Strategic Giraffes: Thursday nights the Vanu get "a bit more organised"

[Qw33r]

To clarify... as PL you actually have 1 less voice than a grunt in a full squad. 2 SGs and 4 PLs on one keybind, 4 ROs on another. You can't hear SLs or Grunts at all.

Yes, but the 'average' grunt talkes 1 time during 10 mins and the 'average' RO/PL/SG maybe 10 times.

[CMaster]

I think ROs for PLs are pretty much unnecessary - PLs don't have a squad to deal with, just a small number of other people.
Where I'd consider going instead is losing the horizontal communication between PLs. It's useful, but probably not enough to justify the interruption. SGs would have to set up separate whispers for each platoon, but as SG is hardly an everyday role, I don't see this being a big problem.

I also think we need to look again at priority speaker. Sounds like its causing problems rather than solving them a lot of the while. I don't think it's that hard for a PL to tune out a single RO or indeed the SG and listen to one other voice.

[Ksempac]

I don't think you should simply count voices to estimate the coms difficulties : in a squad you have 11 voices speaking roughly about the same thing (their situation which is basically the same). When you're in upper command all the voices are talking about different things. I haven't been TACGIR PL but i expect that's harder to follow what everyone is talking about

[MrEclectic]

I think ROs for PLs are pretty much unnecessary - PLs don't have a squad to deal with, just a small number of other people.
Where I'd consider going instead is losing the horizontal communication between PLs. It's useful, but probably not enough to justify the interruption. SGs would have to set up separate whispers for each platoon, but as SG is hardly an everyday role, I don't see this being a big problem.

I also think we need to look again at priority speaker. Sounds like its causing problems rather than solving them a lot of the while. I don't think it's that hard for a PL to tune out a single RO or indeed the SG and listen to one other voice.

Horizontal coordination between PLs is needed. The fact that it is underutilised is a problem, as the same goes for coordination between SLs. If people shared a bit more information horizontally, be it among grunts, or between SLs or PLs, vertical communication would be even less cluttered.

[CMaster]

Oh the other thing, regarding Platoon 3 in the north after Jakkar took over:

We were aware of you potentially being in a difficult situation up there. It wasn't possible to have any reinforcements coming particuarly soon. I was keen to impress upon Jakkar that he shouldn't let you get farmed in a spawn camp, and that it was necessary to guard Quartz Ridge (if you defend Indar Excavation until it has been capped, you will find enemies are already in Quartz Ridge, and you've just lost a huge defensive advantage). It just so happened that we were able to free up another Platoon (I forget who) to come and reinforce shortly before the TR reached QR, meaning the fight erupted int he plains beyond QR, rather than at it.

[Boris]

Actually, this is an excellent suggestion! Can't see why I didn't think of this myself, being a vocal advocate for squad ROs. I'll see if I can find a way to accommodate this within the existing structure, we could probably achieve something identical to the SL-to-SL thing but between PLs, and have PLs each have their own RO, only they would be rather lonely, sitting apart from the squad chatter... Have to think about how to solve this.

LordKiwi gave his thoughts on the matter here, what do you other PLs think about the idea?

Since I don't like RO's, I don't like this. It's another layer of abstraction that delays action. Also it requires us to find 5 more guys to get into some kind of leadership role and you know how hard it was last night to draft the 48 (!) guys we needed for those roles.

We literally had a platoon's worth of people in some kind of non-grunt position last night. Count them yourself. 2 SG, 1 TVA, and 5 platoons with each 9 persons leading (PL plus 4x RO/SL) equals 48. Or, 1 in 5. That's too many fingers in the porridge.

Perhaps it would be better if we split it down the middle. We have 2 SGs who are in contact and each lead 2 platoons. If I can only talk to my sister platoon and my SG that would cut down on a lot of extra comms chatter. And since we can't relay tactical information fast enough to matter when we're actually fighting all in one place (excavation), I don't think we'll lose anything. To expand this system we only need 1 extra dude per 2 platoons, instead of 2. Plus it scales better.

[Boris]

I'm sure he also knows me well enough by now that I'm not getting at him at all in this post, just observations that he does not deal with lots of voices at once as much as soem others. Hugs and kisses darling!

Yeah. I suspect I might have Asperger's or something.

I also get frustrated in crowds, and after a few hours socializing I need to be alone for a bit. My close friends understand this, but others just assume I'm either an anti social jerk or mad at them.

[qaz]

Oh the other thing, regarding Platoon 3 in the north after Jakkar took over:

We were aware of you potentially being in a difficult situation up there. It wasn't possible to have any reinforcements coming particuarly soon. I was keen to impress upon Jakkar that he shouldn't let you get farmed in a spawn camp, and that it was necessary to guard Quartz Ridge (if you defend Indar Excavation until it has been capped, you will find enemies are already in Quartz Ridge, and you've just lost a huge defensive advantage). It just so happened that we were able to free up another Platoon (I forget who) to come and reinforce shortly before the TR reached QR, meaning the fight erupted int he plains beyond QR, rather than at it.

Most of the night was pretty fun and worked well. The IE fight was the only one that i thought was particularly problematic. The squad I was in got sent to QR when we still held all points at IE, taking us out of great fight and accelerating the loss of IE. Furthermore, we set up defenses at QR, but of course nothing came or was likely to come for about the 10 minutes it took for IE to fall. In my opinion, it'd have been easier to just make IE as hard as possible to take, and then send in support from the outside, either via armour or air. The time-frame for that was roughly 10 minutes. Anyway, after IE fell, the whole platoon joined at QR and we were in well prepared and pretty good defensive positions. Problem is, we were then told to give these positions up and charge right into the armour force we had faced at IE before without actually having friendly armour intervene (because they had striker batteries set up on the way). All in all, this cost us all the prep we had done, including the defensive sundies and didn't get us anywhere. Waiting for their assault on QR would have allowed us to kill off all their vehicles and scatter/disorganise them.

Anyway, rant over. Apart from that, the organisation last night was pretty superb, cmaster.

[Dewi]

Oh the other thing, regarding Platoon 3 in the north after Jakkar took over:

We were aware of you potentially being in a difficult situation up there. It wasn't possible to have any reinforcements coming particuarly soon. I was keen to impress upon Jakkar that he shouldn't let you get farmed in a spawn camp, and that it was necessary to guard Quartz Ridge (if you defend Indar Excavation until it has been capped, you will find enemies are already in Quartz Ridge, and you've just lost a huge defensive advantage). It just so happened that we were able to free up another Platoon (I forget who) to come and reinforce shortly before the TR reached QR, meaning the fight erupted int he plains beyond QR, rather than at it.

That was the daring soldiers of platoon 2 I believe. It was an awesome fight that saw the scale of warfare that PS2 has to offer, in the plains I mean. Teh chaps in my squad really enjoyed it, and were coming up with suggestions as to how to get sunderers closer and push the front lines forward. it was spectacular, especially from the new guys. yeah we got pinned down for a bit but it gave people a chance to catch their breath a bit and take part in a really awesome battle.

Highlight being the sunderer that the NS2 lot led by quanta managed to park up at the north of Indar Excav. hearing Quantas voice shout out over SL chat that a sunderer is deploying deep in enemy lines and to redeploy immediately was amazing! then us working amongst ourselves co-ordinating our squads at the points and defending the sundy. Managed to keep that baby alive for a good 10-15 mins too! Such a shame the TR armour rolled in.

[CMaster]

Most of the night was pretty fun and worked well. The IE fight was the only one that i thought was particularly problematic. The squad I was in got sent to QR when we still held all points at IE, taking us out of great fight and accelerating the loss of IE. Furthermore, we set up defenses at QR, but of course nothing came or was likely to come for about the 10 minutes it took for IE to fall. In my opinion, it'd have been easier to just make IE as hard as possible to take, and then send in support from the outside, either via armour or air. The time-frame for that was roughly 10 minutes. Anyway, after IE fell, the whole platoon joined at QR and we were in well prepared and pretty good defensive positions. Problem is, we were then told to give these positions up and charge right into the armour force we had faced at IE before without actually having friendly armour intervene (because they had striker batteries set up on the way). All in all, this cost us all the prep we had done, including the defensive sundies and didn't get us anywhere. Waiting for their assault on QR would have allowed us to kill off all their vehicles and scatter/disorganise them.

The time frame for getting friendly support was actually unknown. They were all tied up elsewhere, I had no idea when I'd be able to get anything available to help you. I was (over) worried about you guys getting farmed out there, as the map was saying you were horribly outnumbered. I've seen too many defenses of Indar Excavation turn into defenses of Indar Bay Point, because while our forces have been spawn camped at IE, the enemy has run through QR, secured that and taken down Hvar generators. My main error really was in underestimating just how well you lot were doing. Also, I didn't give the order for you to move out from QR (maybe someone else did) until I actually saw the RPS armour crossing under Indar Comm. I anticipated it taking some time for you lot to move out, but instead it seems you were very quickly into sundies, while the friendly armour hung back.

TL;DR - there were definitely mistakes made. But don't think you were forgotten about, or there were easy solutions to the problems.

[EsotericReverie]

Highlight being the sunderer that the NS2 lot led by quanta managed to park up at the north of Indar Excav. hearing Quantas voice shout out over SL chat that a sunderer is deploying deep in enemy lines and to redeploy immediately was amazing! then us working amongst ourselves co-ordinating our squads at the points and defending the sundy. Managed to keep that baby alive for a good 10-15 mins too! Such a shame the TR armour rolled in.

Perfect example of what the SL-to-SL communication allows us to achieve! Glad to hear of it being put to good use. This is one of the aspects of the night that the SG never gets to see.

Most of the night was pretty fun and worked well. The IE fight was the only one that i thought was particularly problematic. The squad I was in got sent to QR when we still held all points at IE, taking us out of great fight and accelerating the loss of IE. Furthermore, we set up defenses at QR, but of course nothing came or was likely to come for about the 10 minutes it took for IE to fall. In my opinion, it'd have been easier to just make IE as hard as possible to take, and then send in support from the outside, either via armour or air. The time-frame for that was roughly 10 minutes. Anyway, after IE fell, the whole platoon joined at QR and we were in well prepared and pretty good defensive positions. Problem is, we were then told to give these positions up and charge right into the armour force we had faced at IE before without actually having friendly armour intervene (because they had striker batteries set up on the way). All in all, this cost us all the prep we had done, including the defensive sundies and didn't get us anywhere. Waiting for their assault on QR would have allowed us to kill off all their vehicles and scatter/disorganise them.

Let's see. Was this after the big push for IE with the massed Galdrop + tank column?

[qaz]

No worries, i just wanted to write down my experience to add another perspective to that situation. As for us being outnumbered, I think Air Towers are actually the bases you can defend the best against superior numbers due to the amount of exits you have from spawn, with the balcony often being overlooked and presenting opportunities for getting A back and holding it. So, i guess their was a mismatch between squad level assessment and PL assessment. Maybe due to communication too? Not sure. Only thing that we really shouldn't repeat is pushing out of a fortified position when we know that we're set up well and the enemy has major forces incoming that will likely take us apart if we move on the ground.

@Eso that was quite late in the evening, right before we redeployed to the NC side of the map. The first armoured push out of QR was pretty nice.

[darkweeble]

So, to help move things forward, a couple of suggested action points:

• Perform training for command roles (PL, SL, RO). Have people read the respective guides, go over the basics of the roles, how to set up keybinds, and then some real-life practice with smaller squads, have more than one person in the SL/RO channels, listening in, giving feedback etc.
• Make sure that the guides are pointed out to anyone who colunteers for a SL, RO, PL slot, give them a minute to read through that before tossing them into the role, let them get acquainted with the role if they don't have extensive experience with it. Announce it in-game, make sure the guides (that incidentally describe how to solve all of the problems people have been complaining of) are actually read by the people who take on these roles.
• Practice more often in-game, as MrEclectic suggests. Once a week for four or five people is not enough if this is to spread at any decent rate.
• Use mentors; have a more experienced RO sit with the RO in his/her channel and give helpful suggestions, like "Now would be a good time to report to PL that we've reached our objective" etc.

GinSoakedBoy has volunteered to hold a Comms discipline/roles training session on the 19th at 7PM UK time. I'll have the official post up after we finish your session, Eso.

[EsotericReverie]

Excellent news! We need to work a bit on that still, although we have come a long way since the beginning.