After Odessa: EFGF

This idea here desperately needs fleshing out. If it's gone about poorly then it'll just make a big mess. Done correctly though, I agree, it could help take some of the pressure off. I'll start by breaking it down into the three ways I can see this going down: the current way, the messy way, and the organized way.


The Current Way[/b]

The current way we have things is that one overall officer dictates the entire ground campaign and everyone else is basically a glorified lemming. People occasionally point out flaws or typos, but the burden of planning and organization is almost entirely on one person. The lead guy does really well for a while because he has total control, but eventually gets burnt out because this takes too much time and energy. This is a game, so it shouldn't have to become like a job where if the one leader steps out the entire force runs around like a chicken with its head cut off with nobody really knowing what to do, until somebody new takes the reigns.

Pros:
-Organized
-Unified
-Stable while we have a fresh leader

Cons:
-Leadership easily lost
-Energy intensive on leader
-Poor RP capability
-Downtime and instability while finding a new leader

Atra's rating: C+


The Messy Way[/b]

The messy way is to have everyone in the EFGF start making their own plans or everybody to some extent being a leader. This sounds good in theory, but you either have complete chaos, constant arguing, or you revert back to the method we have now, with one leader. For those that don't know, my Electronic Warfare class is in the middle of planning a fake war. If you ever want to see total chaos, then just give 20 guys leadership abilities, and tell them they have 3 days to agree on a single plan of action, all with varying good ideas and you'll see nothing but arguments for hours. More ideas are good, but handled improperly, the burden of leadership is still on either one guy, nobody, or everybody. Everybody and nobody might as well be the same thing. Both are far worse than just one leader.

Pros:
-Lots of ideas
-Degrades to Current Leadership Method

Cons:
-Nothing accomplished
-No unity
-No organization
-Everyone gets annoyed/burntout

Atra's rating: D-


The Organized Way[/b]

The organized way, the new system which I am proposing, more accurately reflects a true command system. While I understand that the RPG was designed so that it doesn't have to work on the ranking system, I think it actually works out best.

My proposition is that we split the EFGF into teams of roughly 3-5 people as mentioned above, and give each team a leader. Said leader doesn't even have to be an officer, just somebody who knows the system, and has a little more free time. Of those team leaders, one team leader would be designated as the overall commander. The Overall Commander would tell each of the teams generally where to go and what he wants done, but leave the how's to the team leaders themselves. In this way we have more leaders actually being effective, the Overall Commander doesn't have as large of a workload, and if the Overall Commander disappears on us the team leaders should still have some idea of what they are doing and be able to retain some level of organization. Furthermore we could rotate the Overall Commanders to avoid burnout, as well as designate a specified order so that if one suddenly goes MIA we know who's going to pick up the slack. This could also play into the set teams to help encourage group RPing.

The main arguments against this are not having enough available team leaders and splitting our forces too wide. Without enough team leaders we'll eventually fall back to our current system, so nothing is truly lost there. As far as splitting our forces goes, there is no reason we can't send multiple teams to the same task temporarily, it might just mean a little more communication between leaders.

Pros:
-Very Organized
-Shared leadership burden
-Better group RP opportunities
-Flexible
-Stable
-Degrades to Current Leadership Method if it fails

Cons:
-More communication intensive
-Untested

Atra's rating: A


So there you have it. I've been watching my Electronic Warfare class argue a lot lately. I've been watching leader after leader burnout in OYW. I think that if we have the volunteers, that following Odessa would be the perfect time for a change.

I'm Ky-Jar, and I approve this message.

How about, while we're waiting we try to determine now who would work best as doing what and with whom.

With the amount of active people we have, I wouldn't extend the group to larger than 5 PC's as a rule of thumb. Granted, that could change depending on the mission, but it's a good solid number for us to get things started.

Let's start off with a full list of characters and mobile suits currently available to us. Note, I'm not going to factor in VP and CP right now , since I'm merely looking towards the actual units and capacity. I also won't really be factoring in inventory (with the exception of Nigel and the 42nd) since at this time it might end up being a wasted effort with the results of Odessa still yet to be fully determined:

• Aurem Senaiha, GM Ground Sniper
  
• Bryce Hollerfelt, Land Combat Type GM
  
• Charles Gano, Aqua GM
  
• Cray Vermillion, Type 61
  
• Edmund Blackadder, Gundam Massed Production Ground Type
  
• Jack Murphy, Guntank MPT
  
• Jim Irwin, Tin Cod
  
• Kyle Slater, Ez-8
  
• Seth Yamanu, lvl 6 Infantry
  
• Thomas Parks, GM Cold Climate Type
  
• Aaron McCaskey, GM Land Combat Type
  
• Jarvis Ackart, GM Command
  
• Nigel Ferdinand, Captain of the LLG and 42nd.
  
• Arianna Elvy Saoirse, GM S Type
  
• Bigby Wolfe, GM Desert Type
  
• Thierry Mersault, Guncannon Harbor Defense Type
  
• Hirsch Munchek, Waterproof Gundam
  
• Scott Archer, Core Booster
  
• Thorvald Siggurdson, Blue Destiny

Now, I'm thinking that with this split up into teams, we'll be focusing mostly on three things: weakening defenses, man-hunts, and fortifying defenses. Creating specific teams that focus on these three avenues will benefit us the most, as we can just send what we need over there and expect the maximum benefits of such , as opposed to just piling everyone into random bunches and toss them wherever.

So, as a initial thought, I'd be thinking this:

Edmund Blackadder, Kyle Slater, Scott Archer, Arianna Elvy Saoirse, Jim Irwin

This group would be focusing on mostly hit-n-run attacks, as two of these people have very fast units. The other two are both great offensive capable mobile suits. While I wouldn't be looking for anything very serious if it's just these 5, a good solid attack followed by fleeing the scene to fight another day would make a excellent group effort. Maybe even toss in a NPC Guntank MPT to add additional firepower and distraction to the scene.

Nigel Ferdinand, Hirsch Munchek, Thierry Mersault, Charles Gano

These are the 4 main water attack PC forces we have, so they should obviously band together to take on shoreline attacks and defenses. While it wouldn't hurt to switch someone from one side to another, or maybe even add a additional person to the list, these 4 would work best together when they are all patched into the 42nd.

Bigby Wolfe, Aurem Senaiha, Bryce Hollerfelt, Jack Murphy, Aaron McCaskey

I would like to call this the "Blow Shit Up" team. This combo would focus greatly on artillery strikes, with Aurem Senaiha focuses on covering Jack Murphy, Bigby Wolfe, and Aaron McCaskey, if need be as they engage in the artillery strikes, as well as picking off stragglers. This team also allows Wolfe and McCaskey with the ability to defend Jack and Aurem should close combat be required, as Jack and Aurem lack any real worthwhile close combat weaponry.

Thorvald Siggurdson, Seth Yamanu, Jarvis Ackart, Seth Yamanu, Thomas Parks

The remaining men seem to have a great advantage with focusing on ambushing and hunting down. While it's no great secret that the Blue Destiny is a awesome machine, utilizing the Marines to setup ground-based ambushes would be greatly effective. The Cold Climate and the GM Command swiftness and weapon capacity would also greatly compliment the Blue Destiny in this endeavor. A great hard hitting, multi-tasking team.

This is just a rough draft, of course, and as I said, I didn't factor in VP and CP with this, since I just wanted to factor in just PC capacity first before putting it all together, but what do you guys think?

Two things, you haven't take into account that we should send some troops up into space to reinforce the EFSF and your didn't take into account people's RP related requests. Oh and you forgot me (guessing I should be in that last group.)

The people who at the moment are able to go into space are:

• Jack Murphy, Guntank MPT
  
• Seth Yamanu, lvl 6 Infantry
  
• Aaron McCaskey, GM Land Combat Type
  
• Jarvis Ackart, GM Command
  
• Nigel Ferdinand, Captain of the LLG and 42nd.
  
• Scott Archer, Core Booster

I count officers since they could just jump into ships but Ackart just needs a free refit to continue in his MS. Of the rest... Aurem isn't going anywhere Arieta isn't so scratch him, Arianna's S Type is Earth only so she stays and so does Bryce, clearly our underwater friends aren't going anywhere and neither are our friends in antiquated machines (Jim and I), and then there's Kyle whom I don't think is going to ditch his upgrade.

• Aurem Senaiha, GM Ground Sniper
  
• Bryce Hollerfelt, Land Combat Type GM
  
• Charles Gano, Aqua GM
  
• Cray Vermillion, Type 61
  
• Edmund Blackadder, Gundam Massed Production Ground Type
  
• Jim Irwin, Tin Cod
  
• Kyle Slater, Ez-8
  
• Thomas Parks, GM Cold Climate Type
  
• Arianna Elvy Saoirse, GM S Type
  
• Bigby Wolfe, GM Desert Type
  
• Thierry Mersault, Guncannon Harbor Defense Type
  
• Hirsch Munchek, Waterproof Gundam
  
• Thorvald Siggurdson, Blue Destiny
  

So we have a total of 3 people left over who CAN switch to space capable MS come next shop update (which I think is after Odessa, don't quote me.) So who's taking a dip in the sea of stars?

Edit: Didn't realize the Blue Destiny is based off the GMPGT so that rules it out from going into space.

Can the Blue Destiny actually go into space...? This is delightful news to me. I thought it was only BD 2 and 3 that could do space.

There will still be stuff that needs to be done on Earth post-Odessa so I wouldn't get to concerned about jumping to space.

I agree with that as well. Trust me, if I were going with just Roleplaying, I'd be in your group in half a second.



I...think I accidentally deleted you in my final list. My bad ^_^;;

You're right, I didn't factor anything like that in my initial list, but to be fair, I did know that some people would be going into space, as I did mention in a earlier post in here.


I merely wanted to utilize my list as a starting point in a discussion about what to do next and I chose things that tactically made the most sense.

This is where we break out and discuss the said list, as we are doing right now, and get dialogue going. If space is the final frontier after Odessa, then at least we know the suits that are currently capable of space awesomeness, what would work best there in groups, and utilize our capacity from there.

This also lets us know what it is we'll need in Space and what remains on Earth, as well as what we should expect.

So, can we get some of the EFSF people in on this and discuss what it is they need right now?