air and pump it once past full, just for luck.
A light breeze blows through your hair, picking up intensity until the strength of the squall almost knocks you down, CPS 3000 and all. Regaining your balance you pick up a small leaf and release it from your hand. Watching its direction you notice the wind is blowing towards the west... The leaf is picked up into the air, swaying this way and that, at the complete and utter mercy of the prevailing winds. It drifts it's way down the steep ridge, into the valley and the...
Suddenly you notice three ant size blobs creeping up the base of the steep ridge. You peer harder, but they are too far away. Reluctantly you take out two things: Your walkie-talkie and a small pair of binoculars. Looking down the ridge, you sigh and identify the specks. They aren't your men. You look to the west where they arrived from and notice a plank leaned up against the wall, just large enough for someone to sneak over... You refocus your binocs and zoom in to 10x. Darn it. They aren’t exactly lightly armed scouts. The first one is armed with a CPS 2500, the second one with an XXP 275, and the 3rd with an XP 105. "North Ridge to Base" you mutter into the walkie-talkie, pressing the "talk" button. "We copy North Base...What seems to be the problem?" Just as you are about to explain your situation, you pick up something on the three intruders. Raising your binocs to your eyes, you zoom in all the way, to 20x. "Da-" You stifle your raging anger. You reply back to base on your walkie-talkie. "Uhh...Just wanted to check in, everything’s A OK." "Good to hear that North ridge. Over and out." The transmission ends in a crackle of static.
Glaring through your binocs you look once again at the shocking discovery. The enemy troops, now close enough to receive signals, have been listening in on your communications with base, with another walkie-talkie. How could they..... Darn it. You must have underestimated your enemies intelligence operations, and just your enemies’ intelligence in general. You hadn't told them of your plans to use a walkie-talkie, but you had used it very successfully in your last battle...Its very possible they might have caught on.
They know where you are...but what is there intention? It could be many things, and you begin to go over them in your head. They could be doing a standard info gathering mission. But this one is different of course. Your walkie-talkie set has three units, one for the base a half a mile away from you, one for the distant scouts, who, last you heard, were traveling south away from the base, and one for you. The realization is a shock: These spies could monitor your plans. Even though you know better than to communicate, what about your base and your scout group? Anything anyone says, now that the enemy troops have came close enough to receive the signal(which goes up to half a mile), is known by the opposition. The main section of enemy troops has managed to elude your team's scouting operations so far, so you at least have no idea of what this rather large group of spies is up to. This could be preparation for an assault, finding a suitable position to launch an attack from—or something much more devious. You look behind you. A wood densely packed with long thin trees stretches on endlessly to the north, only separated by a long quad-trail which winds on through the impassable trees. Over years past all-terrain vehicles have carved a deep path into the ground, well suited for hiking. You had tried to walk it in length once, but it stretches on for more than 2 miles. If you needed to escape it could be used...But you don't know where you'd end up, plus, after you traveled a few hundred feet, you'd lose communications with base. Not that anything you would say wouldn't be eavesdropped anyway.
Exhaling deeply you glance once more at the leaf which, picked up again by the draft, is carried on out of your sight. This incursion is much to serious to ignore. You will deal with these spies.
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Okay, First thing I should point out is that due to the large natre of their weapons they are probably a recon unit and not trained spies. A spy would carry at the most an XP 65 or more commonly an XP 35. So I can safely make the assumption that I am not dealing with a group of trained spies but more with regular troopers. However they are probably also handpicked by their leader. Now that I have theat idea established with you the most obvious thing to do would be to turn on your transmitter and inform the base about the opponents location. Because you do not have the firepower or at least the attack vectors to handle an attack by 3 troopers you should call for reinforcements. Because trying to take them on alone would be futile you should hide in the trees or in the grass and wait for reinforcements. This would be the primary way to solve this problem. However the logical and most optimistic way is usually not the way that it happens:
Good, overconfidence would be bad, and troops not very highly trained or at ease may not take appropriate action when they're spotted . . . heck, if you're really lucky maybe their walkie-talkies don't even use the same frequency as yours ;)
Besides, if they already know your position, they'd probably have to not know you by reputation to think that you didn't notice them. Stupid opponents wouldn't pose much of a treat, and skilled opponents would predict that you'd actually seen them.
Assuming that I have just called for reinforcements I would state that I have left the area but I would move out of the area with gaps so the enemy could not see me. I would then move down the path used by quads for about 15 feet and wait in a rut assuming that there wasnt anything to run me over.
After I have waited for about 5 minutes I would return to the mouth of the path and start shooting at the troops who by now should be at the top of the hill looking for me. I now have the proper vector for attack as in order to hit me they will have to come in front of the path. This will give me the time to fire and stay out of their way. If I run out ammunition I should run down the quad path because any chance of remaining dry and safe is better than the risk of being captured and your binoculars/transmitter/CPS 3000 being taken and used against my team. However I should switch off my walkie talkie to prevent them from tracking me with it.
~Thomas Warwick
Hm, that plan is based on the assumption that they'd come looking for you up there despite your transmission that you were moving. This plan also has the added disadvantage that your teammates are likly to presume you "dead" or captured when you don't show up, and may come looking for you, which would detract from base defenses if they decided to head straight to the heart of your army.
The action taken would rely mainly on pre-planning, anyone using walkie-talkies should have established a code, even a simple code word to negate a statement, like "fork-and-spoon, there are NO enemies listening in on us." I'll assume that the team didn't think of that, and you're fate lies in the hands of the gods.
I know. You'd like to THINK an organized army would have come up with some secret code (preferably a little less obvious than your example), but we have to assume the worst. However, if you know your teammates well its usually not too hard to give the correct impression without being too forward ("So, what do you think of the view to the east (labeled west on the map)? I really like the bright colors down there a little to--oh, that would be your left. I wonder what causes that interesting effect?").
The heavily armed scouts have three main advantages against you: They have big guns, they have secretly intercepted your only form of communication, and their position is only known to you. It is therefore logical to solve all three problems in one move; announce via radio that they have intercepted communications, their position, and their large armaments.
<grin>
Well, that's the forward way to solve it. The disadvantage, of course, is that you
similarly forfeit any advantages you have over them (besides that you'd better have more
than three people in your base). You also leave them the advantage of knowing your plans
without revealing their own intentions.
This should get the attention of many people, including the spies. Your next move depends on their reaction. If they retreat, great job and don't use the walkies anymore. If they split up, go ballistic on the straggler. If they head for you, say a little prayer and run like heck or say a longer prayer and go kamikaze on the center of the group. Whatever they do, constantly feed information to the base about what they are doing.
A wonderfully beautiful and devious alternative requires skill and great acting. Pretend that you don't see the three attackers and say on the radio something like "(your name) to base, has (name of member on team) successfully infiltrated?" or something hinting at a member of the other team as a spy. That should get a good mutiny going while you have time to run back to the base with details. It would certainly help if you named one of the attacking group, causing them to go into a dogfight in the middle of a warzone.
~Philibob
Hehe . . . the easiest way to feed false information to your opponents is definitely through their own "secret" info taps. However, it would seem to me that you're a large, organized army fighting another large organized army, in which case someone who has been in long enough for you to expect any results would have to have been in so long that you wouldn't be asking anymore, you'd know. While the scouts might not be able to figure this out, enemies which are that stupid don't pose much of a threat to begin with, but it would still be good to get them fighting each other.
I would simply scare them to death by announcing to your base that there is a bear near the spies. Of course, don't say "near the spies," just describe the spies' general location. Terror is the heart of all stupidity.
-Matt Lindsay
Hehehe . . . I love it! Unfortunately, judging by that map it doesn't look like there's enough cover over in that area for them to have not noticed any bear over there, so they'd have to be pretty darn stupid for that to work; and if it doesn't, you've given away the fact that you know where they are, thereby negating your last advantage (besides the numbers you'd better have in that base).
P.S.: East and West on your key should be switched around.
Hehehe . . . did you hear that, BEN KATZ OF WATER WEAPONRY!!??? Your map has an inacurate compass rose!!!!
Not my map . . . this POW and map graphic were submitted . . . maybe its a good thing I didn't request that he make me a map graphic for POW #8 . . .
It seems strange that no one has picked up on how important the wind is in a water fight (unless, of course, I'M the one who's missing some important detail). Assuming that when Mr. Katz said the wind was blowing west he really meant east (I assume this, because if he screwed up which way west was on the map, then it probably goes for the whole scenario),
Given that the wind and the leaf thing is what called your attention to your enemies in the first place, that sounds like a safe assumption.
then you could probably beat the three guys, because they would need to fire uphill AND upwind -- it seems to be a strong wind, too. As long as you could manuever to keep it that way, you could soak them and effectively blow their cover. My only concern would be running out of water; I've never used a 3000 (being somewhat "too old" to play with water guns, I only have an old 200 that I got for my 13th birthday), so I don't know how much they hold.
I havn't seen one, but given that they use backpacks, you're probably safe.
As for the other team listening in on your walkie-talkies, it seems more likely that they saw how well they worked for you, and thought they'd try it. Then again, maybe not. You should probably assume the worst. I like the "bear trick," but I am, for some reason, reminded of a children's story about "crying wolf."
The idea is that you explain what you did to your teammates afterward!
The problem, of course, is that you don't know your enemies will advance in your direction, and you didn't mention what to do to reconcile the problem of their eavesdropping or what your backup plan is if they ignore you and go straight to your base.