team coheshion

[adrianm]

hio...

 

heres a question that im thinking more and more about laltely as im starting to rock around my regular sites with more and more ppl im getting to know (for years the only person i saw regualrly at every game was the mate i went with).

 

 

How to maintain a team when taking casualties?

 

The way i see it there are a few choices. (this is assuming the team does not have radio coms)

 

1. if a team member has to go to respawn the team holds possition until they return

This will totally loose any momentum in assault the team may have had...may be boring if its a big site...the teams possition might not be all that defendable, enemy assault may force them to move elsewhere so returning dead player will make alot of effort to get back to a place only to find no mates and lots of opfor

 

2.if a team member dies the whole team go back to respawn with him

anoying for the live players, means killing 1 person will remove alot fo players from the fight, would ruin any assult/advance etc

possible the worst option imo

 

3. before the dead man walks off everyone agrees a rally point, if in the middle of an assult they can choose a position further into enemy territory so account for the ground the team will make wile dead man is away. or just somewhere near the fighting but defendable and easily reachable by returning player.

 

4. team carries on doing whatever and leave it up to the dead player to find them again.

this is the only experiance iv had....not too bad if its only 1 guy dying and if your close to the spawn but as soon as few ppl start dying and the fight is moving rapidly this quickly gets teh team totally split up and the only hope of getting back together is by chance, next game or if ppl just wait at the spawn till ppl arrive (last option isnt great cos your team will need u int eh fight...also if the rest of the team wont die youl be waiting a long time)

 

5. just use radios

seem teh obvious and best solution, however every time i see a team with radios, i also see random ppl obviously not in any team pull out their own radios and start tinkering with the scanner - id love to use radios but every senario when i think it would be great to have one...i then think how it would be ruined by the fact that every other sod with a radio can hear every work and balls to talking in code

 

 

so what do the veteran team peeps do and how well does it work for you?

[ED-SKaR]

Use comms, when players get hit leave them, and call positions over radio to have them move up and rejoin the fireteam.

 

 

"Balls to talking in code" Why buy anything without the intention of using it properly. I've seen teams on public comm chanels drown out all the noobs and organise things through simply knowing what they are doing.

 

I've never really brought comms to airsoft games, because there are never enough people using them, but if you have a team, all of a sudden it becomes an asset that you would sorely miss out on without it.

[signal319]

With regards to cohesion as a whole, things are always much easier when you play with the same blokes every time. I have never been to an airsoft game when I haven't had all of or some of the same mates there. Between us we have managed to build up what effectively amount to standard tactics, words of command, voice procedure, and we generally just have a good feel for how we all play. It's taken a long time to get to the stage where we are what might be considered a team, in the sense that we play together all the time and have improvised our own way of doing things. I don't think you're ever going to get any serious "cohesion" between everybody on a regular day as such unless you've been playing with the same people time and again. It takes a long time to build up an actual "team" rather than just a group, which in the majority of cases is a gathering of individuals who have in all probability never met before (with the obvious exception of serious regulars).

 

This is not to say that teamwork at airsoft games doesn't exist, far from it! But beyond "fire-team" level, i.e. amongst the blokes right next to you, I have rarely seen any serious co-ordination in the majority of ordinary games that I've played. For instance, simple things like target indication, fire control (e.g. upping the rate of fire to cover a team-mate in the middle of a mag change or putting down a co-ordinated rate of fire to suppress the enemy and win the firefight), deciding how an assault on a position is going to play out, letting people know an objective's been taken, regrouping - I often see this kind of stuff ending up going to ratshit when the first round gets fired and people start going off and doing their own thing. Communication throughout any game, between everyone, is absolutely f***ing vital.

 

On the other hand, I have played games where everyone in the team has been really switched on, been passing messages up and down the line, giving proper covering fire, all the good stuff, and, surprisingly, we ended up winning... Do the maths.

 

Getting your newly back-in team mates to meet at a known rally point to link up with the assault is by far your best bet but don't forget you'll need to assign multiple rally points in order to reflect the dynamic nature of the game; i.e. if the enemy beats you back and takes control of the area around RV-1, where do you go to regroup next? And make sure everyone KNOWS where these rally points are! Depending on the nature of your game, picking an obvious area such as a game objective point is likely to make your RV much more likely to get bumped. Stick your rally points somewhere knowable but tucked out of the way, especially in the more sneaky-type games. Getting attacked in a forming up point is seriously annoying.

 

Going back to respawn with the whole team is, like you said, disastrous in the assault and you're basically sacrificing ALL your surprise and momentum at the first hurdle. Basically you're becoming 100% "casualty-averse" which is a complete farce and something you cannot afford to be. Get stuck in and be prepared to get shot.

 

The entire team holding position upon taking a casualty is, again, potentially disastrous for the same reasons - however the more casualties you take, the more you should think about maybe going firm or withdrawing to a RV point, digging in and waiting for reinforcements before forming a new plan and pushing on again.

 

And you're forgetting the unwritten rule that comms don't work when you need them the most!

But decent voice procedure - and I'm not talking about "Hello, 1-1 Charlie, this is Zero, with long message, over"----"1-1 Charlie, send, over", I'm talking basic security, accuracy and discipline, keeping messages brief - goes a long long way into getting people to understand what you're on about:

 

Bad:

"Yeah we're just taking fire now, give us a minute or two and I'll tell you what's going on"

"Err, yeah, we're in the uh, big building, at the objective, you know, we're under attack, we've got a few guys left in here but I'm not sure how many, not sure how they're doing, it's looking bad though, erm........can you help?"

"yeah we've just cleared the position mate, some enemy are dead, we've lost some guys, we don't have much ammunition left, I'll get back to you in a minute when I've worked out a plan"

 

Better:

"Hello Matt, this is Sean, contact, wait out"

"Hello Andy, this is Steve, we're under attack at Objective 3, the big building with flat roof, situation critical - send a few guys over from the left through the woodline and dead ground to provide support, over"

"Hello mate, Objective 1 taken two minutes ago, two enemy dead, one friendly dead, ammo state low, we're going firm before engaging their depth positions, send forward a resupply, over"

 

Key difference - in the latter, it's all the essential information but with no messing about, keeping what could be very long messages comparatively brief. In the latter, the sender is being decisive, offering constructive information and tactical suggestions to the recipient. Think about what you're going to say before sending; don't clog up the net. Wait a few extra seconds to work out exactly what you're going to say to keep things simple and tidy.

 

In short - communicate regularly with your guys throughout all games; sort out your comms early, let everyone know key locations, any passwords or codewords etc well in advance, and KEEP MESSAGES BRIEF.

 

EDIT: Apologies for length of post.

[WhiteHawksan]

Use radio's, have a dedicated comms-man with 2. 1 for 'team' channel - most sites will specify a radio channel for each team to use, and you're required to stick to that, no radio snooping. And 1 with your team chatter.

 

Keep your team channel private. Agree on terms, key words, etc. It's no good saying, drawing to RV3 for going firm. Echo Delta 1 Out. If you don't know who ED1 is where RV3 is or what they mean by 'going firm'.

 

There's no need to stick to military language either. But, it's helpful, and you should learn it. They've developed it for many reasons, almost all of them good.

[Azubi]

If you are worried about people listening in on your comms, pay a bit more for radios other than PMR. You will need a license but IIRC they are something like 60 quid for 3 years and between a group that is nothing really. You don't even need expensive radios, plenty of Chinese things out there that are bloody cheap and easily programmable to meet your license. As an example I paid 500AED for 4 good radios which works out less than 100 quid. I have given them a battering in the desert and they worked well in the wadis. I even picked up some that could chat to PMR channels when I programmed them right. @ 5w output though, I believe they would be illegal to use in the UK on PMR frequencies.

[FireKnife]

The way i do it is like this:

 

One player takes a hit, walks back slowly to the regen, waits for another team-member to join him at the regen and the pair go off in search of the rest of the team. If the rest of the team goes out they form pairs each time and try to find the rest of the team to join up with, that way you have two of you to look out for the rest of the team and can actually have a better chance of finding and moving to the team, especially to cover each other while moving.

 

If you need an example like the scene in Black Hawk Down when you have the two gunners that realise they have been left behind, as a pair they can move and cover each other until they get to where the rest of the team are, much more effective than one person trying to find a whole team.

 

Another way to do it is start the game as a full team. When you are at the regen leave as pairs again but join up with other members of your side, but not necessarily your team and add the volume of two extra guns to whatever fight they are needed at. It helps to not focus too much on being in a team with your mates and more where your fire is needed at any given time, again as a pair you have more chance of covering each other and moving to where you are needed.

 

'FireKnife'