Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

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Ferrard Carson
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Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by Ferrard Carson »

This is more of a "What if?" thread than anything else. Theory-crafting from me just to prove that I have way too much free time every now and again. Nonetheless, this was interesting enough during Rebound that I feel it was worth discussing:

What if we replace the four Two-man MG and AT elements with two or more Three-man "Hybrid" Support elements?

During Rebound, our support section was comprised of 6 dudes organized into three teams of 2 according to the 2.6.1 loadout as follows:
  • 1x MMG team (M240 Gunner and ammo-man / spotter)
  • 1x HMG team (M2 mini-tripod gunner and tripod-man / spotter)
  • 1x MAT team (MAAWS gunner and ammo-man / spotter)
Our numbers were halved within the first fifteen minutes of the game due to the general lack of cover on the hills combined with our "knife-fight" engagement range enforced by the fog. What we were doing on the open high-ground is actually proper Crew-Served-Weapons doctrine in Afghanistan... when there are clear conditions, something I had forgotten. So, when we first lit up Shukurkalay from the northern hills, our fire was effective, but so was the enemy's response. MMG team was wiped out, Rawrnix my HMG gunner got shot and bled out before we could revive him, and when I manned the gun in his stead, I got shot too along with one of the dudes from MAT.

After this, I took over as HMG gunner, and Black Mamba picked up one half of my gun and became HMG's tripod-man as well as MAT's ammo-man / spotter, and here's where it gets interesting.

Our depleted support squad operated all down the valley, finding firing positions both good and bad. The main difficulty of being an HMG gunner is that in order to have an effective field of fire, your gun has to be horrendously exposed - part of the reason that Soviet, NATO, and Mujahideen CSW doctrine in Afghanistan was to mount it on a hill a mile away, and use it from such range that the enemy simply could not respond. Here, in the Shukurkalay / Chaman valley, we had no such distances to work with, so I settled for daring instead. We found a pretty good rhythm: I'd find a decent spot, Black Mamba would dump the tripod where I was standing, I'd set up my gun, and then he would provide security and help Strang the MAT gunner find decent targets. Having finally discovered after half-a-year of ArmA-ing that you could sight in on the M2, I was mowing dudes down pretty well.

Simply put though, it's fairly rare that both AT and MG are firing at the same time. The targets you'd save MAT / HAT for (mainly just tanks) can't really be harmed by an MMG / HMG, and the targets you'd engage with an MG are usually a waste of MAT ammo, to say nothing of HAT, meaning that at any one time, the spotter / ammo-man / tripod man only needs to spot for one gunner at a time.

So my thought experiment is this:
3-man MG / AT hybrid support team. Whether this is MMG / MAT or HMG / HAT or any other combination thereof smooshed together would depend on the mission, I suppose. A hard and fast rule would have to be that there can only be one mounted gun in this setup - obviously with three people, you can't carry four CSW components. Examples of potential mixtures would be:
US Army:
  • Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, M16A4, ammo, smoke grenade, 3 mags M240, tripod bag)
    Support 1 MG - M240 Gunner (M240, ammo, smoke grenades, M9, pistol mags)
    Support 1 AT - TOW Gunner (M4A1_AIM, ammo, smoke grenades, TOW bag)
TK Army:
  • Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, AKS-74 Kobra, ammo, smoke grenades, 3 mags PKM, tripod bag)
    Support 1 MG - PKM Gunner (PKM, ammo, smoke grenades, Makarov, pistol mags)
    Support 1 AT - SPG Gunner (AKS-74 Kobra, ammo, smoke grenades, SPG Bag)
UNFORT:
  • Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, M16A2, ammo, smoke grenade, 1 MAAWS rocket, backpack {2 MAAWS rockets, 3 mags M60})
    Support 1 MG - M60 Gunner (M60, ammo, smoke grenades, M1911, pistol mags)
    Support 1 AT - MAAWS Gunner (M4A1, ammo, MAAWS Launcher, 2 MAAWS rockets)
TK Insurgents
  • Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, AK-74, ammo, smoke grenade, 3 rounds PG-V7L, tripod bag)
    Support 1 MG - DShKM Gunner (AKS-74, ammo, smoke grenades, DShKM bag)
    Support 1 AT - RPG-7 Gunner (AKS-74, ammo, RPG-7, 3 rounds PG-V7R)
Employment
The basic premise of these arrangements is that the person most concerned with logistics and security and, well, anything but "shooting stuff" is the element leader, allowing the gunners the freedom to concentrate on their targets and not worry too much about security and coordination. Anyone with a big gun tends to get tunnel vision, because they think (and often times they're right) that employing their weapon will probably help the battle more than yakking on the radio with someone. This allows for that natural tendency and lets someone else focus on the big picture and coordinating with other elements.

If you want to get as complex as any sort of doctrine, this is as bad as it needs to get: position the static first if you have one, and then let the other gunner free-form to the best firing position nearby. Chances are, a good firing position for AT is going to be a good firing position for MG as well, and vice-versa.

Pros and Cons
Pros:
  • The Team Leader takes the burden of comms off both AT and MG gunners, allowing them to focus on the task at hand.
  • A large amount of support power is consolidated into one element as opposed to spread among two.
  • A three-man element is more player-efficient. 3 players : 2 CSW's or 6:4 instead of the current 6:3 right now.
Cons:
  • The Team Leader is not as effective an assistant to either MG or AT as the Assistant Gunner in a 2-7-0 two-man element.
  • Splitting AT and MG assets is much more difficult here than if two 2-7-0 support elements were working together.
  • A three-man element is less able to absorb casualties and remain effective than two two-man elements.
Credit must be given where credit is due: Strang was the first to note the efficiency of our work in Rebound, and the concept of concentrating CSW firepower and attaching it at lower levels is lifted straight out of an extremely fascinating read for anyone interested in military history and military theory: "Rethinking the 'Rifle' Platoon" (it's not entirely applicable to ArmA, especially the more casual way we play in FA, but it's fascinating reading nonetheless)

:clint: ~ Ferrard
"Take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turnin' of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' before she keels... makes her home."

Black Mamba
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by Black Mamba »

Well, that's funny, this has been on my mind for quite some time now: reorganizing the way we use support elements. Until now, I refrained from doing it, because we badly lack a M32 (grenade Launcher) and/or a M225 (60mm Mortar) in vanilla Arma.
The other thing that seemed to make this irrelevant is something we've been discussing during last session: Attachments (and even intra-FT roles) are usually quickly rendered obsolete by the fact that many people will loot stuff, making our platoon a full AT/MG attachment by itself. Rebound was quite symptomatic of that: MAT never really had to use its rocket launcher due to most of the fireteams carrying one or two looted RPGs, PKs and a shitton of FALs.

Anyway, my idea was to strip each squad from a third 'conventional' fireteam, to replace that by a weapons team: TeamLeader, M48 gunner, SMAW gunner, Designated Marksman (M16A4 ACOG), where the TL and the DM would probably carry spare ammo for the weapons.
This could give room to remove the additional M136 rockets from the AAR inventory in the two other FTs, so that he could in turn carry more 5.56 ammo, making it easier to unleash massive amounts of fire and destroy sandbags with bullets.

At the platoon level, I would have created a fourth squad: Weapons Squad, or Fire Support Group, depending if we go Yank or Brit. In this one I'd unify under the command of a new Squad Leader the MMG team (M240), HMG (M2), HAT (TOW or Javelin) and the Mortar Team. Having a squad leader there would probably reduce comms saturation a bit, and the CO would only have to provide targets, while the Squad Leader would be in charge of engaging them in the appropriate manner.

Only Engineers and Sniper team would remain Platoon assets, seeing that the engineers need to be everywhere at the same time, and that the sniper, we don't use.

All of this could be an alternate Platoon (I don't know the OPFOR weaponry as well, but this can probably be adapted, as long as we use more RPKs than PKMs) that could be used in some coop missions, along with the usual platoon in others (I tend to find the usual platoon well balanced for adversarials).

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Kefirz
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by Kefirz »

Read both of your ideas and some of the link you provided, but I must say that having 2 man teams is better in my opinion.
Ideally they should work as buddy teams, MMG gunner would engage while his assistant would spot and correct his fire (In clear weather MMG can be effective up to like 800m after that the spread just becomes wild).
And the same would be for MAT, ok MAAWS has an inbuilt range finder, but ideally assistants job would be to check MAT's targets, direction and range.
Having a man do both of those things might be overwhelming, not to add the fact that you can carry around more ammo on 4 people than 3. And 2 buddy teams will have better time at reviving eachother.

Some of the text in link was to add more m240's to the scene, that is very specific to Afghanistan since it is mainly a range war, it's not only m249 that can't have bigger range. It's the 5.56 that makes trouble all around. Not to mention that 5.56 is relatively weak and will have no chance against sandbags or other Taliban defenses and 5.56 just don't have the punch that 7.62 (39 or 51 ,doesn't matter both are more powerful) has.

About the Heavy statics, the way Arma and RL works is that people take out the bigger guns first, and the targeting in Arma helps a lot because of the whole targeting system (The box around it and all that stuff). Also giving TK a SPG seems a bit odd, RPG-7's would be better, they have different ammo for it.

About the mortar's.. well they don't apply to us, same with snipers or all scoped weapons in fact (not the reflex dot's but magnifying ones).

Additionally you can remember the added AT and AR capacity in FT level. 3 squads with 2 FT's each have 6 m136's and m249's, m203's, and that is very adequate. And not everyone even manages to shoot his m136.

About the looting- we can enforce that and tell players not to do it, personally I looted just some binoculars and a makarov (which came in handy later). But then again weapons like AK's and FAL's seem acceptable unless they have scopes, because you might be running out of ammo or you just want to be CPT. America, military counters this problem by having re-orgs after each engagement, but we are not mil-sim so let's not burden ourselves with that.

Conclusion? The structure that is in F2 is very well done and it has proven itself not only in Arma, but in RL as well. Effectiveness in here is only measured by discipline, teamwork and communication, all other becomes secondary. Heck you could even be effective with a RPG18.
Not everything is universal, adapting is good.

Jack of all trades, master at none.
''I am not going against tanks'' - Tryteyker, MAT gunner.
''Downboated so much, it's an u-boat now.'' - Boberro.
''Sorry, I meant hon hon hon baguette baguette Eiffel Tower'' - Mabbott

Black Mamba
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by Black Mamba »

Point taken.

A few corrections/precisions though.
In my idea, the weapons fireteam still has four people. One carries the smaws, and the Teamleader has the necessary optics to assist that. The other one carries a short MMG (Mk48, so not that big of a range, but still a good punch) and the DM also has the optics (4x) to assist that. To counterbalance the effectiveness of the DM, he gets a very limited amount of ammo due to the need to bear ammo for the main gunners. Plus it still let 4 people in the group, meaning dealing with casualties is not a problem. But it takes the support inside the traditional rifle squad, which should be of much help to the squad leader when moving his fireteams around.
The Weapons Squad also retains buddy teams, with gunner and assistant. The difference is a squad leader is now in charge of all that, which remove the weight of communication from the gunners and their assistants, makes it easier for the CO to manage (less micro-managing), and IMO allows for a better coordination of the support elements.
So nobody ends up doing a two-man job.

Regarding the looting now. This isn't probably the best thread to discuss this, but. You can consider looting a AK/FAL is okay, though the last session featured myself grenading a friendly FT, located in the building we were about to occupy, only because I couldn't see them and they were firing FALs. Half my bad, half theirs. It also featured us being confused more than once by the sound of enemy weapons coming from our back.
Also, remember that the mission maker has an intent, and gives you that particular loadout because this is how he wants the mission to play out. Going for another loadout at the first opportunity kinda kills that intent. Let's not resort to "public games" scripting to prevent people from denaturing the missions, that'd be sad.

Finally mortars. The built-in arty computer makes them an owerpowered weapon (and a boring one, if not for Egg). On the other hand, simply removing it makes them unusable. I myself consider it'd probably be fun to use mortars to support an infantry push, as it's a great way to achieve fire superiority and suppression of entrenched enemies. One way to go at it, that I'm currently exploring, would be to use a slightly more complicated and hazardous way of using mortars, enforcing the need of a spotter and fire correction so that you cannot snipe enemies with 81mm rounds. It'd also be beneficial to move the mortars at close range, as they'd get a lot more accurate, instead of the current 'no matter where we are, we got the computer'.

Edit: Oh yeah, that:
Kefirz wrote:Not to mention that 5.56 is relatively weak and will have no chance against sandbags or other Taliban defenses
Come to the workshop, we'll prove you wrong! :laugh:

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wolfenswan
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by wolfenswan »

Finally mortars. The built-in arty computer makes them an owerpowered weapon (and a boring one, if not for Egg). On the other hand, simply removing it makes them unusable.
I like given the mortar guy control of AI mortars. They can still be used by clicking on the map but are more inaccurate and always shoot in barrages of 4.

Macaco
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by Macaco »

Correct me if I'm wrong but this kinda seems like it's more taking a standard HMG or HAT team, then adding in a normal AR or AT guy. With the way arma is an RPG or an AR isn't much of a crew served weapon other than the fact that an extra back to carry a few more rounds will help your longevity.

I don't have much experience with playing as attachments so how it will actually feel idk. (I was a MAT pack mule once, and an HMG gunner, but after being ordered to fire at an empty rock formation repeatedly I finally did it and was immediately sniped from the forest to the right before ever seeing an enemy)

Mamba: I like the new weapon squad idea. It would be like a forward air controller, but for medium and heavy attachments instead of CAS. However I still think they'd end up splitting up, at least the DMR as he would be more effecting breaking off and maneuvering to get a better shot without dragging the rest of the team with him. Though as we have all seen, no host ever lets anyone have fun with snipers, so it's likely they wouldn't slot that anyways.

regarding looting, in the Rebound mission we did, anyone who was in contact a decent amount of time was running out of ammo pretty quick. I personally loaded up from dead folks with stanags about 3 times, and I was lucky to find those. I told my AR guy to take a PKM because it was either that, or he runs around shouting bang at people. I've never had a problem with shooting friendlies due to what weapon their carrying so I can't relate much on that front, but I don't see any issue whatsoever with swapping out your gun for an enemy gun of similar nature(ie don't go from a Bizon to a M60) if you are out of/very low on ammo. As to mission makers intent, no offense to the mission makers but they don't always plan for every possibility.

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wolfenswan
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by wolfenswan »

in the Rebound mission we did, anyone who was in contact a decent amount of time was running out of ammo pretty quick. I personally loaded up from dead folks with stanags about 3 times, and I was lucky to find those.
That's actually something the new loadout introduced in 2-7-0 will hopefully fix or alleviate. More backpacks and more ammo all around.

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harakka
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by harakka »

Black Mamba wrote: Also, remember that the mission maker has an intent, and gives you that particular loadout because this is how he wants the mission to play out.
This. When you pick a slot, you are meant to play as a person of that "class". Looting is heavily discouraged, unless you're low on ammo (clear it with your element lead), or one of the handful of survivors of your squad huddling together in a Death Barn, and being hunted by angry tanks. This is also one of the reasons why we don't have weapon crates in missions. Don't switch out that AK with a FAL unless you really need to, you were given an AK for a reason.

When you think about stuff in this thread (which has thus far been an interesting read, keep at it!), consider looting a non-issue. Don't worry about it. It is just a question of session discipline, much like comms has been in the past, and we will become better at not doing it.
Me and him, we're from different ancient tribes. Now we're both almost extinct. Sometimes you gotta stick with the ancient ways, the old school ways. I know you understand me.

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fer
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by fer »

In the next version of F2, you will have an option to leave your element and join another. Consider also the oft-underused DC element in the platoon. If sufficient numbers are available to fill out a number of the current 2-person attachments and slot a DC, a mission-specific 'weapons squad' can be created around the DC and used as a constant BOF to support the movement of Alpha/Bravo/Charlie. The DC can take on much of the communication and tasking work, leaving gunners and assistants (spotters) to concentrate on sending the enemy kinetic messages, whilst the DC's medic (if available) can pull wounded gunners from behind their tripods and cuddle them better.

The advantage of this approach is that we don't have to bake-in a specific support weapons squad to the ORBAT - the CO can make that call before, or perhaps even during the mission if you choose to pause between engagements. Remember, Voltron is your friend, comrade.

Black Mamba
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Re: Three-man Hybrid Support Elements

Post by Black Mamba »

I get that. I've been lobbying for that for quite a while now. Regarding the weapons squad, this is exactly what I'm saying.
Way I see it, the DC slot is kind of a remnant from the times we didn't have squad leaders, and the leadership of some fireteams had to be delegated. Now, apart from very few particular missions maybe, it doesn't have any use. I'll regularly even, probably stupidly, remove him from the missions I make. So why not go and change him to a Weapons Squad Leader? This would, maybe, act as an incentive to actually use him, even though it's actually just a change of name.
Regarding the weapons teams, those would also have as a main goal to act as an incentive for squad leaders to go a bit further than the good ol' 1 in the middle, 2 on the right, 3 on the left and we attack this village.

Macaco, just to be clear, the Designated Marksman would be a part of the weapons team, not the weapons squad. He has nothing to do with the Squad's sniper team, and wouldn't be meant to leave his fireteam as its primary role would be to assist the gunners, spot and provide security. In some cases he could be brought to actually taking a mid-range shots or two, but really not the goal here. As stated before, he'd only get a standard rifle equipped with RCO, not a DMR.

I'm also aware that, for once, what I'm proposing here is reducing the flexibility. Hence the idea of making it some kind of alternate Orbat, chosen by the mission maker, while most of the missions would retain the standard Orbat.

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