8 replies to this topic

[Lauranis]

Hi all, over the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about all aspects of organising a company for play in MWO, I have considered in game lance makeup and am now working on the meta-game aspects of running a company and how to get the best out of the players. Assuming the following:

12 players, all whom have previously gamed together
A dedicated Teamspeak server, with admin rights, allowing the use of a channel per lance if desired, with Lance Commanders able to talk to each other.
One of the Lance Commanders will also be the Company Commander
The Company will be taking a "Generalist approach," attempting to use a company setup that will perform well in any scenario.
You are limited to the currently revealed line-up of mechs'.

Given the above, the following questions:

What mechs' will you use in your company?
How will they be organised in game?
How would you organise the out of game voice comms?

My current thinking has led to this:

Lance 1:Recon Lance
2 light scout mechs' (raven, jenner?)
2 fast medium or heavy (Dragon, cicada?)
Naturally the scout mechs' are intended to locate and identify the enemy force, the fast mediums and heavies to provide support for the scouts, counter-scout activities and to interdict enemy base capture attempts in the mid-field.

Lance 2: Battle Lance
4 front line combat mechs', medium, heavy or assault, rigged primarily for durability and brawling.
(Hunchback, Cataphract, Dragon, Centurion).
Battle Lance's primary function is to move up behind the scout lance's advance to establish the primary line of conflict. They should not initially allow themselves to be drawn into deep however.

Lance 3: Hammer lance
4 Hard hitting heavy or assault mech's.
(Atlas, Awesome, Stalker, Catapult, Cataphract)
Moving up intentionally slowly, Hammer Lance waits for Battle lance to engage and hold the enemy before moving up and directing focused fire onto enemies by turn to cripple and destroy them. Once Hammer Lance engages, and all enemies are accounted for, Recon Lance is free to engage targets of opportunity, eliminate stragglers, or push around the zone of combat to strike at the enemy base.

Each lance maintains its own teamspeak channel, with the lance commanders and company commander able to talk seperately to each other.

So, post your own equivalent, but remember the out of game organisation is just as important as in game company structure, how will you organise your team? what problems do you anticipate, both in game and with the voice comms? comment and critique:

[Justin Wolf]

While i still believe its a bit early to really be hammering out assighnments until after we see some real game play going, I would suggest for the comms aspect that its much more efficient for all members of your team to be able to hear and speak to each other, while yes we represent a "company" we are really squads with 4 man fire teams. Just have to be sure your players understand comms discipline. Open comms with your whole team cuts down on middle man messages, far easier for the whole team to hear the recon report and to hear each others orders, gives them a more detailed picture of the battle field and cuts down on friction that is detrimental to your team. A requirement for open comms to work though, like i said earlier is good comm dicipline as well as call sighns, (2-1 this is 1-1 move your team around west. 2-1 rogers, 2nd lance around the west) granted if you have a boistrous team with low to no control then this option is out you will end up talking all over each other but since these systems are not like Push to Talk radios used by the military it should be even easier to cut down on cross talking. Just my humble Grunt opinion. 3/7 Killer Motha F#$%ing Kilo USMC

[Absolon]

Good ideas, I would breadk it down to a like this. Command, Fire, and scout. Command is your front line, main combat line. Fire is your fire support lance that has more missile/long range weapons, but can fill in as the command lance takes damage, and then your Scout lance.

[Micheal Hessek]

I always liked the Brion Legion's organization of Base-6 the Comstar copied.
Recon base orgaization with 4 lights and 2 fast mediums to provide additional support made the most sense.
The Brawler/Striker/Line unit of 2 solid mediums 3 great heavies and 1 mobile assault provided great flexiblity.
The Breaker/Fire-Support/Command unit of 4 heavies and 2 assaults seemed to take best advantage concentration of firepower.

[Lauranis]

Justin Wolf, on 10 June 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:

While i still believe its a bit early to really be hammering out assighnments until after we see some real game play going, I would suggest for the comms aspect that its much more efficient for all members of your team to be able to hear and speak to each other, while yes we represent a "company" we are really squads with 4 man fire teams. Just have to be sure your players understand comms discipline. Open comms with your whole team cuts down on middle man messages, far easier for the whole team to hear the recon report and to hear each others orders, gives them a more detailed picture of the battle field and cuts down on friction that is detrimental to your team. A requirement for open comms to work though, like i said earlier is good comm dicipline as well as call sighns, (2-1 this is 1-1 move your team around west. 2-1 rogers, 2nd lance around the west) granted if you have a boistrous team with low to no control then this option is out you will end up talking all over each other but since these systems are not like Push to Talk radios used by the military it should be even easier to cut down on cross talking. Just my humble Grunt opinion. 3/7 Killer Motha F#$%ing Kilo USMC

I acknowledge that having everyone in the same com channel will allow for faster communication across the whole company, and is the alternative I am considering, and in that case I would most certainly enforce push-to-talk in the game channel (whereas we allow voice activated systems in the "public lobby" of our server). One point I would make is that with the "company-in-channel" (CIC) system, communications will have to be limited by necessity to only mission critical data. however in a "lance-in-channel" (LIC) system individual lance members can be in constant communication with each other on a second-by-second basis, with mission critical data passed on by the Lance commander as needed.

it does occur to me though that the company commander in an LIC system could have a second command to broadcast to all members of all lances...

( I should not that my company is having this very discussion in the run up to MWO, but I wanted a wider perspective on the matter)

Absolon, on 10 June 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

Good ideas, I would breadk it down to a like this. Command, Fire, and scout. Command is your front line, main combat line. Fire is your fire support lance that has more missile/long range weapons, but can fill in as the command lance takes damage, and then your Scout lance.

I kind of feel that the Command lance should be the fire support lance (or hammer lance in my projected TOA), freeing the CC up to command more than he is directly fighting (though I must admit that is somewhat coloured by my recent re-reading of the entire BT novel collection)

[Shepherd]

Here's my thoughts on a composition for the company. It's based on two principles:
1) Lances should be fully functional on their own (contain both scout and combat elements)
2) You need to account for both offense and defense on the company level

Given those two principles, I'm envisioning three lances similar to these:

Lance 1: Assault Lance - characterized primarily by firepower
Catapult
Cataphract
Centurion
Raven
Lance 2: Defense Lance - characterized primarily by armor; sacrifices speed
Awesome
Atlas
Hunchback
Commando
Lance 3: Strike Lance - characterized by speed
Cataphract
Dragon
Cicada
Jenner


Assault's job is to make it to the enemy base intact so they can deliver the pain and bring down the enemy base. Defense's job is to hold the line at your base and prevent the enemy from taking it. Strike's job is varied - initially they are a screening force attempting to scout the enemy advance. Depending on how the game is going, Strike's job could be to retreat and provide support to Defense at the base, advance and provide support for Assault at the enemy base, or even to take over for Defense and send Defense lance up to provide some serious firepower at the enemy base.

So you can see that I don't have a dedicated "recon lance" per-se. Strike lance is definitely fast, but each lance has a swift light mech capable of scouting *for that lance.* Strike lance is the wild card that provides flexibility - they scout for the company, they support the company's engagements. I dislike the notion of grouping all of the scouts into a lance, but then demanding that they cover the whole map. Why not attach a scout to each lance and demand that the scout keep tabs on the area surrounding its lances zone? That way it is close to its organizational unit if it needs help, and it doesn't need to rely on another lance to exploit its findings or to bail it out if it gets pinched.

[SuomiWarder]

Well, I don't plan to get into too much detail on our organizational plans for play - although we expect them to change as we test out what works and what doesn't in MWO. However the assumption of lances of four Mech as an organizational point is probably faulty. I expect to break the total number of friendly units into force groups designed to deal with the mission at hand. In a attack/defend base drop we might go two groups one for O and one for D. Any scouts would be one or two mechs of the two main force groups. Actual weight of mechs used will depend on the map and tactical plans. (Are there tonnage limits? A hot or cold map? A map with good open space for LRM groups or a tight urban map?).

Not to mention we still don't know if Mercenary Company missions will have players using their personal rides or Company mechs. If members have to use personal rides, then the drop mix will have to factor in who is on hand for a given drop and what mechs they own.

So while it is a fun mental exerise to dream up the "perfect" 12 'Mech mix.....what will work in the real game will likely not be anything dreamed up on the scant information we have so far.

Edited by SuomiWarder, 10 June 2012 - 08:58 PM.

[Jordan Kell]

O what things our minds can concieve when factual data is limited
I do think that your ideas have great merit though.

[Woodstock]

1) Command 2) Fire and 3) Scout for me too ... BUT

The Scout would be:
Raven
Raven
Centurion (increase speed - 5/8 or 6/9) Flankers
Centurion (increase speed - 5/8 or 6/9) Flankers


Command would be:
Cataphract
Catapult
Catapult
Hunchback (close in defence)

Fire would be:
Awesome
Awesome
Cataphract
Cataphract