Interesting topic.

Originally Posted by billyinorganic

Yes.... having one part of the squad cover fire while the other flanks works very will, however if there is a hidden enemy element then you must realize that they will probably flank your suppression element.

g;day

The effectiveness is mostly down to speed of execution. If you are using a fireteam setup, imo the key principle that determines the tactic's effectiveness is the following: the ablity for your fireteammembers to disengage immediatly DURING combat, regroup with their fireteam and move to flank. If your members have the discipline to do this -and yes you'll have to beat them with a stick to acieve this- then this sort of tactic passes the "effectiveness" treshhold. Then the time waste organising will be trumped by the ability to organise under fire.

To achieve this discipline, I see 2 steps.

1) Getting players to maintain cohesion while not under fire. This may require constant nagging and some kicking from the SL.

2) Getting people to maintain under fire/ when engaging. This is a lot more difficult for most players. There is this grand tunnelvision effect we all suffer from. It is when you see an enemy, you scope and you lose all awareness of the surroundings.
I suffer from this quite a lot myself, as everybody does at times.

I've been playing with Wicks as a fireteamleader (3 men 1 medic) quite a lot and it is working out better and better.

When you have a player with good battleinstincts and great shooting ability like Wicks, or e.g. Jeepo (I remember though we don't play together much ), they can do so much damage on their own, and they will usually run off and do their own thing. They learned this, and in most squads, it IS hugely more effective then running in a line behind their SL.

But imagine now that this person, with their given instincts and skill, has a very good medic and another riflemen close by him when he reached the enemy's fanny! Exactly, they're all dead!

Remember that game on operation ghost train Wicks? At one instance I had my fireteam (allways with the less experienced players in this playstyle) covering and rebuilding the firebase. All I had to say was Wicks, attack. We safely shoveled the firebase, while W's 3 men killed the rest of the enemy and their RP. Also for the rest of the round we were just wiping out the enemy squads that infiltrated often without losing more then 2 tickets or so per squad taken out.
In this round Emdek's support as a medic who understands from the old MIP days how this works was golden, as he was often the deciding factor in finishing off a the second half of that squad W just flanked and getting him up again.

What ties in most to this thread in my post, is I beleive the remark about tunnelvision, and about the natural lack of discipline that comes with most skilled players. Other parts may be a bit more of topic .

I'd include some advice for people trying to use more advanced organisation. ALWAYS group the better players in the fireteam that is not yours. Give your sargeant (ft-leader) the best, take the 'noobs' with you so you can babysit them better.
(Mind you better and noob here is defined mainly by the ability to be disciplined and remain in cohesion.) And furthermore, only do this if you have a good sargeant.

And for those playing like this with me in the future: every second spent calling you back to your fireteam, is a second of situational awareness lost. So yes. Running away 70m can get your whole squad killed. It basically paralyzes your whole squad and makes you as agressive as a sitting handicapped duck on rohypnol. We all no that poor animal is going to get raped . The usual reponse from this player is then.... lol.... to blame the deaths and losses on you as a SL, ironically, because he just took away your ability to lead.

If you are not SL or sargeant, you don't make ANY decisions as long as your leader is alive. The only thing you do, is be exactly where he expects you to be, watching his back and flanks. Only when he is dead, your own planning and decisionmaking comes into play.

I enjoy playing like this a lot, and I would be more then happy anytime to play as a medic slave in this sort of squad. Unfortunately it is an art lost more and more as PR grows, so I have to do it myself as SL. At any rate. It just feels awesome if you engage, yell "sarge flank" and minutes later you have killed a squad + their RP without losing any men.