Troop formations: Bounding Overwatch

[sc1ence]

Bounding Overwatch is a troop movement technique that is highly effective in real life as well as some tactical shooter games. I think FFOW can be particularly well suited to these basic principles.

A short but useful blurb on bounding overwatch from wikipedia:

Bounding overwatch, also known as leapfrogging or simply bounding, is the military tactic of alternating movement of coordinated units to allow, if necessary, suppressive fire in support of offensive forward movement or defensive disengagement. As members of a unit (element to platoon level) take an overwatch posture, other members advance to cover; these two groups continually switch roles as they close with the enemy. This process may be done by "leapfrogging" by fireteams, but is usually done within fireteams along a squad/platoon battle line to simulate an overwhelming movement towards the enemy and make it more difficult for the enemy to distinguish specific targets.

This military tactic takes continuous training and focused coordination to be effectively practiced on the modern battlefield. It was first developed in World War II, when suppressing fire became possible - in other words, when man-portable automatic weapons began to come into general issue.

Today, well-trained military forces practice the use of Bounding Overwatch, due to its effectiveness.

Example: A four-man fireteam in an urban combat zone must advance to a building 100 feet away, crossing an intersection they know is in many enemy rifle sights from elevated buildings. If the team simply made a run-for-it, they would be wiped out by the enemy's superior elevation, and concealment.

This is where bounding overwatch comes into play.

One or two soldiers will begin suppressing areas believed to house enemies. The firing doesn't have to kill the enemy soldiers (that's a bonus), it just has to keep their heads down. As this occurs, the other soldiers of the four-man fireteam rush to a secure spot and begin suppressing the enemy soldiers. The first one/two troop(s) reload and rush(es) to the others. Once the soldier or soldiers reach the other two, they begin firing while the other soldiers advance further. Once they reach the intended destination, they suppress as the last soldier rushed to the destination.

By using Bounding Overwatch, this Fireteam was able to effectively move through a hostile urban street and intersection, sustain little or no damage, and possibly neutralize some enemy soldiers.

Although Bounding overwatch is used in every military situation, it is very important in urban combat because cities provide enemy forces with elevated positions, tight corners, and ideal cover

In general, the principle of bouding overwatch can be seen by the following high tech animated gif



When each element reaches cover, they dig in and lay down covering fire for the other elements that are moving. That is the basic idea. Elements can be people or groups of people or vehicles. The basic premise is that while moving, you really can not fight back all that much. So get your teamates to cover you.

Note that this is a movement technique not a pure attack formation. When you encounter resistance, everyone takes cover and works on clearing the way to your objective. At some point your SL may call out a diamond formation, or single file or wedge attack formation for a breach or something. But for moving as a squad from one CP to another, this is really how a good squad will be moving. The formation is not rigid, the fireteam should move as a single unit, with each element having reasonable freedom to pick thier cover and movement path within the confines of the squads objective.

Once you get to the objective, a different formation may be used with each element of the fireteam taking cover in a back to back formation or any other number of loose groupings. fireteams that are working together can also make use of these techniques with one fireteam bounding with another. Classic infantry military formations seem like they would do well with ffow given the frontline dynamic. Formations are all about the chess match that goes on at the strategic level.

Although good twitch skills are critical to your success on the battlefield, it is tactics and strategy that will turn a few rambo guns into an unstoppable fireteam.

This kind of behavior is typically difficult to get with a random squad. Often you will find TG In house squads focusing on these kinds of movement techniques.

If your squad leader calls out something to the effect of "we are going to leapfrog (or bound) to the northern CP" then you know that they are expecting you to move cover to cover. You should be spending about as much time behind cover as you are moving. Typically, there is only one or two elements of the fireteam moving at any time. The squad leader is usually at the rear of the formation and almost never leapfrogs to the front unless a nearby spawn point is available.


Depending on the how organized your fire team is, you may want to try breaking up the movement into sub groups like is done in grouped alternate and successive bounds.


For a video of how this can be used to clear a building, watch the some TG guys in action in 2142: http://www.cooperclan.org/TG/Boundin...20bounding.wmv

[Io Dragone]

Very nice... I'll have to try that out on Frontlines. That 2142 video, was it just 1 life elimination?

[sc1ence]

Originally Posted by Io Dragone

Very nice... I'll have to try that out on Frontlines. That 2142 video, was it just 1 life elimination?

yes. 1 life elimination small fireteam drills. Those vids are about a year old now. I would love to get some good squad formation tactics on video for FFOW. Hopefully in the next week I can have something on video that shows how bounding can work in FFOW.

[Magnum50]

just fyi...

Back when full spectrum warriors was released they had some nice tactical videos, i have them all at the bottom of this page:

http://www.gettacticaldammit.com/squad_tactics.htm

but heres the one related to this topic:


if it helps.

[Io Dragone]

Thanks for the videos, Magnum.
If you could get a video of bounding overwatch being used in an actual game of Frontlines against other players, that would be awesome, Science.
Edit- Me and my squad actually used bounding overwatch today to move up on Memorial park on Gnaw. It worked pretty well!

[Exploding_Silver]

I was talking to sc1ence about this on teamspeak, i can see for infantry a squad having 2 fireteams of two, alpha and beta. The leapfroggin all the time as standard movement policy

rule is alpha always move on the left and bravo on the right, to keep it simple

so imagine streets, going down an alley
alpha hold (implication is cover)
bravo move forward
bravo hold
alpha move forward

nice simple & tight communication to leapfrog two fireteams, this seems very workable to me