[AWE] 103 Fireteam Tactics -- 1/6/17

[SkullCollector]

Date: Thursday, 1 June 2017

Event Time: 1830 UTC (see what time that is for you!)

 

Sign-up: https://goo.gl/forms/N6byK5FtwUQwFUzp2

 

Description: A hands-on session for interested players of all skill levels to learn the fundamentals of fireteam tactics and unit cohesion.

 

103 Fireteam Tactics

• Buddy teams revisited
  • cooperation, reliance, security
• Firing drills
  • firing from a stationary position
  • moving around friendlies
  • shooting and moving
  • base of fire, suppression, bounding
• MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain)
  • approaching an urban environment
  • CQB
  • house clearing

 

All of these topics are inherently practical. To this end, this session will operate more like a staged scenario based on dynamic exercises with brief pauses for showcasing and questions.

 

---

 

We've finally departed from our theory-heavy lectures and arrived at fireteam-level practical courses. From here on, we will further your knowledge of procedures and equipment across all elements, moving up the ranks all the way to PltCo - eventually.

Stay tuned for next session's mystery content. It may save lives.

 

Cheers

The Training Team

[SkullCollector]

Here's a quick push to remind everyone that there's a training session scheduled for this evening, 1830 UTC / 1930 BST / 2030 CEST.

 

We'd love to see you all attend. There should be something to take home for everyone, at the very least you'll get to play a custom town-clearing scenario!

[Stuart.G]

Super excited! Town Clearing sounds awesome! Cant wait to fresh up my Infantry 101.

[Lindi]

Was a very informative evening, shame I had to leave early. Hope I didn't miss out on much. 

[SkullCollector]

5 hours ago, Lindi said:

Was a very informative evening, shame I had to leave early. Hope I didn't miss out on much. 

 

You left just before we called it a day and we went on to a round of comments and criticism. So you didn't miss any training, and here's your chance to give us some feedback regardless.

 

If anyone has some form of comment or concern, do feel free to bring it up! We're looking for feedback and ways to improve in all aspects of the training, so speak up!

Thanks for attending, everyone. Hope to see you all next time around.

[Noah_Hero]

7 minutes ago, SkullCollector said:

here's your chance to give us some feedback

As Lost said it was very long and if it were shorter maybe a few more people would've stayed.  

To solve this I would recommend to separate the fireteams directly from the start on to decrease waiting times. For that I would probably do the bounding demonstration first (at the base airfield for example) and then teleport each team to a different location together with one supervisor where everything else goes as in this training but just without having to wait for other teams and with always having a supervisor looking only at one team so that even better/more precise feedback can be given.  Also the part at the end could be a bit shorter (even though it was basically nice) because at some point it just becomes a bit annoying when you are clearing like 30 buildings. So I would probably recommend for this to set every team in a different smaller town/village with a reasonable amount of houses, enemys and IEDs so that it doesn't becomes annoying and the supervisor again can give more precise feedback even on individual persons.

But overall I enjoyed the training and hope my feedback helps you.

 

 

best regards

Noah  

[JaSmAn]

It was an informative session. I am sad I had to leave early but it was getting late.

 

Some comments:

 

1) One general comment about all the training sessions I've attended (about 3 now) - can't help but feel that they are quite improvised and not very scripted. The guys running them really do a good job once there, but maybe put more time into the script, objectives, etc. We should not try to bite off more than we can chew by trying to fit too much into each session because it then drags on, people start leaving, etc.

 

2) Don't let people decide when they think they've done enough of something. At one point you asked "would you like to go on to shooting?" Like anyone will say no!  But we'd never had a chance to practice bounding more than once. If we don't know formations and how to bound, we don't know the absolute basics of infantry movement! I know people get bored, but if they want to get on to shooting they should shut up, stop f'ing about, listen, get the task done, and then we can move on.

 

3) We spend too much time setting up. This is always the case, but I think we could improve this by giving instructions either in the forum or in the mission description ahead of time. For example, "as soon as you join, grab a your basic rifle loadout, include smoke grenades, and then form yourself in your teams in an orderly fashion. Team Leads get one HMVEE per team." 

 

4) I agree with Noah's suggestion that breaking into smaller groups would have been better. That way each group gets a chance to do more practice without having to wait for others. It also would be good to make sure that you are balancing the groups with people who have done it before or know what we are talking about with groups who have absolutely no experience, that way everyone learns together. 

 

Please don't interpret as gripes. It was a good session, thanks for running it.

[Stanhope]

Overall i feel like most of us walked away having learned something new, so that's definitely a good thing.  However i do have a few points of criticism here:

 

First of, i feel like there was too much planned meaning that we couldn't go into detail on everything.  I'd have made the CQB stuff a separate training all together so the firing and moving could have been practiced a bit more.  And that we could have seen multiple techniques on clearing houses instead of just one. 

 

For the firing and moving i think it would have been useful to have a range set up with pop-up targets to really practice the shooting while moving.  At that same range we could have practiced the moving around friendlies and with some minor adjustments the bounding might have also worked.  After that we could have moved on to a live firing exercise specifically designed for bounding, instead of doing it into a town while it wasn't really needed.

What i was personally also hoping for was an exercise on peeling.

Don't get me wrong i feel like the bounding was explained really good, but it was still more talking than doing.  And like noah, i feel like this could be partially solved by splitting the group up.  

 

For the CQB part, the method that was explained will, without a doubt, work in many situations.  But every method has it limitations and places where it really excels.  I have the feeling that if it was put in a separate training we would have the time to go over multiple ways of breaching and clearing (i mean sometimes it is sensible to go in through a window), explaining the positives and negatives of those methods. 

 

As i said at the start: i feel like i, and most other people, walked away having learned something new so it was certainly a good training.

This is just my personal 2 cents.

[Lost Bullet]

It was indeed a good session but I also have some remarks:

 

It took too long: Training went for almost 3H if you count from mission load and when it ended, I think that could be indeed shorten up not by splitting the training but by:

 

1) Quicker setup, we spent easily more than 30min to setup the teams. that could have been done in the lobby by assigning directly people to roles (you know the players and know who should go into each slot for any given training)

2) For this particular kind of session splitting into 2 "squads" where one would go do pure bounding (like the demonstration we saw) and others CQB. Then they would rotate

3) Smaller CQB (as suggested by Noah): make it a one street only with enemies on both sides on buildings; clear and repeat if necessary;
4) Jasman has a good point: Scripting is definitely the way to go, if the ones giving the training know exactly where and what to do next then there wont be any downtime (briefing and QA is not downtime)

Thanks for the session, it was great

[SkullCollector]

All right, thanks a lot for your responses!

What I've taken away so far, including my own observations from last night:

 

1. Streamline the process more. Prep as many things as we can while we can. I've personally taken note of having to take more notes beforehand; that'll help improve structure and thus cut down on time wasted.
2. Agree on a method and convention and stick with it. That will avoid arguments in front of the trainees as seen yesterday, aiding no one but just confuse the hell out of everyone in earshot. (If you're attending the training, please avoid barging into the lesson, too! Join the team if you want to teach.)
3. Smaller bites! Split up content into more intricate but digestible showcasing pieces to follow through with the trainees afterwards. Will again cut down on length, avoid confusion and crucially help the training team observe and correct individuals more closely, reliably.
4. More hands-on parts. The firing drills were entirely winged due to the lack of prep, turning it into a talking head show. I could mentally picture the yawns.
5. Pre-brief the server. Establish an etiquette so everyone knows what to do upon spawning.

 

As for the setup of fireteam tactics, we're most likely going to split it up into two separate sessions. 103, as run yesterday, will establish the method of working as a fireteam, show and tell about tactics, formations and have a piece about house clearing that's more prepared -- in a compound with multiple identical buildings, all ready to go, run simultaneously. It'll have proper bounding and nothing make-shift (oh god I'm still sorry about it). It worked, but it could work far better.

The next session, 104, will then cover more detailed aspects of CQB and include a live fire exercise as intended for the end of 103. Go over the basics as a refresher, bring up more stuff that's yet to be decided, then literally go to town.

Target duration for both will be an hour to 90 minutes, hopefully furthering player retention.

 

We're also discussing the possibility of equalising lobby slots. Dedicated trainer roles, the rest will be groups of trainees with identical loadouts. Spawn arsenals and crates (or use loadout scripts) as required for the exercise.

 

Cheers again! Keep it up.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, SkullCollector said:

I've personally taken note of having to take more notes beforehand

Good to see you have taken note of taking notes  

Hopefully there will be more to come!

Don't worry about it, you haven't ran many training exercises, you aren't expected to do them perfectly first time you know