S-2 hears you, we care - Ground Forces Edition

[Capt (Ret) Hito]

I will try to use this area to ask for some feedback related to certain topics. S-2 would like to hear your opinion, your ideas, what do you like, what you dislike, and take this into account for future activities, next deployments so we can improve so the things can be more enjoyable for the unit member.

 

Just keep in mind this doesn't mean that all the things said here will be implemented, I can assure you that we will take your opinions very seriously, we will analyze all the information ( that's our job)  and those that are feasible and are in order with the unit overall goals we  will try to implement  them in the near-mid future.

 

Our topic today is

Ground Operations

 

 

We would like to hear from our ground forces what type of missions or activities should they do in future missions. This is an open forum, so members outside from ground forces may also share their views.

 

 

Final reminder keep the conversation civilized, don't be that guy that fucks everything, otherwise, you will deal with the Gunny,  and you don't want that.                                 

 

[Capt (Ret) Hito]

Bump. Please share your thoughs this will helps us

[Maj (Ret) Ray]

No one on the ground has any suggestions or requests? I don't believe that at all.

[MSgt Falconer]

I´ll throw in my two cents here.

For me mission making has always been about balancing fun and realism, and when in doubt always lean on the side of fun.
I think we can all agree that we wan exciting, action filled missions where we get to do cool SF shit.

This however presents us with a problem, namely the "SF shit"
We are light infantry equipped for a very specific mission each operation, we are NOT frontline sluggers meant to go toe to toe with a conventional enemy force.
Not rarely do our missions end up in a senseless wholesale slaughter of the enemy force and the objective hopefully being one of the things that died /exploded in the middle, usually also with very large numbers of BLUFOR wounded, usually a ratio that should see the mission aborted so hard planned parenthood would name a national holiday after us.

 

So the way I see it the problem is simple: We fight waaaaaaay to large enemy forces for what we are, leading to the mission just becoming a dull grind.

Solution

S2 Ares operators: Please take a moment to consider if your actions are going to be an exciting/interesting/fun experience for the Task Force, or just a chore. When faced with realism vs fun, always lean on the side of fun. This is ofcourse not to say that all missions should be a breeze, but spawning wave after wave of Russian QRFs because the Task Force got slightly delayed with a casualty or ARMA issue, or whatever is just piling frustration on top of the issues.

S2 Mission creators: Smaller, more focused missions. Not every mission needs to be a massive raid on some military grade doom fortress. Personally I would like to see several smaller objectives, maybe somewhat linked to each other via various bits of Intel. "Investigate point A, Intel leads to Point B, Upon completion of B unit is redirected to some ongoing issue that requires attention" the extent of this would be down to the mission creators and ultimately to the Ares Operators.

 

MSOT members of all ranks: You are not the hero in a Michael Bay movie, there will be missions that arent all about shooting people and big explosions, accept it.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Sgt Falconer

[Specter]

I'd like to see more recon. Part of our job description is deep recon and we rarely do it. So a few missions where a team slips in to scout AA positions, fuel and ammo dumps, HQ locations etc to mark as targets for artillery, air, or incoming friendly conventional forces would be nice. 

 

And I am fucking sick of cartels and pirates. We've done that like 3 times and it has sucked every time.

 

EDIT: Change it up.

Edited August 1, 2018 by GySgt Specter
Change it up.

[Capt (Ret) Kardnal]

Personally I would like to see more flanking confrontations. Assisting an MEU with breaking lines by infiltrating a half mile behind the frontlines to disable/destroy prime targets, only to be noticed and have to exfil out of the area under enemy notice would be quite the spectacle.

My biggest issue with the last deployment was that there was very little communication between HQ and the battle captain, whereas the battle captain would start the mission planned as one way, and the HQ would plan a different way, and the two would never meet, causing the mission to be defunct.

[Capt (Ret) Jones]

Something that I think can definitely be improved upon is the inclusion of the story within each mission. The last few deployments have had stories behind them, but there was never anything specific that would tie the overarching story into the gameplay. If we capture an HVT, I want to know what the purpose behind it was, why it was important to capture him, what information he shares that dictates the next operation, etc. There should be more than just "he said this, we're doing what he says". To somewhat echo Specter, instead of sending us directly to a new objective (and for this scenario, assuming an HVT were to give us such information on this objective), we have to recon it beforehand. This would qualify what the HVT has to offer and could make him a more trusted informant for S-2. 

 

Having objectives that we complete (or fail to complete) should have an impact on the current and next operation, while also impacting the story that is being told. This segues the idea of dynamic objectives and not having everything be static. Adding in variables to each operation would make them more interesting. As a complete hypothetical, say the objective was to stop a bomb factory from exporting their goods, but if the team takes too long to arrive at the location, the trucks leave and are now entering civilian populated areas, and now the team is on a time crunch to stop the trucks. Again, complete hypothetical, but I'm hoping the point gets across. Having a flowchart of events that will occur if conditions are met would be more interesting than what we've had in the past.

 

As a final note, it's very easy to predict when certain events will occur. If there is a singular building in the middle of no-where, it almost ALWAYS is an ambush or a trap. There are extremely predictable events that I think could be remedied with curveballs being thrown discreetly. This would likely aid in mission variety and overall enjoyment.

 

 

[K. Cooper]

Change it up.

[GySgt (Ret) Reeves]

5 minutes ago, Cpl Cooper said:

Change it up.

 

Ground Operations cover such a broad spectrum of activities, and to just say "change it up" is comparable to saying "just change it" while trying to amend a whole Constitution or political manifesto, without specifying which part or what should be changed. Surely there is something good, and most surely there are bad aspects too. Take a look at the other posts as an example, nothing constructive can be taken from a post that simply says "change it up."

[K. Cooper]

SSgt, that message is as straight forward as possible. From my participating perspective, all I've seen are missions that seem recylcled, overused, and overly extreme. Kill the redundancies and the repitition. It shouldn't be difficult too understand if you've participated in these latest FTX/Operational Cycles.

Again : Change It Up.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Cpl Cooper

[GySgt (Ret) Reeves]

Thanks for elaborating and clarifying the change it up statement. Repetitive and recycled missions would've sufficed originally as "change it up" is as broad as the subject itself. The snide comments however are not appreciated.

 

We appreciate all the input so far and will definitely discuss and look at implementing some of your suggestions in the next deployment.

Edited August 2, 2018 by SSgt Reeves

[Zietara]

Personally, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that @Sgt Falconer brought up regarding gathering intel being critical to completing the mission. That would add a challenge to the game on a strategic level, and in some cases non-'mission critical' intel (meaning important, but not necessary to 'win') such as locations of enemy assets that would change the gameplan of the commander/leader during the operation, would add to the mission in terms of enjoyment and realism.

 

And @2ndLt Jones idea of a 'story' is (in my humble opinion) one of the most important aspects of immersion in the MILSIM experience. Having a believable story that is influenced by the actions/inactions of the individuals in the story should be the framework of every deployment, with failures and successes both being possible outcomes and both altering the course of the deployment. Having a  'go to A, clear B, extract at C' operation operation may be fun at times but is liable to becoming repetitive and boring. To be honest, LT stole the words out my mouth and said it better than I ever could.

 

My two cents is a amalgamation of most of the opinions here. To put it bluntly: I want failure to be part of our operations. I want to get bad intel regarding enemy forces/etc and get bogged down in a nasty firefight. I want the possibility of failure to hang over my head every time we step off. In my opinion, it seems that every time we go out (with exceptions) we are 'destined' to win, no matter the cost. If consequences for failure were more dire, they encourage the team to work harder to win, and 'winning' tastes all the more sweet. I can expand on this as well, as to not take too much space. I hope the idea is clear, though.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Cpl Zietara

[Maj (Ret) Ray]

Is there any opinion on VCOM AI so far? Have you found that it presents a greater challenge, or is it just annoying?

[Capt (Ret) Koch]

From the perspective of someone that was in charge of things here, just wanted to add something.

 

Lots of the wishes and suggestions I see now are a stark contrast to what people wanted in the past, so not sure what changed. Reports and things I heard in the past were: not enough to shoot at, not enough action, failing was not fun, intel gathering is not fun

 

Am glad that seems to be changing now and people want to take the unit in a new direction. Just wanted to add that little tidbit; I did want to move the unit in this direction, but I was afraid of a backlash.

 

Glad to see Hito doing this thread, too. Gonna keep an eye on it and see what happens, I still consider 3d the child I willingly gave away full custody of.

 

Rock on, friends

[Sgt (Ret) Chase]

Personally I only really need a purpose, I don't like just blowing up a town for no reason or doing recon for nothing. So that might tie into the addition of more story. I'll watch a rock for an hour if you can't convince me it's important enough. Also don't be afraid to go out of the box when it comes to storyboarding strict realism can be cool and all but it's also nice to get a breathe of fresh air. I was honestly praying the Chinese would attack us at some point in that last deployment just to shake things up. I personally would love to fight a conventional force, of course not as grunts, but just to even the playing field a bit and give us more of a challenge rather that getting shot at by a random villager who found an AK.

[MSgt Falconer]

1 hour ago, Maj Ray said:

Is there any opinion on VCOM AI so far? Have you found that it presents a greater challenge, or is it just annoying?

Much more fun to fight against.
Borderline useless to when you want them to guard something.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Sgt Falconer

[Maj (Ret) Ray]

6 minutes ago, Sgt Falconer said:

Much more fun to fight against.
Borderline useless to when you want them to guard something.

@SSgt Carter How'd you get VCOM units to garrison successfully?

[MSgt (Ret) Carter]

52 minutes ago, Maj Ray said:

@SSgt Carter How'd you get VCOM units to garrison successfully?

VCOM in the testing phase would remain garrisoned when there was apparent BLUFOR AI. Occasionally a couple would detach, but if the headless client wasn't overwhelmed it appeared they would successfully come back to their standing garrison order once all AI conflict was over. When a BLUFOR player is present (this wasn't tested to my knowledge) they throw literally almost all orders out the window and do what they want. Unsure if they'll ever return to their standing orders because they usually die.

Obviously them returning to their standing orders isn't apparently as useful as it came across in testing. However the mentality and direction then was VCOM is far more difficult to play against because they're flanking and react to gunshots. Whereas the default AI you could discharge a un-suppressed weapon 180m from them and they would do nothing. Once they heard you, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

[GySgt Cole]

3 hours ago, SSgt Carter said:

Whereas the default AI you could discharge a un-suppressed weapon 180m from them and they would do nothing. Once they heard you, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

 

A lot of this behavior in Vanilla AI can be negated by increasing spotting distance and AI accuracy, but I got complaints about how hard the AI were when tested.

@GySgt Hito @1st LT Osbourne and any battlecaptains that weren't around when I was: you're never going to make everyone happy, especially if you try to put more focus on driving a story (making a story that an 15 people can interact with is hard, 30 even harder).

Everyone else: understand that S-2 is never going to be able to make everyone happy. Find the fun in each mission (talk to your battlebuddies, check houses that probably have zero consequence to the mission), and please be respectful and upbeat when addressing S-2 with criticism. Nothing burns out a zeus more and gets you ignored faster than being whiney about something in game that probably could be chalked up to ground incompetence (which happens all the time), not S-2 personally trying to dick you over (which doesn't happen).

[GySgt Cole]

I would edit my post but permissions have been incredibly restricted for people who've dedicated at least 1.5 years to the unit for no reason.

Hito/Osbourne - take criticism but remember to have a vision for the story and missions you'd like to create and abide by that vision. I found that readjusting that vision every week to suit task forces or grapeshot critiques/suggestions just made things seem chaotic to the regular guys.

[Capt (Ret) Bazarnicki]

10 hours ago, Capt (Ret) Koch said:

Lots of the wishes and suggestions I see now are a stark contrast to what people wanted in the past, so not sure what changed. Reports and things I heard in the past were: not enough to shoot at, not enough action, failing was not fun, intel gathering is not fun

It isn't as cut and dry as "not enough to shoot at, not enough action, failing is not fun" - all of those statements are not black and white, there is tons of grey area.
Finding the line in those is what we have to do. Failing a mission due to 100 AI swarming you at once can be very not fun, but failing due to being worn down through multiple engagements can be fun. Failing due to incorrect intel, the target escaping, enemy reinforcements push us off of an objective, etc - these are all fun ways to fail.

I think this might be more of the issue with people not wanting to fail - failure always seemed to be previous a lot of enemies just overwhelmed or shot us enough to make us get frustrated. While i won't discount that being a viable way to fail, when that's all you see, either mission complete or total wipe, it gets... old and stale. And that makes it not fun.

As for the "not enough to shoot at, not enough action" - I do agree with that at some level. We are here to do Milsim, but in the end we need to all realize that the actual part of milsim we want is the operations, stepping outside the wire, doing things. Something at some level has to happen otherwise its a waste of time, hence why we don't have FTXs or trainings where we all get together and clean our guns, do PT, etc.

With that in mind, action doesn't have to be "firing guns until we run out of ammo or targets." I'd say a mission where we sit at the airfield for 1-2 hours literally doing nothing is a failed mission, and is not respectful of the time the members put in to showing up. The good news is there is a middle ground, in my mind. Instead of sitting around doing nothing, send us out. Give us a mission where we have to recon and avoid enemy patrols, infill as stealthily as possible, slip in under the radar, go covert. If done correctly, we don't even need to engage many contacts at all, but its still what I would call "action."

Basically, things still need to occur during our missions. Events still need to happen. But that doesn't mean every mission needs multiple waves of endless enemies to shoot. Take out a small patrol with silence, slip past a defensive perimeter, do our shit and get out, with them none the wiser until daybreak and they realize their patrol is overdue. That would be fun for me, even if not full of "action" (unless we fuck up and get caught).

Quick note on intel gathering not being fun - Sitting on a hill for 2 hours looking through binoculars and doing nothing else sounds boring. However, gathering intel for a while and then using that intel to do something would be fine, and could work nicely. 

Edited August 2, 2018 by 1stLt Bazarnicki

[MSgt Van Dyke]

I can't speak for the rest of S-2, but keep it coming guys. Some really great feedback here, and I'm watching this thread very closely.

[SSgt Benson]

I would like to see, for story and immersion, more information on enemies. I just like to know who we are fighting other than "Bandits" "The Cartel" or "The Rogue Chinese", Some actual names for units. like If we were fighting the Russian Army, Who are we fighting within the army? Is it the X Motor Rifle Brigade or X Guards Tank Division? Just more information than VDV or Infantry Company size force. More background info on equipment, and more variety of enemy equipment than just "eastern bloc". That is one thing I liked about the Rogue Chinese Operations was the break from that. Project Opfor is still great with the usage of the Bloc equipment. Throw some old western stuff in there to test peoples PID'ing as well.

 

 

[Osbourne]

Thanks again everyone. We will try and incorporate what we can for this upcoming deployment.