Republic of Folk

Why are we locked in this room? And what’s that smell?

Comrades! Never mind the residual chloroform and lend me your ears, for we embark now upon a glorious quest to test a new Order of Battle--For Science!


Why are we testing? For that matter, what are we testing?

Comrades – The Party has authorized the testing of a new Order of Battle designed to:

• 1) Reduce the number of leader slots required in our Platoon
  2) Make our Platoon more resilient when faced with casualties
  3) Encourage even more use of Bounding Overwatch and Fire & Maneuver
  4) Simplify the integration of armor and other attachments at the Squad level.

Let it be known that henceforth, this brave experiment shall be titled:

FAXORBAT-4B!

Follow the link above to learn more about this brave new Order of Battle that features 7-man Sections organized into 2-Section Squads organized into 3-Squad Platoons.


Sign me up! I’ll gladly join this testing initiative!

Mr. Makarov, Minister of Motivation, sure is persuasive isn’t he? Not to worry, we will perform our tests with only minimal disruption to your weekly fill of violence. Testing will occur as follows:

• Each Sunday, an FAXORBAT-4B workshop will be held to help Section Leaders and Squad Leaders work with 7-man sections.
• Afterwards, one or two of the missions in that Sunday’s lineup will be chosen from an established pool of missions prepared with FAXORBAT-4B.
• The host will kindly remind everyone about the desire for feedback about FAXORBAT-4B as well as plug this very post, encouraging you to provide feedback.
• All Comrades who love The Party will provide feedback either through this thread or by posting in the relevant AAR thread.
• Beatings Testing will continue until morale improves The Party has collected enough Science. This will likely take several weeks.
• The Party will render its verdict at a politically advantageous time to destabilize the sovereign nation of shortly thereafter.

Mr. Makarov, what sort of feedback do you desire?

We wish to know about your experiences with FAXORBAT-4B in four distinct areas, arranged in beautiful copy-pasteable code below:
Please provide feedback either through a reply here or by posting in the relevant AAR thread!


So… What happens next?

Listen… we both said a lot of things that you’re going to regret, but I think we can put our differences behind us. For Science. Comrade.


~ Ferrard

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
Pros
Losses were not as significant as they are in 4-man groups

If we were to form a human pyramid we could now get one person total higher

Cons
The 7 man team did not have the versatility nor mobility of 2 4-man groups

7 people are hard to manage and unwieldy in situations of urban combat

There was a problem in that group chat, which is typically used for general chatter of any/all kinds became hard to hear due to there now being significantly more people on the same comms. The delay in in-game VOIP being significant only exasperated the issue as talking over one-another was an unavoidable side effect.

Having 2 MMGs in a small area did not seem to have any significant advantages over having a single MMG in a small area

Having less AT per capita was not an advantage in the situation we found ourselves in


How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?
As a section leader you now have to give out orders to 6 people in the same time as you used to give orders to 3, in my experience that resulted in less thought out and less complex orders given per member (And no I would not consider myself to be the micromanaging sort).

Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
A 7 man section only really has the option of hold (blue) and sweep (red) whereas the 2 4-man teams are (at full/3quarters strength) capable of both holding and sweeping.

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
I am sure that if we were to fight on a larger scale the advantages of the new model would quickly become apparent, but for the smaller style of engagements we are familiar with it felt like I had been stripped of a great deal of mobility and precision.

P.S.

Reduce the number of leader slots required in our Platoon

98% of the time, FTL positions are taken within seconds. It is invariably CO and SL which are the positions that has everyone collectively looking to each other, muttering about who wants to do it the most.

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
Pros:
Especially for the longer engagements can see this being useful as it lets elements function for a lot longer than normal before folding in.

Cons:
My thoughts are similar to Netkev, listening to or passing orders was hard at times because of the voice overlapping, and it was good to hear the comms between elements (squad - co - attachments) to get the broader picture it did get in the way sometimes.

I also get the feeling that there was a some confusion as to what red/blue should do at any given moment but maybe thats because it was the first session with 4B.

How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?
DIdn't have a chance to command a section but noticed in the medical truck theft mission that their was a large gap between alpha 2s command going down and the rest of the section responding to the CO.

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
4B really shines on the longer engagements while I think the old 4 man has an advantage with shorter missions or cqc.

Cool to see something new

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
Cons :
- Group VON as a free form banter zone seems likely to disappear.
- A bad section leader ends up messing things up for 6 other people instead of the 3 who get a hard time in the old fireteam.
- Situational awareness without STHud might be a problem. People who play with it have a tendency to forget how it looks for people w/o it.
- Since there are so many people the possibility to make the section a learning experience for new people is somewhat diminished, since the section leader is busy managing more people and the other people will be reticent to chat a lot over group VON.
- The jump from section member to section leader becomes larger than the jump from fireteam member to fireteam leader.

Pros :
- The section does not end up combat ineffective once one guy is injured.
- Section leaders with good situational awareness and communication skills will have more tools at their disposal.
- Squad leaders can spend more time on situational awareness and less on micro management.


How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?
From Squad Lead position in Appropriation Pt. 2 :
Having two sections @7 to work with was much better than three sections @4. Sending a 4 man group out to the side means it'll probably get swarmed if the approach is from that angle. With seven people you can assume that there is at least a chance they'll be able to retreat and reorganize.


Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
It might just be my VON that was too low relative to everything else, but to me it seemed that our section leader had the desire to attempt F&M but that comms made it very chaotic.

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
From squad lead, yes. From section member, a bit worried.

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
I think a lot of the relevant pro's and con's have been brought up already. They definitely reduce the organisational chatter, and move some of that down to the intra-section level. I was A1 section leader for one mission, and I thought it was kinda nice to hear people communicating between the section. It never got to the point where things were completely off the walls confusing (no more than certain fireteams comms can get, depending on the mission). It will definitely lead to a bit more noise, but also makes things a bit more lively, and I think with more experience, people will begin to realise when the chatter is good and when the section needs to listen up and stay quiet for a second.

How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?
I think the main change is really at the section leader level. CO and Squad Leader have some of the workload reduced for sure. I don't think section leader has more work to do, but I do think the section leader now has to be on top of the work they need to do. What I would say is that there is no longer room for half-assing the role, and it is something that the player needs to be willing to work for and put effort into (similar to how the squad leader needs to actively work at their job too). What this means is section leaders need to be firm in their orders to blue and red team, and they need to manage the intra-section comms a bit too. i.e. if the section is holding an area, and the leader gets orders to move, they will need to announce a "break" across group von and get people listening. The extra comm chatter in group VON can easily be manageable if leaders are willing to gently refocus the attention of the section every so often (possibly with the help of their sidearm).

Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
Yes, even with a more disorganised section under my command (and some first time confusion on my part) I can see that as we become more familiar with the new ORBAT, the power of the fire and maneuver sections will become much more important. Similarly, having 2 sections in a squad streamlines things immensely. Even on going back to the default ORBAT for "uneasy partners", it was clear how much the 3rd fireteam messed with the dynamic of squad level movement.

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
I do, and I definitely think it is worthy of more testing.

On a slightly different note, I think this style of ORBAT is perfectly suited to having a good direct communication VON (or *whisper* ACRE *whisper*) system in place. I know thats out of reach a bit for FA, and I think with some more experience we will overcome the problems that some people pointed out. It was just a thought I had last night while sitting holding a courtyard with A1 section, it would be nice if color-teams (or subsections of the section in general) had some way to communicate casually without using group VON. Ah the dreams of a perfect world...

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
Much better than the 1-man Section Lead elements.

But as has been already said, comms discipline in Group Channel VOIP is going to have to become a thing. Our run of To Arms last night was a bit of a lesson in that especially at the start. I could have stabbed myself in both ears with a knitting needle and it wouldn't have reduced the usability of VOIP by very much for me during the first ten minutes or so of that run (whomever said that I could have stabbed myself in both ears at once with a very long knitting needle and still have been as effective anyways, hush ). Don't take that as a whinge - it was fun - it's just that if we'd hit contact in that first few minutes, we'd have been wiped out before the last man had time to ask what was going on.
I'm not sure how our banter-friendly (or at least banter-tolerant) approach will live with that little problem, but these things have a habit of working themselves out with time I guess. I wouldn't be leaping for the rulebook and a sharpie myself just yet (besides, I like the banter, when it doesn't get me shot - if I wanted to do this seriously, I would have joined the army twenty years ago. I don't even like the shooting bits, I like the moving-around-and-figuring-out-how-to-do-stuff bits).

Oh, and yeah, STHud. It's now a bit past being useful really, and is damn near essential. I nearly had a panic attack as section lead when STHud took a few seconds to sort out who was red and who was blue at the start of a mission. It's not realistic to try to track that in your head, and having a notebook by your PC to play this seems terribly 1990s...

How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?
In terms of handling comms, Nyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhmybrain.... just about covers the initial shock and workload, at least right now. Once we get past the "OH GOD, SO MANY BEAUTIFUL SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES" reaction and on to the "Red moves, Blue covers, and screw remembering their names, they're all dead soon anyway, I have bigger things to worry about" mindset, we'll be grand.

In terms of fun, yeah, it's like being given more margin for error, more capability, more ammunition and less anti-tank capability in one package. Changes the feel from "bunch of lads from the pub quiz team trying not to die" over to "yeah, we can get this done". Not quite Rambo, but also not quite final-crying-about-the-PTSD-scene-from-Rambo either. It's a nice step up.

In terms of pucker factor when taking a section lead slot, it's very squeaky-bum time because now you can ruin six people's fun not just three. You find yourself reciting Shepard's prayer quite a bit.

It also seems like sections need a real job now. You can't just point one at a single task ("Go clear that building"), it has to be a big task ("Go clear that compound"). Otherwise it feels wasteful (and seriously, seven of us with heavy weaponry clearing an empty building is something that you know is going to cause two to three casualties...)

And in terms of what you have to do as a section leader, I think it's actually become a real job now rather than one poor schmuck doing a half-job and everyone trying to survive including him. Situational awareness has gotten promoted from "bloody useful" to "your life and six others depends on it" and if your SA-fu is weak like mine, everyone is going to know soon enough.

Oh, and as a nice side effect, speaking of real jobs, MAT just became a real boy. One RAT per fireteam even with only the RPG or PCML and every fireteam is an effective anti-tank asset that is more capable than MAT, at least for one or two contacts (and if you have three or more armoured contacts near a fireteam, the gods hate you anyways and it's a very academic debate you're getting into). But now, with one RAT per section, MAT's got a real role back again. That will have some interesting second-order effects, like requiring more coordination between sections and squads and attachments to avoid (a) people being mown down by IFVs and (b) friendly fire vehicular incidents...

Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
Not so much (for me anyway). "We're bounding, Blue covers, Red moves" is still as easy to say and still doesn't happen even after you say it unless you micromanage and with six people, micromanagement is a blink-and-they're-all-dead sort of mistake. That's nothing to do with the ORBAT though, and is just a consequence of us having lives and families and full-time jobs and not being sixteen anymore and so not having eight hours a day to practice this stuff. Also, it'd put off newbies coming in to try Folk out if we made this sort of thing a thing. The old hands get it. The new hands will pick it up. It's not a huge deal and doesn't (to my mind) have much to do with the ORBAT really. Get in a four-man fireteam in the old ORBAT with Fer, audiox and Pickers sometime (or any other three old hands who tend to survive missions) and you'll see a lot of fire-and-manoeuver. It's purely down to experience, not the ORBAT.

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
Yes.

What do you mean, more detail? An engineer just gave you a one-word affirmative response to a direct question. You'll find hen's teeth more often than that.
/sigh
Okay, okay...

- We have serious conflicts with trying to add in new maps or weapons or mods or that kind of thing, for good reasons; it conflicts with the Party's goal of being friendly to people who don't have ten hours to set up their machine just so. And that's a good goal that we shouldn't abandon (seriously, I have a 3-year-old and a full-time job with on-call duties, I can't drop everything to learn six new things like ACRE and different mod setups and so on). But it does cause some samey-ness to develop and that tends to be problematic too (comrade, I yearn for new weapons and scenery, if I just didn't need to spend a day installing them and learning new things to use them). This new ORBAT is like our vehicle missions - it gives some novelty to the game, refreshes it a little, gives us new and different challenges that we can rise to, but doesn't compromise the Party's goal. This is a Good Thing™.

- Small 2 and 4 man teams are great for some tasks; not for others. A one-size-fits-all approach means not every mission is going to fit the ORBAT, which reduces the fun and increases the if-only-we-had-X frustration. Having a new ORBAT (assuming we don't completely ban the old ORBAT, which humbly, I think would be a mistake) means that we can have a better mission-to-ORBAT fit and therefore a more satisfying challenge. This is also a Good Thing™.

- One grenade to an old-ORBAT fireteam means that fireteam is not a fireteam anymore, is not combat effective, and someone is going to have to run half-way across the map and join up with some other fireteam, forgetting their old objective, figuring out what the new fireteam's objective is and how to slot into that, while that FTL is going to have to figure out what to do with the survivor. With FAXORBAT-4B, one grenade means that a section is now an angry, mobilised, pissed-off ARMY OF DEATH THAT IS ABOUT TO SWARM ALL OVER YOUR PUNY FACES AND.... is that a second grenade on the ground here? Who dropped tha{#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER

Sparks brings up a few things I planned to mention, but then forgot to, because I am trying to write a paper in work and all this writing is making my brain into mush.

Sparks wrote:Once we get past the "OH GOD, SO MANY BEAUTIFUL SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES" reaction and on to the "Red moves, Blue covers, and screw remembering their names, they're all dead soon anyway, I have bigger things to worry about" mindset, we'll be grand. In terms of pucker factor when taking a section lead slot, it's very squeaky-bum time because now you can ruin six people's fun not just three. You find yourself reciting Shepard's prayer quite a bit. ...

Someone else mentioned that managing 6 people people is harder than 3. I would defend the new ORBAT by saying that in practical terms you are still managing two elements, same as with a fireteam. In a 4 man team, you and the RAT are one element and the AR/AAR is the other. If anything now the new ORBAT streamlines this process, by removing you from the equation, and giving you two nice 3 main buddy groups to order around. This means leading is a simple as:

1. Where do I need my base of fire, and where do I need to get my other element to...
2. "Blue Team, get in that house and lay down fire, Red Team, move to the wall east of us"
3. Where am I, with my superior corporal skills, + my UGL, going to be best suited
4. "Red team, I'm following you guys, move out"

Once you have killed everyone/the enemy is bored of shooting at you, get blue team to move up, rinse and repeat from your new position. The 3 people in each color group are big boys, and they can all pick a spot behind a wall/window to shoot from, you just need to point blue and red to a place, and let them at it. The section leader really should not have to do any extra talking in group VON than before, so really the extra chatter comes just from having a couple of extra people in the team, which I think we will all get used to soon enough.

Sparks wrote:Oh, and as a nice side effect, speaking of real jobs, MAT just became a real boy.

Another big plus to the new ORBAT I feel. The attachments can often get forgotten about and not have much to do when every RAT can deal with all of the issues. The new MMG weapons in the recent DLC, as well as the shift in importance of attachments means slotting them is way more fun for players, and it feels like you are needed/loved by the party. (Seriously, the MMG teams in the run of InterIV last night really added to the atmosphere, with those tracers screaming overhead from the hill outside town).

Sparks wrote:Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
Not so much (for me anyway). ... It's purely down to experience, not the ORBAT.

A point which is true no matter the ORBAT. We could play with 40 seperate rambo elements and give everyone an MMG, a launcher and a medkit, and we would still have some fun I'm sure. Because no matter what the organisation of the group, the fun comes from a group effort of keeping a positive attitude and letting everyone have fun.

EDIT: One other thing I should mention: Would there be a possibility of getting the F3 nametags module to work as a pseudo-SThud by changing the color of the names in the section, that would definitely help with the logistics issues mentioned. The newest version of F3 has some pretty sweet new small and unobtrusive nametags too, so it wouldnt be too much of a push to gently remind people to use them if they dont have SThud enabled.

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
It had some coms and logistics issues but I found it enjoyable.
Personally I think ShackTac HUD should become mandatory for the new ORBAT, as the squad colours and finding each other became difficult for some players.

How does FAXORBAT-4B change the leadership experience?
I didnt lead but it seemed fine to me?

Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
Cant say I noticed, more fire & OH JESUS CHRIST A HMG!

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
Yep, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Based on the [Sun] 24 May 2015 (For Science!) session, From the perspective of a regular, non-leading section member:

How do the 7-man Sections hold up in-game?
Much have already been mentioned on the shift in coordination workload from squad leader to fireteam/section leader and how it influences group VON. The Section definitely feels like a separate unit in its own right - more capable, but less focused, and harder to wield compared to 4-man Fireteams.

Has FAXORBAT-4B had a positive effect on the use of Fire & Maneuver?
The section leaders were clearly making an effort to apply bounding overwatch. And ofc it works well with just two fireteam/section elements compared to three elements. But it was more a matter of leadership insistence than of organizational structure. In general firefights in Arma seems to be over way before Fire & Maneuver can be effectively applied.

One thing clearly not working as intended is the fixed roles of a Base of Fire team and Maneuver team. It’s way too inflexible in the heat of battle and doesn’t add anything.

Based on this particular session, do you like FAXORBAT-4B?
Well, I really like what the new ORBAT is trying to achieve (more resilience, encourage Bounding Overwatch and Fire & Maneuver, simplifying integration of specialized elements). The reduction to 2x basic elements made the squad more focused and resilient. But the 7-man fireteam felt a bit bloated (both in structure and communication), and the intended fixed roles of blue and red team felt theoretical at best.

Suggestion
The doctrine of Bounding Overwatch and Fire & Maneuver are all about pairs of interchangeable elements continually switching roles, right?

Why not compromise (between 4-man and 7-man) and adopt the ShackTac 6-man fireteam with two equal blue/red buddy teams? It seems perfect for doing fireteam level Bounding Overwatch / Fire & Maneuver. Still adds resilience to casualties. And puts a little less pressure on the fireteam/section leader role and the group VON.
Optionally add a MAT or MMG team to each squad to compensate for the smaller section/fireteam size.

PhilFlame wrote:Why not compromise (between 4-man and 7-man) and adopt the ShackTac 6-man fireteam with two equal blue/red buddy teams?

I could be completely wrong here, but does a 6-man fireteam not have a similar loadout to the FAXORBAT one, except the grenadier and FTL are merged into one person? I don't think one person per team will make that much of a difference, seeing as it leaves the section leader a bit more free to float between the elements. 7 is also a nicer number for vehicles. Its definitely an option others have found useful though (and a well experimented one at that).