Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

(01-23-2017, 09:52 PM)Variable Wrote: [ -> ]Great post MJ, it was a good read.
 
Crash Site Red
Heavy Machine Gunner, MJ's team
 
Our force made its way up the mountain. When I finally arrived, exhausted, to one of the few rocks, I deployed the Navid and provided suppression fire to allow the other teams to advance. Looked like it worked. We reached a structure that looks like the relay of the nearby comm tower and a fierce close range firefight ensued with the NATO team that guarded it. I didn't have a chance to switch to my pistol and took out an AT gunner, firing from the hip. We were in a great position to suppress the enemy reinforcements that were climbing from the other side of the mountain. I think we took out at least two teams worth of infantry. A Marid then attacked and we tried to take it out with a scavenged Spike launcher, but it was too fast and the field of view too obscured. While fighting for our lives we saw the destruction of the UAV, not knowing if we managed to secure its data core. We fought for a long period of time before our team was wiped out. That was a great run.
 

This here is a good point to support what I am about to say quiet nicely. 

Given the recent improvement in AI, we keep getting our teeth kicked in. I've spent some time thinking about it, trying certain things and also meshing it with my real world knowledge (which gets more and more appropriate every time the AI gets better), and there are a number of things that have occurred to me.

• Spacing
  
• Initiative
  
• Enemy effectiveness
  
• Flank protection
  

So first spacing. While I am to an extent talking about between team members, I am also talking about teams in general too. The other night, I took my team wide to the right, about 100m further right than I should have if I was strictly following orders. This had several important effects. 
First was that it meant I could cover the flank. In fact, because of the position and terrain, we could cover both flanks, and stopped several flanking attempts by the AI. Simply by being spread further apart meant that it was harder to flank us.
Second, it put us in a good position to fight from, allowing us better arcs onto the enemy that was approaching the other teams. It literally made mutual support easier than if we had been together.
And third, it meant that we were more spread out, and less prone to suppression and damage from a single source. Something like a Marid turning up is much less of a threat to everyone when there are 12 of you spread over about 400m of ground.
Normally, we tend to have follow the leader chains, even when in contact, that are relatively easy to suppress, and have no depth or mutual support, making them easy to pin down and overrun. While there are many situations where a single column makes a lot of sense (covert insertions, or just getting to the mission area), if maybe mission commanders start spreading their teams out, the normally accepted distance for this is about half the effective range of your weapons systems, so separate element by about 150-200m for dismounted infantry.

Initiative is a difficult one. In the example above, I took it upon myself to take the compound at the top of the hill and provide support fire from there. This was a case of something I'd seen, that made a whole lot of sense and worked out. The trouble comes when the commander has a plan and needs it executed exactly to work, but someone sees an opportunity that would normally be a good idea. Best idea for initiative would probably be to call it up to the commander, but I know that whenever I lead, I don't really have a problem with team leaders working off their own initiative, because the commander is never going to see everything and be everywhere. Just don't go running off on an ill advised counter-attack on your own.

Enemy Effectiveness. In real life, riflemen rarely kill anyone. Belt fed and crew served weapons are the infantries main killing weapons, mainly because of the number of rounds they put in the air. But when riflemen do kill people, its at point blank range. Close range is the most dangerous form of combat for obvious reasons, and the defenders will go to great lengths to keep the attacker away from it. Generally, the attacker will inflict greater losses up close and take greater when further away. 
And it generally been roughly the same in out games of ArmA. When the AI gets to grenade range in any sort of numbers, our casualty rate tends to go right up. The best example of this was on one of the random missions we played a few weeks ago, where you have to clear a town. My group, which came in through the low ground was contacted from close range, rapidly surrounded and overrun, taking several dead from grenades straight off. The other team, who had been shooting from the top of a hill, some 200 or 300m from the village had taken a couple of injuries and only started to take KIA once the AI focused on them and started to close in. Despite the overwhelming numbers of AI, the second team eventually prevailed, having managed to keep the AI mostly out of grenade range.
Given that we are almost always outnumbered, the AI tends to try and get close. And I think we should be more willing to withdraw so that they don't. It can be quite difficult, but I think that's more a function of the fact we tend to fight in one fairly tight group, rather than spread out like I posited above. With several distinct positions, other positions should be able to cover a withdrawal, ideally causing enemy casualties and preserving our own forces.

Flank protection. The AI is now very flank happy. This is a good thing, it's what we do, its what soldiers do in real life, it makes sense. However, sometimes we seem to forget that they flank, probably due to the fact that for like a decade or more we've been playing this game where they don't really flank you, except maybe a little bit by accident. Really, all you need is one person on each flank looking out. Its a boring job most of the time, but often a life saving one. Probably be a little easier to do in more large scale missions too.

EDIT: One more thing I wanted to mention, which again is showcased quite nicely by the above AAR, is weapon utilisation. Stuff like MMGs and ATGMs, when properly placed can change the course of a fight. Variable in the above AAR pretty much changed the course of the fight. He kept the enemy back from the edge of the hill as the other elements moved up the hill at the beginning, and stopped several attacks from the front while the other teams were trying to secure the drone. An MMG along with ammobearer/spotter on the top of a hill can do roughly the same sort of work as 4-8 riflemen. A lot of the time, they just get used like autoriflemen, in that they are essentially used like riflemen with a bit more firepower. They have the potential to be a lot more than this. This actually segues onto another thing I've just thought of, flexibility of organization. ACE allows us to change groupings on the fly. There's nothing wrong with making an extra team of say, an MMG gunner and an ammobearer and treating them as an MG team. Or the same for a Titan/Javelin team. Both the ATGM and MMGs have a relatively massive effective range, so it can be safetly put in a dominating position further away from the enemy than the rest of the forces and still be more effective than current usage. How many times would having a Titan overlook us from a high point have saved us from "suddenly TANK!"? Or an MMG in a dominating position allowed us to withdraw from an overwhelming enemy force?

Thoughts? Additions? Other Ideas?

Speaking about Initiative, when I lead a mission I usually assume that the team leaders are proactive enough to make their own decisions. The last thing I want is micro-manage (one of the reasons why I usually don't play strategy games).  Usually, there is a "commander's intent", and I guess the commander should make that one pretty clear so that everyone is on the same page. The only exception to this rule would be if I specifically order not to do something. In all other cases, as I see it, the commander gives specific tasks to the fireteams ("your team attacks from the east") but leaves the execution of this (minus synchronization of actions) to the fireteam leaders. 

I agree that I have a hard time adapting to the way the AI works now. I noticed that a while ago when I was firing at a group of AI and didn't take cover since I "knew" their behavior pattern and was pretty sure I had two or so seconds left until they would open up on me and have any chance to hit me. Sadly, I was mistaken. It takes a while for me to get used to that, too often old reflexes take over.

I agree with everything, and I'm glad the AI challenges us to get better.
On the subject of expanding the gaps between teams, we need to keep in mind that it bears the risk of exposing us to being over flanked by the enemy. More gaps means more opportunities to flank the enemy, but also more risk of single teams getting isolated and taken out. I suppose the thumb rule here is always keep within eyesight?

(01-24-2017, 11:17 PM)Variable Wrote: [ -> ]I agree with everything, and I'm glad the AI challenges us to get better.
On the subject of expanding the gaps between teams, we need to keep in mind that it bears the risk of exposing us to being over flanked by the enemy. More gaps means more opportunities to flank the enemy, but also more risk of single teams getting isolated and taken out. I suppose the thumb rule here is always keep within eyesight?

Yes, I probably should have put that in there. The distances I give are ideal situation, but can be adjusted to fit. 200m is never going to work in the Jungles of Tanoa, but on plains of Altis, or the deserts of Takistan its much more reasonable.

I know, looking at the scenery from the air as an observer, it's always easy to spot the problems. Well, this should also help us to see what we did wrong. Note this is not to point fingers, I would have acted the same in your position. It's just an observation for the future.

I'm referring now to the attempt at "Across the Sea". There were several decisive moments when soldiers where lost for now good reason. I list those situations below. Also on this list, a mistake I made yesterday in the first mission (Jolly Green)


1 Securing the area

In this case the group was trying to recover the code book. The book was somewhere in the ruins, and the players took the ruins from the enemy. Then, everyone moved in, and while waiting for the new tasking to arrive, everyone was just standing around. And that's the problem. No one paid any attention to the outside. I placed a bunch of enemies (only three) into the town and had them walk up to the ruins to investigate. There was fire there before, so it would be normal to investigate. They basically got right up to the players and opened up. Luckily, I was controlling the machine gunner at that time and deliberately missed, otherwise, I could have killed two without any problem.

So, the rule should be: We arrive somewhere, we secure it. That means, secure the inside firsts, then move in, and when the inside is clear, secure towards the perimeter. Even Arma AI will come to investigate if they hear gunfire. Never stand around idle and do nothing. 

We should make it a habit of doing an all around defense whenever we stop, including stamina breaks. Do this every time, even without the squad or fire team leader commanding it. If we stop, call out the direction you will be looking at. The rest of the team should pick up on that.

In specific situation, like the one yesterday, I would even suggest a further approach: When two or more teams are present, one team does whatever the objective requires (searching for the code book in this case), while the other team(s) move past the objective and secure in the direction of the most likely enemy contact. At this point yesterday, the enemy was known to hold the town, thus, it would be prudent to assume that any counterattack would come from there. So while one team searched the building, the other team should have secured/watched the road leading up from the town.


2 Approaching "Points of Interest"

The ultimate demise of the mission was the incident at the road, the parked car. Simply driving up to it an stopping was a bad idea. The result was that nobody saw the two Chedakis standing next to the car in the shadow of the trees. Note that all of the area was hostile territory. It is unlikely that a UAZ flying the red star is just standing there. At the very least, expect a patrol somewhere in the area (if not close to the parked vehicle).

The only way to approach this would have been to stop early, get out, and approach on foot, weapons ready. The numbers where not there anymore (only three left), but in any case, there should have been someone securing from the back while someone else approaches. Even if you where considering this to be the car that you were searching for, just stopping next to it was a bad idea.


3 Covering too much ground when under fire

That was my mistake yesterday. When we spotted the castle ruins on the hill, I thought it would be good cover (which it is actually, but...). The distance was something like 600 meters, and there, things got messed up. Moving that much distance, up a hill, under constant enemy fire, is just asking for trouble. People will tire out running up hill, and one hit to to the leg will basically be the end of you.

So, the lesson learned from that is not to move so large a distance without peeling or bounding overwatch. Ideally, I would have chosen a closer place for cover. That was a stupid maneuver and it cost us half the team (not that it changed much, the chopper was blown up by an RPG shortly after).

One thing I might toss in here, though it's not so much tactics as it's more or less procedure. On the mission I lead last night everyone did phenomenal. The one thing I might offer in suggestion though...

  There was a moment when there was a small explosion amidst the group. Luckily no one was injured or killed. Right after the explosion I asked for a status report from my team, "All squad members report status, is anyone down?" two or three people immediately reported in that they were fine, but not everyone did. So I followed up by asking each individual squad member directly one at a time "2 are you ok, 3 are you alive, 4 are you up.... etc, etc." It would be helpful if a squad leader, or a medic for that matter ask "squad report status any one hit?" for each member of the team to be sure you report status. In the example situation only a few people responded, but when I turned around I counted more people standing than actually reported which lead to me asking one by one in turn. 

  The reason this is important to me, is that as a team leader if I ask live or dead status check if some one doesn't report in I should be able to assume that individual is down and either dead or unconscious. In such a circumstance I can then react and have people quickly search for the down soldier and see if they can be treated or if they are dead. This whole doctrine falls apart though if some one who is alive and fine doesn't respond to the status call, I might waste time taking a casualty assessment and recovery stance when in fact it's not needed as their are no actual casualties. 

  Also it waste time for the team leader to have to ask each member individually one by one on a status check of any kind. If the team leader ask "all members report 'X'  "  each member should report back without further prompting.

  All in all it's just a communication thing. 

  Also I hope no one reads this as a gripe, context and delivery are lost a lot of times in text. This is just a tactics discussion, and offering up ideas or advice. Overall the mission was carried out excellently and we suffered no dead. However even a 100% successful mission can still offer up learning experiences and areas that can be improved.

So sat at home, bored out of my mind, I decided to create some diagrams to demonstrate what I meant by spacings on the first post.

So as a background, even in Arma, incoming fire raises your stress level. This has a variety of effects based on weight, from making it harder to spot the enemy, to making it harder to return fire accurately to outright pinning you behind cover. All of this makes it much easier for the AI to close in and kill you. 

Every round has an area around it, we'll call it the suppression area, where it will affect you. A machine gun, due to an inherent inaccuracy and sheer weight of numbers, will have a much larger one than a single rifleman. But this zone is important to us. Theoretically, in the open we should maintain 10m or more spacings, meaning that even a belt fed machine gun firing on us in wedge formation would struggle to effect more than a couple at a time. 

The main point of this post though, is inter grouping spacings. We always tend to travel as a single packet, like an overlarge squad rather than several separate elements, probably because its easier to control. We then get shot at and pinned down as a group, like this:


Where the heavy red line is the actual line of fire, the red cone is the suppression zone and the blue is us. Maybe we were travelling down the road, one team on either side, and when we got to the break from the town, got shot at and all dashed into the building. It's something that has happened before, and given the field of fire the enemy has on us, it makes it difficult to do anything in return, return fire will be hampered and movement will be difficult without running into a bullet.

However, imagine that one fireteam followed the road, and one followed the dry riverbed that runs parallel to the road. The contact begins at the same time as the first scenario, but instead of all bolting for the same position, the second fire team moves into the compounds in front of them. You then get a situation like this:


The second fire team are now in position to locate the enemy firing on the first and either suppress it or manoeuvre on it.

This also helps out with multiple firing positions, as it forces them to split their firepower rather than concentrating on one particular position, thus reducing the suppressive effect on both halves of the section.

In a lot of cases we work in multiple teams and tend to put a lot of distance between them. While it offers flanking opportunities, it doesn't allow mutual support as MJ illustrates. A thing to consider.

Sooooo. Last night, we had a little thing about grenades. I wanted to say something then, but I decided to leave it overnight to when I could get it out easily, without argument.


So, essentially, we play a very specific set of roles. Generally small teams who have to go to an objective and blow stuff up or find something in an enemy held position against an enemy that is much stronger on paper. And consequently, that means we have to play to the enemies strengths. Which is a pain, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. 

What I mean, is that in infantry combat, as the larger force, you want to try and get elements close to the smaller force so you can force a decisive engagement. This is where the 3-1 rule comes from, you have a suppressive force, an assaulting force and a reserve to either exploit victory, help with the suppression or help with casualties. The smaller force should avoid this, as, as I have mentioned above, that most casualties come from point blank range, and when it gets to point blank range, you should expect to trade 1 for 1 and anything better is a bonus (unless the opposition is suppressed or pinned in place). Unfortunately, we can't really avoid this, because of the missions we tend to play. (If you watch ShackTac videos, you notice that they tend to withdraw when a superior enemy force starts closing, and if you pick positions right, you should be able to do this, which is part of the reason being flanked is so dangerous, because you often close off escape routes with fire and cause the decisive engagement the smaller force is seeking to avoid.)

When it gets to the final section of the attack, known as the assault, grenades are critical. In WW1, there were guys who crossed no mans land with nothing but a bucket of home made grenades, one British Officer got a Victoria Cross because he drove off a Battalion, killing a full company of men with nothing but his bucket of grenades and a pair of balls so massive I'm surprised he fit in the trench. If I was going into a position to finish off a dude with automatic fire and a bayonet, you can bet all your money I'm going to hit him with as many grenades as possible beforehand so even if he is alive, he is in no state to consider fighting back. And yes, currently grenades are too powerful, I'd like to see them do basically no damage and just rely on shrapnel, but if I understand how the shrapnel system works, then that's a pipe dream (On a tangent, I'd have made it so all explosives do randomX damage where X is the amount of damage they currently do at a distance (with maybe a random chance of a multiplier), so its possible for a dude to survive a hellfire hit, but you might also die from a grenade 25m away).

In missions where we aren't forced to close with the enemy, where we can just stand off and whittle their numbers down from a distance before closing in, we tend to do much better and lose less guys to grenades. In terms of accuracy from distance, we are clearly much better than the AI, and its harder for them to use their strength in numbers against us as effectively, so maybe being less aggressive where we really don't need to so much could help. We're often far more aggressive than our force ratios should allow, though it's often forced by the mission situation, and we don't bound anything like enough really.

As a conclusion, I don't really see anything too wrong with the AI's use of grenades really, though they could really do with less of them, but that seems impractical.

Mjolnir Wrote:As a conclusion, I don't really see anything too wrong with the AI's use of grenades really, though they could really do with less of them, but that seems impractical.

I think the major issue is the amount of grenades that they use. I mean, I don't pretend to have any combat experience, but I find it overkill that a grenadier uses more than, say, five grenades against a group of six people. At close range using frags is perfectly fine and something the AI should do. I am not sure about how precise their grenade throws are.

I can get them to use less grenades for sure, we can give that a try. In general I am quite content with the AI right now, just the mere number of grenades they use seems excessive to me.

EDIT: One more thing, I agree about falling back. We never do that. I have the tendency when I lead to even shorten the distance when we get into a firefight (unless we have overwhelming number of remote optics) which makes it even harder to retreat. I never claimed to be a good leader

MJ I agree with every single word in your analysis of how a combat unit should perform. However, it lacks the fun factor and that's the point where I start to disagree.

I WANT to be able to move in close and  personal, have bloody firefights that end up in our victory, I WANT to be able to take risks that would get any real-life team leader court martialed if not shot by his subordinates and live to tell the tale in the debriefing thread. I WANT to have experiences that get the adrenaline rush that no 300-meter-pot-shot-engagements-with ACOGs would yield.

The missions we like to play would have NEVER been approved by any sane military leadership because they would have been declared suicidal. I bet my ass that the British Army will never order your outfit to storm a fortified position with enemy that outnumber your force 4 to 1, without massive artillery and aerial support that thin out the resistance and shrink it to ratios in favor of your force, and thanks heavens and the Queen for that. But the scenarios that often unfold in real life are no fun to play. Well, only if things go wrong, the intelligence is bad and suddenly all those GBUs the Air Force promised never get dropped.

So why do we play such scenarios? Correcto mundo! Because they are FUN. Well, let me correct that, they are fun only if the resistance allows you to play the thin line between what would be reckless in real life but fun in the game world. In coop nights, and I speak for myself now, it used to be that way, and I feel that it no longer does. All I want is the experience we had about two months ago and before. Did the AI back then allowed us to play recklessly at times? It certainly had. Was it more fun though? Oh, yes it was. I don't want to stick to military discipline to win missions. I prefer to lose 4 missions and win 6 when going close and personal in all of them than winning all 10 because we played cautiously.

But even if I look at what bothered me last night, I still find completely unrealistic behaviors. The AI clearly fires off 40mm grenades and doesn't even wait to see if the impact and correct accordingly. It just fires one after the other in succession with very good accuracy. Honestly, I would have never cared if we were any close to being that good with grenades, but we don't. The AI is extremely better than us at that, the gap is not marginal. If we want to play any reasonable scenarios in terms of fun, the AI can NEVER be better than us. Unfortunately, it was always better in certain aspects but these damn grenades really top it off.

If the current AI remains flawed, the following options are available:

1. We change our tactics dramatically, start to play cautiously in ways that resemble real life military operations
   
2. We switch the missions we play from small unit operations to more traditional sane military ones, with closer to 1:1 enemy-friendly ratios.
   
3. We keep on playing the way it is now and live with it. 
   

Personally, I don't want neither. All I can do now is put my trust in the angel Alwarren, otherwise Arma 3 will become a game I don't enjoy.

I'm sorry for excessively bitching last night, but it frustrates me so much that coop starts to be an exercise in anger control and not the fun activity I'm used to do twice a week.

Variable Wrote:If the current AI remains flawed, the following options are available:

1. We change our tactics dramatically, start to play cautiously in ways that resemble real life military operations
   
2. We switch the missions we play from small unit operations to more traditional sane military ones, with closer to 1:1 enemy-friendly ratios.
   
3. We keep on playing the way it is now and live with it. 
   

We can probably patch ASR AI somehow, but quite honestly:

I would like to try to play cautiously once in a while... in general, I would like to see more of a mix of playing styles. Right now, we're always guns blazing, and while this is good from time to time, I would also like to play differently from time to time.

Sure, each leader is free to choose his own path. I'm fine with being cautious from time to time, I just don't want to HAVE to play cautious ALL the time. What bothers me is that my favorite leading style no longer seem possible.

I wanted to bring this back up, as it's more relevant than ever. 

Last night we saw a pair of policemen flank and completely murder most of a team.... twice. So covering the flanks, especially in closer areas with shorter lines of sight might be nice... XD

And also, incoming suppressive fire isn't a suggestion. If you run out of cover and get a burst of machine gun fire come back at you, then its probably a really good idea to go back to your cover, manoeuvre round to somewhere else and try there, or locate and destroy/suppress the enemy before moving forward again. Otherwise suppressive fire becomes effective fire and you die.

Mjolnir Wrote:Last night we saw a pair of policemen flank and completely murder most of a team.... twice. So covering the flanks, especially in closer areas with shorter lines of sight might be nice... XD

In this particular case, the problem was that we were basically hasted by the fact that team Nameless was no longer responding and we had to act quickly. And since nobody reported any contact from that area, it was a gamble, but one that we had to take.

Mjolnir Wrote:And also, incoming suppressive fire isn't a suggestion. If you run out of cover and get a burst of machine gun fire come back at you, then its probably a really good idea to go back to your cover, manoeuvre round to somewhere else and try there, or locate and destroy/suppress the enemy before moving forward again. Otherwise suppressive fire becomes effective fire and you die.

I think we made a lot of tactical mistakes yesterday that were rather suicidal in hindsight (and yeah, I know, it's eays to say that after the fact). For example, storming down that slope towards a town we knew had something like 100 guns aimed in our direction was not good, especially since the enemy knew we were there and already creeping up the hillsides.