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Command Room - General Chat / Re: Some key questions that need to be answered before we can decide on a strategy
Last post by ~L~ -I see Demontank answered a lost of stuff already. I am going to respond to all your posts on different boards, here, cho, just to make it a bit easier. The Vanduul are a Tribal and nomadic race and as of yet we have seen nothing to indicate the presence of a Vanduul home world. What's more, the Vanduul we fight in one system may not be the same as in another system. There are tribal tensions within the Vanduul culture as well and one tribe may not necessarily be willing to come to the aid of another in danger, or if they do get involved it could be to take advantage of a situation that has weakened an enemy tribe. Alternatively it could of course force tribes to work for a common goal, even reluctantly, and what could have been a fight against one enemy becomes a fight against two or more.
As Demontank mentioned there is no official command structure. This is a volunteer for fun event. The closest thing we will have to a C2 would be the Intelligence Research and Data Analysis Center (IRADAC). In IRADAC we intend to collect and process information to develop intelligence and distribute guidance and recommendations based on that intelligence. Whether anyone chooses to heed any of that will be their choice because as Demontank said we aren't going to command the tactics of the event, but we do want to have something available that can provide participants an edge and some more variable options than just mass at a location and fight.
Regarding communications ships, we may have other options than just destroying them depending on how far along EW mechanics are at the time of the operation. Same goes for the potential with cyber warfare.
The Art of Maneuver looks interesting and just from your run down could be helpful for those without military experience in a command position or intelligence operations. Although I personally I don't care for the point of #7 entirely. That is to say it only touches on a small part of equal force engagement. There are many options to consider in that regards in shaping the battlefield and the fight depending on the engagement and its location. Even in a retreat one could still utilize a mobile defense or simply retrograde to alternate positions instead. In the end though regardless of what actions we take there will be losses and all we can do is hope to mitigate those losses as best we can.
I do like where you are going with things though and it is good to see some interest from someone in this again. A lot of interest and activity in this has died down with how long it's been and how slow progress of the games development was. Please feel free to continue sharing thoughts and ideas and participating in discussions either here or on the OPPF discord. As Eisenhower said "Plans are useless but planning is indispensable" and it is something I very much agree with.
Again, welcome to OPPF. If you have any questions about anything regarding OPPF don't hesitate to ask. I also recommend you to check out Guardians of Orion which is our after pitchfork OP. In the event of us somehow being successful in pushing the Vanduul out of the Orion system, ORIONGUARD is the operation intended to retain the system and conduct the sustainment operations that will allow colonists to slowly move back in to the system and start building new infrastructure and to rebuild what the Vanduul had taken and destroyed.
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Command Room - General Chat / Game Theory
Last post by Bigdaddyocho -We could extend this to cover all known Vanduul systems, but maybe we don't want to wipe them out completely, but only protect what is ours? If we attack their homeworld, I imagine that will prompt a full invasion by them, and we probably don't want that.
On a side note, we do know of only one route they could take to Sol due to their reliance on capital ships, and that is via Vanguard through Elysium. It might behoove us to be ready with mine layers on our side of the jump point in Elysium in case they DO decide to try that.
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Command Room - General Chat / Re: Some key questions that need to be answered before we can decide on a strategy
Last post by Demontank -I don't really expect them to back off if we destroy their harvesting ships. This might be the case if we were defending, but as we are launching an assault and they are a warrior culture I find it unlikely they will be programmed to be routed by just that. As well, Orion, the system we are thinking of invading seems to have Vanduul infrastructure on it so simply destroying the driller might not be adequate to take out the supply line. We may have to orchestrate some teams to take or destroy their camps on the moons and planets to effectively do that.
Though the staff and organizers are not going to command the tactics of the event. We don't want to overstep our member organization leaders and our roll is to manage the more behind the scenes infrastructure of the event. Things such as maintaining the social media pages like the discord, the spectrum, the organization itself so that people can network with each other and plan what they are going to do among themselves. We also act as liaisons to those with questions about the event.
The king ships are going to be a massive undertaking. Those class of ships, at least as explained in the past, aren't going to just die in an explosion. They are mobile fortresses containing hundreds of vanduul fighters that we will have to fight over a long and arduous process that may take several hours. We will likely not be able to board it as well, though I really want to be able to.
As for splitting their fleets. We need people to scout to actually determine fleet makeup and reinforcement rates. We are trying to push them out of an entire system. System's are big, they have the foothold and number advantage. All we really know so far is that their are going to be some minor raiding parties that are flitting around and some not so minor ones flying around.
I imagine we won't be able to lure the largest ships into atmosphere as the kingships and Bengal type ships are suppose to be finite resources. This may work with their corvettes and freighters though, but it may be safer to just shoot out their engines with normal guns and let gravity do its thing than rely on distortions temporary effects.
It should be noted that armor is not a thing at the moment, eventually small weapons will do little or nothing to the most heavily armored ships so all the larger capital class ships and even some of the smaller ships like Valkyrie and Terrapin will be a lot harder to kill in the future. So fighters might not be as effective as they are now against large ships.
Their fighters are built to hit hard in ambushes and alpha strikes. They favor cannons that shoot slow but deal massive damage as well as ramming tactics. They will outnumber us and a lot of our people will simply be chaotically roaming the system shooting anything that looks like a Vanduul. Vanduul will also have various levels of competency, but their smaller ships do seem to be glass cannons, at least this time, and a small group of coordinated players should be able to fend off raiding parties at least equal to their own numbers multiple times.
Make no mistake, people taking part in this event will probably die at least once. It was originally going to be a suicide run into hostile space, that has since be padded with the possibility of actually winning and breaking the system from Vanduul control. But, this does not mean it's going to be easy
Capital ships should serve a support role but that is up to the owners/operators, they can deal a lot of damage and take a lot of damage, but many are missile boats and we are gonna be far from civilized space to restock. Even if we have a few organizations intending to run cargo, there is no way they would be able to keep up wit the sheer quantity of missiles and ballistic ammo people can spam against minor targets. They should probably use their missiles where it counts when those around them start getting overwhelmed to relieve pressure.
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Command Room - General Chat / Re: Streamlining Communications & Coordination
Last post by Bigdaddyocho -1) "Squirrel, Raptor. Secure point Bravo" (We need to establish what we mean by "secure", because in the Navy, it means to shut it down; in the Marines and maybe the Army, it means to eliminate hostiles; and in the Air Force, it means to buy it (or at least that's a joke I read once).
2) "Secure point Bravo, Raptor, Squirrel aye" (A mere informational report only needs to be answered, "Squirrel, aye").
3) "Raptor, Squirrel. Point Bravo secured."
4) "Raptor, aye."
Why is this called 8 step comms when it took only 4 steps? Anyway, that's just one way. Firefighters switch callsigns around, and I'm pretty sure all armed services have their own way of doing it. We definitely should standardize this for the whole group, though. I'm totally willing for everybody to just do it my wy, though.
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Command Room - General Chat / Re: Intelligence, Research and Data Analysis Center
Last post by Bigdaddyocho -27
Command Room - General Chat / Re: Pitchfork and ship roles for the battle
Last post by Bigdaddyocho -One important thing I read was that a Herald would be good at getting information, but a Vanguard Sentinel could actually screw with enemy radar and do other things.
Another thing to consider is that we should probably put different types of ships in a team so they can adapt to the situation. An example would be pairing infantry with tanks because they both serve to make up for the weaknesses of the other unit.
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Command Room - General Chat / OPPF YUGE Achilles heel
Last post by Bigdaddyocho -I believe we should scout this area for a path into Orion. We only need to guard the large jump points from an invasion by them, and if we can use this same path to attack, so much the better for us.
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Deutsch Organisations / Re: [German] Thelyn Ennor - Multigaming since 2005 [Warfare / Industrial]
Last post by ThelynEnnor -Wir freuen uns auf deine Bewerbung
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Command Room - General Chat / Re: Some key questions that need to be answered before we can decide on a strategy
Last post by Bigdaddyocho -The problem is that these are capital ships and they'll probably require coordinated alpha strikes with torpedoes so they have no time to react.
Right now, we don't have enough solid data on the Vanduul, so trying to figure out how many torpedoes of what size isn't going to be very helpful, but I do have an idea about HOW to attack them.
I'm thinking the first line should be fighters with many missiles (ie. gladius) who can fire decoys (decoy missiles are going to be a thing) and then break away, followed by a line of missile boats protected by the decoy screen, firing everything to both confuse enemy radar and to maybe cause damage, followed by enough torpedoes to kill the target assuming they all hit, and maybe a few extra just in case.
Another idea is that we can maybe split their forces by surrounding them with several fleets of similar makeup and then retreating after a brief engagement. After they spread out to engage, we can flank the individual groups more easily.
I'd really love to draw their capital ships into atmosphere and then crash them by knocking out their propulsion using suckerpunch type weapons if that's at all possible.
What we really should NOT do is try to match our strength against theirs. If we exploit their weaknesses and dislocate them from their point of strength, we should be able to win. I feel like their fighters are built to take down capital ships, so we definitely need defensive ships as well as offensive. US Naval fleets have an inner core surrounded by two rings of ships, mostly in the direction of expected attack, with the outer ring consisting of long range weapons, the inner ring of high rate of fire weapons to take down incoming missiles and faster adversaries that get through, and picket ships that hide and wait for enemies to get close and then kill them with missiles.
Maybe our capital ships should serve in a support role only, with the Polaris and eclipse doing most of the heavy lifting, at least until their forces are weakened considerably.
One more suggestion: Sending the ground forces may be necessary to draw the enemy into atmosphere or even to get them to respond en masse, but we will likely suffer casualties if we do so. Their void bombers look like they will be smallish and have no problem in atmosphere, so maybe we need aerodynamic fighters standing by just to counter them.