AWE Training Sessions

[SkullCollector]

Hello lovely people,

 

as some feedback in the past has shown, a number of players would appreciate a regular tour of training for beginners and intermediate players alike. @GhostDragon, @Amentes and I agree and have communicated to @Ryko and the Committee our plans to run training sessions as regularly as possible. This has been in the works for a few weeks months and with this I'd like to show what we've got in store for you.

 

Schedule

To accommodate as many players as we can, we've settled on a weekly rotation with two sessions of the same type per week. We have yet to determine ideal times, but as an example, the primary session might happen on Saturdays with their rerun on the Wednesday after.

 

Content

We see the need to cover a lot of topics, but at the same time we don't want to require anyone to attend every single session to stay on the ball. To this end a training night will be more like a workshop you can choose to join if you're interested in the topics it handles. This is a basic write-up of what we had in mind for each:

 

Spoiler

EU#3 101 - Basic Introduction

• TFAR - essentials and basic protocol
• ACE - essentials of use, basic medical, team management
• Map & cTab - essentials of use, grids, markers - microDAGR and how cTab complements the vanilla map
• Fire Control & RoE - when to shoot, getting permission and essentials of weapon control

EU#3 102 - Advanced Introduction

• TFAR - personal radio use (152 introduction)
• cTab - intro to the Android device
• ACE - explosives and additional equipment
• Fireteam Composition - role specialisation
• AT4 / M72 - ranging, targeting, fire protocol
• Optics - advantages and disadvantages, when to bring which
• Buddy teams - intro to battle buddies

EU#3 103 - Fireteam Tactics

• Buddy teams+ - buddy responsibilities, cooperation, reliance, security
• Firing drills - fire & manoeuvre, moving around friendlies, base of fire & suppression, bounding
• MOUT Intro - first CQB lesson, house clearing -- enhance fireteam cohesion

EU#3 104+ - undecided, will complement as necessary - may include marksman workshop, MAT/HAT, MMG, etc.

EU#3 110 - Combat Medic aka the extra mile for everyone

• Medical procedure - patient priority, wound priority, assertiveness
• Patient vitals
• Advanced medical - in-depth on bandages, drugs, adv. treatments, etc.

EU#3 111 - Fireteam Leadership

• Fireteam Composition+ - in-depth on use of specialist roles
• Essentials of leadership
  • Leadership - essential protocol and leading by example
  • Awareness - team supervision, terrain utilisation
  • Tactics - formations+, bounding+, security
  • Communication
• Buddy Teams++
• Example phrases - the verbal toolkit for every aspiring leader
• Leadership Etiquette
• possible refresher on MOUT / CQB if attendance is high enough (aka the fun part)

EU#3 112 - Squad Leadership

• Intro to strategic thinking
• Squad cohesion
• Element coordination, joint-unit operation
• Squad formations
• additional firing drills

 

There are many more to come. Our plans include use of support and specialist teams, a look at high command and a number of scenarios to drill CQB, house clearing and other high-risk manoeuvres in particular.

 

Each session and its topics will be complemented by a custom mission with various hooks and techniques to put what you learn into practice right away. To keep everyone entertained and engaged, there will be various Q&As after each lecturing bit and everyone will have a role to play aside from impressing everyone with their AT4 skills at the range.

 

Any questions and suggestions are welcome, just post them here.

 

Cheers.

[Colsta]

Regardless of your experience on EU#3 AWE, I'd recommending attending even the most basic training sessions. You might learn something you didn't know about. Having an attitude of "I know all these things" or even "I don't need training" is something I feel goes against the spirit of EU#3 AWE.

[Grezvany13]

@SkullCollector (and the rest) good to see those sessions happening, because I know how important it is to have some training for both new and old players.

 

Although I have 2 (minor) issues / feedback point:

 

1) As @Colsta mentions, it's important to participate, even when you're already a veteran. Not only to get a refreshment for yourself, but also to help the newer players with some tips&tricks which aren't pointed out during the training. However, to use myself as an example, I already know all the basics (and more) with exception of TFAR (I'm used to ACRE, so shouldn't be too hard to adept) and cTab (never used it, but my map also works). So spending 3 evenings of training for something I can probably learn in 10-15 minutes myself is a bit of an overkill. And in the end it's more important to keep doing it while playing (repetition) than only doing it once a year.

 

2) The time issue brings me to my second point, time

I know it's impossible to find a perfect date/time for everyone and even when you do plan it twice or three times a week, people will still complain that they can't join. Besides that, it's rather hard for people to be forced to stay online for a fixed amount of time. For me for example it's the reason why I barely play ArmA3 anymore, simply because I don't have the time to play for at least 1-2 hours straight (family and stuff). Of course in the evening hours it's easier, so times like 1630 GMT (which for me is 1730 GMT+1) is just around dinner and thus impossible to go online.

Again, I know it's impossible to keep everyone happy, but perhaps it's "best" to have 2 sessions on one day, so people from different timezones can join easier.

 

 

Please note that this is feedback and just issues which I have/see, and in no way to attack this great idea!

[GhostDragon]

you raise a good point in regards to timings and we also understand that not everyone will be able to attend the sessions and we are open to different ways in which we can make the sessions more accessible to different people. This is an area that i am going to be investing a fair bit of time in the upcoming weeks. 

 

We agree that not every session will be for everyone and this is why we are likely to adapt these sessions to improve the experience for all. The first few sessions will be slower and are the first times that they will have been tried out so we ask that you bare with us and offer feedback where possible. 

 

We feel that at first we will run the first session a few times to iron out any issues that might be present within our delivery and to set a baseline so that we can have a level of expectation of the players as we go into the more advanced areas of the training session. 

[JaSmAn]

Hi,

Are these sessions still being run? Want to get into AWE and this would be perfect for me!

 

[BenjaminHL]

@s4I not in charge of these but it has been announced that more will be coming very soon. Also upcoming tank training will be coming up before OP- Desert Storm.

 

-Ben 

[GhostDragon]

Indeed these sessions are going to resume and you can expect to see more news regarding this within the next week or 2

[Colsta]

For anyone who's wondering, you sign up here for the first session.

 

[Einarsen]

Quick question, is this still ongoing? Can't seem to find any newer threads than the one mentioned above.

[Karate Pyjamas]

Shoot me up if you want to learn anything specific this weekend, we can always take one apart for a few minutes to teach stuff.

[GhostDragon]

Otherwise the sessions should be running again soon

[Ryko]

I think part of the problem is that the last training session we ran was not well-attended by new players, and existing players who elected to participate didn't take it seriously enough that we could even archive the session and use the video for training purposes.  It was a bit demoralizing. Perhaps new players need to make their voices heard so that we can get at least a fire team (4-5 new players) online at the same time to make it worthwhile?

 

- R

[Stanhope]

I'll happily attend some training sessions.  I might not be new to AW but i'm most definitely new to AWE.

[BenjaminHL]

@Ryko So one of the problems I kinda knew would happen and one of the reasons I didn't come to the first session was that I knew moderately new players would be the ones come and not the ones that needed it. This is because they have the confidence to come whereas the newer players think they will make themselves look stupid. Subsequently the moderately new players and others kinda took advantage and with an 'I know it all attitude' took everything off track. 

 

My suggestion and what I think is the much better way of doing things is to do specialized training programs like @Cryo and I did while back, and instead of having these sessions just encourage a better role model systems on the server (easier said than done). A good way of doing this might be to better point out mods and vets alike in game and on TS. Also maybe point out newer players so that more experienced ones can help. A good way of doing this might be to have banners with some really simple instructions for new players about how to reach more expirienced ones in base, and then having something like the recording tag someone could easily apply to themselves in TS. Something very similar to the how to join TS banners on EU1 and EU2.

 

Just a couple thoughts on how we could do things better and different than the lack luster training sessions of late.

 

-Ben 

[Lost Bullet]

28 minutes ago, Ryko said:

I think part of the problem is that the last training session we ran was not well-attended by new players, and existing players who elected to participate didn't take it seriously enough that we could even archive the session and use the video for training purposes.  It was a bit demoralizing. Perhaps new players need to make their voices heard so that we can get at least a fire team (4-5 new players) online at the same time to make it worthwhile?

 

- R

 

There's not much we can do about new players attendance aside from what we are doing (promoting the training session in forum and in game), on the other hand we can do much about what went wrong with people online:

• All players spawn in a a closed area
• Only after verbal confirmation that they are there to shut up and listen, they are teleported to the designated area
• On transgression, teleported back to the closed/spawn area

[GhostDragon]

the point ryko makes is a good one and we have discussed this and it will change for future sessions, we are working on ensuring that all players have a good experience with training and that the players that have had previous experiance are adviced to look at what the training offers and see if it is needed to further their experiance on server. 

[JaSmAn]

I was one of the new players that really wanted to join this training and unfortunately I ran into issues logging in (Session Lost error repeatedly). I think this may turn off some new players, and I know this is being dealt with in other forums, so not a topic for here, but I think it did affect the turn out.

 

Another idea is maybe to get players a small briefing document or basic instructions ahead of the training session. When I did manage to log in, and not having been on the AWE server before, I really wasn't sure where to go or what to do. Unfortunately I got disconnected soon after, but I can imagine that I would not have known where to go.

 

This comment applies to the AWE server in general as well. Some may have noted that I ask a lot of questions about protocol. How do I contact my squad lead? How do I join a team? How do I get a lift? Etc. As a new player, these things aren't clear. I've always received the answers from players, but I think a quickie guide to protocol for noobs might be useful.

 

I was thinking that, if it helps, I could write down a bunch of questions that maybe then get answered by more experienced guys and gets pinned in the forum. 

 

One more suggestion is to make sure the Calendar section of the Forum is updated and accurate. It is currently highlighting past events and I don't think the training event was showing up in the calendar.

[GhostDragon]

4 minutes ago, JaSmAn said:

I was one of the new players that really wanted to join this training and unfortunately I ran into issues logging in (Session Lost error repeatedly). I think this may turn off some new players, and I know this is being dealt with in other forums, so not a topic for here, but I think it did affect the turn out.

 

Another idea is maybe to get players a small briefing document or basic instructions ahead of the training session. When I did manage to log in, and not having been on the AWE server before, I really wasn't sure where to go or what to do. Unfortunately I got disconnected soon after, but I can imagine that I would not have known where to go.

 

This comment applies to the AWE server in general as well. Some may have noted that I ask a lot of questions about protocol. How do I contact my squad lead? How do I join a team? How do I get a lift? Etc. As a new player, these things aren't clear. I've always received the answers from players, but I think a quickie guide to protocol for noobs might be useful.

 

I was thinking that, if it helps, I could write down a bunch of questions that maybe then get answered by more experienced guys and gets pinned in the forum. 

 

there is a guides section within the forum where a lot of the basic questions are answered and the session lost issue should be resolved now from what i remember. 

when you spawn into the training mission there should be someone there waiting to give you a quick brief before letting you know where the main teachings are currently happening. 

[Colsta]

Just now, Ryko said:

Perhaps new players need to make their voices heard

 

And old players needs to grow the hell up.

 

That behavior will not stand in the next session, at all. Consider this your first warning if you intend on attending the sessions just to mess around.

[JaSmAn]

2 minutes ago, GhostDragon said:

there is a guides section within the forum where a lot of the basic questions are answered and the session lost issue should be resolved now from what i remember. 

when you spawn into the training mission there should be someone there waiting to give you a quick brief before letting you know where the main teachings are currently happening. 

@GhostDragon I had a full read of all the guides and they were excellent and very useful. I just don't think they provide all the information you need when you are new.

 

 

[oberKGBler]

My cousin and I are new to Arma and realy like your server. I was quite disapointed that there are no more trainings and would be very interested in joining one. 

While written guides are good, a training session is simply better, the more so if you are a firsttimer on a server.  ...My 2 cent

[Ryko]

I think in the future we had discussed using EU6 as a training server and thus Gauntlet could continue to run on EU3 (aka AWE).

[JaSmAn]

Just as an example, as a newbie, I don't really understand the differences between all the servers. I know EU1 and 2 are IA, EU3 is AWE, which is "Advanced", but I played on EU6 the other day and that was more advanced than AWE b/c it was 1st person only and used the Alive mod, which I had no experience with.

 

Some clarity on the servers would also help. Apologies if I missed this in the forums somewhere. Been trying to climb the learning curve as quickly as possible.

[S0zi0p4th]

3 minutes ago, JaSmAn said:

Just as an example, as a newbie, I don't really understand the differences between all the servers. I know EU1 and 2 are IA, EU3 is AWE, which is "Advanced", but I played on EU6 the other day and that was more advanced than AWE b/c it was 1st person only and used the Alive mod, which I had no experience with.

 

Some clarity on the servers would also help. Apologies if I missed this in the forums somewhere. Been trying to climb the learning curve as quickly as possible.

Like you say 

 

EU#1 is I&A on altis

EU#2 is I&A on Tanoa

EU#3/AWE is our Heavly moddes server 

EU#4 is a community server means we use it if people request a vanila gamenight or for testing 

EU#5 used to be our PVP server currenlty not used 

EU#6 is our second modded server wich only gets online when used and mods may change so do dificulty setting's 

EU#9 is our modded Test server

[Colsta]

4 hours ago, BenjaminHL said:

Subsequently the moderately new players and others kinda took advantage and with an 'I know it all attitude' took everything off track.

 

As a side note, this is not what happened at all. People know who they are, and how they behaved.