How to play an Officer
|
Ultimately, OYW is a strategy game that revolves around working with the other 20+ people on your side as a team, in order to beat the enemy team and win the war.
With as many as potentially 30 people playing together as part of one side, with no rules requiring them to do one thing or the other, some people inevitably need to step up and take a leadership role, coordinating attacks and expenditures. Some people play the game specifically to play this part, while others every run do not intend to be a leader, but end up doing it anyway. It is important to realize that you do not need to play an Officer class in the game in order to play this part on the side forums, and if you do play an Officer in the game, you do not need to lead. The only thing Officer class chars are required to do is vote in officer forum polls about Sieges, captured PCs and voting to promote enlisted men. But because they have access to the officer forum, it is certainly easier for Officer class chars to take a leadership role. So if it is your intent to be a faction leader, I'd strongly suggest you play an Officer class character. Roleplaying wise, a player who is taking a leadership role on the side forums does NOT have to be a leader in the game world. All of the games strategic planning can be done out of character. You can easily take a leadership role behind the scenes with a character who is a bumbling mechanic or an enlisted, half braindead marine. It is easy to just say that your low ranked character is getting orders from his superiors, in fact it is often harder in roleplaying to say overarching strategies are some Lieutenant Jr. Grades master plan. This tutorial is kind of long and complicated. If you don't understand these sorts of things, playing in a leadership capacity is probably not for you. We have historically had several officers in previous runs who, while their strategic planning was quite good, they didn't have the respect of the rest of their team, and ultimately they were not able to get people to work together because of it. Different officers need to work together towards the same goals, in addition. If two officers on the same side are at odds, this can cause a rift between enlisted men in the same side, and can ultimately result in two individual strategies that do not mesh well with each other. So it is important that people like you and respect you if you are in a leadership role, and it is important that officers work together. 30 people with mediocre strategy who work together will easily defeat 30 people with excellent strategy who do not work together. Following that, an officer has to manage two distinct resources. Player characters, and money. I'm going to give some tips on how to manage each on both a strategic and a tactical level. The officer forums are also quite useful when doing officer level planning, for a number of reasons. First, having discussions with officers without them being shown to enlisted soldiers can reduce miscommunication. You can talk about hypotheticals and only present information to the rest of your side once things have been decided. Second and perhaps more importantly, it is much more difficult for other sides to gain access to the officer forums. All sides have an expensive Double Agent service that allows them access to a sides basic forum for 1 week. While these are rarely if ever purchased, the threat of it is always there. The only way to obtain another sides officer board password is by capturing an officer and rolling a high interrogation roll twice. This is many times more difficult, so information in the officer forum is much more secure. It is heavily suggested that these two categories are distinctly divided. The officer who is planning overall strategy should NOT be making plans for individual events. It is simply too much work for one person to be doing. This is a problem that has plagued OYW officers in every run, and it's one that has always confused me. Rather than splitting the workload, players seem to prefer to take turns playing dictator, with everybody sending money to one guy who does everything until he burns out and tosses the reigns to another guy. This way of doing things has not only caused many people to get overstressed and quit the game, it is also just not the best way to plan. The game is simply too large in scope for one person to do everything without making mistakes. It is also very important to split your forces up, and try to accomplish multiple strategic objectives at once. There are several reasons for this. If you're trying to destroy a fleet or capture a base, you only need as much PC support as you need to do so. If 6 PCs could capture a base, 20 PCs will also capture the base, but 14 of them were unnecessary in doing so. Those 14 PCs could have been doing something else. I tend to give rank increases or medals as rewards for accomplishing a difficult objective as well, but I will NOT give rewards for accomplishing easy objectives. In our example, I would probably promote 6 PCs if 6 attacked the base, but if 20 attacked a base that 6 could have captured, I won't promote anybody. Secondly, the more split up you are and the more things you are trying to do at once, the more targets your opponents will have to defend. The more things they are doing at once, the more likely it is that they will make mistakes that you can capitalize on. Thirdly and finally, if your PCs are all focused in one area fighting a single target, it make other areas of the map vulnerable. The more spread out your PCs are, the easier it is for them to defend against surprise attacks in remote areas. To that end, it is important in strategic level planning to have multiple goals, and split up responsibility in achieving different goals. For example, lets say EF officers get together and decide their ultimate strategic goal is to take control of Europe by capturing Berlin. You can group all your PCs in Europe, make a big fleet and attack Berlin. However, the Zeon PCs will see this coming, and either put all their guys on Berlin to defend it, or make a big fleet and attack something in Asia that you cannot defend. Even if you do capture Berlin, with 20 PCs attacking it, the rewards won't be as big. You won't get as much VP, and may not get promotions at all. So a better strategic plan might be to distract Zeon in Southeast Asia by threatening Beijing, and in North Africa by threatening North African Mines, before doing the assault on Berlin with a larger force. The same sort of idea holds true for Zeon as well. Zeon could threaten Delhi and Pacific Ocean convoys while setting up an assault on Belfast. So now in our example we have 3 different strategic objectives, as well as a priority list. Berlin is the priority. Beijing and North Africa are also important, but are ultimately distractions. If Zeon sends too many people to defend Beijing and North Africa, they may not be able to defend Berlin. If they send too many people to defend Berlin, they may lose some mines in North Africa or lose Side SP resupplying Berlin from raids. Once the objectives are decided on, you should divide PCs into teams who are responsible for accomplishing these objectives. For our example, there should be a Berlin team, a Beijing team, and a North Africa team. Each team should have a commanding officer, as well as an appropriate number of PCs needed to accomplish the objective. These teams should ONLY worry about their 1 objective. They are responsible for their single piece of the puzzle, not the overarching strategy. Finally, at least one officer and a couple enlisted PCs should be kept in reserve, and their responsibility should be to assist in coordination between the differing individual teams. This guy doesn't need to take a commander in chief sort of role (although they can), but should try to ease miscommunication confusion or problems as they arise. Is Zeon doing something unexpected? The reserve team should deal with it. Is one group having more trouble than expected? The reserve team can help out with resources/PC help. Is one team doing better than expected, and doesn't need all their PC support? The reserve officer can figure out the best objective to move those extra PCs towards. So now we've done the following. A: Identified strategic objectives. B: Split the 20+ people on a side into multiple groups, each with an officer and each tackling an individual objective. C: Kept a reserve team to protect against the unexpected. This is all done without requiring any one officer to do everything, so people can work together but still only focus on one specific objective. This makes it so officers don't get overstressed and don't make mistakes from having to focus on too much at once. As for SP management, on a strategic level you should not worry too much about how to spend your money. The concern is more about how much money approximately each team will need to accomplish its objective, and who needs to send what to whom in order to make that happen. Once officers and enlisted PCs are organized into individual teams with a specific objective, they have to figure out how exactly to achieve their objective. This is tactical level planning. The same sort of general rules apply here. It's important that everybody works together. Even if a plan is bad, players refusing to participate will make it worse. It's better for everybody to work together under a poor battleplan than for people to not work together under an excellent battleplan. It's also important to realize that you don't necessarily have to win a battle on a tactical level in order for it to be a victory strategically. If your strategic objective is to create a diversion, or to slow enemy forces down, then you don't have to win an ambush in order to accomplish your objective. As long as you damage your opponents and cause them repair time, you've done your job. To this end, it may be better to create a plan that guarantees you lose the ambush but also guarantees that your opponents take heavy repair times. Once you've figured out what you need to do to accomplish your objective, you have to figure out what to purchase for your forces in order to do it. The side shops are huge, and obviously what you need is based on what enemy forces have. But here are some general tips to keep in mind. 1: High pilot levels are not cost efficient. 10,000 SP worth of lvl1 troops will normally beat 10,000 SP worth of lvl5 troops. However, high pilot levels are good in specific circumstances. If a plan revolves around a specific unit, for example a Grabro or a Big Tray, purchasing a high level pilot for that one unit can be a good idea. Small groups of high level pilots are also better able to do more special ops related strategies. One ship full of lvl5 pilots can better sneak past patrols than a fleet of lvl1 pilots, and a small group of lvl5 pilots is better able to do a quick raid on a base, causing damage and then retreating, than a large fleet of lvl1 pilots. 2: It's important for an individual battle plan to get you as many tactical advantages as possible. Ask yourself the following questions. • 2a: Is Minovsky Particle Interference important for this battle? There are situations where having no particle field will benefit one side more than the other. • 2b: What side has better air support? Controlling airspace on Earth allows one side to use bombers to harass the other without being contested very much. It's difficult for troops on the ground to destroy high altitude bombers. So controlling the air is important. However, if you absolutely cannot control the air, trying to is ultimately futile. If your opponent can field 100 Tin Cods, buying 10 Dopps to fight them is stupid. You may as well spend that money on more tanks. • 2c: What side has better long range artillery? If you can't compete with your opponent in an artillery war, things like stealth units, weather effects and attacking through low visibility terrain becomes very important. • 2d: Do opposing forces have any obvious weaknesses? If they are in a coastal area and don't have any anti aquatic defenses, an amphibious assault is a good idea. If they are mostly melee units in the steppe or the desert, using a lot of artillery is a good idea. If they don't have much anti air defense, paradropping is a good idea. • 2e: Does your force have any obvious weaknesses? Enemy PCs will try to exploit your weaknesses just as you will try to exploit theirs. So minimizing your weaknesses is important. Services can be used to temporarily protect obvious weaknesses in your forces. • 2f: Is Climate an important factor? In some cases it will be advisable to wait an extra day and have all your PCs purchase harsh climate equipment in order to fight a battle at full effectiveness. • 2g: Is the battle going to be classified as a Long Event? If so, fuel and ammunition become important factors to consider. Long Events will only happen if a battle is too large to be written in one day. They will also occur more often at the end of a week than at the beginning, just due to the way the update schedule is structured. 3: It's important to integrate PCs into battle strategy, for multiple reasons. PCs generally have better units and more VP than NPC forces. They are also less likely to be unceremoniously destroyed without accomplishing anything, just due to the way that writers write battles. Writers want to write PCs being heroic and doing awesome stuff, they don't want to write some nameless Dom pilot being awesome. So important objectives in an individual battle should be accomplished by PCs, generally with NPC forces acting more as backup than anything else. It's also important because it allows enlisted PCs to feel like they're helping, doing something and participating. A problem that OYW can have is the side officers tend to become celebrities. Everything is about them because planning is so important, and they generally make the plans. While enlisted PCs can and definitely should participate in making the plans, there will be PCs who do not participate in the planning process, and then become resentful that they don't get as much of a spotlight because of it. I've seen people quit the game or become inactive on grounds that all they do is sit on fleets and send officers money, when they make no attempt to do anything different in the first place. Giving those players a specific and important part in a battle plan lets a writer give them individual screentime, which lets them feel more included. They end up having more fun in the game, and are more likely to get rewards and participate afterwards. Having multiple different PCs all trying to achieve the same objective can be a bad idea from a writing standpoint, because those PCs are then basically competing for a writers attention. If everybody is doing something different, everybody can get screentime. 4: Don't spend all your money if you don't have to. Once SP has been used to purchase a Zaku, you've got a Zaku. While you still have 50 SP, you can buy all kinds of stuff with that. SP is more useful while it's SP than once it's purchased for a specific task. So figure out exactly what you need to accomplish your plan, and don't overdo it. You may end up with a bunch of units that have to spend an entire week walking across the map to become useful elsewhere, while if you hadn't bought them you could have just sent surplus SP to another officer right away. So if after reading this tutorial you have a headache and find it very confusing, you probably don't want to play an officer. You probably want to play an enlisted soldier or a Rogue. If you think all of the above sounds super fun, you probably want to play an officer. But there is a responsibility to your side that goes with that, and it needs to be something you are ready to do. |