Sc[ + ]pe

Thorough, intelligent and roughly implementable guide, Zedic. I believe that this kind of radio discipline is entirely possible in the realm of ArmA, and I've already seen a brief version of your traffic help clear Teamspeak in large missions.

To the naysayers, I hope you haven't commanded yet...

Zantheus

Great guide Zedic. I am all for radio comms to be followed like this. Brings a whole new level of gameplay to the ARMA servers

FrankManik

I really like the guide. And I'd like to point out that while most of it is probably more than the average grunt needs to know for this game, the guys who are leading squads tend to put a lot of time into the game. Joe rifle can get away with a few basic commands, but as you move into squad and platoon lead positions this sort of thing could be very helpful.

Personally, I'm going to work on keeping better track of my grid position and the grid position of enemies. Giving an absolute location that everyone can work with is a lot better than shouting "Tank at 3 O'clock giving me hairy eyeball" when I've lost contact with my squad and I'm up to my nose in pine trees. Which is pretty much how I seem to roll these days. : (

browna3

OP has been updated de to request from zedic

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fuzzhead

Good edits, the basics are in there...

Making something like this (or simular) a standard procedure at TG would go a long way to making comms at TG more effective I think... its very basic stuff and takes only a few minutes to learn and get into the habit, and makes missions and commanding far more realistic and fluid.

blackmain

This should be stickied.

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The hungry, ignorant man immediately grasps that he is handed a fish, but is bewildered when handed a net. The man who shivers in the cold thinks happily of the man who invites him to sit by his fire, and somewhat poorly of the man who loans him an axe, flint and steel.

SporkWitch

All of this is definitely doable, and while intimidating on the surface, is easy and second nature with practice.

The thing some people seem to be missing is that it isn't necessarily about the necessity (though that's there to, to keep comms clear), but the immersion. Real world comms are half-duplex. That means that while I'm talking on a channel, no one else can, and if they do try to transmit, they can actually cause both their and my transmission are completely unreadable (get three LMRs on the same channel and try talking into two simultaneously, you get garbage out of the receiving one, not two voices talking over each other.) Part of the fun of games like this is getting into the spirit. Sure, we have full-duplex voice comms here, and sure we can hear over each other sometimes when people talk over each othre, and still understand, but that's not the point. The point is the immersion and getting into the spirit, and in this case that means behaving as if we only had half-duplex comms, confirming targets down / need for repeat, etc.

SITREPS and AARs (SOP after an engagement -- not the entire mission, but each individual engagement -- in RL is for the SL to find out ammo / water / casualties status of his squad, and pass that information up to the next in the chain, so that logistics knows where to redirect them and/or supplies) especially are absolutely critical. Last night was my first time playing this particular game, and if nothing else, I learned that lesson very thoroughly. Many people (including myself) are used to the crutch that is auto-updating map indicators of where you and your mates are located, even if they're on the other side of the map. Somehow I ended up as CC for an op last night, and the single biggest factor (I think) that was hurting me, was the challenge of situational awareness on that scale. In order to provide good guidance, I need to know where my guys are and what their status is. Sure, I know where I told them to go, but how do I know they got there? Are they running into trouble? They called in a contact, but what happened after? Are they dead (for a while I thought many were, until I managed to get myself shot and found out we had respawn enabled, heh)?

I guess in closing I would say that, at a minimum, this stuff is doable, though players can certainly get away with simplifying it, so long as the importance of proper SITREPS and AARs is stressed. At the same time, there's no reason not to go for it all out, because isn't that why many of us are here? To get into it, play our role, and fight this war? If we just wanted some teamwork, we could go hop in CS:S, or even Halo (*vomits*), lords knows the mess a team that's actually organized would make in that game. But, for me at least, the fun here is that it's a simulation, not just a game. For the same reason I play MSFS (and cry that there's no combat) instead of Ace Combat, I'm playing for the realism and immersion, and playing a role, not just for the game at its face value.

Sorry that was so long-winded, heh...

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