[Tue] 05 March 2013 (It's my first time be gentle)

[SuperU]

Missions:

• Roadside II
• Crateistance
• Unnecessary Violence
• Colonels

My first time hosting thanks for being patient with me! Hope you all had fun!

I had two near misses with vehicles but I was awesome and dodged them!

Thanks!

[tryteyker]

Roadside II

Charlie Squad Lead

Oh yay first time CSL. So me being me I screw up at the beginning and make a huge plan for Charlie 3 scout for us. I didn't even have Charlie 3
Anyhow, I managed to spread C2 and C1 out evenly with C2 starting to take some casualties, so my plan was for C1 to provide suppressive fire whilst C2 moves (crawls) back. Sadly, C1 seems to have died pretty quickly from hilltop fire , so I only had C2 left and we camped the compound.
After some time, I spot friendlies aiming at our direction (SUPERUUUUU) from the hill. Shortly after we took fire, presumably from the guys from the hills. I evacuate the compound, C2 took casualties. And the mission ended. So atleast some of us survived.

Crateistance

Bravo Fireteam Leader

This was an interesting mission, as we had no SLs here at all and we moved in one big blob. My things started to go downhill here because I was extremely unresponsive to Command etc
So we move out to the first cache, and Echo suicide charges in there. Everybody else stays back and provides support, and we were mostly busy with contact from the southwest.
Since the majority of Echo died and Zergra had to go he did a glorious suicide charge to place a satchel and blew himself up. oh well.
The rest of the caches was easy, and we (bravo) didn't take any casualties at all. At the end, we had a suicide charge, BUT I DIDN'T CHARGE. Well mostly because we were spotting EI around the cache and I didn't want us to die before we reached the cache (even tho anvil had a satchel).

Unnecessary Violence

Alpha Squad Lead

Only leadership roles this session
So awaitz (my trust medic from Roadside II) was back with me in Alpha. Sadly things did not go as planned, and it took me lots of time to decide between M113 and Ural. We had talks in TS of UAZs not being able to cross but I didn't pay attention because we had no UAZs. WELL WRONG, WE TALKED ABOUT URALS. Sadly Alpha 2 was screwed and had to swim over whilst Alpha 1 was in the M113. We could have put both Fireteams in the M113 but I didn't know that, never been driving these things.
My game started to lag a bit as we moved forward (Alpha was apparently supposed to lead but we were behind Charlie and only Alpha 2 was at the top haha), but it was mostly fine. As we reached staging markers I organized A1 and A2 to be at the top of the formation (by now our M113 was destroyed, but the crew survived somehow), and A1 wisely moved to a vantage point to cover A2 as they moved towards bounding markers. Although we had problems with identifying a tree (argh the goddamn treeeeee) it was mostly fine.
So Alpha reached the lonely house and Alpha 1 was apparently pinging me all the way about bunkers & fortifications, but I thought that they said that over CC
so they all died in a suicide charge (even before it got called because I told both to advance). Me too, and afterwards I had to go.

[Anvilfolk]

Roadside II
Bravo 2 FTL, with Dan, Issus, Zitron

We were ordered to stay inside two different buildings, so we did. At some point we got shot from the north, with two of us wounded, so we consolidated the squad. We also peeked from the top of the building, I shot one guy down, directed Dan's fire for a bit, then back into the building. Then the mission ended.

Crateistance
Bravo AAR, with tryteyker (FTL), INinja32 (AR) and Universal (AT)

Props to killa's blob tactics! I found it worked pretty well, again with having to use limited comms and be concise (since everyone was in the same channel). Killa also kept us moving all the time, generally totally on top of the situation. Very, very nice! Like tryteyker said, Bravo was behind the main lines most of the time, though we did provide a few distractions and occasional BOF. Not much action.

Unnecessary Violence
Alpha 1 FTL, with audiox, IceRaiser and Aqarius

This mission did not work out at all, I'm afraid. My recording says that it took 30m for me to die, which happened halfway to Zargabad. All in all, it ended up being very boring. I'm going to be a little more openly critical, though in a constructive light, as usual, so that we can try to avoid similar experiences. It'll still be written as an AAR, which should make clear what I feel went wrong and where.

First off, the CO's plan: It was the long way around to Zargabad, but I've heard tales of horror from the straight road in, so I don't feel there's anything wrong with trying it. However, if the road is longer, we must go faster for it to take a reasonable amount of time. And this leads me to what I think was the main problem. Squads weren't pushing at all.

As Alpha 1, we were being micromanaged in ways that made it impossible to get to the best defensive or offensive positions ("stay on the left side of the road, next to the other M113, a little bit forward, a little bit backward", etc). Besides the micromanaging occurring at squad-level, our orders were mostly about staying put. Looking at the map, I think the same was true for most other squads. Two things might've been happening here:

• (1) The CO wasn't aware of this and/or failed to make clear what elements were to be bounding, and what elements were to be providing BOF (and from where!). Again, there was no attempt to flank or get to high ground. Bodge (I think) has a very telling screenshot of 4+ FTs all bunched together, for instance.
  
  (2) If the CO made it clear who was to be doing what, the SL's weren't proactive enough in accomplishing their objectives.

I wasn't on CC, so I don't know what happened, but it seems probable it was one of the two above.

We were being held up by FT-sized infantry for 10m at a time, I don't think contact reports were making it up the chain of command, and it didn't seem like anyone was being allocated to deal with them. We eventually lost Alpha 1's M113 to rocket fire, but fortunately all of the crew made it out alive. Without a toy to be ordered around, this gave us a little more freedom.

I'm again going to be fairly open at this point, but please take it as one POV to be used constructively. By this point both my fireteam and I were getting very bored of sitting around. Without orders to that effect, I decided to flank left. There were some hills overlooking the north, the dam and the little hamlet, with a small valley just west of it into which we could dive into cover easily if fired upon. I took Alpha 1 there. I spotted some infantry and a technical (which I think had been destroying our M113's), so I got my AR on it while I spotted. It was down within 2m of us deciding to "break the shield wall" and flanking. I also had one of my FT members almost inside town by now, and we heard to orders to move up slowly to a point still far south of town, despite the way being clear. Anyway, we eventually made it into the little hamlet.

At this point I spot some bunkers with static emplacements further north, and call them out. The orders that came back were to move up to the treeline on the road. The trees were thin and the only hard cover I found was a low, broken up wall, so I tried to get there. I get shot on my way, though a brave FT member came to heal me (thanks!). I get killed on my run back.

I headed off for dinner after this, but honestly I wasn't really feeling like watching anymore of it It's normal for one squad to have orders that, for one reason or another, don't give them much to shoot at. I feel this was different though, with the entire platoon grinding to a halt at the slightest contact and so forth.

Remember: a lot of people are relying on the leadership positions for having fun in these sessions. That's a lot of responsibility, and it's also the reason I haven't tried out SLing yet (even though I'd really like to try at some point). The approach I'm taking is to play as a grunt often until I find good FTLs, and I try to learn from the way they handle things. I've started trying FTL positions whenever they take longer to slot, and now I hope to slowly build up to SLing (by learning from the pros!).

You can also choose Alpha/Bravo/etc 1 FTL so that if the SL dies (friendly fire? ) then you get whatever is left of the squad




Sorry for the long-winded AAR! And take all of this with a grain of salt... I'm Portuguese, complaining is in my genes

[tired hippo]

SuperU's near miss with the tank was the highlight for me

[Dogface]

Yeah, UNnecessary violence was definitely a bit of a failure. I was the COM so I take responsibility for that. I wasn't in the best of moods last night and could have made my plan clearer, laid down more markers to show the formation I was going for, walked over to people who weren't in the position I was looking for, made a better plan in the first place, etc.

In my defense, I did lay out what I wanted in CC, which was a convoy of armour along the road with troops shadowing along next to it so they could use it as rolling cover. I specified an order and spent quite a bit of time repeating it, but I never had more than 2 M113's in one place, the BMP was bouncing all over the shop shooting at things, and all attempts at coordinated movement instantly disintegrated. I know there's lots of tempting targets and destinations when you're in armour, but I could have at least had a go at getting my plan rolling smoothly if people had actually moved where I asked at the beginning.. <:)

Anyway, everyone ended out spreading out loosely on the left of the road -- in front of a huge open plain -- but by this point people were getting frustrated so I just went with it and let people advance. When we encountered an SPG and other stuff at the dam at long range, things ground to a halt again as we had no real way to hit it or to advance, until we closed in next to the river to bound in with close armour support. This is why I was trying to achieve that effect at the beginning! The high ground was no less exposed, as Charlie learned when they tried to advance into it and lost their 113, so again, I saw sticking close to the road and river as the best bet.

In retrospect, crossing the river didn't end up giving much opportunity for the platoon to move very effectively. On the other hand due to the nature of the map, having looked at the layout of enemy units in spectator, there wasn't really any way to avoid a drawn out slugfest whichever route we chose, and I didn't want to take the road through Yarum as we'd already done a mission clearing that route the other week.

Anyway, lessons learned, I shall be more definitive in laying out a formation next time, or be quicker to change up my plan when it's clear it isn't working for people. Apologies that this was a frustrating and quaggy mission. I think I might take a bit of a break from comming until my head's in a better place.

[tryteyker]

I definitely felt that Unnecessary violence was going badly for Alpha. I tried to comply with Commands orders but it did end up in micromanaging, sadly. I kind of felt out of control at the end so I just left it to A1 and A2's FTLs to do their thing (when we reached the bunkers). I also apologize for not putting up things up the chain of command because I thought you were doing this via CC. Even though it was my second time as SL I should've done better really.

[Anvilfolk]

Well, one mission that goes a bit slower isn't the end of the world! As I said, I'm Portuguese, so complaining is a way of life As long as lessons are learned, I'm sure everyone's up for round 2

After your feedback, it kind of feels like CO's and SL's should simply complement each other? If the CO is letting SLs roll, then SLs should take initiative and start manoeuvres without explicit orders to that effect. Similarly, if the SL's seem to be waiting for specific orders, perhaps the CO can go ahead and micro them a little more.

Also, I've seen markers being used sometimes for platoon-wide notes, and I think it worked really well. Somewhere out of the AO, one can plop down markers with, for instance, the order of a convoy. Rough sketch below:



This way anyone can quickly check the map to figure out where they are supposed to go! This can also be used as a reminder of who is a bounding element and who is a BOF element. For instance, we could have a marker stating: "Bounding elements: alpha & bravo" and another below with "Base of fire elements: charlie & IFV", or something like this?

This should help with making the marching order "stick" after it's been given in briefing. After all, it's hard to remember the entire plan for the whole mission

[Dogface]

All good points! Markers like that would have helped a lot, for sure.

[Ferrard Carson]

Comrades! Whilst we are talking about who did what correctly or not, please keep in mind that we are all friends here, everyone has off-days, squads work best when fire-teams do the squad leader's will, platoons work best when squads do the commander's will, and the perspective of a dude-with-a-gun is often times much different from that of a dude-with-a-radio.

Also, while we're at it, welcome to the (red) chains of command, new comrade squad and platoon leaders! If you haven't already, please turn your attention here and here to find the official party suggestions / ruminations on how best to lead squads and platoons respectively!

~ Ferrard

[Terminal Boy]

Dear comrade COs, SLs and FTLs.

Please don't be afraid to shout "Terminal: Go there and do this!" commands at me.

Failure to do so usually results in my having a blinding rush of ill-considered initiative in my brainpan followed by a "Hold my Party approved vodka and watch this!" moment.

Such moments currently have a 100% fatality rate.