A discussion on tactics

[Verstanden]

I can't say anything about that specific situation but generally I agree. Situational Awareness is always important. More so in urban areas. There should be individual iniative from every teammember to watch uncovered arks if the TL does not assign them.

Looking at the stuff MJ wrote in this thread brings tears of joy to my eyes

[Varanon]

Verstanden Wrote:Looking at the stuff MJ wrote in this thread brings tears of joy to my eyes

Right, nothing beats being slaughered

[Verstanden]

I was talking about the infantry tactics

[Varanon]

I have to write something about today's games that I really want to get off my chest. Four things in particular.
Again, note that these are not accusations. It's observations. I won't name anyone in particular, but if you think you are meant, sorry, I just have this situation fresh in memory, I could find previous versions with other actors.

1. Fireteam cohesion

We had the following situation: I was leading fireteam charley in the Stargate mission. We were on the southern end of the wall. One of our guys, the medic went down because he was shot from within a crack in the wall. Happens. One guy was bandaging him. I looked around and couldn't find #3. I heard him from around a corner, moved there, but was immediately surrounded by three Russians that killed me. The fireteam was completely wiped out.

Why ?

The first mistake is on me. When the medic went down, I should have one of the team pick him up and move into safety. We were behind a wall, so it was not immediately dangerous, but close to the enemy. However, this was already a no-go since one of my fireteam was suddenly gone off to god knows where. 

So, what do we learn from this ? First of all, the usual "retreat is an option" that never comes to our collective minds. Secondly, AT ALL TIMES, stay in the vicinity of the team, within VISUAL RANGE. You can easily see that by checking group info: If you can see my number (1, team leader), then I can see yours. If you don't see me, come back.

So, STAY WITH YOUR TEAM AT ALL TIMES, WITHIN VISUAL RANGE. Otherwise, the team leader will not have any idea where you are, and all attempts at organizing anything will go down the drain.


2. Squad cohesion

Somehow, any attack mission we do follows the same general scheme: Approach, then divide the fireteams and assign sectors to each. Why we always use this tactic is beyond me (and I did it myself), because it's the most braindead approach that we can have. Let me give an example: We have three fireteams of 4 each. We do not know the amount of enemies we face normally, but let's assume we have three distinct "sectors" and each is guarded by two fireteams (so, 8 each sector). So, each fireteam faces 8 guns in their sector. Which means they die. If OTOH you attack the same sector with full strength, 12 guns will face 8 guns, and chances are good that this will end up in our favor.

Even in cases where there are only few defenders, splitting the teams can go south quickly. As happened to my team today. Losing one man is not losing one man. It's losing two men: the man that's down, and the man that'll bandage him. So one man down means your team is down to half strength. In today's mission, there were at least 10 guns directed at us. As the one man went down, we suddenly faced a 1:5 superior enemy.

Bottom line, this approach will not work. Never. We just do it all the time. 


3. Ignoring terrain

When we attack, not only do we divide up our fireteams, we also let them attack from directions that are totally unsuited for attack. As an example, a few weeks back we had a situation where we had to attack a small hamlet. As usual, we divided up the fireteams and had them approach from different directions. And one of them was from high up towards the hamlet with no actual visibility. 

The correct approach was luckily carried out later in another mission where we had to attack a radar station. Our squad leader lead us around the installation to attack from a better angle.

But in general, we plan our attack from convenience: We approach from the south, so we attack from the south, even if the approach is shit.


4. Clear communication of the plan

In the Toyota mission yesterday, we had to retreat when we destroyed the convoy. The command was "to go south". And it went south, but not in the good way. Half way up a valley, it was suddenly revealed that one team lost their car. How is it possible that a team is left behind in such a situation.

It went on, we were attacked, and without clear procedure (drive through, stop and fight), one vehicle went on, the vehicle in front of us suddenly stopped, I was driving an unarmed vehicle, so all we could do was catch bullets. 

The whole retreat became a clusterfuck in the end. In cases like that, a clear marching order should be given, and clear instruction on what to do in case of fire (drive through, stop and fight). I admit, this isn't easy, but the result was anihilation....


As I said, I'm guilty of these things as well, but all of these problems popped up yesterday again, so I wanted to bring them on the table.

[Sputnik Monroe]

You make some very good points and I'm happy you spoke up.



I'll give my 2 cents, on each of your bullet points.

Quote:1. Fire Team Cohesion

When treating a wounded comrade, we need to start to audibly make it clear who's working on the wounded team mate. Often times everyone drops their guns and begins working on one downed man which leaves everyone defenseless. As treating a downed team mate is a serious matter, that if not addressed quickly can lead to them dying and missing out on the rest of the scenario, it's imperative that there is solid communication. If someone is the first to begin working on them they need to declare, "I am treating the patient!", if they run out of bandages or need to switch to another task do to necessity, (AT duty, or other role related task) before the patient is stabilized we then need to declare that as well, "I need to do X, so and so still needs treatment!". 

There should never be more than one or two people max working on a wounded soldier. Ideally the only time there should ever be more than one person treating the patient is if one is bandaging, doing blood works etc, and the second is doing CPR if needed. If there is only one wounded and there are multiple medics and plenty of firepower I suppose that is an exception as well as they are then performing their class role.

It also is a good idea to declare each step you are treating verbally while working on the patient. Do this in local never on the radio. This has two effects, firstly the unconscious player can hear you at it reassures them that they are receiving help, secondly if two medics are working on a single patient it prevents them doubling up on the same task, "I'm patching his legs, you get his arms." 

As mentioned previously there should ideally only be one person working on a patient at a time, for serious injuries that require immediate major aid, or CPR two is the most that should be working on a patient. That said we tend to break up into too small of groups however, which leads to two people being a 50% or greater loss in fire power. This leads to bullet point 2.

Quote:2. Squad cohesion

I couldn't agree more with everything you've said. We split our forces all the time every time and it's just terrible force projection, we constantly dilute our fire power down to piece meal groups spread all over hell that cannot support one another. This becomes a major issue when ever we run in specialist situations as well, run into a tank? Well crap, the Anti Tank guy is in another fire team somewhere else. Some one's been seriously wounded and needs blood? Well the medic is also in another team somewhere far away. 

Another related issue to this, not only do we split our forces all the time, we always attack targets from multiple directions converging on a central point, this is a blue on blue nightmare. Nearly every time we engage the enemy in objective areas, I have to hesitate when firing and almost never can bring heavy fire power like grenades and machine gun fire to bare because almost every time without fail I know there are friendlies on the opposite side of the target from us.

United we stand divided we fall.

Quote:3. Ignoring Terrain

I second everything you said here, I can't really add to it.

I will mention that radar attack you gave as an example was setup perfectly. That was my Rangers in Finland mission, and Variable did a fantastic job setting up the attack, we repositioned several times until we had a great angle to begin the attack from. It was lovely.



As for point number four I'm going to replay with it as a separate reply...

[Sputnik Monroe]

Quote:4. Clear communication of the plan

That final mission last night was a communication nightmare, hell a nightmare would be a downgrade, it was fucking hell. 

My teams vehicle was shot to hell and I reported that we had lost the engine and half the tires. I was then told to,  "drive over and meet up with Alpha". I said, "That'll be interesting with no engine or wheels". 

I then kept in touch with Alpha reporting that my team was going to move up the ridgeline to scout and see if we could locate any stragglers from the target convoy. We got to the ridge and spotted a Ural in the checkpoint town. I reported this multiple times but got no confirmation that we were heard.

Another team's technical drove past us on our left and was driving right up to the town with the Ural. I couldn't reach them as they had lost their long range. I was under the impression that Alpha was somehow communicating with them however, (using their short range channel maybe), and once again reported to Alpha, "We've located a straggler from the convoy, there's a friendly technical just 50 meters to our left if you tell them to move up to our position they can see the truck and have a perfect shot on it". I was just told they had no comms with that team, so I said fuck it and ran down the hill to the truck myself shouting in local "Can you guys hear me in local!" no answer. I saw the passenger seat was empty so I jumped in their vehicle and shouted, "Guys if you turn and go a few meters up the hill on your right you can see the last truck from our position" neither the driver nor the gunner were responding or speaking. I thought they possibly might be AI at that point and jumped out of their truck and went back to my guys on the ridge line.

It took a while but the other truck finally bumbled up to the Ural and destroyed it on their own the hard way. At this point the task hadn't ticked and their had been reports of a T-55 in the briefing. I told Alpha, my team would move east to the next ridge line and see if we could spot it or whatever straggler was left from there. We did this, and then we repeated (after communicating intent) by moving to yet another ridge line after that. 

The task finally ticked and I asked alpha "How many spare seats do the remaining teams have in their vehicles? My team is all alive but we will need to be picked up." I got a response along the lines of "You don't have a vehicle?" I almost lost it, I reported back "Yes we lost the engine and wheels a half hour ago, we've been repeatedly moving on foot from ridge to ridge as reported multiple times." I was then informed their might be some civilian vehicles in the town we could commandeer, so we moved towards the town.

This is where I finally lost it and snapped, sorry about that. But as my team moved NW to the town I saw two friendlies moving from the west on foot as well. I asked Alpha about them and was informed they were the team with no long range. I said, "Tell them to switch to my channel to they'll be in a team with a long range. Alpha responded "OK", a few minutes later me and my team are on the main street and in the intervening time no one switched to our channel. I then hear over long range a report that the two man team has a Red Land Rover now. I asked "My guys are on the main street, the other team still hasn't switched to our channel can you have them come pick us up." The answer I got was "Go ahead and run to where your vehicle was knocked out we'll rendezvous there." as he said that I spotted the red land rover about 200 meters away driving away from us. I lost it and shouted on the radio "No! My team has done more than their fair share of walking, I can see them right now you tell them to pick us up now!" 

I'm sorry I snapped but we had just land humped over a quite significant distance at that point including three tall ridge lines, and I wasn't happy to be told we would have to march an unnecessary additional distance simply because of inane comms bullshit. The Rover was redirected back to the town, and I had to repeat several more times that we were "on the main street, right on it can't miss us." and just as the rover finally came into view we found a red pickup and I reported "We found our own wheels, were taking a red pick up, we don't need the land rover anymore."

The whole mission was a comms nightmare. In hindsight I should have just had my team switch our short range over to Red Rover's channel when they never joined ours. They probably never were informed by Alpha to switch to our channel to begin with, and to be fair they may have never heard anything from Alpha and were simply making do as best they could in a communications blackout.

But what got me most was every five minutes or so I'd get questionable orders about "take your vehicle to" when I had reported many times we had lost our vehicle, and had been for around 20 minutes reporting our "foot" movements such as "my team's marching to the next ridge line" only to hear over the radio when I asked for a pickup much later "you guys don't have a vehicle?" 

Sorry for the long After Action Report, and I really don't know what to say or suggest. My team was communicating fine using the standard mix of local and short range. But as far as Longe Range net communications were going, I'm not sure what more I could have done. It's pretty disheartening to make reports and send messages and they seem to fall on deaf ears.