Really hoping command style changes in the community..

[McClellan]

In all honesty, I'm tired of the "follow the leader" single rank line garbage that's flooding the community nowadays. I really hope this game at least tries to force line of battle with file closers and movement in column of fours some how. Maybe boosters or something? I don't know. I just really think it needs to happen some how. I'd just love to see regiments using historical commands (Oblique left etc) I know that's up to the regiments, but change would be nice for when this game is released.

[Soulfly]

Well its all up to you and the players to form a clan/ regiment which will exercise those formations/ movements, making this happen will take a lot of work, patience and fellow comrades willing to achieve this. Though i am confident that this game will have a solid player base

[Lackay]

Well its all up to you and the players to form a clan/ regiment which will exercise those formations/ movements, making this happen will take a lot of work, patience and fellow comrades willing to achieve this. Though i am confident that this game will have a solid player base

Well I think it comes down to the leaders wanting there regiment to survive/win for fun and a little selfishness, and will do what is necessary to minimize losses, such as taking single file line.
But if all the leaders are willing to sacrifice for authenticity then the game will definitely become better
Like most online gaming communities, the trolls/troublemakers are usually(not always) from the younger portion of the community so as long as age and maturity holds the rank it should work out fine

[Bravescot]

Admins could always make it clear that an event rule is to fire in an accurate formation.

[Rithal]

Admins could always make it clear that an event rule is to fire in an accurate formation.

This is true, but then that's up to the server admins, which is a whole new issue.

Maybe incorporating a formation guide book or something like that, that shows the formations and pictures ingame can serve to educate the player base on how to be historically accurate. Who else thinks this is a cool idea?

[Bravescot]

This is true, but then that's up to the server admins, which is a whole new issue.

Maybe incorporating a formation guide book or something like that, that shows the formations and pictures ingame can serve to educate the player base on how to be historically accurate. Who else thinks this is a cool idea?

So like an NCO drill manual? I'm cool with that.

[Rithal]

So like an NCO drill manual? I'm cool with that.

Something to that effect. (Once again devs... look here ^^^^^^ )

[McClellan]

Yeah, I'd be down with that. From reenacting experiences I can start drilling now. Get a nice head start heh.

[Bravescot]

Something to that effect. (Once again devs... look here ^^^^^^ )

Backing up a lot of my ideas today ;)

[~Lawrence~]

20th Maine will be using all historical commands and drill from the civil war =)

[Bravescot]

20th Maine will be using all historical commands and drill from the civil war =)

2nd US Sharpshooters have your back on that one :D

[McClellan]

My entire army will, so that's that I suppose

[McClellan]

http://www.10thpa.com/drill1.shtml A little bit of a guide. You can see the tabs at the top to switch from drill 1 to 2 to 3 etc.

This is not everything, but you get the idea.

[Rithal]

http://www.10thpa.com/drill1.shtml A little bit of a guide. You can see the tabs at the top to switch from drill 1 to 2 to 3 etc.

This is not everything, but you get the idea.

Wow. That was actually really informative and interesting. Thanks!

[McClellan]

Cheers, enjoy. ;)

[Swiftwisp]

A tutorial in formations before you play the multiplayer, a single player tutorial with an NCO shouting at you to get in line and so on, with virtual boxes of how the formation should look on the ground

[Rithal]

A tutorial in formations before you play the multiplayer, a single player tutorial with an NCO shouting at you to get in line and so on, with virtual boxes of how the formation should look on the ground

I agree. Something like this should be in the game.

[Soulfly]

I agree. Something like this should be in the game.

Which needs time and resources ;) but i like the idea and would love to see this later when the more important stuff is done. Though you learn things like that better with "human" actors around

[Bravescot]

Which needs time and resources ;) but i like the idea and would love to see this later when the more important stuff is done. Though you learn things like that better with "human" actors around

The NCOs bellowing out the orders the keep the ranks closed and kicking the ass of anybody that is too slow.

[Soulfly]

The NCOs bellowing out the orders the keep the ranks closed and kicking the ass of anybody that is too slow.

I used to command/ drill 32 soldiers in a "similar" game and that was quite a thing, regarding the time needed to make formations work. So with this experience i think that such a tutorial would be nice but will have little effect on "real-life" action since the interaction with the human comrades left and right to you needs training too.

In my opinion a successful linebattle will only be achieved when lead by experienced and trained officers/ ncos who will make sure that the public players act as ordered, therefore a short warm up phase will be the best to teach and show the basics of movement and firing

[MrAmerican]

So like an NCO drill manual? I'm cool with that.

Honestly that would be an amazing idea... save me the time of researching :P But it would be cool, the devs don't have to do it, but perhaps the community can... if needed I might do some research and make one in advance for the game release... but it would be like a simple word document lol... Now if the devs actually incorporated a NCO drill manual into the game or seperate from the game that showed the correct terms, usage, description, and a visual representation (diagram or animation) which showed how they worked that would be one of the coolest things ever lol... but honestly that is asking a lot from the devs so I can see this being a community made thing.

[GeorgeCrecy]

Its not like a certain someone in the Dev community has the drill manuals and the time to type them out or the time to find editions already typed out...
:cool:

[Rithal]

Its not like a certain someone in the Dev community has the drill manuals and the time to type them out or the time to find editions already typed out...
:cool:

:) I think I have an idea of who that someone is.... It would be great if this someone found a way to show these formations and drills in some sort of animation as well. They will be much easier to pick up that way...

[Swiftwisp]

the 32nd do it in in their hosted line battles by enforcing double rank formation at all times as a rule, it works well.

[Historical Player]

20th Maine will be using all historical commands and drill from the civil war =)

As will the 36th Virginia. I think realism would be great for events, but it's hard to do it when you have a very small line at your command.

[MrAmerican]

Hey guys, I've been researching commands, formations, ect. these past couple days and I would like to share some of the links with you guys to help any of you out. Some of them are pretty informative, some of them give you an idea and you kind of have to think the rest out. But it shouldn't be that hard exspecially if you have past experience with any kind of military commands, whether it be modern day commands or civil-war era commands.

Link 1: A very descriptive and informative guide on Civil War drill. Including Manual of Arms (I doubt that you will be able to do most the stuff in this section in the game because it is like ways to hold the rifle and how to do more showy things with the rifle, similiar to things that Armed Colorguard would do, but still very interesting.), How to march a line and all the formations/commands, platoon drill and skirmish drill.

http://acws.co.uk/gilhams/

Link 2: A very simple but somewhat informative diagram that points out the main components of a Civil-War-Era rifle... very helpful for the link above when he talks about Manual of Arms.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Musketparts.jpg

Link 3: Civil War Army Organization and Rank... explains what the parts of an army, and also main ranks and responsibilities those ranks hold.

http://www.townofelbridge.com/Organization%20and%20Rank.pdf

Link 4: Formations and Ranks in Civil War Units... like link above but more informative on "what goes into what" and how many people should make up what and who leads what, ect.

http://www.angelfire.com/wv/wasec5/formations.html

Link 5: As mentions before on this thread this little animation demonstrates very basic commands... the 1st link is this link times 10 and to the exponent of 500 :p , but this link is still very helpful for a visual representation.

http://www.10thpa.com/drill1.shtml

Enjoy and happy researching... I've been spending days researching all this stuff :)

[Rithal]

but it's hard to do it when you have a very small line at your command.

I have thought about this issue, and I think it might be necessary for smaller regiments to come together into "companies" to form one regiment. So one regiment of 20 people isn't really big enough. They can join three other small regiments of 20 people and BOOM, you have an 80 man regiment split into four cohesive companies with a good command structure. I think this will be imperative to keep tiny little 15 and 20 man regiments from skirting around the map in little stubby double column formations while getting gunned down by huge regiments. It will also look cooler and more realistic ;)

[Bravescot]

But can you get people who do nae know each other to agree to this in a hurry?

[Rithal]

But can you get people who do nae know each other to agree to this in a hurry?

That's the other problem. This game will require great teamwork, as well as the ability to branch out and meet new people. That's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about it :)

[Soulfly]

....This game will require great teamwork.....

please allow me to add "competent leaders and coordination" to your post :)

[Bravescot]

please allow me to add "competent leaders and coordination" to your post :)

Coordination is great but Soulfly is right. The leaders need to be good enough to hold the men together.

[Potus]

In all honesty, I'm tired of the "follow the leader" single rank line garbage that's flooding the community nowadays. I really hope this game at least tries to force line of battle with file closers and movement in column of fours some how. Maybe boosters or something? I don't know. I just really think it needs to happen some how. I'd just love to see regiments using historical commands (Oblique left etc) I know that's up to the regiments, but change would be nice for when this game is released.


McClellan i'm assuming you are referring to Mount and blade let it be NW or North and south....you should check out our event we host

For instance.
We run a "realism event" every last Saturday of the month (again mount and blade NW...) Where we focus on certain engagements in a battle during the Napoleonic wars. We have a dedicated map maker who tries to recreate a certain part of the battlefield.
This upcoming Saturday we are focusing on the twin battle of Jena - Auerstädt, we will cover Jena this month and Auerstädt next month.
Key concepts in a nutshell in our event. Half step unless on a road etc. forming up in double ranks or other historically accurate formation.

We "force" 3 regiments (15 to 20 people) together to form a center company, a grenadier company, and a light company, Under command of a battalion commander who in his turn gets his orders from a General (Napoleon, Wellington...)
They use whisper lists and give orders to the regimental commanders. So you have 2 to 3 battalions on each side

We ask people to take of aiming reticle and friendly banners. this is a big "trust " thing among participants but so far most people seem to honor that agreement.

We tend to follow a playbook a bit. We give the General some objectives in advance. So that it not evolves in just 2 giant ass lines duking it out until the round is over.



i'm not advertising (well a little bit i guess :rolleyes:), just pointing out it all comes down to the organizers and how far they are willing to go with their concepts while trying to make it work in harmony with game play and that touch of historically accuracy. And off course the willingness of other regiments to participate in this. We had regiments dropped out of it also, and we got dubbed as "Utterly boring" "Standing in line simulator 2015" "parade drill event" etc etc...
Nonetheless we are pulling our server up to 250 this weekend so in interest, there is no lack off it at all! Regiments that form up a battalion organize their own little trainings for it etc...

i hope that once this comes out people will take a moment to actually think through what the possibilities could be before copy and pasting events they might already run.


Admins could always make it clear that an event rule is to fire in an accurate formation.


This is true, but then that's up to the server admins, which is a whole new issue.

Maybe incorporating a formation guide book or something like that, that shows the formations and pictures ingame can serve to educate the player base on how to be historically accurate. Who else thinks this is a cool idea?


When this comes out and people all over the world are gonna buy it :cool: then a large majority will probably not know a lot about formations and drills etc so a Formation guide book or some sort of tutorial would be great indeed!
But the majority of the knowledge for the brand new player is to be obtained by ending up up in an environment with capable people.

[Rithal]

The people have spoken Hinkel. WE REQUEST A..... FORMATION BOOK!

[Bravescot]

We are the forumers who say......NI!

[GeorgeCrecy]

I am loving dat reference. Funnily enough, whenever I make references like those, not a single person ever laughs. It is incredibly frustrating.

[Bravescot]

There is but one problem George! We are no longer the forumers who say...NI! We are the forumers who say ekki-ekki-ekki-pitang-zoom-boing! And to post on our forums you must give us.....A FORMATION BOOK!

[Historical Player]

I have noticed that a lot of regiment commanders do not take the time to study the tactics of Infantry or whatever they are leading. They just lead men to their deaths and never accomplish anything. I have studied many hours of infantry tactics and it helps a lot! My guys get to kill tons of people, and we don't die a lot. It makes the game even more enjoyable, but it is hard for commanders to keep track of their men if they have a large line. It takes a lot of training, and drilling. Experience also comes into play.

[Theodor Schmidt]

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few months and I realised there are three things

1. People who do historically accurate things for the sake of it - e.g honour bound (not necessarily)rules on when to fire or what formations you can use. This is very rare

2. People do things because they are easy/known (at first)to be fun. E.g Charging off into battle, ramboing, snake lines. This is why you see alot of those things happening

3. People do things because they have to(this can be good or bad) E.g Grinding to get a new tank or plane or gun. Stopping to reload. Taking a long journey around a place. This is what gets people doing things, most of the time they are mundane or annoying activities, but this could be used to have people do activities which they might not think of doing, such as forming proper lines and other formations.

Having some type of feature that either forces people into lines or other formations or makes it easy for people to actually form formations, move around in them and change into other formations

[Rithal]

I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few months and I realised there are three things

1. People who do historically accurate things for the sake of it - e.g honour bound (not necessarily)rules on when to fire or what formations you can use. This is very rare

2. People do things because they are easy/known (at first)to be fun. E.g Charging off into battle, ramboing, snake lines. This is why you see alot of those things happening

3. People do things because they have to(this can be good or bad) E.g Grinding to get a new tank or plane or gun. Stopping to reload. Taking a long journey around a place. This is what gets people doing things, most of the time they are mundane or annoying activities, but this could be used to have people do activities which they might not think of doing, such as forming proper lines and other formations.

Having some type of feature that either forces people into lines or other formations or makes it easy for people to actually form formations, move around in them and change into other formations

I would agree that #1 is accurate except for the "honor" part. From my knowledge the idea behind "honor" in warfare really died off after The American Revolution (For the U.S at least) Many didn't consider it dishonorable to allow soldiers to fire at will and to use skirmish (spread) formations to keep their own men from getting hit. But yes, this game will most certainly see many who will actually play in a historical manner hopefully.

[McClellan]

In my solid, honest opinion, if snake lines and regular garbage is ported into this community from NW, this game will have lost all event potential for me.

[BloodBeag]

German soldiers laughed at the British in the first battles of the first world war for being in a skirmish line.

[Caserta34]

Are u talking about a firing line

[Rithal]

German soldiers laughed at the British in the first battles of the first world war for being in a skirmish line.

What are you trying to say here? The First World War occured fifty years after The Civil War. I'm not really sure how it applies.

[William]

Back to the Formationbook what do you guys think about that we check what are the most "needed" formations and make a book our owne ?
To help out the Dev´s because this is a thing what the community can do because what i saw we have mutch guys here who know mutch about formations and that stuff :)

because the main thing for the devs is atm the game itself the book can we do if we work together, i think so..
:)

[Soulfly]

What are you trying to say here? The First World War occured fifty years after The Civil War. I'm not really sure how it applies.

Actually both wars have in common that those were fought with outdated tactics regarding the weapons used

[Historical Player]

Actually both wars have in common that those were fought with outdated tactics regarding the weapons used

Especially the Civil War. They had high caliber weapons firing at each other really close in line formations. Warfare started changing in 1864 when the Civil War started using Trench Warfare and Guerilla Warfare.

[Rithal]

Actually both wars have in common that those were fought with outdated tactics regarding the weapons used


Of course, but you must look at it like this. The Civil War featured advanced technology while still using tactics from Napoleonic Wars. The First World war featured advanced technology while using tactics that probably would have been more effective for Civil War technology. They can be an analogy but really have no direct correlation in terms of tactics that should have been used. While a skirmish line in WW1 would have resulted in the company/platoon getting cut down by a machine gun, a skirmish line in the Civil War would have been much more effective than standing two ranks deep shoulder to shoulder.

[Theodor Schmidt]

I would agree that #1 is accurate except for the "honor" part. From my knowledge the idea behind "honor" in warfare really died off after The American Revolution (For the U.S at least) Many didn't consider it dishonorable to allow soldiers to fire at will and to use skirmish (spread) formations to keep their own men from getting hit. But yes, this game will most certainly see many who will actually play in a historical manner hopefully.

I meant in game, during events. Some people may use formations because it was accurate, others only with rules.

[Octavian360]

Would be really nice to see older gamers leading these regiments as well... I think alot of this is due to the fact the younger gamers are typically the leaders.

[Rithal]

Would be really nice to see older gamers leading these regiments as well... I think alot of this is due to the fact the younger gamers are typically the leaders.

I have seen a 38 year old man lead and a regiment, and I have seen 15 year olds lead regiments. There is surprisingly little difference in command strategies. It all relies on the individual attitudes toward leading and how each "officer" goes about reaching the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy.

[Brother_Padre]

In all honesty, I'm tired of the "follow the leader" single rank line garbage that's flooding the community nowadays. I really hope this game at least tries to force line of battle with file closers and movement in column of fours some how. Maybe boosters or something? I don't know. I just really think it needs to happen some how. I'd just love to see regiments using historical commands (Oblique left etc) I know that's up to the regiments, but change would be nice for when this game is released.

For the 1.0 update for North and South the Union Army events will now be in lines rather than the single file columns you've seen before, so hopefully this will probably carry over into the WoR events. :)

[Octavian360]

For the 1.0 update for North and South the Union Army events will now be in lines rather than the single file columns you've seen before, so hopefully this will probably carry over into the WoR events. :)

May have to pick this mod up

[Bravescot]

It's not hopeful. It WILL carry over and it WILL be used in WoRs.

[Brother_Padre]

It's not hopeful. It WILL carry over and it WILL be used in WoRs.

The mighty UA dictatorship shall prevail! :p

[Bravescot]

The mighty UA dictatorship shall prevail! :p

Someone once asked me if the UA was a dictatorship. I said I can't complain.

[PurplePanda]

I still think most regiment leaders will either do single rank or double rank. This is simply because I don't think everyone that will be playing this game will be capable of learning 4 rank formation easily and it would take much more time for the leader to train their members for these formations unless it's a regiment full of civil war re-enactors.

[DictatorDom]

Yeah, I'd be down with that. From reenacting experiences I can start drilling now. Get a nice head start heh.
You reenact? I can not wait to get into it, I've been researching furiously along with searching for a good group.

[GeorgeCrecy]

I still think most regiment leaders will either do single rank or double rank. This is simply because I don't think everyone that will be playing this game will be capable of learning 4 rank formation easily and it would take much more time for the leader to train their members for these formations unless it's a regiment full of civil war re-enactors.

Well fortunately for leaders, the only real use for going into fours is to create a column and march away, whereas the line of battle is always in two ranks, or one rank for a skirmish line, so all's well! On the other hand, once you know how, it's actually really easy to get into fours.

[Rithal]

Well fortunately for leaders, the only real use for going into fours is to create a column and march away, whereas the line of battle is always in two ranks, or one rank for a skirmish line, so all's well! On the other hand, once you know how, it's actually really easy to get into fours.

That's very reassuring George! I believe the biggest column I have been a part of in NW was a three man wide affair, and that was rather difficult to get together. But hey, I trust you! With practice we will all surely be 4-rank pros!

[Bravescot]

Four......FOUR RANKS! Yes! I can finally walk my charge my men in a French column like formation. Sometimes I enjoy commanding suicide charges.

[McClellan]

Its Column of Fours not four ranks, bravescot. Big difference, mate. ;)

[Bravescot]

Its Column of Fours not four ranks, bravescot. Big difference, mate. ;)

It's all the same to me when the bodies hit the floor :o

[Historical Player]

I take my tactics very serious, and I know everyone has their own style of doing things, but the historical way is the best.

[McClellan]

^^^ this ^^^

[Josy_Wales]

I am looking forward to seeing lines work together in combined attacks on objectives, and not just run around doing their own thing. I think a commander will make the tactics in this game great.

[Rithal]

I am looking forward to seeing lines work together in combined attacks on objectives, and not just run around doing their own thing. I think a commander will make the tactics in this game great.

Definitely. I am hoping this game will be a huge step up in teamwork from other titles in this genre of game.

[Soulfly]

Definitely. I am hoping this game will be a huge step up in teamwork from other titles in this genre of game.

As long as the player base will be open and supportive, your hopes will come true.

[Bravescot]

I'm just pulling people's legs. Historical and efficient is how I want my men to fight.