Post by Robengrad on Dec 7, 2006 16:58:04 GMT -5
I want to make it clear that this is a basic guide to fighting war. I want anyone involved in a war from now on to PM me plans, military sizes etc. EVEN if Im at war with you. This is just for fairness, and I will not use knowledge against you, if its a cool enough idea I'll even exalt you!! P.S. the full version is in the RP office
Roleplaying a war.
Now’s the fun part. First, contact whoever it is you’re going to war with, and do it OOCly and get as many facts straight as you can. This is the only way I’ve seen where a war can be RPd well without getting ground to death in arguments and misunderstandings. Just make sure you dont use OOC knowledge to help you ICly-- the only thing OOC knowledge helps is determining what actually *happens* and improving the quality of the roleplay. Remember, its a roleplay, something like collaborative fiction writing-- not a competition. Cooperation is necessary, because if you dont cooperate with your opponent at all, the storlyine is lost. Dont let your ego get the better of you; remember that roleplay should be fun and fair, not WON. Even if you LOSE a war, its still a fun roleplay, so go with it instead of whining that you lost. Similarly, dont be a jerk about winning. The war won’t even take place unless both enemies acknowledge and agree on what happened. For these reasons, I never wage war on someone for an OOC reason, or with someone who I know I can’t agree with-- for example, godmodders. Best to find someone on your level of RP and work it out.
Once you’ve decided on the basics, like tech level, size and location of forces involved, then you can start the war. Trust me on this, you dont want to start a war just by declaring it against some random person. You’ll have to agree on the basics at SOME point for it to work, best to do it in the beginning. And, don’t hesitate to continue during the war, talking with your enemy OOCly and making sure the roleplay isn’t sidetracked or stupid. Communication in this way can only help.
Fighting
There are probably some things you should know about fighting wars, if you don’t already. Lets get into those.
A. Principles of war. I won’t go into a paraphrase of Sun Tzu here, but you should know what these things mean.
-Mass. Get there first with the most. Concentrating fire on a single enemy ship is taking advantage of mass. As is attacking your enemy with overwhelming force. More than NUMBER, this includes strength of units overall. To win, you generally need 3:1 strength ratios. This means if you and your enemy are exactly the same types and quality of force, you need three times as many to get a guarantee on victory. More often, everyone has slightly different, so you need to use common sense.
-Initiative. Also known as leading the dance. Don’t be reactionary-- always stay ahead of the enemy, making THEM respond to you, not the other way around. Because, throughout history, defense has always lagged behind offense, and its better to be in control of attacking rather than passively awaiting an attack. Generally. A surprise attack is an example of achieving total initiative.
-Flexibility. This means having contingencies and being able to operate in case some things fail-- which they inevitably will. If you have a single plan, and everything hinges on that plan working, and then it doesn’t, you’re screwed because you didn’t have enough flexibility.
-Objectives. Every combat must have a purpose, a clear goal. No one really wins wars by having a lower body count than the enemy. You have to do something specific, or try to. Your forces need a reason to fight-- ie, your attack will eliminate SAM defenses, thus enabling a second attack to go on. Or, you cut off the enemys supplies, so that they’re starved and run out of ammunition.
-Economy of force. Use what you have. Spending your entire military budget, for example, on any single type of thing, whether is the army or tanks or your latest spaceship, is a bad economy of force. Holding a force of reserves at all times is a better use, and helps maintain flexibility as well. Never put your eggs into one basket.
-Leadership and unity of command. This is a good reason not to be cheap when it comes to “payment” in your military budget. Spend more, get better trained and motivated officers, who can then lead better in combat. Unity of command means, for example, in an international fleet action having a single Admiral make the decision, not some sort of hodgepodge of individual fleet commanders or worse, some kind of democratic council. You need good leaders at all levels of combat, not just generals but lieutenants and sergeants. You can have masses of untrained infantry if you wish, but if their leadership is equally untrained it will more than likely end up in slaughter.
-Morale. Your troops need to be motivated. Fighting a war is very demanding on the human (or elven, or even orc) psyche. A sentient being can only see so many of his comrades die instantly due to mines, friendly fire, enemy fire, bombs, disease, starvation, accidents, etc before starting to consider running the hell away. Leadership helps a lot here, but so does avoiding situations where your troops demoralize quickly, like fighting in a swamp or taking lots of losses, or fighting against an enemy that they FEAR. Psyops and psychological warfare play a huge, underestimated role in warfare.
There are some other things too, of course, like terrain, maneuvering, climate, casualties. Casualties for modern ground combat, for instance, tends to be about 1 to 5 percent per day of sustained fighting. Infantry takes more casualties, since they are susceptible to the most forms of death and harm; about twice as much per day. Take casualties, don’t be afraid to, because they come with the job. Always. Its okay if your soldiers aren’t invincible. Invincibility is a myth.
And remember, try to visualize the combat. If you attack with your 8 divisions and 4000 tanks, what do you see? A huge field with 4000 tanks crammed together, moving forward at the same speed? Of course not. Real tanks tend to fight in pairs, 10-50 meters apart. Anything closer and they attract death and lose effectiveness. And, since most of a division and other large combat units is support, divisions only tend to fight with small percentages of their total force at any given time. Exceptions are, when you’re completely surrounded and attacked all at once. But other than that, those 8 divisions will only expose maybe 400 tanks to the enemy at any one time, about 10 to 15 percent. The rest is as far from fighting as possible, and usually front line troops work in “shifts” with the rear echelon troops, to maintain effectiveness.
Don’t forget to organize your forces, either. I’ve been using divisions, which are combined arms groups. They may have infantry, armor, and artillery regiments (1500-2500 men each) in different proportions. This can get really complicated when you start naming things, like the 145th infantry regiment, as things move around so much that you might lose track of everything. Keep it simple, and decide how many men you have in a squad, platoon, company, division, and perhaps who leads the groups. Never just “attack with 10,000 tanks,” because that vague and really doesn't tell you much of what's going on.
Another important thing worth repeating is that large operations take lots of time to prepare for. D Day operations DON’T just take place at the drop of the hat. They’re planned for, for years in advance, and pre-positioned transports and equipment is absolutely necessary. So at the very least, your major offensive will begin with ominous stockpiling of munitions and supplies, mobilization of merchant fleets, etc. All of this should be RP’d, so that your enemy has an IC chance to prepare or respond. Never, ever just “i launch a surprise marine landing of 5000 tanks!” out of the blue. People tend to notice little things like the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of personnel, transports, trucks, etc etc etc.
Roleplaying a war.
Now’s the fun part. First, contact whoever it is you’re going to war with, and do it OOCly and get as many facts straight as you can. This is the only way I’ve seen where a war can be RPd well without getting ground to death in arguments and misunderstandings. Just make sure you dont use OOC knowledge to help you ICly-- the only thing OOC knowledge helps is determining what actually *happens* and improving the quality of the roleplay. Remember, its a roleplay, something like collaborative fiction writing-- not a competition. Cooperation is necessary, because if you dont cooperate with your opponent at all, the storlyine is lost. Dont let your ego get the better of you; remember that roleplay should be fun and fair, not WON. Even if you LOSE a war, its still a fun roleplay, so go with it instead of whining that you lost. Similarly, dont be a jerk about winning. The war won’t even take place unless both enemies acknowledge and agree on what happened. For these reasons, I never wage war on someone for an OOC reason, or with someone who I know I can’t agree with-- for example, godmodders. Best to find someone on your level of RP and work it out.
Once you’ve decided on the basics, like tech level, size and location of forces involved, then you can start the war. Trust me on this, you dont want to start a war just by declaring it against some random person. You’ll have to agree on the basics at SOME point for it to work, best to do it in the beginning. And, don’t hesitate to continue during the war, talking with your enemy OOCly and making sure the roleplay isn’t sidetracked or stupid. Communication in this way can only help.
Fighting
There are probably some things you should know about fighting wars, if you don’t already. Lets get into those.
A. Principles of war. I won’t go into a paraphrase of Sun Tzu here, but you should know what these things mean.
-Mass. Get there first with the most. Concentrating fire on a single enemy ship is taking advantage of mass. As is attacking your enemy with overwhelming force. More than NUMBER, this includes strength of units overall. To win, you generally need 3:1 strength ratios. This means if you and your enemy are exactly the same types and quality of force, you need three times as many to get a guarantee on victory. More often, everyone has slightly different, so you need to use common sense.
-Initiative. Also known as leading the dance. Don’t be reactionary-- always stay ahead of the enemy, making THEM respond to you, not the other way around. Because, throughout history, defense has always lagged behind offense, and its better to be in control of attacking rather than passively awaiting an attack. Generally. A surprise attack is an example of achieving total initiative.
-Flexibility. This means having contingencies and being able to operate in case some things fail-- which they inevitably will. If you have a single plan, and everything hinges on that plan working, and then it doesn’t, you’re screwed because you didn’t have enough flexibility.
-Objectives. Every combat must have a purpose, a clear goal. No one really wins wars by having a lower body count than the enemy. You have to do something specific, or try to. Your forces need a reason to fight-- ie, your attack will eliminate SAM defenses, thus enabling a second attack to go on. Or, you cut off the enemys supplies, so that they’re starved and run out of ammunition.
-Economy of force. Use what you have. Spending your entire military budget, for example, on any single type of thing, whether is the army or tanks or your latest spaceship, is a bad economy of force. Holding a force of reserves at all times is a better use, and helps maintain flexibility as well. Never put your eggs into one basket.
-Leadership and unity of command. This is a good reason not to be cheap when it comes to “payment” in your military budget. Spend more, get better trained and motivated officers, who can then lead better in combat. Unity of command means, for example, in an international fleet action having a single Admiral make the decision, not some sort of hodgepodge of individual fleet commanders or worse, some kind of democratic council. You need good leaders at all levels of combat, not just generals but lieutenants and sergeants. You can have masses of untrained infantry if you wish, but if their leadership is equally untrained it will more than likely end up in slaughter.
-Morale. Your troops need to be motivated. Fighting a war is very demanding on the human (or elven, or even orc) psyche. A sentient being can only see so many of his comrades die instantly due to mines, friendly fire, enemy fire, bombs, disease, starvation, accidents, etc before starting to consider running the hell away. Leadership helps a lot here, but so does avoiding situations where your troops demoralize quickly, like fighting in a swamp or taking lots of losses, or fighting against an enemy that they FEAR. Psyops and psychological warfare play a huge, underestimated role in warfare.
There are some other things too, of course, like terrain, maneuvering, climate, casualties. Casualties for modern ground combat, for instance, tends to be about 1 to 5 percent per day of sustained fighting. Infantry takes more casualties, since they are susceptible to the most forms of death and harm; about twice as much per day. Take casualties, don’t be afraid to, because they come with the job. Always. Its okay if your soldiers aren’t invincible. Invincibility is a myth.
And remember, try to visualize the combat. If you attack with your 8 divisions and 4000 tanks, what do you see? A huge field with 4000 tanks crammed together, moving forward at the same speed? Of course not. Real tanks tend to fight in pairs, 10-50 meters apart. Anything closer and they attract death and lose effectiveness. And, since most of a division and other large combat units is support, divisions only tend to fight with small percentages of their total force at any given time. Exceptions are, when you’re completely surrounded and attacked all at once. But other than that, those 8 divisions will only expose maybe 400 tanks to the enemy at any one time, about 10 to 15 percent. The rest is as far from fighting as possible, and usually front line troops work in “shifts” with the rear echelon troops, to maintain effectiveness.
Don’t forget to organize your forces, either. I’ve been using divisions, which are combined arms groups. They may have infantry, armor, and artillery regiments (1500-2500 men each) in different proportions. This can get really complicated when you start naming things, like the 145th infantry regiment, as things move around so much that you might lose track of everything. Keep it simple, and decide how many men you have in a squad, platoon, company, division, and perhaps who leads the groups. Never just “attack with 10,000 tanks,” because that vague and really doesn't tell you much of what's going on.
Another important thing worth repeating is that large operations take lots of time to prepare for. D Day operations DON’T just take place at the drop of the hat. They’re planned for, for years in advance, and pre-positioned transports and equipment is absolutely necessary. So at the very least, your major offensive will begin with ominous stockpiling of munitions and supplies, mobilization of merchant fleets, etc. All of this should be RP’d, so that your enemy has an IC chance to prepare or respond. Never, ever just “i launch a surprise marine landing of 5000 tanks!” out of the blue. People tend to notice little things like the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of personnel, transports, trucks, etc etc etc.
