Just asking out of interest, but has anyone ever discussed changing in game organisation?
Currently we use Squads and then Fire Teams called Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.
Both the American Army and British Army use this system:
1 x Platoon (15 - 30)
2-4 x UK Section/US Squad (6 - 8 )
2 x Fire Team (3 - 4)
Also I believe each Section/Squad has its own name to avoid confusing especially when radio transmissions get cut off, also for brevity. i.e. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie or 1 Section, 2 Section, 3 Section.
It then means the Section/Squad can be split in to Fire Teams as we do already by colour.
As I have said in the first sentence this is just a question I am in no way saying we should change our current structure in game, I just thought if it hadn’t been discussed i would ask :idea:
PS. I only brought this up after watching a Dyslexi Shack Tac video where several times there SL or PLT L got Alpha 1 and 2 mixed up which I can understand under pressure, as word association in relation to the unit there location, task and so on would be better if they word was different.
We have been using our system for longer than a year now, and it has been working just fine. From your proposal, I can’t see what the benefits would be.
PLT has nothing to do with fireteams, so him calling "Bravo 1" or "Charlie 2" is out of place. PLT needs to address only squad Leaders (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie), who then in turn contact their fireteam leaders ("ONE" or "TWO" shortened for brevity).
I understand if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, I think it works fine the way it is. Just wondering if it had ever been discussed.
I also understand the way we as a community are structured in game is not based on real life, I was just using real life examples for an alternative. There are no short term benefits to using real life Platoon structure and the only long term benefit I can see is that we would be using the correct military definitions which will only matter for those of us who suffer from OCD :oops:
First we thought of having two 7-men fireteams - FTL and two buddy-teams of 3 men each - this allows the FTL to detach and focus more on micromanaging and thinking of tactics. That was earlier when we felt like FTLs had too many balls to juggle, especially when there were 2-4 recruits per fireteam. This is not the case anymore and FTL should be on the front line anyway.
Then we thought of doing the real-life structure of three 4-men fireteams (meaning 3 FTL per squad) but this also fell short. In real life soldiers don’t die left and right like we do. In ARMA’s case, losing 1 man from a 4-men team lowers your efficiency immensely. Losing 2 would render that element nearly useless.
Which is why we never brought this issue up. 6-men fireteams are a good middle ground.
We are always thinking, rethinking and conducting thought experiments, about whatever you can think of that concerns our community. We leave nothing to the case, or at least do our very best. That’s partly the reason why some things take longer time to implement or change.
Whenever one of JrNCO’s and above are proposing something, it’s always thoroughly written out and explained. That way we don’t have to spend time trying to decipher and read each other’s minds. We’re quite reluctant to discuss any ideas if they aren’t written out and detailed, at least to some extend.
Benefits and flaws of proposal, what other aspect would it change, and how to implement it in practice, are all crucial aspects when we consider ideas. If they’re not presented, it’s wasting our times if we have to think about them.
I think I may be confusin matters but in Carpe Noctem we call a Section/Squad a fire team when in real life a fire team is like blue team for us a 3 or 4 man squad, so I full Section/Squad would consist of 8 men one is the FTL as we know it in charge of the whole group and his 4 man fire team when he splits it up and the AAR as we know it would command the other 4 man fire team.
So if we went with real life Org it would be lowest level
-combat buddy/buddy team
-fire team 3/4 people
-squad/section 6/8 people with Equvilent to FTL in charge
-then what we call SL is actually Plt Comd
It is the misuse of the word fire team I was trying to correct with my original post but I’m not here to rock the boat it is just a suggestion.
best regards,
Dachi
Benefit of 8 man squad is easy more fire power when providing things like overwatch, more eyes to cover arcs, when split is more effect when supporting each other due to man power, would mean the Plt Comd ie Shiny would only have 3 squads to worry about instead of 4 that we usually field which also mean we could field the specialist teams MAT and MMG more often.
Negatives would be time to change the mission script/loadouts, re writing of documentation and the gettin used to of the new naming convention.
Ah, semantics. Seeing as there is no real-life equivalent name to our structure, we have to improvise. We can’t call our fireteams ‘squads’ because they’re too small.
If you think changing the structure is a good idea, talk to me privately and we’ll see if and how we can bring this to the next NCO meeting.
I understand I will send anything like this to Bull in the future privately. I posted in the forum to promote discussion and I suppose that’s what I got.
No wonder people have headache just by thinking about this. Neither Professional military has a consistent solution for squad size and organization. You can read about history of that in here =>
Not really that big, ~50 pages to read. First couple of pages seemed very interesting. I’m always interested in these short summaries or historical explanations of current state so I very much appreciate you sharing this with us.
