Force on Force Planning

[Nap]

Hi guys,

The IDFL would really like to get the FoF competition going.

• If you are a member of a Wing/Squadron, you can help by communicating the following information to your Wing Commanders etc.
• If you want to form a standalone team, you will need to nominate your captain.

Here is a proposal on how the Force on Force Competition could be conducted:

Planning Phase:

1. The IDFL will specify:
   • Theater to be used,
   • Date, Time and Weather settings
   • Blue Side objectives that need to be attacked/defended/overcome,
   • Red Side objectives that need to be attacked/defended/overcome,
   • Blue Side Order of Battle (Land, Air, and Sea units)
   • Red Side Order of Battle (Land, Air, and Sea units)
     (If possible RED and BLUE OOB would be identical)
2. The IDFL will send a "blank" TE to each of the teams participating with the basic settings already established.
3. Each team will make at least 2 copies of the above "blank" TE. One to be used when the team flies RED side, and the other when the team flies BLUE side. (Note that you can have multiple layouts for each side.)
4. In the Team's BLUE side TE, the team will place all the BLUE units allowed by the Order of Battle given above in whatever way they feel would best defend their positions and attack their targets/objectives. The team will not place any RED side units in this TE.
5. In the Team's RED side TE, the team will place all the RED units allowed by the Order of Battle given above. This time, no BLUE units will be placed.
6. These 1/2 TE's will be kept by the Wing/Squadron/Team as TOP SECRET.
7. The IDFL will post a roster of who will play who.
8. Teams will need to negotiate when their respective matches will be held.

Falcon Version:

Which version?
Falcon 4 Allied Force (and patched as appropriate at the time of the competition) could be used since it is easiest to gaurantee a standard install.
Open Falcon and Red Viper are options, but as I understand it, there are various patches available out there so it would be difficult to organise a common install. Also, I've heard various comments about MP and campaign related issues. (Maybe someone can comment on these.)

Resources:

The IDFL does not have any of it's own servers, so it will be necessary at this point for us to kindly ask those wings who have servers if they could make them available for use in this competition. We would ask that in making such an offer, the IDFL are provided with SOP's for it's use, as well as any restrictions or any other operating considertations that would need to be taken into account. The IDFL respects the rights of the owner and will endevour to uphold all expectations placed on it.

The IDFL has most of the other resources available to it, however in the interest of cutting down the time to organise and manage the competition, the IDFL would welcome volunteers to assist with the work ahead.

The IDFL referees will need to be found, and could be selected from the teams involved in the competition. Of course the Referee for any given match must be seen as neutral and therefore cannot be from the teams participating in the match at hand.

Teams and sizes:

I didn't mention team sizes in the original posting.
Obviously the capability of the host or server will determine how many can participate in a match. I have seen servers on HL with up to 24 players allowed.
Please indicate team sizes, and the various roles within the team that are required, in your comments below.
Teams could be from wings/squadrons, or for non-affiliated vPilots, members of the IDFL could form together into one or more teams (see Centermass' and Scarecrow's posts below)


(Assuming team A and B will play their match)

The Day before the Match:

1. The IDFL Referee for this match will not be a member of either team's wing or squadrons (the Referee must be seen as impartial by both teams).
2. Each teams will send in two(2) TE's (one RED Side and one BLUE Side) to the IDFL Referee.
3. The IDFL Referee will manually combine Team A's RED Side TE with Team B's BLUE Side TE to form the actually TE to be flown. The IDFL Referee will do the same with Team A's BLUE Side TE and Team B's RED Side TE.
4. The IDFL Referee will keep these combined TE's secret until Match Day.
5. The Falcon AF server to be used will be determined (either a dedicated host or a player host) between the two team Captains and the IDFL Referee,
6. They will also decide who will play RED and who will play BLUE in the first round,
7. The order of players coming into the TE will be decided.

(See Couby's post below about exporting units and merging SITACs .)


Match Day:

1. Once the two teams and the IDFL Referee have gathered in the TS server, the match will start.
2. The IDFL Referee will enter the F4AF Host, load the TE and start the clock.
3. The IDFL Referee will then call the teams to join the server into the 1st chat lobby.
4. Once all the teams are in the 1st chat lobby, the IDFL Referee will call the teams to enter into the TE.
5. The players will not be allowed to stop the clock upon entering the TE.
6. There will be X minutes to study the map and setup their ATO (see Couby's post below)
7. After the Study time has expired, the teams will be allowed to commense the match.
8. Players will be able to post flights in the ATO, issue commands to ground units, and all the other fun stuff you can do in Falcon.
9. The match will continue until the victory conditions have been met or all units have been expended.
   
   The reverse match will then be conducted using the other TE.

Scoring:

1. Scoring will be based on Victory Conditions set inside the TE.
2. Results will be scored in the Force on Force Web League.

NOTE that Referees will need to be know how to create/edit TE's fairly efficiently and without making mistakes. We will need some volunteers for this task.

Please read this proposal and make your comments in this thread.
Please highlight the line you want to comment on so it is clear for others to see.
You are welcome to add new lines, but please contact me so I can add them to this post.

Cheers,
Nap

[Nap]

Planning Phase:
The IDFL will specify:

• Theater to be used,
• Date, Time and Weather settings
• Blue Side objectives that need to be attacked/defended/overcome,
• Red Side objectives that need to be attacked/defended/overcome,
• Blue Side Order of Battle (Land, Air, and Sea units)
• Red Side Order of Battle (Land, Air, and Sea units)

The IDFL will also supply:

• A diagram showing the FLOT, which will determine the boundry of where Teams will be allowed to place their units.

If possible, there will be only one Order of Battle which will apply to both RED and BLUE sides. Thus ensuring a fair fight in so far as equipment is concerned.

Cheers,
Nap

[Scarecrow]

I think this idea is excellent, and gives a perfect solution where both sides can have the same strength to play with and what finaly determin the winner is how good of a planner/Strategist the teams are...

Another addon would be to select teams by picking names from a hat how that is done I don't know excactly.

Great work Nap

[centermass]

I like the idea of a "pickup FvF" or U.S. vs All FvF.

The FvF would would have 2 leaders picked and then the 2 leaders would go through the current standings, of pilots who want to fly, and take turns at picking a pilot until all the pilots are picked.

[Couby]

First, I would like to say there are 3 squadrons in the VEAF specificaly interested by this type of game, but on OF !
VEAF counts 40 pilots in the 3 squadrons.


I would like to add that for OF the following point is not working perfectly. I recommand you to deeply test it with AF.

[*]Players will be able to post flights in the ATO, issue commands to ground units, and all the other fun stuff you can do in Falcon.

To be more precise it works perfectly with a few pilots. We tried with more but from around 10 there are problems (CTDs, TE not rejoinable...), when flying the TE after the planning phase.

I recommand to allow teams to access the merged TE before the meeting, in order to prepare their ATO.
I also recommand to give slots to teams to build the ATO, with just one tasker in the TE. So that it is done step by step, side after side. And then everybody out, TE saved, relaunched on the server, and you can start the dance for the entry of pilots in the game.

Another recommandations, imposing slots for T/O flights to teams.
Minutes 0, 4, 8 for team A for example, and minutes 2, 6, 10 for team B, this in order to prevent any overload on server with 3D entries.

To finish, if it can help, but as TacEdit doesn't work with AF it's interesting only for OF or RV, I wrote a TCL script to export units in order to merge SITACs.
There is a bug with the TacEdit if you want to import units from multiple SITACs.
Thanks to this script you can easily merge two SITACs, what would simplify the referee work... we can also imagine an automated script on a server using TacEdit to do this task.


If it can help...


I'm reporting the initial post in the VEAF .

[Revientor]

Ok people, really great Idea.

I report that in my vSquadron in the main page:
www.escuadron111.com

And the forums
http://www.escuadron111.com/foros/viewt ... =9559#9559

Good work good work

The ATO or a previos ATO can be create in the Red TE and Blue TE.
In the mision (the day of the mision) the pilot can add more or modifi those misions.

Other idea, the IDFL can say too what airport en the Red and Blue side have aircrafts and what tipe...

[Bender]

Copied to the 69th.

I really like this plan. This is simulated warfare as it was meant to be (or comes as close as AF allows us to get...)

[Dirk98]

AF is the only platform atm that can reasonably support and manage this difficult FOF task. With all due respect to the beloved OF it won't work properly, since FOF is also about moving ground forces dynamically during the action and capturing of territories. AF is not perfect but is the only platform that can potentially handle it decently. Great idea, put me in, guys.

[LoVeN]

great idea but what server will host such big thing.?
.

published it in the israeli community.

[Dirk98]

great idea but what server will host such big thing.?
.

published it in the israeli community.

Don't make such bing thing. Scale it down.

[Nap]

I have updated the openning post.

Keep the ideas coming in.

Cheers,
Nap

[Nap]

Ok people, really great Idea.

I report that in my vSquadron in the main page:
www.escuadron111.com

And the forums
http://www.escuadron111.com/foros/viewt ... =9559#9559

Good work good work

The ATO or a previos ATO can be create in the Red TE and Blue TE.
In the mision (the day of the mision) the pilot can add more or modifi those misions.

Other idea, the IDFL can say too what airport en the Red and Blue side have aircrafts and what tipe...

Airport: There is a choice. Does the IDFL specify the airport, or should the Team be able to decide? The later would increase the 'surprise' attack possibility but require more time preparing the ATO (unless the ATO is built as the match progresses or one of the team members who isn't flying at the time).

ATO: This would depend on the above decision.

Cheers,
Nap

[Couby]

AF is the only platform atm that can reasonably support and manage this difficult FOF task. With all due respect to the beloved OF it won't work properly, since FOF is also about moving ground forces dynamically during the action and capturing of territories. AF is not perfect but is the only platform that can potentially handle it decently. Great idea, put me in, guys.

As far as I know, we can also make ground forces moving dynamically during the action with OF .

Yet we recently experienced some new issues in FoF online planning with OF that we consider as showstopper for a serious competition based on that game mode .

We'll study it deeper but for the moment I think it is wiser to keep it in standby for OF.

[Dirk98]

As far as I know, we can also make ground forces moving dynamically during the action with OF

Couby, OF has problems in dedicated server alone for TE engagements, I even won't mention about sustainable FoF. I know that you know what I mean.

[Couby]

Couby, OF has problems in dedicated server alone for TE engagements, I even won't mention about sustainable FoF. I know that you know what I mean.

Actually, I didn't really know , and that would explain what we recently experienced.

Yet if I understand well, it would be possible in player server mode. Is that correct ?
If yes there would be possibilities using this server mode, just for planning phases with imposed slots, and then let people flying what is planned in dedicated server mode.

That would uncouple planning and flying phases but that's not a so bad idea.

We could have something like : 30 minutes for planning, 1h30 for flying, 30 minutes for planning, 1h30 for flying and so on...

Would it be feasable that way ?