Commander's Critique

Epic fail avoidance
Black Mamba
Posts: 335
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 12:11 pm

Re: Commander's Critique

Post by Black Mamba »

Well, I did end up having to lead a squad yesterday (damn I hate that. Still don't feel confident leading more than three guys).

I inherited command of Alpha upon Wafflz death. The squad was bogged down in a massive quagmire, as we had been trying to assault that strongpoint on top of the hill while having our left flank exposed to the north. Many casualties were taken, so my first intention was to regroup, and pull back south. My own fireteam (A2) had been previously tasked with security on the left (northern) flank, at the foot of the hill, so I had no real idea of what was really happening on the hill.
Eventually, realizing that I wasn't getting much response from my FTs (well I was getting answers, but no movement according to my orders) I moved my own fireteam to the hillside, to assist and lead by example.
First big mistake: I had a tank right there, and I should have used it to watch for our northern flank / suppress the hilltop. Instead I let it do what it wanted (which ended up quite well actually).
Got myself in some close combat, started to understand why people weren't moving, fixed Tiger "medic" Shark, and kept yelling "pull back to RV2, goddamn it".
I do think people don't respond well to retreat orders. It took us ages, and actually I never could get my squad where I wanted it to be. Once engaged, we have trouble disengaging if we don't eliminate the enemy. (Watch Ferrard's above video of UNnecessary violence at 46 minutes in, and see by yourself. Maybe a point in a future workshop?)
In my head, here's how I was seeing stuff. That stronghold on the top of the hill was gonna be on our back at some point if we kept moving up, so I wanted to move back south east, regroup, and assault it from the south where we wouldn't have to worry about flank security.
Here is what happened:
- my squad somehow refused to pull back and stuck to close combat in the woods, so people got constantly wounded, effectively pinning the squad down.
- Bravo had been moving way faster, and was kinda stuck while waiting for us to effectively occupy the right flank of the platoon.
- so Command finally ordered me to move my squad towards Bravo's position without having cleared that hilltop.

My squad wasn't responding to my orders to move south anyway, so I ackwnoledged that and had them regroup to my position, to the east, on the other side on a tree line. Took ages again, but we finally made it.
Got them in a wedge formation, myself and my FT being the tip, so that I could lead by example. I knew this wasn't exactly my role as Squad Lead, but I felt the squad wasn't reactive enough and needed to be a tad more micromanaged for a while so that we get our shit together.
We were moving fast to catch the pace with Bravo, and it almost cost us all. I shot two dudes laying down on the ground less than ten meters away from us, and hadn't I been looking at that exact point while running, we could easily have ran past them.

Now we were exactly where command needed us, ready to assault the city, and my FTs were in a decent formation. Things went wrong right at that moment. One Dshk was overlooking us to the front, outside of 203 range, and an other one was in front of bravo, covering the whole open field between us and the town. I had my AT guy take care of the one in front of us, and requested help from the tank to clear the other one.
Turns out the tank was otherwised engaged, yet they were extremely fast to react. But. That strongpoint (the one we didn't clear) was now right behind us, above us. Enemy started to engage us from behind the moment I had organized my squad for the assault.

Well. I repeated the exact same error I was whining about earlier. I Command was pressing me to move (although we were actually regrouping and treating the casulaties) and I launched the assault before receiving confirmation that everybody was in place.
Note to myself: use the goddamn map markers to give objectives to my fireteam. Otherwise they can't know for sure where it is I want them to be and I end up frustrated.

What happened after that, I'm not too sure. My fireteam did cross the openfield without any issues (even though we were still engaged from behind), but I got shot in the face while clearing the first compound.
Zitron immediately informed command of my demise, which is a good thing. But I think there was some kind of floating moment after that, and the squad was splitted in two parts. Everything went right out of the window after that anyway.

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Mamuto
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Re: Commander's Critique

Post by Mamuto »

Ah. I see what happened here. Bravo got to their position on the hill but the mistake they made was pushing forward into the town... They should have set up a base of fire and waited for alpha to un FUBAR themselves instead of rushing off into the town and letting themselves get flanked from more enemy positions to the west/southwest.

Also, when I respawned as a medic and hung around with Alpha for 5-10 minutes, I realized they were sandwiched between the town to the north and enemies from the hill on the east with no real cover anywhere around them. To add to that, it was still uphill to the town. AND, to add to that, it was getting darker and darker which I know at least in MY case, made everything more frantic and rushed (trying to beat the settling darkness). No wonder Alpha was pretty much combat ineffective to attack the town.

I think you hit the nail on the head about us having too much momentum, in this case, Bravo. Squad leaders as well as platoon commanders need to keep this in mind. There's no reason to go rushing off to glorious death.

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Commander's Critique

Post by Ferrard Carson »

This isn't quite on the same level as the previous "Commander's Critiques," but it's about a role that has the title of "Commander" and is usually weighted like a squad command, so I feel it somewhat appropriate. My runthrough of Rolling Matryoshka II as a tank commander was... interesting. This session was, to be honest, the first time I had commanded armored vehicles outside of with a group of friends from another gaming community (now defunct).



I didn't do as good a job as I hoped. Chief among my shortcomings - I went somewhat cowboy, as I have a tendency to do when not given much direction. The tank maneuvered somewhat independently of everything else on the map. At one point I eavesdropped on Alpha's troubles and set my driver on a path north, purposefully entering a wide open field to screen Alpha from where I thought they were being attacked from. At another, I pushed the tank through some forests into a clear depression to help with problems that Bravo was reporting on CC. In neither case was I tasked with that job. It worked for a while, but when I tried to single-handedly flank what turned out to be a ZU-23 position without other support, we ended up trading assets. And their ZU-23 was significantly less... significant, than our tank.

Oops :zoidberg:

~ 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."

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Commander's Critique

Post by Ferrard Carson »

For today's critique, we're going to look at my command of Bravo squad in this past Sunday's run of Flask.



To start, we land, and my squad establishes security. I could've given more detailed instructions, but if the LZ was hot, we'd have been hit by incoming while the chopper was still landing, so I wasn't worried. Initial movement was done in hasty, moderately careless manner because Alpha had just vacated the space we entered. Once at the hill, I arrayed my dudes in an echelon left - the road was the primary axis of advance, and from previous travel through this region, I knew that the best cover was provided to elements on one side of the hill by elements on the other side of the hill. Thus, I wanted Bravo to be able to provide massed fire Southeast on demand. Encountering a fire-team's worth of Takistanis on the hillside 300 meters to our immediate front, I settled everyone down and began to prepare them for a hasty ambush when what stealth we had was blown by one of the Shilkas spraying the group with a burst of 23mm cannon fire. A burst of fire from everyone, and all four insurgents were down for the count.

In echelon, we advanced south up the hill, inexorably closing on the obvious key terrain in the area. From Bravo's objective, we would be able to observe virtually the entire town of Ravanay with impunity. Upon nearing the crest, however, Bravo came under fire from both flanks, close around the hill. This could have ended very badly, but thankfully the enemy attacks were not coordinated, and when Bravo 1 was down, Bravo 2 was able to maneuver and destroy the enemy whilst Bravo 3 helped me and our medic pull up our wayward lead fireteam. After that, my guys spotted some more dudes to the southwest and chomped at the bit to engage them. I ordered them back east - we were already out of direct visual contact with the entire rest of the platoon. Since Platoon didn't have any indirect fire capability excepting GP-25's, that meant that we were effectively on our own. Not a good position to be in. We at the very least shocked whatever force we had encountered, then pulled back East across the ridge and into safety. A short while later found us firmly entrenched on the top of the ridge, evenly spaced and looking down into Ravanay itself, my FTLs dutifully marking enemy concentrations for future use. Command then told me to separate one of my elements and move... West? It didn't register with me until I started giving movement orders and realized that I was being told to send the detached unit in two opposite directions. East across the valley is what was almost certainly intended, but I needed to find out for sure. If they moved east, I would have Bravo 3 move, and 1 and 2 would shift slightly to better support them. If they moved west, then my entire squad needed to cross the ridge again to allow Bravo 1 to move under cover. Under no circumstances was I going to allow any one of my fireteams to move without support from the other two.

Through five more minutes of trying to sort out where command wanted me, my squad grew increasingly impatient. As I was moving to see if I could position my guys better to begin an advance into Ravanay, someone fired an AT shot, drawing the wrath of 2 BRDMs, a mounted ZU-23, and hordes of infantry in the town. I immediately wished he hadn't done that, but I bit my tongue - that shot was probably meant to engage an armored vehicle about to open up on friendlies, and I had to trust that particular AT rifleman's judgment. Unfortunately, I knew instantly that the rocket was going to draw down a hail of fire from all those people that we had been staring down for the past ten minutes. A firefight had been initiated, and the proper response is dictated by the first rule of firefights - use more gun. I told all my guys to open up on anything they saw. This time, they hesitated, when I had been constantly reining them in before. My second order to fire was followed, and despite the delay, we were able to achieve fire superiority. By the time the bullets stopped flying, most of the Ravanay garrison was dead, along with three of my guys (though my FTLs were only aware of two of those deaths). Not an ideal engagement, but given its suddenness, better than it would have been had Bravo squad hesitated any longer to open fire after the rocket.

Afterwards, I got a Casualty Report (CASREP) and an equipment check from all my fireteams. Bravo 2's AR was lying on the ground, so I told someone to pick it up. At this point, Ravanay was largely clear of resistance, and the Shilkas were rolling up, so I brought Bravo down the hill to link up with our lucky semi-armor.

Through Ravanay, we pushed into the next valley, and at this point detailed squad leadership beyond "stay with the Shilkas and keep moving forward" kinda stopped due to 1) No specific tasking from above, 2) Constant casualties, and 3) People not listening because we were closing in on the final objective anyways ("CHAAAARGE!" mode activate).

~ 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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Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 12:11 pm

Re: Commander's Critique

Post by Black Mamba »

This video definitely proves there was absolutely no blue on blue incident involving the Shilkas whatsoever.
What it does not show, is that rocket was totally useless, as it was fired at a dead enemy vehicle we had destroyed a few seconds before.

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Ferrard Carson
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Re: Commander's Critique

Post by Ferrard Carson »

So, we went through Wideola yesterday. No one wanted to step up and command the lot of us dudes into an early, splintery, forest-y grave, so I decided to take the slot. And thus began something that had been long in development in my mind, an idea that I had had for months since we played Wideola thrice in the span of a month back in September:

A heliborne assault on Zelenogorsk.



Needless to say, this was at the very least an enormously risky plan. I was relying on our two chopper pilots landing their flying bathtubs in the middle of a city, with buildings, power lines, and very tall trees all around the LZ, and barely 15 meters of clearance to either side of them if the choppers landed 15 meters apart. He who dares, however.

Why did I think this risk was worth taking? Well, from the records of last transmissions kept by our company radioman, we knew that walking into the forests around Zelenogorsk was an invitation to an early-grave. To be frank, we've done Wideola something like five or so times, and every time it has consisted of:
  • 1) Land on the edge of the perimeter
    2) Make slight headway into the forests
    3) Die horrible, splintery death
The strength of the Folk Platoon has never been forest combat in the woods of Chernarus, especially against AI, who will happily "estimate" our location through the thickest foliage you can put between you and it when we can't even see them. The strength of the Folk Platoon has usually been in lightly populated urban environments and wide open fields. The only place near Zelenogorsk that combines both those elements... is Zelenogorsk itself. We know from prior experience that the AI tends to go a bit bonkers once it figures out where we are, and defending against AI in forests historically hasn't turned out any better for us than attacking them. So, since we'll eventually attract their attention anyway, and since they'll swarm us once we've attracted their attention, why not attract their attention and get into terrain that we know how to defend, all at the same time?

It was rightly pointed out that our tasking was not to take and hold Zelenogorsk, but to clear the caches in and around it. To this, I must reply, "Is it not easier to investigate the caches when we have broken a wave of enemy counter-attacks and thinned their numbers?" For that was the ultimate goal of my plan. Clearing the city was something I tasked Alpha with, but the expected enemy counter-attack was more dangerous than whoever remained within the city, so I split my forces such that Bravo received the bulk of our manpower and the firepower of the MMG, all this to counter the swarm of AI that would likely appear out of the woodwork.

And then Black Mamba was shot through the cockpit glass and Alpha's chopper landed hard, wounding everyone. And Zitron's chopper was swatted out of the sky by a vengeful Chernarussian tree, enraged that we would avoid their splintery death, and thus claiming the forests' due dead. More than a fire-team of Bravo died when a flaming helicopter fell onto their heads and exploded.

I died shortly thereafter, and was witness to a very interesting phenomena - my plan was partially followed - the entire platoon, consisted of two half-strength squads, cleared the entirety of Zelenogorsk (twice - once north from the chopper, and once south back to the chopper). As the enemy converged on them from the northwest and south, they were sandwiched between two fire-team sized elements, but the massive swarm of farmers with AKS's never materialized, probably because ASR_AI is not as balls-to-the-walls aggressive in the same manner as un-shackled vanilla OA AI. Also, there were simply fewer AI than normal. Interestingly, when Bravo ended up sweeping the town with Alpha and didn't keep rear security, the ASR_AI moved slow enough that it didn't bite them in the ass. What few AI who wandered into the city after the platoon were eliminated to a T in the sweep back south, and the platoon made it back to Black Mamba's (functional?) chopper almost completely intact.

All in all, despite the horrific casualties in equipment and trained pilots, I'd call this method a success simply because after the horrific initial minute or so, we performed amazingly well, taking only two or three further casualties during both sweeps through the town. This method of mission-completion would require further refinement to make it more efficient and less deathy in the insertion phase, but I think I was able to prove the concept of not-forest being better for us than forest.

: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."

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