Join the new world

V2 is only a day away, and in preparation for this article, I spent more time in the beta module, looking things over. If you have not been in beta, I suggest that when the v2 military module goes active, you spend a little bit of time in a defensive sector (where you side is being attacked) and just move around and get yourself acclimated to the new module. I won't be going over the mechanics much in this article, but you need to get familiar and comfortable with the sequencing of movement and fire, and you need to understand how the boosters work, what they cost and what they can do for you. Some very quick observations:

1. Be prepared to spend money. Unlike the civilian boosters for working, training, studying and relaxation, which are basically a waste of money, you will need gold both for wellness restoration and to selectively improve your combat performance. This is particularly true if you are facing a mismatch, where you are facing a more powerful or better equipped opponent. I recommend that you go into battle with no less than 5 gold at your disposal.

2. Go first class. If you think you are saving money by buying a lower quality weapon, guess again. In v2, the damage you inflict directly effects the damage you will suffer. You want to take out your opponent in as few rounds as possible. Otherwise, you either risk losing, or you will have to spend gold getting your wellness back even when you have won the last combat,

3. Help your buddy out. As we said before, never fight alone. In the interface, you will have the choice between targeting one opponent at a time, or “go beserk” and target more than one opponent. If you are going to survive on the V2 battlefield, individually and as a team, you need to make sure that the all enemies who are attacking you get attacked and take damage in turn. If you don't do this, your uncoordinated mob will get picked apart, piece by piece.

In our last article, we went over basic organizational structure and basic missions.

http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/basic-battle-tactics-i-forces-and-missions-1451929/1/20

Today, I'm going to talk about how you modify and adapt your organizations to accomplish the mission, and I'm going to introduce you to some basic planning concepts that will help you tailor both your forces and the standard tactics we use to best accomplish the mission.

The British have a wonderful term that I really like, a term that is not generally used in American military terminology. They call it the “terms of reference” for a mission, meaning the scope of that mission, what resources are available, what the constraints are imposed on achieving the mission, what things need to be done by when. (the schedule, if you will). The US Army uses the acronym METT-T to address the same thing, This stands for:

Mission
Enemy
Troops
Terrain and Weather
Time and Space

For counterinsurgency warfare, they also add “C” for civil considerations. Let's consider these one by one

The mission statement takes the form WHO-WHAT-WHEN-WHERE. Why is optional Let's take an eRepublik example:

“Seal Team 6 attacks at 6PM Eastern Daylight Time today to seize the bridge at 7,20 on the Southern Great Plain (Hungary) and assist EZ Company in crossing the river from west to east."

This is a bit more verbose than we would like it, but it does have all the elements of a good mission statement, It is unambiguous – it assigns specific responsibilities to take action, establishes when the action needs to be completed, and describes the location of where the key action(s) need to be taken. As you do your planning, you will further subdivide the mission into tasks for your subordinate commands that will serve as their mission statements, As you do this planning, you will consider:

Enemy Situation: In the V2 military module, there is a lot of information you can gather about the enemy as deployed, You can scroll across the hex map, select a hex and inspect what type/armament and level of enemy players are deployed. Because you know how fast their systems can move, you can estimate how long it will take for them to get to where you are going, once they have decided to move from their current location. You may get a sense of how they are organized for battle, and if your intelligence organization is sophisticated enough, you can lean a lot about their intentions and capabilities by tracking their key players. You may need to fight for this information, but you can tell what nations are coming into fight in the region by tracking them as each engagement unfolds. Ask for situation updates as you are planning for battle and give your people updates on what you have learned during the fight.

Troops: You need to know, as precisely as you can, the status of your organization, who is likely to show up and who has shown up for battle. Be firm about this, but also be flexible, Be prepared to integrate late joiners into your plan, but don't count on them. Remember Murphy's Law – if something can go wrong it will.

Terrain and Weather. In eRep, you don't have to worry about the weather, but you do need to be able to analyze the terrain and how it affects your mission. Choose your starting position carefully, to enable your forces to get into the kind of terrain that favors them best as quickly as possible, without crossing “death ground”. In general, move infantry through forests, tanks by bounds in the open to hills, aircraft in the open and over mountains. Corridors of favorable terrain are called avenues of approach. As an attacker, use these favorable avenues of approach to get to your objective. As the defender position your forces to block these avenues and to force the attacker into less favorable terrain. You also need to identify positions that will give you an advantage, positions that you want to secure and hold – towns for air defense artillery, hills for tanks, forests for infantry, mountains for aircraft. Key terrain is terrain that offers you a significant advantage, terrain that blocks the enemy from advancing along an avenue of approach, and terrain that frees up your own movement along an avenue. Rivers are obstacles, and bridges enable you to cross over – they are therefore almost always key terrain.

Time and Space. Because of the way in which the turns are timed, and because all players have a minimum to play, you are always on the clock and you will always be fighting for time. As you are planning the mission, you need to think how long it will take to accomplish in the best case – and the worst. You may either time phase your operation, or control it by a plan that sets outs the events that trigger each mission and set of actions in order. In either case, you need to make sure that you can accomplish the mission with the time your players have to work with. The mission described above could take up to two hours to complete, and you want to make sure that you have someone to relieve you when your task force goes off the clock. Less ambitious tasks could take far less time – a matter of minutes – just enough time to fight and recover.

This gets us to the issue of task organization. A task force or team – we'll use the generic term task force here, regardless of size – is a temporary organization set up to accomplish one or more missions. A task force may consist of a core unit, with additional attached forces. We call that a reinforced unit. You may also detach part of the unit for a separate mission. Traditionally, the US military cross attaches to form task forces and company teams. An infantry company swaps platoons with a tank company, so you get an infantry company team with two infantry platoons and tank platoon and a tank company team with two tank platoons and an infantry platoon.

As always, METT-T rules – you want to combine your forces in a way that maximize the advantage of all arms and minimize their disadvantages. In the example of the tank company team, the infantry will lag behind the tanks, since they can only move half as fast, but they can sweep forested areas of other infantry and can go after helicopters lurking in the mountains. In eRep, coordinating the movement of team members that move at different rates is the most difficult problem – once you go out beyond one move length, you lose mutual support, both in the attack and the defense. This is why it is not really a good idea to set up combined arms platoons. Infantry and artillery you can combine into two-man teams, but combining infantry and helicopters, will either slow the helicopters down or expose the infantry when the helicopter flies out of range. You may be able in some situations combine two man teams into task forces of all arms – two tanks, two infantry, two artillery and two helicopters. You can even cross attach the infantry and artillery into combined two person teams, consisting of a single rifleman and a single artillery piece. In this case, the artillery protects the team from helicopters, and the infantry from other artillery. Helicopters and tanks can cooperate in open ground as part of a team, but I do not recommend breaking them down past same-weapon teams of two. So you can create a composite platoon team consisting of a tank section (two tanks) and a helicopter section (two helicopters).

Once you have your task organization established, make sure everyone understands the mission and what you expect them to do in order to accomplish that mission. This is especially important when you are dealing with people you have not fought with before. Whether using IRC, chat, or PM, get them to read back their instructions to you to make sure they understand what they are supposed to be doing. As a task force leader, you are in charge and you are responsible to accomplish the mission. In the end you must physically lead, and your standing order should be “follow me and do as I do”. Your example is especially important when communication is limited or non existent – or in the case of allies who don't speak your language, impossible.

In my next article, we'll discuss battle formations and movement techniques, so don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned.