Concept: ORBAT and group management

[fer]

Chances are, playercounts for folk sessions won't ever be very high. So it strikes me that we should consider a slightly different approach to the ORBAT. Personally, after years of playing in a USMC-patterned set-up, I'd like to experiment with something more irregular and - whisper it - OPFOR-ish. Something a little looser, but not a wolf-pack. Here's what I propose:

Core formations

Commander (CO)
|-- Medic

Deputy Commander (DCO)
|-- Medic

Alpha Fireteam Leader (FTL)
|-- Automatic Rifleman (AR)
|-- Assistant Automatic Rifleman (AAR)
|-- RPG Gunner (RPG)

Note: Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo and Fox fireteams as per Alpha

The concept is that the CO would split the fireteams between her/himself and the DCO when formulating the mission plan, or even task a fireteam with independent action. The intent is maximum flexibility, without sacrificing the really useful small-unit formation of the 4-person fireteam, as well as creating lots of opportunities for players to lead.

Optional attachments

MMG Gunner
|-- MMG Ammo Bearer

MAT Gunner
|-- MAT Ammo Bearer

In keeping with the irregular forces theme, we might avoid really heavy weapons as a rule, and keep support weapon teams down to just 2 players each. Again, the emphasis is on doing more with fewer players.

Player movement between groups
The current F2 JIP functionality includes a simple menu that allows JIP players to select a loadout and become part of any existing group. To maximise flexibility, I was thinking we could leave the group re-assignment functionality open to all players, all the time. So that as we take casualties we can consolidate fireteams, or merge attachments into regular fireteams to create special groups on the fly. My assumption is that the kind of players we'll have in folk sessions are mature enough not to abuse this.

What do people think?

[Xiathorn]

I believe we discussed this earlier, but in prinicipal I like the idea. It's formalised, but it also enables people to adapt to their particular style _without_ affecting other players. For example, if I wanted to have a massive silly charge with all my FTs, that doesn't affect the playstyle of the individual FTMs as they're still operating within a fireteam.

Likewise, if I wanted to have a large number of FTs spread out with varying objectives, it still works. Of course, everything the PltCo does will affect people, but it will affect their _enviroment_, not them themselves. That's really useful.

WRT open-group-flexibility, I agree that it's valuable but we have to consider logistics somewhat. Do we want any invitee to have it in their first session? It might be overwhemling, they might make mistakes (esp. if they're new to A2 gaming, etc)? I know the approach is optimistic and we trust people as they are invitees of other, trusted, members, but it might be viable to only give that functionality to established members.

BUT - WARNING WARNING WARNING - Do we really want to go down that route? I don't think I do. Established members vs new members is absolutely not the kind of thing I think we want to aim for. We're. All. Just. folk.

[fer]

BUT - WARNING WARNING WARNING - Do we really want to go down that route? I don't think I do. Established members vs new members is absolutely not the kind of thing I think we want to aim for. We're. All. Just. folk.

Personally, I'd rather we trusted people and adopted a forgiving attitude to mistakes. Really, the only thing really new attendees won't be allowed to do is issue their own invites. Other than that, I think we should strive to help them. The worst that can happen with the group re-assignment functionality is that they have to use it a second time to get [back] into the right group. And, after all, this kind of thing is already available to pubbies in Domination missions.

[fer]

Documentation eats the hours. I've written up pages for the Folk components in F2, but haven't made them visible on the wiki home page yet. For the moment, you can find them here: http://www.ferstaberinde.com/f2/en/inde ... Components

[Edited this on 06 June 2010 to reflect the updated URL]

[fer]

Right, I haven't implemented the new move-between-groups (all the time) feature yet, but the platoon is built and the necessary supporting stuff has been adapted. You can play with it right now in vanilla ArmA2 by downloading this special build of F2: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1880105/folk/Fo ... 0100606.7z

Naturally, this is likely to get tweaked over the next few days and weeks, so please don't redistribute it.

[Tigershark]

BUT - WARNING WARNING WARNING - Do we really want to go down that route? I don't think I do. Established members vs new members is absolutely not the kind of thing I think we want to aim for. We're. All. Just. folk.

Personally, I'd rather we trusted people and adopted a forgiving attitude to mistakes. Really, the only thing really new attendees won't be allowed to do is issue their own invites. Other than that, I think we should strive to help them. The worst that can happen with the group re-assignment functionality is that they have to use it a second time to get [back] into the right group. And, after all, this kind of thing is already available to pubbies in Domination missions.

I tend to agree with this. In addition, I would think that the types of people we would invite would be open to friendly advice if they found themselves in a leadership position and were about to make a stupid call. It is a game after all and people should be able to make mistakes in the name of fun.

[Headspace]

I don't think there's any reason to restrict people from using the JIP functionality when they JIP in. It's something that's fairly easy to enforce in-game. Making it some kind of special privilege to use just seems to me that it would be more trouble than it's worth.

[fer]

I don't think there's any reason to restrict people from using the JIP functionality when they JIP in. It's something that's fairly easy to enforce in-game. Making it some kind of special privilege to use just seems to me that it would be more trouble than it's worth.

To clarify, my original idea was:

• Everone who JIPs in will have the ability to use the current Select Reinforcement Options feature, which allows you to choose a loadout and a group to join (from the existing groups)
• Separately, and throughout the mission, everyone would have a feature which allowed them to switch membership of groups (but unlike the feature associated with JIP, this would impact on loadout)

The intent was to ensure we could reform the platoon into meaningful fireteams in the event that we took heavy casualties throughout all original fireteams.

[Tigershark]

The F2 file does not work out of the box for OA. Modifying it now.

[fer]

Still working on the OA version of the Folk build of F2, but the ArmA2 build manual pages are now accessible here:
http://www.ferstaberinde.com/f2/en/inde ... Components