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A list of real world military tactics
Nerf09
Member CommonPosts: 2,953
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_tactics
Why I subscribed to
-WWIIONLINE for 5 years
-Planetside for 8 months
-only WOW for 4 months
Tactics depth and richness (player created content), not Progression, kept my interest.
When I got bored of playing frontal assault 24/7 in WWIIONLINE I was one of the first players to pioneer the idea of getting a 2nd account to tow around an 88 anti tank gun and position myself between towns to kill resupplying allied players. Tactics: Interdiction, Perfidy, Reconnaissance (Sometimes enemy players would pass me way out of range and I would relay this information to friendlies), Shoot and Scoot, Infiltration, Patrol, Ambush
And when I got bored of that I was one of the first players to pioneer the idea of towing a bofors anti aircraft gun up to the opposite side of the battle at an enemy town, the least likely place enemy players would locate me, yet the closest I could get. This is where enemy planes were going low and slow circling their town thinking they were safe. Tactics: Interdiction, Perfidy, Recon, Infiltration, Ambush....
Eventually after enough players started doing that enemy planes became pretty damn efficient in hunting down interdicters, bombing and straffing them. Tactics: Defense in depth, air, recon.
So I tried using the StugB as a mobile artillery piece, while my 2nd account was used as a foward observer artillery spotter. But learned after a few practices that it's innefective due to engine limitations (no kills or even damaging enemies above certain extreme long distances). Tactics denied: Artillery
I was one of the first to drive my 2nd account as rifleman to enemy airfield to spot enemy planes taking off and landing while my 1st account in an interceptor flew around out of range waiting for enemies to take off so I could kill them while climbing to altitude. (I was not cheating, my 2nd account was not on enemy team) Tactics: Interdiction, recon, shoot and scoot,
Believe it or not it took me 3 years of playing before I learned the importance of Hull Down tank combat. This wasn't a skill I progressively trained it was a tactic that I learned that had always been available to me since day 1.
Planetside.
When I got bored of playing frontal assault 24/7 in Planetside I tried playing the cloaker minefield layer. Tactics: minefield
When I got bored of that and learned a little more about player zerg behavior I would place an AMS between enemy town and frontline, and then started placing minefields at bridges and terrain bottlenecks. This wasn't entirely effective cause usually tanks would stop before being destroyed and the driver would hop out and toss some EMP grenades to clear out mines, so I would then have to place myself at the end of the minefield to shoot the tank when the driver got out. However even when all things ran smoothly after the first kill my AMS would somehow magically get spotted, probably by using reveal enemies. Tactics denied: Interdiction, minefield, force multiplication through defense
Comments
Replicating RW military individual tactics is highly dependent on how "real" the virtual world is. For example. can you get into a gully and have defilade protection from enemy fire? Will the gully give you LOS protection from without, while allowing you LOS abilities outwards?
SWG has all these gullies on Corellia and Tattoine that appear to offer you the ability to fire without exposing yourself, but the world engine during the pre CU period wasn't able to translate what you saw on the screen into a reality that affected combat, particularly LOS issues. The rifleman profession probably came the closest to reality in that if you were in the prone position (three possible positions in the game: prone, kneeling, standing) you had a great deal of advantage over your target in terms of accuracy and visiblity. Of course, if some melee type managed to find you, they'd have an attack bonus against you as you were much more vulnerable to melee attacks...you'd need to rapidly change your stance to shed that disadvantage.
If the world engine can support it, and the combat system allows for it (no such luck in WoW...it's highly ritualistic in its approach to combat) you can adapt individual and small unit tactics to the game. If not...well, find out what the game allows and adapt as best you can.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
ummm O K
Funny you should mention SWG. I remember making a post in SWG forums, when it first came out, saying something to the effect that SWG has a great terrain with so many peaks and valleys to provide a rich tactical environment yet bullets go through the terrain making it pretty much useless factor in combat. It's like the terrain didn't exist and you're just floating around, and the only thing that matters is distance.
Start up Battlefield 2. Tactics available: Frontal Assault. ho hum. You know that gets boring after a while, doing the same thing over and over again. yaknow yaknow yaknow
In BF2 you do Frontal Assault with sniper, Frontal Assault with support, Frontal Assault with medic, Frontal Assault with tank. Ho hum.
This is an interesting observation, one that I find myself in agreement with. The best WoW raiding guilds attack an instance as a drill. They get each fight down to a science, and against an AI, that's fully possible. What the developers do is create a puzzle you have to solve, and pounding against it, learning from each wipe, as a group, leads eventually to success. Furthermore, they commit a great deal of time to doing this...on a regular basis with no excuses for missing a session. It's like being in the Army again...as one of my guildies (a retired CSM) has observed.
It's interesting how some view a "pre made" BG group as some sort of exploit. Well, duh. It's what actual armies do when going into battle. You train together, as a unit, and if possible you rehearse your attack before you do it for real. In an MMO this gives you a decisive advantage over a PUG assembled from who knows where, people who never play together, most likely from different servers. You can't know in a PUG how well these individuals know their class' skillsets, If you premake a BG team, you know, like IRL, you're going to get better results, because people know how much the other people on the team know because they've practiced this before.
And you're also right in that this kind of discipline rubs a lot of people the wrong way. In my guild we have a few military vets and we're always bemoaning how these "civilians" play the game...but also how to be really good at raiding you have to do the drills...and most of us USED to do that sort of thing and are here to have fun, not to drill :P
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I don't see how WOW fits into this. You can't out-think your opponent in WOW, you can only out-grind your opponent.
If you're talking about PvE, yes. But teamwork is vital even in PvE, and that's what we're talking about in this case, as opposed to your emphasis on tactics. It's even more important in PvP, even with WoW"s highly ritualized and artificial combat system.
These are two different, but related issues with MMOs. One is about the virutal world and what works and does not work compared to RL, which is about tactics. However, the social aspect of group play isn't dependent on the world engine's virtues or flaws. Getting people to follow orders when you have no real means to force the issue (by inflicting serious hurt on them, in terms of locking them up in a stockade or docking their pay) is difficult to say the least. If they don't want to be there, they'll just exit the group right in the middle of a fight....after they looted the shiny they ere there for. Or if the fight isn't going as easy as they expected. There is no military discipline in an online world, and that will frustrate your attempts to replicate actual combat conditions.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
There is no tactics in WOW, PVE and PVP outcomes are predetermined.
Wait.. what? No tactics whatsoever? Am I reading this right?
Even without the premade vs pug situation. Arena has tactics, Raids have tactics, hell even dungeons do (even tho Blizzard has been phasing that out).. etc. I don't even like WoW, but to say it has NO tactics is absurd.
I didn't see Interior Lines on that webpage.
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There are zero tactics in wow-clones.
Really, what type of tactics are used in WOW.
WOW and all the WOW-clones play like Super Mario Brothers or Donky Kong, where you follow a set pattern exactly, or you die; even when PVP.. There are no tactics.
you think officers go to military schools for show? studying, learning, drill, training, discipline. stake and scope may be different, but approach is the same. that's why some people rolfstomp through instances, while others stagger around like headless chicken. i'm not saying either approach is better (After all, it's just a game), but there is enormous difference in quality of players. putting everyone in the same basket is rather shortsighted.
For me to win this, I just have to state one example. Whenever you choose as a healer to dispel a buff, dispel a debuff on a friendly or heal you are using tactics.
Of course there are tactics in WoW, and WoW clones.
Those tactics more often than not have nothing to do with real world tactics. But even Super Mario brothers has a manner of play that can be, loosely, described as "tactics."
There are definitely tactical and strategic decisions being made in both group PvE and group PvP encounters in any MMORPG. Their relationship to real world mlitary tactics are tenuous, at best, because real world military tactics are applied with the ultimate physics engine's rules in place. In my first post, I alluded to this...that you're not going to see real world tactics applied in a virtual world that doesn't replicate real world physics. WoW and WoW clones hardly qualify on that basis.
You see players attempting to exploit quirks in the world engine all the time in WoW. It's pure gamesmanship. Soldiers attempt to do this in RL, too. The thing is, there is no crew of developers working to create balance in RL.
You play in the world you're given. Actual application of RL military tactics is not going to happen if the world you're in has things like mobs that can shoot through walls and you can't shoot through walls back. Not to mention that melee combat simply doesn't exist in RL warfare. A long time back I posted about this, how military theorists imagined that the decisive moment in battle, up to WWI, would be "cold steel"...that is, a bayonet charge. The reality however had overcome military theorists who were not paying attention to what rifled muskets, breech loading, and cartridges did to ranged combat in the American Civil War. The theorists who travelled to the battlefields assumed that the Napoleonic tactics of the early 19th Century would be seen on the battlefields of America. The increased firepower that rifled muskets, breach loaders, and cartridges made possible changed the way battles were fought. The entire siege of Petersburg was a sneak peek at trench warfare as was seen in WWI. With the "holy trinity" of the MMO in place, with melee still having a role in it where in RL it vanished nearly a century ago, even in theory...
So, yes, most MMO combat has very little to do with RL combat. Which means that you're not going to see the sort of application of military tactics to MMOs. For one thing, in RL, it's boom headshot (or bodyshot) all the time. Which doesn't make for a very entertaining game.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
OP was ok. I have little tolerance for slow players when I am in a guild or outfit that attempts to discipline in tactical roles such as Air calvary.
But I couldn't help making the largest facepalm in history after reading his one-liner responses.
WoW is pre-structured. Simple, right? Yes. If you want to do well, then be perfect at following the structure. Easy? No this is impossible unless you play with people who are good at mmo's and have a similar dedication to you. In essence, following the construct requires discipline and when you do that you put yourself above most players.
The military is similar. You don't make autonomous gut calls on where to take your M1A2. You follow orders from a well constructed calvary. Which is part of a well constructed regiment.
That's nice, but WOW and all the WOW-clones have no tactics and there is no need to bring anything about those games into a disgussion about a MMOFPS.
There is discipline in Super Mario Brothers but I wouldn't call that a tactic, and neither would I bring Super Mario Brothers up in a disgussion about Planetside.
That is not a tactic.
There are no tactics in those games, you are no veteran, and playing a video game doen't make you Rommel.
I amstating a fact that giving a player another class, or more levels, or more shiny swords, to do the same tactic over and over again Frontal Assault isn't going to keep them interested and subscribed. How many threads at mmorpg.com do you want me to point you towards that proves this point at how bored players are of the same-o same-o.
So how do you make recon a viable playstyle, a viable tactic? Well first thing you do is not have "reveal enemies", and 2nd you need to let the player communicate their findings by being able to mark the map, or draw on the map.
So how do you make interdiction a viable playstyle? Well the first think you do is allow players to be able to stealthily move towards the enemy rear in one way or another, having a tiny BF2 map where there are far too many chokepoints on such a small map makes it too hard to reach the enemy rear on foot. Second thing you need to do is have something to interdict.
So how do you make Force Concentration a viable playstyle? Well first you need to allow players to make defense a viable playstyle where 1 player can hold off 2 players, so that 1 extra player on even teams can concentrate their forces on an attack somewhere else.
So how do you make minefield a viable playstyle? Well first you don't give players an I-win button that destroys a wide radius of all CE.
So how do you make highground a viable playstyle? You don't create impassable barriers everywhere.
So how do you make ambush a viable playstyle? First you don't have "reveal enemies", second you need concealment.
So how do you make armored spearhead or Blitzkrieg a viable playstyle? First you need to be able to group up tanks/planes in a small area that isn't always being OS'ed all the time.
How do you make pincer a viable playstyle? First you need an AMS that lasts longer than 2 minutes and isn't being OS'ed all the time.
These typical FPS shoebox games are a MIRACLE!!! They have none of this!
Here is a list of viable playstyles or viable tactics in Planetside1, although most are very ineffective to the point where nobody uses them:
-Frontal Assault (95% of battles are these)
-Artillery (almost never used, OS doesn't count, it's a lame I-win button)
-Counter Artillery (never seen it used, but available)
-Vertical envelopment
-Tank Desant (tanks and planes being used as transport vehicles)
-Counter Attack
-Raiding (blow generator, but many see this as being cheesy)
So.. when Jose Mourinho decides to have his team play more defensive against Barcelona he is not using tactics? How is it different? When I dispel a buff I am playing more offensive, the other 2 examples are defensive. You decide these things before you enter the Arena, how will you play against different comps. If there were no tactics, I would play exactly the same everytime and not worry about who I should attack and who I should not attack.
Please, explain to me what your definition of tactics is?
Planetside 1 had the best tactical play in any mmo I"ve seen outside of maybe PotBS (which was much more limited) although I guess WW2Online would probably be up there as well. I tried it at release and couldn't get past the bugs, I always meant to try it out again though, hmm.
Anyway I love that SOE is going to actually support outfit specialization in PS2, ie tank outfits, air cav, etc.
One of my favorite outfits was Azure Twilight, a Vanu outfit that specialized in tactical assault and holds. We practiced Galaxy drop assaults and MAX assault/holds. Usually we'd hit a tower via Gal drop for a zerg respawn point, then MAX assault in through the back door to take down the spawn tubes or the generator and hold them. Other times we would do gal drops on strategic installations, drop the gen and hold it .. this worked very well on the smaller maps or for important bases like the enemy's only vehicle tech base on a continent.
Then I joined another outfit that specialized in tanking which fit well with my engineering cert emphasis. We"d do magrider drive by's and retire to a safe spot to repair.
I ended up with another outfit that was much more loosely disciplined and played the engineer sapper/support. I'd usually drive an ams to a chokepoint and set up a minefield, turret field and an orion turret. Great fun
My point is that we were able to do alot in game without official support, I can't wait to see what can be done in PS2 with it. What I listed was only a sampling of the various tactical and strategic options the game gave us.
I think the problem is that the OP is talking about tactics and others are talking about strategy. Altough the OP is being anal about it he is technically right, from a certain point of view.
"1. In military usage, a distinction is made between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the utilization, during both peace and war, of all of a nation's forces, through large-scale, long-range planning and development, to ensure security or victory. Tactics deals with the use and deployment of troops in actual combat. "
from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/strategy
EDIT: spelling
playing:DCUO,GW2,WoW
played:SWG,LotRO,CoH,GW,FF14,ESO,AlbionOnline