Pre planing Friday night missions

[12Alfa]

Ok.

Lets go back to when we had the mission b4 Friday night.

We think that we can assign some players to key leadership positions. Now in the event not enough players show, well np, we just as we do now change the mission to fit the number of players.

We can do the pre planned mission the next time.

What do you all think, Brun and myself would like to think this would be a better draw of players and a better type of play for most of regulars.

We will still have the Friday night missions, that won't change.:biggrin:

[Brun]

Haveing Co's be able to go over the battle ahead of time would speed up the planning process on fri night and make for less confusion and more enjoyable battles. Especially on scenes with lots of units and complex tasks such as obsticle breaching under fire.

[Mogwa]

Flash back a few years. We've been through this before. It just leads to preplotted BPs selected through extensive scouting in 3D view etc etc. Outraged claims of cheating or its unrealistic, blah blah blah.I say just post a screenshot of the map and a few graphics and let that be that. Are we really experiencing excessive delays in planning ?

[12Alfa]

Flash back a few years. We've been through this before. It just leads to preplotted BPs selected through extensive scouting in 3D view etc etc. Outraged claims of cheating or its unrealistic, blah blah blah.I say just post a screenshot of the map and a few graphics and let that be that. Are we really experiencing excessive delays in planning ?

No we r not experiencing delays, however some of us would like to have a plan that is well though out. This can't be done in 30 mins on a Friday night after a long week of "normal" work/life .

I would recommend that we have 2 missions ready to go. The pre-planned with a confirmed roster of players for each side, and a mission if the desired amount of player don't show for the pre-planned mission.

We just want to plan the mission better with the players that show on a weekly schedule so the CO can assign sectors/mission/sub-plans.

If it doesn't fly, well then no harm, we have the second mission to fall back on, much the same we do now if the mission is too big/small.

[Sean]

This would require that people submit more missions. With the exeption of a few people, thats not happening. Otherwise I'm just picking stuff out based on the size of the crowd or editing old missions on the spot to fit the size of the crowd. Yes, in a perfect world it would be ideal to have lots of time to pre plan a mission. Remember that saved plans cant be loaded anyway...

Most of our delays have nothing to do with planning - its going back for people that have dropped, etc.

[ShotMagnet]

I'll submit more missions. The biggest problem I have with FNG missions is finding the right size. Is there one?

Shot

[Brun]

I'm sure real life commanders have access to detailed sattelite images of the terrain and enemy fortifications that they use to plan their attacks, Info from scouts and forword observers, or even a damn sand table to to study and work out the plan and BP's for more than 15 mins. Haveing no save plan feature does not matter, I can print out a map with graphics on it I can use for reference.

Co's here often have complex tasks with many units and players of very different skill levels to organize in 15 min with a brief and and topographical map and a hurry your ass up. With proper planning time I can assign positions to players based on skill levels, because I know what each units task will be before the battle starts. Sb is the most realistic sim around. It is time the planning phase for Co's match that level of realism, and go beyond the last min pick up hack and slash battles. We can have those battles any time, tgif should be different.

[Hodo]

I'm sure real life commanders have access to detailed sattelite images of the terrain and enemy fortifications that they use to plan their attacks, Info from scouts and forword observers, or even a damn sand table to to study and work out the plan and BP's for more than 15 mins. Haveing no save plan feature does not matter, I can print out a map with graphics on it I can use for reference.

Co's here often have complex tasks with many units and players of very different skill levels to organize in 15 min with a brief and and topographical map and a hurry your ass up. With proper planning time I can assign positions to players based on skill levels, because I know what each units task will be before the battle starts. Sb is the most realistic sim around. It is time the planning phase for Co's match that level of realism, and go beyond the last min pick up hack and slash battles. We can have those battles any time, tgif should be different.

As a ex-army man, and having done quite a bit of training on the JR. officer level. You dont always have alot of access to all that information or even time to plan it all out in great detail. During some training menuevers, before 9/11, the captain rarely had more than 20min to plan out a op for the company. He would recieve the brief from the battalion commander and staff, then he would in turn reword a bit of the Op order for the company, then hash out a hasty plan that worked withing the BN level operations. And he would issue Fragos as needed in route if there was a situation change. Honestly the best information a commander can have is actually having reliable human eyes on target. This is why a good cav scout is worth their weight in platinum.

After all a company commander aka Captain in the US army, is still considered a junior officer.

Trust me there were times I wish we had time to take a few days to plan out a op... but it just wasnt the case.

[Brun]

As a ex-army man, and having done quite a bit of training on the JR. officer level. You dont always have alot of access to all that information or even time to plan it all out in great detail. During some training menuevers, before 9/11, the captain rarely had more than 20min to plan out a op for the company. He would recieve the brief from the battalion commander and staff, then he would in turn reword a bit of the Op order for the company, then hash out a hasty plan that worked withing the BN level operations. And he would issue Fragos as needed in route if there was a situation change. Honestly the best information a commander can have is actually having reliable human eyes on target. This is why a good cav scout is worth their weight in platinum.

After all a company commander aka Captain in the US army, is still considered a junior officer.

Trust me there were times I wish we had time to take a few days to plan out a op... but it just wasnt the case.

\

I understand your point. Commanders in real life can have little time and basic info to plan a battle. They also have well trained soldiers under their command to work with. My desire to have more time to plan is to cut down on confusion for newer players and make tgif more enjoyable for them. Either way is fine with me, the battle must go on.

[12Alfa]

After all a company commander aka Captain in the US army, is still considered a junior officer.

Trust me there were times I wish we had time to take a few days to plan out a op... but it just wasnt the case.

Well maybe back then.

However now that doesn't happen to often. I have just come back from a multi-nation ex and the standard times at the battle group/battalion level is generally 24 orders by the time it hits the company commander. That is to say the brigade CO would issue orders at 19:00 on a Monday for a op on 19:00 or later the next day.

With the more troops/units this would take longer to get the info passed to each unit and time for them to do their battle procedure/rehearsals etc.

Now I'm not saying the 20 min orders don't happen, just its rare these days in the environment we have to operate in.

I would say anything under 12 hrs is pushing the envelope for any unit over a company size mission, longer with additional supporting units to ensure a mission success.

This is only after different nations have worked together before. The coordination needed at this level without some training is noticeably going to make the time from issue to start line longer.

I found that all armies have the same time lines more or less. The difference would be how they use their time in between:biggrin:

Of course Mr Murphy is going to want his time also,:biggrin:

Asking for a few days to plan a TGIF I think is not unreasonable:cul::cul:

[Volcano]

I don't think it is a bad idea, it is just - as Sean said - there isn't exactly a great flow of scenarios coming in from the community. He usually either makes the scenario himself a few days in advance, or picks one out of the scenarios we have played in the past. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating they we suddenly get a flood of scenarios that are poorly tested for TGIF, just that it would be nice if more people contributed to make something like this practical.

Perhaps in a few years when we have such a vast amount of scenarios available that we can just pick them completely from the group of "classics", but otherwise it is a bit impractical to expect someone to come up with a sceanrio ahead of time and submit it early in the week to make much of a difference.