734 replies to this topic

[Paladin1]

Honestly, I believe we need to establish a few things.

At the Regimental level, we'll need to know who's the team leader, Colonel or whatever they want to call themselves. This will be the front line in the CoC.

Brigade Level - We have several Brigades already established, so let's use them. If we have people running units tied to the Davion Heavy Guards, for example, then they're a part of the Brigade of Guards. Do this for all the other major Brigades (Avalon Hussars, Ceti Hussars, Syrtis Fusiliers, Robinson Rangers, etc) and we're well on our way to having a working force structure. One change that I would make to the way that the AFFS works in canon though is to have each Brigade granted solely to an individual March. The Robinson Rangers Brigade, for example, wouldn't leave the Draconis March and fight on the Capellan border and vice versa. The Avalon Hussars, Crucis Lancers and the Brigade of Guards though would act as firefighter outfits, reacting from the Crucis March to reinforce either of the other two Marches if they come under attack. Defense in depth is the key to our survival, we don't want another 1st Succession War playing out on us, and trust me the Dracs and Cappies are going to try to do just that.

Independent Regiments - We all know that there's going to be independent units, so let's use that to our strength by attaching them at the March Level. That would give each March a force of units that could be passed back and forth between each command as needed. This would allow us to build up for a major push by transferring units between the Marches without making it obvious we're building up for something due to a lack of March regulars.

March Militias - Speaking of defensive forces and March Regulars, we need to deal with this as well. I think that keeping a form of the three March Militia Brigades is a good idea, especially for those commands and players who aren't as active. They may not be as good as the front line troopers, but they're still good enough to slug it out until we can send help to either reinforce them or retake the planet if it's lost.

So what, really, do we need?

1st level - Small unit commanders. Either they report to their direct Brigade commanders or, if independent, they report to the March Commander.

2nd Level - Brigade Commanders - Report to the March Commander and are responsible for the defensive and offensive operations of their respective March, unless otherwise noted as above.

3rd Level - March Commander - Reports to AFFS High Command, is responsible for all offensive and defensive operations in their respective March. Has a March level HQ staff to help deal with the planning which should consist of a Logistical Officer, an Intelligence Officer and a Communications Officer.

4th Level - AFFS High Command - Ultimate authority within AFFS. Since the First Prince isn't going to be a playable character, the AFFS HC needs to be a multi-member group which decides on the operations undertaken by the AFFS. This group will consist of the March Commander for each March, a Logistics Officer (for determining jump off times and movement schedules), an Intelligence Officer (expected opposition) and a Communications Officer (for dealing with inter-unit communications and PR duties). Also, we may look at attaching a Mercenary Relations Officer at the AFFS HC level and possibly even the March Command level to deal with coordinating with Mercenary Units operating in our territory.

So, that's my rough outline based on about 15 minutes of thought. Ideas? Suggestions? Comments?

[Liam Avery]

Paladin1, on 09 February 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

-Snip-

Logistical Officer, an Intelligence Officer and a Communications Officer.

I'd like to give my opinion on this, if I may.

Currently, it sounds like we're only going to have one member per position for these three "Officers." Now, I can see a problem with one Regiment getting three of their members into these three spots, and effectively declaring themselves the High Command due to having said positions.

Now, my proposal is - Rather than calling these people "Logistical Officer, Intelligence Officer, and Communications Officer" we change it to "Logistical Department, Intelligence Department, and Communications Department."

Why? Well, we have fourteen Regiments, plus more to be established in the future. Currently, these departments would have one member from each regiment. So, the Logistical Department would have fourteen members, as will the Intelligence and Communications.That means, three people are elected from each regiment to fill one position within these three departments.

This way, each Regiment is actually represented fairly. So... an example of my proposal.

1st Robinson Rangers

• Joe Smith - Intelligence Officer
  
• Jack Smith - Communications Officer
  
• Jason Smith - Logistical Officer

1st Blackburn's Raiders

• John Doe - Intelligence Officer
  
• James Doe - Communications Officer
  
• George Doe - Logistical Officer

So on, so forth.

Edited by Liam Avery, 10 February 2012 - 03:25 AM.

[Dihm]

Paladin1, on 09 February 2012 - 12:49 PM, said:

4th Level - AFFS High Command - Ultimate authority within AFFS. Since the First Prince isn't going to be a playable character, the AFFS HC needs to be a multi-member group which decides on the operations undertaken by the AFFS. This group will consist of the March Commander for each March, a Logistics Officer (for determining jump off times and movement schedules), an Intelligence Officer (expected opposition) and a Communications Officer (for dealing with inter-unit communications and PR duties). Also, we may look at attaching a Mercenary Relations Officer at the AFFS HC level and possibly even the March Command level to deal with coordinating with Mercenary Units operating in our territory.

Since players will not actually be able to control faction units (they'll have no authority to approve or deny anyone from joining a faction unit, will be unable to boot out offenders, will be unable to enforce their orders), I'll be quite interested to see how this works.

Anyone who joins the faction can join whatever faction unit they desire, if they have the Loyalty Points to do so, and are not bound to follow the orders of other members of that unit who have a higher rank (higher Loyalty Points). The only player-controlled organizations are merc units, for now any way.

[nightsniper]

This discussion seems to be running in circles with a certain assumption that a CoC will be a supreme commander. I think this is assuming far to much and not the least is that all people that call themselves davion will listen or even have a line of communication to listen. Let me lay out what I mean as clearly as possible I have a group the 703rd that has been playing on line games for about 4 years we have some new players and some old warhorses. Most have told me they will come when the game is up and running not before I suspect I will have a group of 4-5 lances about 20 in all players who will be using our ventrillo server for communications and look to our group leadeship for direction. Now as stated in other threads I am associated with House Davion from MPBT3025 and MW4 as well as my board game playing I participated as a House Davion in the mount Diablo world wide board play. As a result I am most likely to listen to the CoC I am most familiar with and know. but not exclusively. Time and size of House Davion in todays online world is likely to grow to 10, 20 maybe 100 fold over what the units looked like in 1999. Point of fact in Mech commander I had a unit the SLDF that dominated in size all other units at 54. Many still play.

I go back to my suggestion that instead of looking at a fixed chain of command where one person is ontop and a team follows. We all need to develop a plan to work through those groups that we have affiliations with and establish a communication system that is some what unified. Strict control is never likely to happen mainly because of the scale and also the personallities we all see in online gaming. I for one will make decisions for my group that are in the best interest of my group with in the game economy that said not even I can command the 20 some od people in my network LOL your kidding yourself if you think really anyone can. So my recommandation is to scrap the discussion of a real top down CoC regardless what the Developers have suggested and work with in real life other wise groups like mine will play the game as wee see it should be played and move on if need be because we are just not interested in spending out money and lesuire listening to some one carp all the time or to take direction from some hot shot know nothing teenage.

Reality Check ladies and gentleman.

[Polymorphyne]

Quote

1st Robinson Rangers

• Joe Smith - Intelligence Officer
  
• Jack Smith - Communications Officer
  
• Jason Smith - Logistical Officer

1st Blackburn's Raiders

• John Doe - Intelligence Officer
  
• James Doe - Communications Officer
  
• George Doe - Logistical Officer

Umm... it looks like the Smith and Doe families have somewhat of a monopoly going here.... im not sure im okay with that.

[Thoth]

Better than the A**hole family.

[nightsniper]

What ever you call them the lines of communication is what concerns me the game will be played 24/7 having one structure with in a group for point of contact and control or even 3 people is then dictating the make up of the group up front that is going to be one huge feat.</p>

I like the idea of sector responsibility but that may fall apart based on the individual groups success and moving more units into or over a pre-assigned group may be a disaster that could prompt in fighting and group fleeing.

As much as I have been a student of Battletech and Mech genre the scale has always been smaller and this is potentially huge, certainly the developers are hoping so they have real money riding on that.
What we need is more detail from them on where and how everyone starts is it one location and you fan out will you be assigned a jump off point will you request a jump off point? All of these are key to deciding how and what to organize. Will all units share contact info? Is the forum the only real contact? If that is the case it is already failing I have PM players and received no response so in my opinion that is a titanic fail. Will we have real time comms or will we rely on the mix and match each unit now having their own choice paying for in some cases their own dedicated servers in TS, ventrillo, or one of a host of other paid and free services available? Is email which is now snail mail for real game play going to result in confusion by missed messages?
We need to think this out in the real world in the real time online global game world or this is going to be Chaos. I am sure the Developers are looking at this in their own way and maybe even dealing with many of the same questions. They may even have a totally different opinion based on what they have time and resources to develop.
Pappy has had a great idea and has moved it forward and that is to introduce and establish a real time meet and greet and exchange to help build bonds that may lead to an infrastructure with in the house. Nothing better then real talk to help build a group. We need to continue that and continue to get to know each other and talk out these issues now, to help take as many bumps out of the road as possible.
CoC has another huge hurdle that can cause a break down in the results and that is the 24/7 clock with units and players from around the globe will be dealing with. Who plays when who has enough players to face a foe at the same time the coordination of this alone is a monster task for a fixed CoC. With a whole host of unique problems and issues that global play presents.
Take a look at a map rendered for online visualization of the known world from the collection of info that the whole genre it is 3040 and the next map up date on this scale is 3055 you may have another source but this is just visualize the issue

http://iscs.teamspam...scs_jp_3040.pdf

Think about 50 separate units, game clubs, or a group of friends now who assigns them what how about 100 units or 200 where do you put them on the map who decides what are the costs associated what are the expectations, what is the cost to move to the fighting? Who is willing to start in the center if there is a cost to move to a fighting sector? Lets say you can select a boarder world and it is involved in conflict right off the bat lance is for the opposition lances their facing and thus you lose and the house loses as well. (this will happen any way if game play is well balanced) What if house Davion has 60 players on at 2AM eastern time and Steiner has 120 and swarm the map. Will units come on at 5PM to find their homeworld is lost? How will that affect CoC?

I go back to my original point we need to find a way to coordinate a large number of independent units in an online setting that can give some direction to the majority in a strategic and timely manner and decide how to create an effective communication model to deal with a MMO with the least amount of Chaos.Still the developers will need to give more detail (when available) on how they are creating that portion of the game. This will be key to give us the ability to look closely at the structure to be able to have meaningful dialogue. In the mean time I would stress continuing the discussion and most importantly as Pappy has demonstrated the need for real time communication to build relationships that will benefit the online game play we are all have been looking for. Also to accelerate the building of the small unit structure with in the groups we all associate with the more lances the more diverse times the bigger the house the more likely to have the resources for success.
Trying to do more now with so many questions so many groups coming to the table from different games and even new players to online gaming presents enough challenges. Establishing a CoC in advance at even a unit level is way to early to produce an fluid enough model to deal with the unknowns. Unit leaders or their proxy should be more then enough for now.

Edited by nightsniper, 13 February 2012 - 07:04 AM.

[Jack Gallows]

Honestly, not a whole lot can be implemented until we learn how much of the game is automated, and looking at how PGI is going it's probably going to be units doing their own thing with very limited "command" style stuff at high rank, especially since some worlds are going to be "core" and unchangeable. The most likely isn't going to be a need for a CoC, and it'll just be snap coordination with whoever is online at the time through mutual agreement.

I know the majority of the time the Jolly Rogers are going to be selecting targets based on what the unit wants to do based on available info and eventually MW:O experience instead of worrying too much about a AFFS CoC structure or what they're going to want. Especially based on the idea of LP decay.

Edited by Jack Gallows, 13 February 2012 - 07:16 AM.

[Paladin1]

Thoth, on 13 February 2012 - 06:10 AM, said:

Better than the A**hole family.

Hmm, the censotron seems to see House Liao as a curse word. Must be a Davion design.

[Paladin1]

Liam Avery, on 10 February 2012 - 03:21 AM, said:

I'd like to give my opinion on this, if I may.

Currently, it sounds like we're only going to have one member per position for these three "Officers." Now, I can see a problem with one Regiment getting three of their members into these three spots, and effectively declaring themselves the High Command due to having said positions.

Now, my proposal is - Rather than calling these people "Logistical Officer, Intelligence Officer, and Communications Officer" we change it to "Logistical Department, Intelligence Department, and Communications Department."

Why? Well, we have fourteen Regiments, plus more to be established in the future. Currently, these departments would have one member from each regiment. So, the Logistical Department would have fourteen members, as will the Intelligence and Communications.That means, three people are elected from each regiment to fill one position within these three departments.

This way, each Regiment is actually represented fairly. So... an example of my proposal.

1st Robinson Rangers

• Joe Smith - Intelligence Officer
  
• Jack Smith - Communications Officer
  
• Jason Smith - Logistical Officer

1st Blackburn's Raiders

• John Doe - Intelligence Officer
  
• James Doe - Communications Officer
  
• George Doe - Logistical Officer

So on, so forth.

Actually I didn't have a single person in mind when I said Officer, just that each department (Logistics, Communications, etc) would have a person who represented that department. I do think you make an excellent point though and like the idea of each unit having it's own group of Officers to handle these tasks, that's a sound idea that I think bears investigation.

[Egomane]

I love this thread!

In essence it is this:
We need a leadership structure
we don't need a leadership structure
we do need a leadership structure
voice of reason (ignored)
how to make a leadership structure
that wont work we have to do it that way
another voice of reason (ignored again)
nononono, we should do it this way
i like that idea
i don't
and so on ...

I had a good laugh while reading it, keep it going.

[Azantia]

nightsniper, on 13 February 2012 - 05:17 AM, said:

This discussion seems to be running in circles with a certain assumption that a CoC will be a supreme commander. I think this is assuming far to much and not the least is that all people that call themselves davion will listen or even have a line of communication to listen. Let me lay out what I mean as clearly as possible I have a group the 703rd that has been playing on line games for about 4 years we have some new players and some old warhorses. Most have told me they will come when the game is up and running not before I suspect I will have a group of 4-5 lances about 20 in all players who will be using our ventrillo server for communications and look to our group leadeship for direction. Now as stated in other threads I am associated with House Davion from MPBT3025 and MW4 as well as my board game playing I participated as a House Davion in the mount Diablo world wide board play. As a result I am most likely to listen to the CoC I am most familiar with and know. but not exclusively. Time and size of House Davion in todays online world is likely to grow to 10, 20 maybe 100 fold over what the units looked like in 1999. Point of fact in Mech commander I had a unit the SLDF that dominated in size all other units at 54. Many still play.

I go back to my suggestion that instead of looking at a fixed chain of command where one person is ontop and a team follows. We all need to develop a plan to work through those groups that we have affiliations with and establish a communication system that is some what unified. Strict control is never likely to happen mainly because of the scale and also the personallities we all see in online gaming. I for one will make decisions for my group that are in the best interest of my group with in the game economy that said not even I can command the 20 some od people in my network LOL your kidding yourself if you think really anyone can. So my recommandation is to scrap the discussion of a real top down CoC regardless what the Developers have suggested and work with in real life other wise groups like mine will play the game as wee see it should be played and move on if need be because we are just not interested in spending out money and lesuire listening to some one carp all the time or to take direction from some hot shot know nothing teenage.

Reality Check ladies and gentleman.

I believe that sums up what we have been saying for awhile. Well said.

House Liao, always lurking in the shadows. Who knew?

Edited by Azantia, 13 February 2012 - 01:37 PM.

[Jack Gallows]

Azantia, on 13 February 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

House Liao, always lurking in the shadows. Who knew?

Justin Allard

[Azantia]

Touche.....*raises his glass to Hanse Davion's announcement of the fourth succession war*.....

see what I did there?.......Im sure at least someone will recognize the reference!

Ah, memories...such a good trilogy of books...

[MajorQuinn]

Wow nice, don't forget he crushed the glass in his metal hand.

[Azantia]

I didnt forget....i just wanted to see who could catch the reference. Well played Quinn, you passed. Anyone else?

Edited by Azantia, 14 February 2012 - 12:11 AM.

[Polymorphyne]

I think the best option would be for the various player groups that want to work together, to simply meet and talk on a regular basis and co-ordinate in a democratic way. That way the highest level of decision making still contains people from the relevant units the decisions are being made for- the guys who lead or represent said units. Any higher level of command would involve a guy from one unit ordering other units around- he isnt a part of those units, he doesnt have a full understanding of how that unit operates or what its members want from the game.

[nightsniper]

To give more perspective to scope I went into my WOT account and looked at clan wars and here are some numbers that may focus on scope their clan wars and only clan wars their are 119 units with 90 to 100 players (the limit is 100) and many groups have more then one unit so do number in to well over 100 Players are limited to one account (not true reality but) Their are 2210 units with more then one player in the unit. My unit has 36 players and is rated 1219th. This does not include any of the unaligned players not involved in Clan wars and not all units play clan wars.

A clan war is their version of Map domination and play is 7 days a week no stop you do not respond to a challenge you lose. Challenges are open during the EST daylight hours Fighting begins 9 PM EST and continues till all challenges resolve. Battle times are 1 hour and run hour after hour with no ability to delay. It is fight or forfeit.

I am posting this not to suggest the Developers are going to model MWO in this manner but to put perspective on the growth of the online planetary movement and the demands on coordination. Honestly the WOT model is resulting in a high burn out rate of players but certainly is producing a huge revenue stream to the developers as premium items are necessary to just compete.

They love us at shows and online for our devotion and enthusiasm but if your looking to only play this game as Free the love for you will wear out very quickly. The game you bought for $60 and played on end even for years has evolved into the $60 a month premium or micro transaction game where you pay or just become a scalp on a wall. This is not to discourage people but it needs to be understood to understand the mechanics behind trying to pull together a leadership with in the game framework. A person dropping $100 a month or more is just not going to listen to another player who is playing primarily for free, nor would the two be in the same realm of competition. This is the economy of online entertainment, which is necessary to coax investors into putting up the large sums of upfront capital to pay staff to develop a viable online game.

So to sum it up trying to set a structure is not likely to be successful with out more direction from the developers and that is not coming because right now they are trying to build Buzz not put the torch to it. Second the structure will need to change as more and more players and groups join the game. Something the developers are dreaming about on a daily basis. What can work is growth in your unit’s alliance made between groups and an understanding that working together has a plus in the game economy. Ego's, wallets and players ability will trump CoC every time especially the wallet.

Pappy has the right idea talk, meet, become friends and agree to work together. Structure and rolls will be each group’s personal decision.

[Kyll Long]

Azantia, on 13 February 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

I believe that sums up what we have been saying for awhile. Well said.

House Liao, always lurking in the shadows. Who knew?

Me

[nightsniper]

To bad we have to put up with low life interlopers with to much time on their hands looking at others ideas instead of coming up with their own.