Novy after action review

[Pint]

After action review is exactly what it sounds like, but with a structured purpose. Since non of us can claim to be experts on how this engine works including points about that and the general strategy are both welcome. What you want to add would be three things we did well and three things we did poorly, its not a blame fest (I'm not saying that since I am the one who TK'd a party member) but if something was done wrong by an individual a solution so it does not happen needs to be included or it does not need to be mentioned, again excuses don't help reasons for the poor action do.

The good.

1) Some of us did not want to do it, some of us did, the majority did so we did it as a team and executed our coordination well. That is a big plus. Need this.
2) Our communication as we executed was brief and to the point, this is helpful so the next person who needs to say something can chime in quickly, in others words low clutter in comms. Need this and room for improvement.
3) We attempted to make educated guesses on where the bandits would be, we were not right but we made an attempt. This needs to be done more thoroughly before hand, we did some, more would of changed our plan I think. Weak point, but more would be our biggest improvement.

The bad.

1) We fought both zombies and players at the same time.
2) We had too many people for this mission, this lessens the comms time per player, which lessens what can be shared and lowers the standards to things like "I'm taking fire", that needs to be said, but with 10 people we could not all chime in on things like "I am exiting the south barn" as an example. We did well for the amount of players as per "the good" #2, less would of been better.
3) We had a TK.

Solutions, suggestions.

In the future it would be beneficial to clear the perimeter of the town before entering, this has the advantage of clearing possible player positions before we add zombies to the mix. After we know the peremiter is clear, then assault the town and look for players in the town, not looking for players out of the town while we are in the town.


For the number of players we had to be useful the teams would need to stay together so that position and direction and disposition of team can be communicated by one player, the team leader and have it applied to all the people in the team. Addresses both the good and bad points.

We need to implement a team rule. If you see a player in close quarters and the location is known to have hostiles and friendlies and we are not in a formation like a line, should you see a player pointing a weapon at you call out "Being flagged" every friendly on comms should immediately point away from any player who they are facing and being faced, if they do not then it is a hostile. A hostile might have get the drop on you in the chaos but at least we will not shoot each other. Do not keep pointing and say "its me", act and then say its me, if you have a better idea I would like to hear it, but this is not that different from how tactical teams behave should they be unsure on someone being a hostile. Also give your self one distinctive characteristic, like me being an old guy and Spec doing the William Wallace face.

[Wraith]

I strongly suggest that in groups of 8 or more we split into teams on SEPARATE teamspeak channels, and then put designated team leaders into a channel on some other chat service, like Vent. That way the random team members will be able to communicate with each other but not clutter the chat of the other team and be confused, while the team leaders can communicate vital information with each other and keep the channels clear.

[salty99]

Recon, this was the biggest problem and probably the only one that really mattered. We could have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off...but 11 chickens with their heads cut off could still probably take down 2 guys if we knew where they were. We could take measures to counter them if we had any information at all.

There's so many things we could have done. Loop around from the other side and gone in through the forest on the south side, send in a small team to find them, cleared the forest first, sacrificed someone to wait for them to come out and loot the body. pretty much anything would have been better. We did have a nice methodical plan of splitting into groups, but it didn't really matter because we had no idea where they were. I'm not saying it was a total failure, we learned some great lessons and the survivors did end up killing them, but none of us were really on the same page as far as intentions and goals.

Choosing to engage prior to the server restart was an awful decision. All of the bodies were gone, everybody came back in in the middle of the battle, and all of the zombies re-spawned. It was still fun and the mission was cool, but we made some terrible decisions. It's easy to look back and tell everybody what they did wrong, but that's not going to fix anything. We just need to be smarter next time. All of this "risk vs reward" and "go big or go home" only applies if you are actually going big or have some sort of reward. We didn't go big, going big would have been taking the time to do it right. Half of us had the exact same thing happen last week in that exact same spot on the exact same server by the same 2 snipers...guess third time's the charm.

Good:
1. Communication, calling out alpha or bravo helped smooth over talking in such a big group
2. splitting into smaller groups. we didn't know who would make contact first but it let the other group get to the city
3. The sniper duo we sent into the forest was a great way to spot things out for us

Bad:
1. we were utterly unprepared; out in the open, no intel, started in a bad place
2. we should have waited until after server restart to engage, we wouldn't have been rushing and probably would have saved more people.

We honestly didn't do that many things poorly, everyone individually did a pretty great job and even the groups themselves did remarkably, but recon, cover, and planning is everything and we had none of them.

[SpecOpsScott]

All said and done, then next large group engagement will be much more successful.

[Mr_Blonde_OPS]

Our first ever assault was on the Northwest Airfield. We didn't encounter any players, but had some good amounts of zombies to deal with. Only after we exited the airfield were we killed on the surrounding town. In my opinion, that was a successful raid on the Northwest airfield.

Our next raid was the assault on Novy Sober. To me, it was more of "Hey let's have some fun and take a risk". After all it is a video game and what's the point if you don't take risks. (My opinion) Yes we didn't scope out he surrounding area, but we did do the majority of things correctly.

1.) We split up our group. Alpha, Bravo, and God Company.
2.) We were synchronized in our assault.
3.) Everyone "followed the call", even if they didn't agree.

Some things we need to work on:

1.) We need to distinguish separate groups with the players who play this game. There are some who don't mind being more risky than others, and to each their own. But we can't have people screaming over Voip, "This is a bad idea!" If the group decides to do something and you don't agree, there is nothing wrong with going and doing your own thing.
2.) We definitely need separate channels and some players need to not talk every second. 10 people in a same channel is too much.
3.) We need a rallying point next time.

Overall, like I said I think the majority of the players on the second assault knew that this was just a ballsy move. The problem with this game is that it takes such a long time to do something and especially with 10+ players, it is hard to coordinate a strategy. If we took that assault on Novy slowly, it could have easily taken 1-2 hours. We could have crawled the whole way or flanked all the way around to the north side, etc. Next time we'll have learned from our mistakes and hopefully make another move in the right direction.

[Option hunter]

I agree with every thing said here by everyone.

Some of the reasons why this plan failed is because.

A) No one seemed to have taken just how many zombies we might have encountered along the way into account. We were constantly having to stop to take out aggroed zombies, which not only gave out position away, but also made us easy target for snipers. Being a recon player in BF, I always tell people that if you know there are snipers in the area, once you fire your weapon, move. Do not stay in the same spot. Doing so makes you an easy target.

B) Once we did start taking fire, nobody was able to call out where the snipers were. Knowing where your enemy is makes it easier to find cover. We should have waited for God team to get in position, and then for them to confirm that the area was either clear or occupied. Intel is important, and God team was there for that purpose. They should have been able to easily spot the snipers and tell us where they were there. As it was, I don't think I heard them say anything about their position once they opened fire.

C) Our retreat was unorganized. We got split up, and cut off from each other. We should have retreated as a group, stood up and ran back to where we started. Once there, we could have dealt with the zombies chasing us without taking as many casualties as we did.

[Mr_Blonde_OPS]

God team was on the opposite side of town from the snipers position. They had no view.

[SmokenScion]

This game teaches teamplay.

[salty99]

This game teaches teamplay.

This is true, regardless of the outcome or some of the disputes, that was some RIDICULOUS team-play. Can't say I would have rather done it with any other group

[salty99]

So I watched the video posted on YouTube of this attack and the more I think about it, if we ever tried this again, what if everyone stacked up along where pint and rob were overlooking novy? You have a clear treeline to move back and forth between Novy and starry, you can easily see to the other end of the city, and its an easier run to the barn and church than coming in from the other side.

If we ever tried to hold those cities that forest would make a great starting place.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2