Improving Fallujah

[Ryko]

Hi folks,

This should probably be on the Gauntlet feedback thread, but I thought there were so many opinions floating around during today's session that perhaps people might want to consolidate them here.  Here are my thoughts:

 

1) People are longing for a Blackhawk on this map.  My understanding is that Bacon wanted Fallujah to be a more convoy / ground vehicles oriented map.  If the idea is to discourage air travel, how about station some permanent anti-air in the city?  Some guys with Stingers, some static AA guns - that would encourage people to go by land in a hurry.  And it would also provide a secondary objective: clear out AA emplacements so air can land.

 

2) I'd remove the M1 Abrams tank.  It completely outclasses every opfor vehicle.  Unfortunately everyone wants to take it because the Bradley doesn't have Thermals that work.

 

3) Fix the C-130?  I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to do a paradrop insertion.

 

-R

[Guest]

+1 for the 2nd comment. As for the third one, I believe thats only up to the mod creator to fix it

[Josh]

1st in working on, give me some time. Both the gauntlet devs are on break at the moment, which is why things are a little slow. Ones moving house and the other just on break. So things will change more rapidly once they're back on a station.

2. Yeah good idea to be honest! But same as above

3. Mod issue not our end unfortunately

[Ryko]

Just putting thoughts down so that I don't forget them!

[Josh]

No problem!

[Nicolai]

My consolidated opinion: the only thing I was longing for in the several hours of Fallujah yesterday was an enemy to shoot at.

 

I perceived it mostly as standing around between WP 1 and WP 15, watching CAS doing a lot of fireworks, waiting for fellow teammates to regroup, who fell down the stairs or otherwise had reasons to respawn.

 

Occasionally, we came into contact with enemies in a range of about 200-300m. Usually the first order I got, when we announced the contact was to move away from the enemy. To this day I do not understand what was the intention behind that frequent "moving away from the enemy quickly" tasking. Well there will be reaons, I guess.

 

Also, I remember our team was ordered to move back into areas, which we had just cleared, just to stand around there and watch the skies - several times. Felt like being parked for further tasking, which is alright and which never came.

 

That happened in a "clear the town" mission, which I understood to be played differently, so far: 1. everyone moves in as infantry, 2. air support is transport, 3. tanks are doing support jobs once requested by CMD - which is pointless and usually never required with the default enemy spawn amounts and, finally, 4. you take out the enemy you see.

 

Getting the whole team into firing positions before opening fire is a wise thing with regard to 4., no questions asked, and we would have had a lot of opportunities with regard to the firing as we were moving quite well and reliably as a team.

 

The least thing I want is to whine about the orders our team received.. I know how difficult the SL / Plt Commander roles are depending on the players joined, especially when being overwhelmed by offers about "doing this and that now" from highly motivated players, who will, of course, try each and every possible way of doing some things. And yeah, those who scream the loudest..

 

Summarizing, I remember it took >2.5h until everyone was depressed enough to restart that mission without even finishing it. A long time of suffering from my point of view.

 

Fortunately, I was in Ryko's team - so I had enough to do - btw. thanks for the rounds yesterday - loved it, will do it anytime again.

 

And srsly.. I don't think 1) or 2) would "fix" the root causes of how things were going along yesterday.

 

[Lone]

Clear the town missions can take AGES cause some infantry is hidden in a house, the mos probable idea behind your commands was to manoeuvre a team who was in a better position to engage to a firing point.

 

Also a basic commander mistake is micro managing, I've been guilty of it, I sure as hell know other commanders are guilty of it too. When a commander takes it upon them self to issue instructions to each and every fire-team, rather than allowing the squad lead to do their job, people/fire teams get forgotten simply because that is just too much for any human to think about at the same time. This has happened allot more recently due to the influx of new players and therefore inexperienced commanders. All they need is some time and some constructive feedback and they'll improve real fast, just whatever you do don't complain at them, that's how you run out of willing squad/platoon leaders.

 

Honestly one of my favourite platoon leaders is Raz, he gives a basic plan, and allows the squad leader to use their own discretion.

 

Anyway, that was simply from my experience as a squad/platoon leader so sorry for the ramble.

 

(Also having a WP 15 is a massive hint of a micromanaging commander)

[Ryko]

@Lone - WP15 refers to waypoints I was dropping as fire team lead.  It also indicates how long we spent clearing the AO.

[Nicolai]

Clear the town missions can take AGES cause some infantry is hidden in a house, the mos probable idea behind your commands was to manoeuvre a team who was in a better position to engage to a firing point. [..]

 

Yes. Not only hidden in a house, but also spawned inside a house of the type you cannot get into.

 

Got that the day before yesterday on video..

 

Another frequent reason for this mission to be difficult to finish is to just start shooting at all enemy you see immediately, instead of herding them together, circling/flanking them, and choking them out - before starting to take them out, to make sure any survivor stragglers cannot run away and hide behind a wall, preventing the mission from finishing with just the same result.

 

This has happened allot more recently due to the influx of new players and therefore inexperienced commanders. All they need is some time and some constructive feedback and they'll improve real fast, just whatever you do don't complain at them, that's how you run out of willing squad/platoon leaders.

 

Yes, not complaining is also my strategy, even though it can mean prolonged suffering, especially few CMD elements favor hindsight sessions and thus practically disable all possible constructive feedback, except from their present players they happen to be in direct contact with.

 

I guess that also explains why we had a lot of fluctuation in SL and CMD, yesterday again, while our team kept quite stable through hours of operation - and yesterday we even weren't on Fallujah. Just the same kind of loser party, this time on Panthera. Hope it made clear the issues are not to be announced with the mission makers and we must improve at other spots. Currently hard to tell for me, where those spots are.. so probably really some kind of task here.

 

And about WP15.. those were indeed the traces of my teamlead keeping us busy with actual reasonable work!

 

Yes, we might have had the micromanaging issue kicking in, only one among other frequently noticed oddities - actually I don't even know, as my teamlead was operating the radio. I guess that 15 also shows part of the issue, that our teamlead had all the hassle with selecting waypoints, and, of course, additionally had all the extra work to do in coordinating those with the other teams.

 

So the number 15 (fifteen) shows exactly what Ryko said.. it was >2.5h and with the loadout and getting to the AO issues.. easily >3h of something I would never want to get into in real life.

 

What freshens up this quite a bit are those players, who actually knew how to play, then join the team for their casual screaming fit, scold teammembers moving a few meters, asking whether they have been ordered to do so, then using their marksman rifles to take out enemies >500m away, getting killed quickly, needing audience for their EU1 style hill camping and then finally (rage?) quitting after a few minutes of bollocks..

 

I came to Arma 3 about a year ago, by some article in a psychological blog, some psychologist discussing whether it rather was a murder simulator or a story generator. She clearly missed that part, when people play it like it was a "jerk" simulator.

 

What Lone's contribution is touching upon is the difficulty of making the game playable and enjoyable in a leader position (team, squad, platoon, ...) for a heterogenous team of inexperienced and experienced players. That does not so much require experience in the game itself or knowledge of the actual missions played, I think, rather some kind of balancing skill between being reserved and directed acting is required, which is - from my perspective - one of the most difficult parts of the game.

[Vlk]

Opinion: as for the clear town mission in fallujah. I think, without any hard evidence backing it up, that if everyone use their eyes and point their weapons ahead Of them, not spending most Of their time looking at eachother, hiding in houses etc, we Could do this mission alot faster. Just yesterday i saw a entire enemy fire team pass outside of the House where entire A1 had a lunch break in. Pretty funny ofc, still stupid and time consuming for everyone involved. Vlk

[Nicolai]

Lol vlk. ++

[Lone]

@Lone - WP15 refers to waypoints I was dropping as fire team lead.  It also indicates how long we spent clearing the AO.

 That's okay then, especially if you put them in group chat, but if a commander goes over 5-6 WP before you even get there that's no good. Personally I enjoy your sessions as a teamlead and strongly recommend you push into squad and even platoon lead more often

[Nicolai]

 That's okay then, especially if you put them in group chat, but if a commander goes over 5-6 WP before you even get there that's no good. Personally I enjoy your sessions as a teamlead and strongly recommend you push into squad and even platoon lead more often

 

Hey Lone, thanks for that comment.

 

I don't understand: "but if a commander goes over 5-6 WP before you even get there that's no good." Can you further elaborate what that means?

 

"That's okay then, especially if you put them in group chat [..]" Here I have a completely different opinion!

 

These waypoints were placed, moved to and cleared on our team's initiative and thus those waypoints were our team's contribution results to the other teams. That is explicitly: marking these waypoints, moving the entire team there, clearing these waypoints, communicating that fact and then moving on to the next waypoint.

 

So, the one and only place for these waypoints to be placed, from my limited perspective, is the side channel and not the group channel. Simply because nobody in the other teams, including SL/CMD, would be able to see them, if they were in the group channel only.

 

Probably due to my limited perspective I do not currently see any valid reason for putting those waypoints in the group channel, especially while we were lacking any other waypoints.

 

?!

[Lone]

Probably due to my limited perspective I do not currently see any valid reason for putting those waypoints in the group channel, especially while we were lacking any other waypoints.

 

?!

 

Hi, The only issue with 15 wp in side is a clutter of the AO on the map, if you where receiving little orders outside of your team-lead and wanted to ensure the rest of the squad knew what you'd done then I agree completely with what your saying BUT idf a commander is on-line and doing their job correctly they should know who's been where and when and therefore the extra clutter just makes their job harder (remember their thinking about terrain, possible hostile forces, where to put who, when to do things so that the force is somewhat unified). All this means that anything on the map that isn't "the plan" or positions of friendly/enemy units is just clutter and something the commander has to wade through to get what they need.

 

In terms of 15 Way-points before you even get there, unless it's a convoy and the way-points are directions they are often used to massively micromanage certain squads. I know this cause I used to do it, ALOT, all the commander is doing is specifying the exact way THEY would approach and expecting the squad and team leaders to conform to that. The best way to approach something is for a commander to specify an "angle" if you will for each squad (that's not each fire team) and let the squad leader work with what they have. This is why I originally shivered at the idea of 15 individual way-points.

[Nicolai]

Hi, The only issue with 15 wp in side is a clutter of the AO on the map, if you where receiving little orders outside of your team-lead and wanted to ensure the rest of the squad knew what you'd done then I agree completely with what your saying BUT idf a commander is on-line and doing their job correctly they should know who's been where and when and therefore the extra clutter just makes their job harder (remember their thinking about terrain, possible hostile forces, where to put who, when to do things so that the force is somewhat unified). All this means that anything on the map that isn't "the plan" or positions of friendly/enemy units is just clutter and something the commander has to wade through to get what they need.

 

In terms of 15 Way-points before you even get there, unless it's a convoy and the way-points are directions they are often used to massively micromanage certain squads. I know this cause I used to do it, ALOT, all the commander is doing is specifying the exact way THEY would approach and expecting the squad and team leaders to conform to that. The best way to approach something is for a commander to specify an "angle" if you will for each squad (that's not each fire team) and let the squad leader work with what they have. This is why I originally shivered at the idea of 15 individual way-points.

 

Understood..

 

That's also what made me shiver, when I looked at the map - and maybe that same shiver is also the reason it got mentioned and debated in this thread here.

 

And yeah, if they did their job, they'd knew and that AO wasn't that large, that 15 WPs would be justifiable or even be reasonable. Your BUT is going well with your IFs.

 

The amount of 15 WP in that mission, its duration and final unsuccessful cancellation - all this might be usable as an indicator how much CMD didn't do its job. But that's too simple of a view from my perspective and I stated before I don't want to whine about any commands our team got. I'm pretty sure there was a CMD, probably even a SL, and I'm pretty sure they did some things.. I don't even dare to ask if these things were the right things or not. From my perspective all the jobs done on that mission were lacking so much in the result, that the only thing we were left to do was what we actually did: making 15 WPs, moving from each one to the next, as already described and finally breaking it off. That shows me how absurdly diverging the activities were with regard to a cooperative mission - if we didn't do it, we could just have disconnected or continued standing around watching the CAS fireworks. And even our 15 WPs didn't help to solve this mission.

 

In case watching the CAS firework is really what it is expected I'd like to ask for announcements, that we know in which direction to look and can make a sandwich break.. or do the laundry..

 

In absence of any orders the more experienced players usually show some sort of self initiative. Might that be already loading a vehicle with ammo for some team like HAT, AAT, MMG to move in as a rolling ammobox.. bringing a Darter into a hold pos at alt 500m around the AO.. getting the whole team on the same frequency, completing the radio check.. getting your team on a secondary radio frequency, all those things you can do, which do not predetermine anything in the AO, which do not make the enemy aware of your presence, can offer an advantage later on in the mission, etc., everything non intrusive, whether you're TL, SL or rifleman, while CMD is still figuring out a plan.

 

What I usually experience is the disregard of any sort of self initiative and also a disrespect and active sabotaging towards the results of such initiatives. For example self proclaimed policing weirdos sabotaging team efforts by shooting your team's darter, because it was against the rules from their understanding, changing the radio frequencies, once the team has completely set and checked it for no reason, telling me it was against the rules to carry an AN/PRC-152, while it isn't, .. and this blabla..

 

Just the same as leaders telling you to move and forgetting to tell you where you should move.. really hilarious sometimes.

 

Overall, when I get the impression the kind of player CMD, SL or TL seems to want is a brainless sluggard, I can assure you that's what you will end up with. And I can assure you at the same time, that this is certainly not what you want to play.

 

On the other hand, the amounts of new players rightfully request more specific orders and feedback, in order to get doing something, to get more experienced and to get feedback if they are doing their job in a good way and where they can improve.

 

This difficulty of balance doesn't make the game unplayable, instead it's the whole challenge in it. It's not so much about which rifle you chose..

 

To me the disrespectful and disregarding behaviour with regard to new and more experienced players alike is exactly that same dicking around, that got mentioned in the rules and threads, just in a different disguise. That's just like educating your child to be a jerk, based on the wrong assumption that in a world like we have a jerk would have it easier to survive.

 

To put another analogy: modern cities are synonyms of junk mixed with disease. Not because all the junk goes to the city, but because the city turns everything that comes to the city into junk.

... http://everythingsaproblem.tumblr.com

[Lone]

Yes although, this is less improving fallujah and more improving team cohesion now

[Nicolai]

Yes, and I give it three problematics:

 

 

My rename suggestion would be "Improving self awareness", if anyone of the people, who most of the statements in here are addressed to, would participate. So far it's rather another one for the archive.

[Lone]

nah m8, I command on occasion, I'm taking this all in, for example I will now, every op give the whole platoon a debrief and an opportunity to poke holes in me and my plan, constructively of course.

[Nicolai]

I have made very good experiences also with something like the following, especially when things got really awry in the field and when it was not possible to settle it there: after the mission I consult specific people I was in contact with in private. Often, delicate issues can better be talked about openly in the privacy between you, me and the gatepost.

 

 

Public humiliation is not the intention, the private atmosphere allows even the most polite person to talk straight out what was perceived as wrong. Also, the conversation does not need to happen on a level that everyone in the teams participating a debrief can follow and understand, which is difficult, especially when they most didn't witness the actual situation and thus can't have anything to contribute to it, except general wisdom. Usually, it has been sufficient to let every party describe the personal, subjectively perceived situation to the other party or parties involved, to ease up tensions built up on a failed mission.

 

Of course, it happens too, that people aren't really interested in playing the game cooperatively, so the debrief or private consultation becomes a farce. For some good reason, these are the rare cases, where nothing will help and a foobar situation is the best that can reasonably be expected.

 

I remember the sessions I had with you to be reasonable, no matter what role you've played. Thanks for these, here!

[Josh]

Okay so what can i add to this:

 

• Arma is arma remember that.
• I've sat and watched units move a lot in Zeus and free cam on Eu#3 you will not believe the amount of times a squad, two squads have walked STRAIGHT past enemy units in buildings/compounds etc.
• AI do spawn in not enter able buildings/under floors. Sadly this is the mod not us. It also is rare. I can guarantee you 75% of the time the AI have either gone slightly a drift or are there somewhere, chilling next to a fence.
• On the note of Squad leaders/Command/Fire team leads. Sadly this is upto the person themselves. If you see someone micro managing a squad or such just ask them to stop and let the leader do his thing. It's all about teamwork and working together. 

I didn't read all of the Nicolai vs Lone thing because tbh it wasn't to do with me.

[Nicolai]

About the tl;dr: there wasn't anything in that, that's new to you or that I haven't learnt from you. Cheers.