TEST 25 v 25 Night Ops Screenshots

Shadow Reaper

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Good vid of pretty much everything you want to do if you want to be a LOSER.

1) Go with no plan. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail and of course they did. You should be careful to avoid any knowledge of the activity, such as whether the event involves craft flying, etc.

2) Discuss your ignorance and prove to others you are as drunken and stupid as is humanly possible.

3) Talk like you're 12 years-old, meaning use "f4ck", "sh1t" and "g0d damm" specifically to prove to others they should never have invited you to adult play.

4) Obsess over your place in the folly. Act as though certainly, you must be the most ignorant sod who ever tilted back a beer.

5) Talk over those who are trying to be helpful. Make sure everyone knows you're now a ghost, how you died, and make sure you don't warn them how they will die. Be sure to talk over anyone trying to be helpful, as that could just ruin everything.

I'm all for having fun and agree there needs to be a balance between discipline and play, but these guys are all LOSERS. I would never go back for a second attempt with such a group. These are the guys that guys like me feed on, mock, rob and ass rape (figurative), because they deserve it.
 
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Rear_Intruder

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Good vid of pretty much everything you want to do if you want to be a LOSER.

1) Go with no plan. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail and of course they did. You should be careful to avoid any knowledge of the activity, such as whether the event involves craft flying, etc.

2) Discuss your ignorance and prove to others you are as drunken and stupid as is humanly possible.

3) Talk like you're 12 years-old, meaning use "f4ck", "sh1t" and "g0d damm" specifically to prove to others they should never have invited you to adult play.

4) Obsess over your place in the folly. Act as though certainly, you must be the most ignorant sod who ever tilted back a beer.

5) Talk over those who are trying to be helpful. Make sure everyone knows you're now a ghost, how you died, and make sure you don't warn them how they will die. Be sure to talk over anyone trying to be helpful, as that could just ruin everything.

I'm all for having fun and agree there needs to be a balance between discipline and play, but these guys are all LOSERS. I would never go back for a second attempt with such a group. These are the guys that guys like me feed on, mock, rob and ass rape (figurative), because they deserve it.
Thank you for your feedback into a training exercise Shadow, I am sure that the participants learnt from the event. There was a debrief afterwards and one of your 3 points was brought up, although in a less abrupt way. From the tone of your post, I'm not sure that you went with 'the spirit 'of the event.

Please feel free to join in the next event as experienced players are of course eagerly welcomed to assist us novices.
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Those were our guys?

Oooops. . .erm. Sorry?

But hey, there are already real combat groups inside TEST who specialize in these things. I have seen several discussions about developing communications conventions, multi-channel VOIP, etc. I suggest look them up. I know there are plenty of people around here who actually have a clue, and none of them were in that vid. Aren't the Yellowjackets still a thing? Isn't there are handful of real Army guys organizing various squad tactics? I know I've seen this stuff before. Lets just face it though, the stuff in this vid was awful. The only way it could have been worse would have been friendly fire deaths and it looks like that may have happened too.

Why would anyone go to a gunfight and not even be aware if air support were an option? You realize pretty much any ship in the game could have put that Rover down and it looks like it killed the entire team.

Ooooops!
 
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Shadow Reaper

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Meh. . .okay so I sound like a real dick above. Sorry about that. It is so totally not helpful to be a dick. My bad. Sorry.

In attempts to be helpful, let me just make a few short observations.

It really helps to know what the rules are, what to bring to the fight, and what your objective is. After the fact it's easy to say, "hey, if we had a single SuperHornet in the air flying upside down, its turret gunner could have located and killed the entire enemy team in 2 minutes." That's lame since you didn't know that before the battle. What you did learn is shields rule, and you need shields. In fact if in the future you do this same thing again, I would use the Rover as cover for the center fire team. Doesn't seem right that there was nothing on the battlefield that could breech its shields. Its actually in Red team's favor they were dying of asphyxiation before the Ursa got them. For a fair and fun contest, you really should specify to both teams what they can and can't bring to the conflict.

Also, I will say this: when your comrades tell you there is fire incoming, and to get down, you really need to get down. Standing around in a group waiting to get shot is not cool.

When you hit the ground in battle you need to have fire teams sprinting to take up flanking positions to protect the rest of the group. Since Red team didn't do that, they never much even identified enemy positions. You can't wonder which way is North, etc. All that needs to be worked out ahead of time.

It does sound like there were a couple people trying to communicate effectively and they were ignored. Some of this confusion may be there seems to be no range nor direction markers on the HUD. Are there settings you can fix for better detail on the personal radar? Is there a better way to set a compass in advance? That must have been hugely frustrating, to not be able to call out directions, and that's not anyone's fault it seems. Still I would look for a way to fix this. Standing around in the dark with no way to point out sightings sucks, and appears is not the players' fault.

I need to ask, was there any command structure at all?

For 6,000 years of recorded history all combat units have command structure. You can't expect to be effective without one.
 
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marcsand2

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I need to ask, was there any command structure at all?

For 6,000 years of recorded history all combat units have command structure. wasYou can't expect to be effective without one.
Nope, there wasn't a combat structure at all. The goal was to get 25 vs 25 accomplished. 25 vs 25 means that you have a hard time getting people together.

There wasn't a lot of organization, just see who shows up and make the best of it. That means that a few people have to try to get a band of TESTies together and have some fun.
I'm all for having fun and agree there needs to be a balance between discipline and play, but these guys are all LOSERS. I would never go back for a second attempt with such a group. These are the guys that guys like me feed on, mock, rob and ass rape (figurative), because they deserve it.
This comment doesn't support the effort which the guys trying to organize this event at all. Give the guys some slack and let them learn from their experience.
 

Shadow Reaper

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This comment doesn't support the effort which the guys trying to organize this event at all. Give the guys some slack and let them learn from their experience.
Yeah. That was very dickish of me. My sincere apologies to the guys. Has been a frustrating couple weeks and I took it out on the wrong people, unless of course there are some investors here who have been dicking me around for three weeks. That stuff is contagious.
 

Cauac

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Meh. . .okay so I sound like a real dick above. Sorry about that. It is so totally not helpful to be a dick. My bad. Sorry.

In attempts to be helpful, let me just make a few short observations.

It really helps to know what the rules are, what to bring to the fight, and what your objective is. After the fact it's easy to say, "hey, if we had a single SuperHornet in the air flying upside down, its turret gunner could have located and killed the entire enemy team in 2 minutes." That's lame since you didn't know that before the battle. What you did learn is shields rule, and you need shields. In fact if in the future you do this same thing again, I would use the Rover as cover for the center fire team. Doesn't seem right that there was nothing on the battlefield that could breech its shields. Its actually in Red team's favor they were dying of asphyxiation before the Ursa got them. For a fair and fun contest, you really should specify to both teams what they can and can't bring to the conflict.

Also, I will say this: when your comrades tell you there is fire incoming, and to get down, you really need to get down. Standing around in a group waiting to get shot is not cool.

When you hit the ground in battle you need to have fire teams sprinting to take up flanking positions to protect the rest of the group. Since Red team didn't do that, they never much even identified enemy positions. You can't wonder which way is North, etc. All that needs to be worked out ahead of time.

It does sound like there were a couple people trying to communicate effectively and they were ignored. Some of this confusion may be there seems to be no range nor direction markers on the HUD. Are there settings you can fix for better detail on the personal radar? Is there a better way to set a compass in advance? That must have been hugely frustrating, to not be able to call out directions, and that's not anyone's fault it seems. Still I would look for a way to fix this. Standing around in the dark with no way to point out sightings sucks, and appears is not the players' fault.

I need to ask, was there any command structure at all?

For 6,000 years of recorded history all combat units have command structure. You can't expect to be effective without one.
Thanks for your feedback. Speaking as someone who actually was part of the event and also in one of the leadership roles in the Blue team, I'd like to make couple of points for people looking from outside to better understand the context and the circumstances.

Due to event organisers' different time tables and real life commitments, we were unable to gather as a group to discuss the events objectives and plans in advance. We did receive a short pdf briefing of the event objectives for both teams perhaps half an hour prior (during another event) to the event starting. Based on that e.g. me and the other Blue team leader made an action plan for the Blue teams mission while we were loading people into the instance and Red team was on their way to their position.
This action plan was shared with the Blue team and we had a mission objective briefing prior to setting out to fly to the target location. However, this action plan was totally made obsolete (I believe it was exactly same case with the Red team) since while moving to target location we got message that we have to abandon the original mission objective (which was capturing a building) due to an armistice zone at the location, and instead the mission objective was to "capture a hill". This was a location I personally was totally unfamiliar with and I doubt that many of the Blue team members were going to this location for the first time. Our original tactics and the mission briefing given to the team were totally inapplicable at this point and that contributed to the melt down of the action plan when the "shit hit the fan". I believe this was largely the case also with the Red team.

As I'm sure you see, the preparation for the event was clearly insufficient and this was agreed upon and clearly communicated in the AAR together with almost everyone that took part in the event. Also we had not established a common brevity and the command structure was not well thought of. Personally I got information that I'll be in a leading role in the event just as the event started.

Not trying to make excuses here as I'm sure we can all agree there is very much room for improvement in all aspects of organising this type of Test events in the future. It was a mess but we got to start somewhere. This was a learning experience for everyone involved and I believe many of us took home valuable lessons from the event, I did for sure.

I personally appreciate your feedback as you already made many good points in the post I'm quoting here. While you explained reasons behind your original salty comments, I believe it's the more constructive feedback that takes us somewhere. I'm not afraid or offended by harsh feedback (as I agree operationally there was lot of confusion and outright chaos during the event) but at the same time I believe that e.g. people that were taking part to a Test (or even SC) event for the first time do not deserve to be judged that harshly. Even the actual event was not an operational success, many people still enjoyed the experience, I myself included.

It would be fantastic if we got more of the experienced combat operation vets in like yourself with us in the upcoming events. It seems we are going to organise events every weekend and I invite you to join us anytime if you can and have the interest for it.
Personally I'm really keen to learn more about combat tactics and especially combat flight. I'm always looking for more competitive pilots that can really challenge me and I can learn from in dogfights. I'd be grateful if you can point me into right direction within Test Squadron as you spoke of experienced combat oriented people organising events/training in our organisation.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing you and hopefully learning from you in the games!

P.S. I'm new here at the forum as you can see from my profile but I've been part of Test for a year or so.
 

Shadow Reaper

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That's very kind of you to forgive my hasty and callous words. Thanks for that. Again my apologies for being a dick.

Hey, you guys had fun anyway, and I'm thrilled TEST has guys moving forward on team tactics. It's going to become a bedrock skill for effective team play, which is my biggest interest in game. I'm looking forward to seeing guys FPS and dogfight cooperatively as teams.

I am not however in a position to play at present. I just don't have time in my schedule and need to replace my machine, etc. Will be some more months I think.

In the meantime, let me suggest anyone looking at leading, think on established squad tactics. Jarheads really are smart, and good soldiers using good tactics routinely outclass their opponents. While it can take leaders some time to get down the basics, it takes far less time for team members to figure out where they should be. Do look through the great tutorials online. Some of them are awesome. The more a team or player invests in learning, the better they'll become. There is almost no end to what you can learn and eventually, the cream will rise to the top and the most disciplined teams will dominate wherever they go. Here's hoping they'll all be TEST teams.

Oh and hey, one final suggestion--for early exercises, fight in daylight. Night fighting is a special skill that takes time to develop. It ain't like in the movies at all and is very frustrating.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKRues4Fwrk


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_tactics
 

Marcel Busse

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we tried to establish something like battlecom in the past, and i think it is neccessary until not everyone is a natural english speaker.

but it also has its downsides, it can be very rude to tohe ordinary player. showing real tactics is far too much you can expect from the normal player.

speaking altogether is very confusing.

we must find something in between.

what we had was very promising, i still have the docs.

dont expect that you will more succeed with a too much pressed battlecom. chatter in between is good for group discipline, if you have 25 players in chan it is too much.

we should have teams each 5 players each team leader should switch discord chans between its team and the other leaders. they should focus on organizing, not on shooting.
 

CaptainHandsome

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It's damn hard to create an environment which suits all participants needs. I think there has to be some sort of balance between structure and "non-structure" in terms of command chain and "Let's see how crazy shit can get". I supose all of us joined TEST for the casual gameplay and manifesto (Recall the word a lot of beer) but to achive it there has to be some sort of structure so all players has a say and can enjoy the gameplay without talking over 25+ other players on discord. But "Give me 20 now soldier" or "Sit here for 1 hour and only talk if enemy contact" kind of drill sergeant will kill it. I hope for the love of BANU (Dont really like Banu but anyway) that ARMA/Squad hardcore playstyle does not arrive in TEST. Drink beer instead and be happy :)

Cheers!

*Reservation for a lot of grammar mishaps.
 

Shadow Reaper

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. . ."Sit here for 1 hour and only talk if enemy contact" kind of drill sergeant will kill it.
You got that right! The art of leadership is to create a goal that is compelling, and a plan to reach that goal that is attainable, then move everyone in the same direction. In our case, the goal has to include fun, but effectiveness is important since winning is fun too.

There is a balance here, and the cream will rise to the top. I think what we'll see here at TEST is we have some amazing leaders, especially starting with Toys. He sets a great standard for us all.
 
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