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A Beginner's Guide to America's Army Operations: Recon

by James Sterrett

Article Type: Strategy Guide
Article Date: September 02, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: America's Army
Category: First-person Shooter
Developer: United States Army
Publisher: United States Army
Release Date: Released
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Files & Links: Click Here

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Welcome to the virtual U.S. Army, soldier. In this article, we’re going to go over the basics: shooting, moving, communicating, and an overview of the missions you’ll face online - not including the Airborne and Ranger missions.

This guide covers the following:

The Basics: Fire and Movement

You’re all probably familiar with the really basic aspects of movement and configuring your keyboard through the menus so that you can move forward, backwards, and strafe left and right. There are a few things you might not have noticed, though.

First off, to run, double-tap your “forward” key. Hold the second tap down, and off you go. Note, however, that you cannot fire while running, and it will take a precious second to get your rifle back up after running. New for version 1.20 is supposed to be the option to use the ALT key plus your Forward key as Run. The double-tap option remains as well, which is good since the ALT key thing doesn't work yet.

Second, while prone your lean keys turn into a command to roll left or right. It’s about twice as fast, but you lose control of your weapon while you are rolling—though it looks pretty cool! Unfortunately, it doesn't always work right in version 1.20.

Over we go!

Third, to climb things, just walk up to them and look up. You’ll climb. Equally, to climb down something, back up to it and back downwards until you get off. You’ll need these skills - and, perhaps, the knowledge that to pass the obstacle course in training you should stay on the right of the climbing obstacle where it isn’t clear where you should go.

Firing is actually rather more difficult and it’s well if you don’t pay too much attention to the “line up the dot and press the left mouse button” method you’ve learned elsewhere. While Army Operations doesn’t show it explicitly, it uses the same kind of wiggling target marker you’ll find in Flashpoint or the expanding target crosshairs you get in Rogue Spear. The following chart, taken from the Army Operations FAQ, shows you what penalizes your firing accuracy:

Speed
a. Sprinting - Cannot Fire
b. Fast Move - Extremely High Penalty
c. Slow Move - Very High Penalty
d. Still - None


Posture
a. Standing - Moderate Penalty
b. Crouching - Small Penalty
c. Prone - None
d. Leaning - Small Penalty
(The Leaning penalty is cumulative with other stance penalties)


Health
a. Red - Large Penalty
b. Yellow - Moderate Penalty
c. Green - None
4. Sights


Rifles
a. Sights up - BONUS: Large
b. Breathing - BONUS: Small
(Fire at the top or bottom of the breathing cycle)


Sniper Rifles
a. Scope off - Very High Penalty
b. Scope on - BONUS: Large
c. Breathing - BONUS: Small
(Fire at the top or bottom of the breathing cycle)


Support (Machine Guns and Sniper Rifles only)
a. Supported - BONUS: Large


Class
a. Native - BONUS: Moderate
(In other words, using the same class of weapon that you started with.)


What does all this imply? First, if you want to shoot accurately, stop moving, crouch or go prone, and use the weapon’s iron sights to fire. If you’re using a SAW (the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, a light machine gun) or a sniper rifle, deploy the bipod when you go prone. When using the iron sights, fire when you cannot hear the sound of your own breathing. Finally, remember that picking up some new weapon is going to cost you in accuracy. If you start the round with an M-16, and pick up an AK-47, your accuracy with the AK will suffer to simulate the fact that you haven’t trained with it. You’ll see people picking up AKs and explaining that they like the automatic fire option. This really means they like to be able to spray bullets without hitting their target.

Advancing on the pipeline building

Using this should ensure you can pass rifle training and probably get your Expert badge to qualify for sniper training. Use those 40 rounds the game forces you to fire before commencing the actual training to prep. Work on firing each round perfectly at the smallest of the targets you can see. Practice tapping into and out of the iron sights, so you can pick a target without the sights, line up on the upper half of the target’s torso, put the iron sights up, perfect your aim, wait for the breathing to pause, and fire—and do it all in about three seconds. With a bit of practice, you should find you never miss when prone and rarely miss when standing in the fighting position.

The key to learning how to qualify with the sniper rifles is systematically noting how you miss. As you fire your familiarization rounds, note very carefully where the bullet went when the target isn’t hit. You’ll be firing over ranges that will rarely if ever occur in the missions we now have, but you do learn two useful skills from this. First, you learn what it’s likely to take to hit the one target in the final test. Second, learning how to correct your aim at various ranges, and then learning to use that correction without ranging shots, will stand you in good stead as a sniper in the online game.



Getting Online

“I want to play a mission, but when I click on “Next” to go to the online mission, nothing happens!” For reasons that are best explained by a classified document deep in the bowels of the Pentagon, the method you use to join all the offline training missions (of going through Soldier Training and selecting a mission) is not the one you use to join the online missions. In earlier versions, you had to suffer with the Gamespy frontend software. With version 1.11, you no longer need to mess around with GameSpy’s front-end software, which is a real bonus. Just click on option 4 under “Report for Duty”, “Find Online Games”, and then click on “Update”. You ought to get a listing of servers, their ping times, and how many players they have. Double-click a server and you try to join it. Easy! Except when it doesn’t join, forcing you to try over and over again. At least GameSpy’s ever-crashing front end is out of the way.



This is the Pointy End: The Weapons and What They Are For


M-16 Assault Rifle
This is the basic weapon that most people in your squad will be carrying. “Basic” and “default” doesn’t mean it sucks; in fact, the M-16 is the most versatile and effective weapon you can carry. You can attack, defend, snipe, or spray with it. You can engage at close quarters or at long range. It is accurate and controllable without specialized bracing, and you get the best selection of grenades as well.

If you expect trouble at anything other than point-blank range, leave the M-16 on single shot. Move forward in a crouch, and when you spot a target, stop, aim, and then cut loose with aimed fire. The result is likely to be deadly. When you’re at very close range, shift to the three-shot burst (right-click to change your setting; once to burst, once more to return to single-shot), but it’s still best to take the time to aim.


M-203 Grenade Launcher
One or two soldiers in each squad may carry the M-203 grenade launcher on their M-16. It’s a tricky weapon to use; while it has very long range, the game models its ballistics and arming. That means that the grenade follows an arcing trajectory, and that it won’t explode if you fire it at close range! Practice extensively with this on the range and you’ll get a better idea of how to hit your targets. Also, remember that when you fire it, the enemy sees a smoke trail leading back to your position—shoot and scoot!

If you have an M-203, don’t charge into close range. Watch what your buddies do, and then lob grenades at the enemies they run into. Be careful not to hit your own team! Remember that you are carrying a support weapon: your job is to assist the guys with M-16s in getting forward and doing their job. Talk to them to ensure you don’t hit them (“Is anybody in that building I’m about to blow up?”) and try to get them to nominate targets for you (“Kill the guy behind that dune!”)


M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon
Even more than the M-203, this is a specialized support weapon. Yes, you can lug it into the fray and try to Rambo around, but most of the time, even at point-blank range, a soldier with an assault rifle in burst mode will defeat a soldier with a SAW, because the SAW’s recoil makes it nearly uncontrollable when you’re standing. Unless you are prone and the weapon’s bipod is deployed, fire in very short bursts if you want any accuracy at all.

The best use of the SAW, like the M-203, comes in providing covering and suppressing fires for the guys with the M-16s. You find a place to go prone, deploy the bipod, and deliver sustained fires to prevent the enemy from using some area, while the riflemen advance. When the SAW is supported, you can deliver high volumes of fairly accurate fire, and enemies who walk into your covered area will likely wind up dead. However, if you wind up in close quarters, you are probably toast.


The Sniper Rifles
These are the most specialized of the support weapons. As with the SAW and the M-203, having a sniper rifle is not a ticket to being a solo killing machine. You have the range and accuracy to pick off pesky defenders or sneaky attackers, and your team needs that support. Not only does this benefit the team, it also keeps you alive. Sniper rifles take time to line up, and it takes even more time to synch up your aim with your breathing. Their rate of fire is slow, and your accuracy when not looking through the scope is essentially zero. Stay back, stay out of close quarters combat, and support the rest of the squad’s actions. One trick to keep in mind: if an enemy seems to pop in and out of a given position, line up the crosshairs, hit Z to go to normal view, and when the guy shows up, hit Z and fire. You’re already sighted in on the spot you need to hit, but you don’t lose situational awareness while you wait.

Looking in the direction of the attackers from the defence compound in HQ Raid

M-67 Fragmentation Grenade
Your basic, all-purpose fragmentation grenade, and it’s a real workhorse weapon. There are several things to learn here. First off, if you hold down the left mouse button, then click the right mouse button, you’ll “cook it off” — release the spoon and thereby light the fuse. In five seconds, Mr. Grenade will become very unfriendly! The advantage of doing this is that it gives the enemy less time to react. If you think the grenade will take about two seconds to get to your target, and you count off two and a half seconds of fuse-burn, then throw the grenade, the enemy gets only half a second of warning after the grenade lands before it goes boom.

Second, if first right-click, you’ll change from preparing to throw the grenade to preparing to roll it. This is a very short-ranged throw, but it’s useful for getting the grenade just through a door. You can use the cook-off option in this mode, as well.

Finally, remember that an exploding grenade has no friends. Be careful in your use of them, lest you kill your buddies. Grenades are the #1 way that otherwise well-intentioned players kill people on their own side. Try to issue a warning when you throw one (type G and then 5 for "Take Cover!").


M-83 Smoke Grenade
“Smoke is a thinking man’s weapon”, the tutorial tells you, and you’ll see many people online who think that simply using one makes them smart. Wrong. That statement means that you need to use your smarts to make the smoke work for you. The most common mistake online is deploying the smoke onto or closer to the point the thrower wants to have concealment for. This generally means that the bad guys either spray the smoke with fire, or worse, as you emerge from the smoke, you become a highlighted target. Not good. Throw the smoke between the place you want to go, and the place the enemy is firing from. Wait for the smoke to spread and the enemy to give up on spraying the area, and then make your move.

Remember that smoking a highly visible objective, such as the prisoner cage in “HQ Raid”, does little but scream “I’m here, please come shoot me!” to the enemy.


The Flashbang
Flashbangs are the least-used grenades. They don’t hide you like smoke grenades, and they don’t kill the enemy like the frag grenades. Why use them? Their lack of lethality applies both ways: if you screw up with a flashbang, it won’t kill you and your buddies. In addition, flashbangs will affect enemies who might be safe from an explosive grenade’s fragments, so you can suppress enemies hiding behind barrels. The effects of flashbangs in Army Operations are pretty impressive: a temporary white-out and paralysis, plus an extended ringing in the ears and reduced vision. While they are specialized, don’t forget you have them. Remember that the fuse is very short, if you cook it off!


Carrying a Second Weapon
You can pick up weapons that others have dropped (default key: Backspace) or off of corpses, and switch between them with the “switch hands” key (default: 1). However, carrying a second weapon will prevent you from throwing grenades. You shoulder your weapon when you pull out a grenade, and when there’s already a weapon on your shoulder, there’s nowhere to put it! You can, of course, drop one, throw a grenade, and pick it up again.


Jam!
You line up the target and pull the trigger…. Click! Your gun jammed! Oh no! What do you do? Get into cover and hit the “unjam” key, which is, by default, F.



Shoot, Move, Communicate!

It doesn’t always happen to the degree it ought, but the key to victory in America’s Army is cooperation, and the key to cooperation is communication. Make sure your Team Chat key is bound to a place you can easily reach! Then download the chart, below, of the preset commands and responses. Print it off and keep it near your computer when you are playing, until you’ve memorized the ones you use.

My First Pony. Er... Comms Chart

Remember, if you’re the Squad Leader, you get an additional menu.

My First Squad Leader Comms Chart

Work you put into fostering communication and cooperation in the squad you find yourself in online is very likely to pay off. Yes, some players are out to be Rambo and some are jerks, but most are not. Watch your squadmates and figure out which ones are team players, and try to improve your cooperation with them. Discuss courses of action after you die. If you notice a player who seems especially good and team-oriented, inform the player that you’re going to follow his lead. Tag along and you should find the good players will try to incorporate you into their gameplan. One of the best experiences I’ve had online was playing with the deceptively named “Solo”, whose play style was anything but solitary. He called what he was going to do so I could coordinate, directed me into advantageous positions, and generally took a less skilled player—me—to a much higher level of gameplay, to the advantage of the entire team.

If you want to get really serious about communications, try downloading the Commo Pack Mod. (There isn't a 1.20 version out - yet.) It turns your entire keyboard into bindings for useful messages. Unfortunately, it also changes some of the basic movement and action commands into new and unusual places, so you'll probably need to fiddle the bindings on your own. On the bright side, it includes some handy sketch maps of the Collapsed Tunnel and McMOUT maps.



MILES Missions

Half of the online missions in Army Operations: Recon place you in a “training” fight using MILES (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, a Laser-Tag sort of setup the military uses to conduct simulated firefights). With the 1.11 patch, these fights include fragmentation grenade simulators as well as smoke grenades and flashbangs, but the MILES missions don’t include M-203s or sniper rifles.

Know Your Enemy!
In all MILES missions, your team will wear camouflage and carry backpacks. The enemy will be in plain green, and will not carry backpacks. See the pictures below from some illustrations of the differences.

MILES IFF Scrapbook

McMOUT
In McKenna MOUT [Military Operations in Urban Terrain] training, two squads fight to place their team flag on three posts. Of course, you can also win by wiping the other squad out. Many of the buildings have large “windows” that you can walk through if you are crouching, and nearly all of the buildings have two internal levels. Watch the other floor! There are lots of lines of intervisibility between the floors! Finally, there’s a small sewer system that may let players get into otherwise hostile areas unopposed. The problem is there’s no cover in the sewer if you meet the enemy, and you’re quite vulnerable when you come up the ladder out of it.

One team starts off in a building. As a starter plan: run forward, out the building, and into the building immediately in front of you. If nobody has done so before you, turn right on entry, through the door, and then left to see a post. Go up to the post, aim at it, and hold down your Use button to claim it for your team. Now work your way through the opposite end of the building from that which you initially entered. Across from the door you’ll see the church, which the bad guys probably already hold! If you did not turn aside to claim the post, then you might be able to slip into the alley unnoticed, but watch out for enemies across the street. Your next task is to take the church, which is best done with several people and a grenade. Keep in mind that a soldier in the steeple can snipe at you when you try to claim the church post…

Deploying from the external start point in McMOUT

The other team begins in the open, and can rush to claim the church. Run around the right end of the building nearest you, and you’ll see the church. Run and slip in the side door next to the steeple. Claim the post, if it isn’t already, and work on defending the church against the next wave of attackers. If you’re fast and they’re slow, you can get into the alley and pick them off as they come out the door. When things calm down a lot, enter the building they were coming out of, and try to claim the post in it. Beware of defenders in the rafters!


Collapsed Tunnel
Collapsed tunnel is a sewers mission. One team is trying to unlock a door in the sewers, and the other is trying to prevent it. Both teams start an equal distance from the door, and very close to each other! The key to this mission is rapid deployment into the sewer and towards the door. To get down to the sewer (as either side), run up onto the small walkway, open the door, go down the short corridor and turn right. You’ll see a door; run up to it and open it. You’ve reached the stairs. Run down them at top speed, because the enemy cannot have reached them yet. Once in the sewers, try to maintain speed while moving towards the door, but it’s hard to recommend specifics because enemy action will dictate your actions. Smoke is greatly misused in the sewers, with short throws causing smoke to obscure your vision yet highlight you to the enemy when you get to the intended location.


HQ Raid
Again two teams, again a locked door, but this time it’s a POW cage in the middle of a small compound surrounded by hills and forest. The defense team starts off in the compound while the attackers start off outside it. The dark, well-modelled forest offers plenty of opportunities for sneaking around, while the brightly-lit compound provides some urban fighting for spice.

The key on the offense is to try to stick together, choose one axis to attack, and advance rapidly enough that the defense cannot collapse its other wings into your flank. Up the hill, to the left, or to the right, all have advantages and disadvantages, but if you don’t deploy fast the defenders will hold good spots from which to take you down. Remember, too, that putting a single smoke grenade on the POW cage screams “Here I come!” to the defence!

Overlooking the defender's compound

The defenders need to deploy out into positions from which to ambush the attackers. Given the wide range of options open to the offense, you’ll inevitably have to split up a bit to cover the options. Communicate with each other and react to take the enemy down. If they throw smoke into the main compound, consider spicing the mix with a frag grenade—but coordinate this with your team, or you’ll kill your buddies.



Live Fire Missions

The other three missions currently available are live-fire. All of them feature the M-203, while Bridge and Insurgent Camp also feature the M-24 sniper rifle.

Know Your Enemy!
You’ll see two variants of enemy in the live fire missions. In Pipeline and Bridge, your team wears white uniforms, backpacks, and helmets, while the enemy wears black and white camouflage, and has neither backpacks nor helmets.

My Winter IFF Scrapbook

In the Insurgent Camp mission, your team wears backpacks, helmets, and a desert camouflage pattern, while the enemy wears turbans and sports a generic Arabic look in shirts and pants.

My Desert IFF Scrapbook

Pipeline
The Pipeline seems designed to cause confusion. The outside areas are fairly simple, but the inside of the complex is riddled with odd lines of sight and ladders leading up and down all over. The attackers need to turn a variety of wheels and type at a computer, while the defence tries to prevent this. The wide variety of approach routes keeps things fluid and unpredictable.

On the defence, try to find a spot from which to observe an approach route, and pick off the enemy as they come through. Unfortunately, the enemy sometimes gets to sites as fast as you do, so be careful! You may not have time to get into positions that appear to be quite nearby. On the offence, choose a route and learn it. Two I like are to take all options for a right turn, which leads you eventually to a small outside shack housing the external valve. Then go down into the tunnel to reach another valve, again following the right-hand wall. Another option is to go down into the pit of cracking towers straight ahead. Going into the door puts you into a tunnel whose left-hand branch leads to a ladder to the rafters, from which you can try to snipe at the defence.


Bridge
Bridge is an assault mission in its purest and most brutal form. The attackers must get one soldier across a bridge and to some trucks waiting on the far side. The defenders must prevent it. The bridge itself is a two-lane-wide road, with towers that serve as fortifications at each end and a small archway in the middle that forms an auxiliary fortification. The towers at either end can only see as far as the arch. Side routes exist, though; you can get onto narrow ledges alongside the bridge roads. To get onto these, either use the entryways at either end of the bridge, which gets you onto one of four ledges; or hop up onto the snow piled up against the road’s walls, then onto the walls, then down onto the ledge.

An enemy soldier advances along the ledge of the bridge

The defence gets the advantage of about a ten second lead on getting into position. Use this to find positions from which to mow down the approaching attackers. The intrepid can advance to the arch and contest the enemy advance from there quite effectively, but make sure you tell your team where you are, or they may shoot you.

This support position exists for both sides

The offence has a very tough mission, and coordination is a must. If you have a SAW, either get onto the balcony on the right (go prone on the edge and deploy your bipod) to help kill defenders at the arch, or get under or on the truck for fire down the main road. The M-16 guys need to advance and take the arch, picking off the defenders at it and beyond. Try to figure out what the enemy isn’t defending, and use the route to get to their tower. Good use of smoke grenades can be critical in creating a covered route. If you don’t think you’re being observed when you reach the tower, head off to the left and link up with the trucks for victory.


Insurgent Camp
An outdoors mission featuring a large, fortress-like building, a tunnel, and sand dunes. The defenders try to prevent the attackers from reaching one of two PCs: one in the top of the building and one underneath it in the tunnels. Both squads have sniper support and much of the terrain is very open, promoting long-range firefights.

Defenders usually begin behind the building. Rapid deployment into defensive positions at windows will tend to get you killed by long-range fire, so you’re better off trying to find ambush sites where you can watch approach routes. A favorite is the base of the stairs on either end of the building, where a well-placed defender can be very hard to shoot and also hard to grenade. In addition, defenders of the downstairs PC can hide against one wall and frequently pick off attackers as they enter.

Common Ambush Sites #1

Attackers need to move quickly and pave the way with grenades. If the tunnel is unguarded, then it’s an easy route, but getting past defenders in the tunnel is very difficult because there are numerous ambush positions down there. The PC on the top left-hand side of the building is an easy one for a coordinated team to provide fire support for, since the SAWs, sniper, and grenadiers can keep the enemy out of the room and off the riflemen’s back while they type at the computer. However, the long-range support is of less help in getting through the building to the stairs. As ever, the key is coordination.

Common Ambush Sites #2

Use Your Death Wisely!

Death is not just an excuse for a bathroom break and a snack. Use your ability to observe to take a look around the map. Look at where your buddies go and where the enemy lurks. Watch for good players and try to figure out how they stay alive.




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