Republic of Folk

Comrades, something that I have been wondering about lately is the degree to which we space out, or even split up, the elements in our platoon - and whether we are tending to overestimate the combat power (or at least resilience) of individual squads and fireteams.

On the one hand, it's great that COs are not simply defaulting to the squad or platoon wedge and attempting to move around the AO in a single tactical blob. A few months ago there was some certainly some chatter amongst the mission makers and hosts about trying to encourage plans that saw different parts of the platoon tackling separate tasks in parallel. However, there is a danger that we're going too far in the opposite direction, assigning squads and individual fireteams tasks that leave them a little isolated, diluting the effectiveness of the overall platoon (particularly when we field under-strength squads of 2 fireteams).

I'm not sure why this happens, although I have a suspicion that part of the reason is that when COs place movement markers it can sometimes be hard to truly understand the distances between positions on the map. I know that I have found this challenging in the past - assuming that my plan on the map will see the elements easily able to support each other, only to find the reality 'on the ground' to be different. A MilSim community I went to 'visit' for a session once had some interesting thoughts about the importance of COs not relying too heavily on the map, and instead getting 'eyes on' the terrain before firming up their plans. The tempo at which that community played its missions made such an approach possible - I'm not sure we would appreciate such long periods between the mission start and first contact (there was a lot of recon), but it's a point worth thinking about. There is an argument that we could slow things down a tiny bit without destroying our experience.

Another thought is that perhaps we already have the answer: taking the red/blue team co-ordination that comrades Tigershark and Carson are bringing to fireteams, and scaling up that or similar concepts to work between fireteams and squads. Perhaps there are other factors / levers open to us.

What do you think?

IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THE BIG SCARY WALL OF TEXT, SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE POST FOR A TL;DR VERSION

Fully acknowledging that I'm by no means a small unit tactics expert, I invite anyone and everyone to poke holes in these, my general rules of thumb while SL'ing. Keep in mind as you're reading this though, that I am Mahanian to a fault in my maneuvering. Not quite a blob advocate, but pretty close to it. The first half or so of the 4th November 2012 Flask video probably features the best examples of my style of maneuver.



1) Don't split your squad - Ever
There are two reasons a single fire-team of four dudes is really fragile, one of which I will explain here, the other of which will wait. The first reason is that if one person goes down, the entire element has to stop - two dudes to cover, and the third to pick up the fourth, and that's assuming the wounded guy A) survived, and B) was the only one hit. Whatever you do as a squad leader, resist the urge to split off a fire-team for whatever temporarily assigned duty you may have in mind, because at the least opportune moment, they will be taken under fire, and if you can't support them by fire with the rest of your squad, then you might as well cross all four of them off your TO&E right then and there.

2) Don't put terrain between your elements
This is really an extension of the first rule, and it's shown best when I pull Bravo back East across the ridge, away from contacts. Basically, two elements can be within 50 meters of each other, but if they're blocked from providing mutual support by a hill, or a wall, or a hedgerow, then they might as well be on separate continents for all the good they do one another. If the obstacle is a ridge like the ones in Flask, then you can station one fire-team on the ridge and have them watch over to the side that you're not on, but be prepared to shift the other two up to join them at a moment's notice if they come under fire.

3) Overlap fields of fire
I consider fire-teams close enough to provide mutual support when they share about 60-80% of each other's fields of fire. If any bad guys show up in that 60-80%, they'll be taken under fire by 8 guns instead of 4, maybe even 12 if the enemy is supremely unlucky. Basically, it maximizes the potential for instant fire superiority at any particular time, such that the first volley will be devastating to the bad guys even before we start maneuvering for a flank.

So far, I've just been advocating for "put all your dudes in one blob," and there are particular problems with that idea too, which brings us to the next few things I think about:

4) Don't cluster
The defining feature of a blob is that one grenade will rack up 4 kills for some lucky dude (insert shameless self-reference here). Sometimes it's a necessary evil and you have to clump up just to maintain proper sector coverage, such as in urban combat, and this is why grenades are so important (and so deadly) in urban combat. This is exercised in a few different ways on different levels. At the purely personal level, just don't stand next to someone else when there's enemies around. At a fire-team level, look around to make sure your guys are at least a few meters apart. At a squad level, when you pick places for your squad to halt, make sure there is sufficient cover for 12 guys to spread out with about 5 meters between each of them (this translates to an ideal combat frontage of about 50 meters at its narrowest, given some leeway for forward and backward displacement). At a platoon level, just don't order your squads into the same half of a grid-square. Unless it's terrible, terrible jungle or thick Chernarussian forest, two squads in the same 100m gridsquare usually means clustering or significant attrition.

5) Don't make one beaten zone
Beyond the importance of denying the enemy effective grenades is the importance of denying the enemy effective suppressive fire. Machine-guns and ambushes in general will have what's called a "beaten zone" upon which the dudes focus their suppression to fix your unit in place. Anyone within that beaten zone usually has to hit the dirt behind something solid, or suffer the consequences. If your entire squad has been caught in the beaten zone, then what do you have left with which to extricate yourself? Only the concealment of smoke and the prayer that another squad can take the heat off you before you get flanked. This is what happened to my entire platoon in two separate locations during this past Sunday's run of Swept. I didn't pay enough attention to spread out my squads enough for them to avoid getting caught in one beaten zone. This is the other reason fire-teams are so fragile - for a fire-team to maintain its proper concentration of force, it almost always stays within a single beaten zone.

6) Commanding Terrain is often worth splitting your forces
This is something I would primarily do at a platoon level because of Point #1. Basically, if you have a hill to one side of the battlefield that seems to provide a fantastic vantage point for the next 500 meters, then your entire plan of battle might revolve around one platoon securing and using the high-ground while the second maneuvers under their overwatch. Given an open enough field of fire, these two elements might be as far as 300 meters apart, but as long as the support-by-fire element can shoot that magic 60-80% of the places from which enemies can shoot the maneuver element, then they can still be considered mutually supporting elements.

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TL;DR Version: Don't ever split your squad beyond avoiding clustering, and don't split your platoon unless you have a good reason to, and even then, try to keep them within an accurate rifle-shot of one another if possible (300m max in open terrain, as little as 50m in cities or forests)

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Weaknesses

There are several weaknesses to this philosophy though. Try to find them, pick them apart, and I'll be back in your evening to acknowledge and explain those weaknesses.

~ Ferrard

It is my opinion that we rush ourselves way too much into contact, only to usually freeze, dig in and refuse to move because bullets are flying around. Which will lead to indecisive firefights, where luck and individual marksmanship only will make a difference.
Basically there are three points that in my opinion we can improve a lot:
- Tactical positioning of the elements (very well exposed above by Ferrard).
- Fire discipline (insert your own example of someone starting a big firefight early only because he coudn't resist taking an easy shot).
- ability to move during firefights.

However regarding the first one, I think we all make progress in the good direction, and even though some of us are really better at that than others (for instance, I can have all those ideas as to how to do stuff, yet when it comes to direct people, I'll invariably fail), only experience in commanding slots will really improve it. The point I was trying to raise some time ago in Ferrard's Commander's critique thread applies here too. We usually have time to reposition the different elements before engaging, and if the terrain has been misread, it can soemtimes still be corrected before engaging. Slowing down the tempo is my principal concern, even though we don't strive for a MilSim or even ShackTac approach where the first half hour of the mission is dedicated to recon.

As to fire discipline, people usually behave really well during Folk sessions. Those are rare incidents, but I thought I should enphasize on it anyway cause it only takes one bullet to put a whole plan on the verge of failure.

The last point is, and has been for the last couple sessions, a serious issue to me. Most of the time, here is the basic anatomy of our offensive firefights:
1- We take the best positions we can find in the time we are allowed before the firefight is initiated.
2- We perform a quick recon of the terrain and identify the major enemy threats.
3- We all open fire at the same time and take out a large part of the enemy in the first volleys of bullets.
4- We achieve fire superiority.
5- Nothing. We stay there and keep firing until one of the sides has taken too much casualty to pursue the firefight. Usually it will be the enemy, yet more than often it will be us.

Reaction to ambush:
1- We take fire from an undetermined direction.
2- We inform command and dig in, trying to precisely pinpoint the enemy's location.
3- Jump directly to the 5 above.

And, this is clearly not an issue of command, or at least not only. I have been commanding a bit more recently, even though I don't feel comfy at it at all. This is one issue I've encountered numerous times:
- People will not respond to an order of covering a certain part of the terrain if they think the bulk of the enemy force is not coming from there, making it difficult to maintain security, even during an assault.
- A squad taking fire will not answer to any short-term order, and will dig in until the firefight ceases. At this point they'll resume following command.
- A fireteam having taken a casualty will be effectively stranded and won't move until the dude's either up or dead.

Those things, I've witnessed at least twice each in the last three sessions, I'd say, in fireteams or squads I was leading. Now you're like, yeah, but I don't see the connection with the initial question from Fer.
In my opinion, you could basically try all the fireteams displays you want on one given terrain, won't change much until we're able to effectively use Fire and Maneuver. There, I said it.
Now, the good spacing between elements, is not when A can fire on the same position as B. It's when B can fire on a position while A is close enough to move onto that position in a matter of seconds at a squad level, of minutes at a platoon level.

Once again, this only an opinion and a personal analysis, and I'll gladly take any comments/suggestions regarding my leading/contradictions.

Amen BM. Great reply to an awesome post from Carson.

Here's a question for ya. We could work on this in the Workshops. Any ideas on how we would structure such training?

Ferrard Carson wrote:...if one person goes down, the entire element has to stop - two dudes to cover, and the third to pick up the fourth, and that's assuming the wounded guy A) survived, and B) was the only one hit.

Black Mamba wrote: - A fireteam having taken a casualty will be effectively stranded and won't move until the dude's either up or dead.

Pet peeve of mine. There's a neat solution to this: don't touch the injured until you've won the fight. Trying to evacuate or patch up people when there's a fight going on just makes it more likely you'll lose, or more people end up dead as a result because you were bandaging your buddy, instead of maneuvering and shooting. This is especially true because the engagements in ARMA tend to be really quick. The injured can wait, the living can't.

I'm not sure that is the solution either. People can bleed out. The issue is more that we don't know how to react properly. With drills we can ensure that we can deal with casualties without unnecessarily exposing others to more danger.

However, there will be occasions, such as being under fire from a Shilka where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and the threat will need to neutralised before anyone gets medical attention.

Yep, in my opinion the solution to that is somewhere in between. Don't forget we have squad medics.
If the fireteam happens to be an assaulting element, thay can't be bothered with treating a downed buddy. What they can do is perform a simple drill involving smoke, covering fire and dragging the wounded into cover. After that they need to resume their assault and let the medic come and pull the guy back up. This can also be done by a second wave/rear security element if the number of casualies is too heavy for the medic alone. You don't need to wait for the end of the firefight. You just can't stop your movement for one wounded dude either.

One other point regarding squad management. One thing we don't see much, and could bear some results, is improvised Fire Support Groups (hopefully he upcoming group switching ability will make this easier. Check my last mission, Last Man Standing if you want to see how I did it). Strip three fireteams from their AR, couple that whith an MMG team, and you got yourself a hell of a base of fire, that can easily cover the advance of a full squad.

Black Mamba wrote:The point I was trying to raise some time ago in Ferrard's Commander's critique thread applies here too. We usually have time to reposition the different elements before engaging, and if the terrain has been misread, it can soemtimes still be corrected before engaging. Slowing down the tempo is my principal concern, even though we don't strive for a MilSim or even ShackTac approach where the first half hour of the mission is dedicated to recon.

Slowing down the tempo is a point that still need to be belabored more, methinks. We do run into a fundamental problem in that most of us want to shoot something when we play, and when we're told not to, many of us get antsy, as evidenced by the unauthorized, but probably good faith RPG shot in my Flask video.

Black Mamba wrote:As to fire discipline, people usually behave really well during Folk sessions. Those are rare incidents, but I thought I should emphasize on it anyway cause it only takes one bullet to put a whole plan on the verge of failure.

Again, reference the Flask video for one of the few times I've caught what may be poor fire-discipline on camera. I'm fair certain that RPG shot cost us two dudes.

Black Mamba wrote:The last point is, and has been for the last couple sessions, a serious issue to me. Most of the time, here is the basic anatomy of our offensive firefights:
{snip}

Reaction to ambush:
{snip}

This is pretty spot on - It's pulling teeth to get us to disengage, something that I'm hoping Tiger and I could make a workshop to focus on. What's that? You've volunteered to help? Good man!

Black Mamba wrote: Now, the good spacing between elements, is not when A can fire on the same position as B. It's when B can fire on a position while A is close enough to move onto that position in a matter of seconds at a squad level, of minutes at a platoon level.

You are right, this is a better rule of thumb than simple co-location of units. Massed fire from static locations like we normally do is useful, but nowhere near as effective as another element flanking and assaulting the forces that you have fixed in combat.

Harakka wrote: don't touch the injured until you've won the fight.

This is one that doesn't get enough attention, methinks. We've done impromptu casualty drills in the workshop, and enough people have absorbed the "smoke, cover, drag, heal" process or seen others doing it that as a group, we now do it fairly reflexively. Unfortunately, this also means that reflexively, most of our assaults (and the terrible clusters that pass for withdraws among us) get bogged down with the first casualty. I don't know of any hard and fast rules for when to pull up a casualty or not, but just think about the friendly forces around you. Can they afford you taking your rifle off the firing line for however long it takes to kidney punch your comrade?

Black Mamba wrote:Strip three fireteams from their AR, couple that whith an MMG team, and you got yourself a hell of a base of fire, that can easily cover the advance of a full squad.

I would love to see this. I've never implemented it myself because 1) it breaks routine and isn't something we practice, and 2) I can't think of a situation off the top of my head where I would want to do that and had the time to organize the logistics involved. Still. I'd love to see this. Hell, I'd love to implement it if there were a mission that could call for this *coughcough* Khalid Pass (stick one huge machine-gun element on the northern-most Abandoned Outpost and have AAR's drop all their spare mags to make the maximum use of that terrain).

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Weaknesses of Mahanian Infantry Positioning

So some of you have touched on some of the weaknesses of my style of maneuver and positioning. My method of positioning doesn't lend itself to quick maneuver. It works really, really well for the typical Folk firefight as laid out quite accurately by Black Mamba. Usually all of our elements are engaged within 10 seconds of the first shot being fired, even when we're ambushed. Unfortunately, this means that there usually aren't any uncommitted fire-teams at my disposal to maneuver and flank, meaning I have to somehow get a group of us to disengage the enemy, something that we tend to be very slow at doing. In Rolling Matryoshka over a month ago, the reason Charlie 1 was so pliant in pulling back when I told them to was that they were taking accurate fire, and they liked the sound of my voice.

So, it's inflexible, and tends to get fixed in place very easily by any amount of enemy contact at all. What else can go wrong with this method?

Simply put, it's slow. A platoon moving via these guidelines is a cumbersome beast - hell to be in contact with, but easy to avoid and outmaneuver, like the Americans in Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan. As a simple fact, the larger an element, the longer it will take to move through any given terrain. The pace of movement will be much more steady and even, compared to a smaller unit, because so much overwatch and so many extra bodies lends itself to the ability to absorb casualties readily and easily, where an independently maneuvering squad would have to go firm and wait for the injured to be pulled back up.

In a mission like Black Mamba's Blackfolk Down, a Mahanian platoon would probably not be a very effective way of going about the mission plotwise. The first HVT might be secured, but if the second and third get wind of what's going on (by, say, listening to the cacophony of gunfire coming from the south) then they're bugging out after a few minutes.

So what other options are there available to you? Well, there's independent squad maneuvering, something significantly more palatable than independent fire-team maneuvering, since squads are significantly more hardy than fire-teams. Something like this is much more suited to Blackfolk Down, especially given the decentralization of opposition forces and objectives. Here, however, care must be taken that no squad is given more objective or opposition than they can chew, and that they have a clear place to which they can retreat and hold out while the rest of the platoon moves to relieve them.

~ Ferrard

Speaking as someone who hasn't played in any kind of leadership role in-game, I personally wouldn't have any problem with slowing things down a little. I don't think 5-15 minutes of manoeuvring and intel gathering in coop missions would impact the games negatively, though adversarial missions are better suited to the way we currently do things.

Take yesterday's run through of Wideola; having some 'on the ground' prep time could mean intel on the proposed LZ and the surrounding area, which could have led to pilots taking a different route to the LZ, or even a differfent LZ altogether, and getting more troops on the ground, and those troops being given some info on the way in, ie 'there'll be insurgents at X Y and Z, so make sure security covers those spots when we land'.

We're all playing to get into the action and have fun, but there's nothing more frustrating than being the guy that takes a headshot out of the blue before the fun's really begun. If slowing things down slightly means more people staying alive in missions for longer then I'm all for it.