FSO: Core tenets & Walk Ons

[ghostdancer]

Every now and then an incident happens that makes us to have to discuss the underlying principles, structure, and responsibilities of participants in the Squad Ops event. Usually none of these incidents spawn from anyone person or group doing something with a purposeful malicious intent. More often or not it is simply because as times go by we forget the original intention or the way we interpret things changes without us not even realizing it.

Recently we have had one of those incidents again that have caused me to make a ruling and to give a private rebuke and mild public rebuke over it.

I am writing on this subject because all the current participants and future participants deserve the consideration, courtesy, and respect for me to explain the basis of this decision and the underpinnings of this event.

I do expect some of you to disagree with this. That is fine it is normal that people disagree with rulings. It is part of life and you see people disagree with sports ruling (i.e. umpires making a call) and all the way up to jury verdicts in judicial cases.

However, a decision has to be made, I am willing to explain how I came to that decision and here your comments.

On your part you also have to think on (after reading everything I write) whether you can live with a decision you might disagree with and still participate or whether you can’t. There will always be a time when a decision / ruling is made that you disagree with (it will happen sooner or later). Everyone just has to decide on whether you can accept this fact that sooner or later something will crop up (remember some of the squads and people have being playing in Squad Ops for 4+ years .. so you can’t expect things not to crop up every) and continue to participate or can’t.

[ghostdancer]

I would ask everyone to step back from this thread for a second, read what I am writing and think about things. Before responding or adding in your two cents.

The structure of Squad Ops was originally created to decentralize responsibilities of managing and running the event by structuring it to rely on the COs and XOs of the partipating squads. This was done for several reasons.

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• We only have 2 CMs per squad ops. By decentralizing the event, making it squad centric, and relying on the squad leadership we are able to run this type of event on a much faster time table than say a full blown scenario event; 3 weeks on and 1 week off.

A sole admin CM must decide on the field of a battle and create an interesting setup. He must look at the available planeset and try to create a balance event from this (something that at times is hard .. the current late war JAAF versus Allies setup was a difficult one because the Allied planes have markedly better performance). Then he has to try to balance the sides and make sure that squads don’t fly more than twice for the same. Figure out who to assign as CiCs of a side (taking in consideration personal strengths and weakness as a general for each pairing). Write special orders, determine scoring, and host of other things. Then he has to assign objectives for each frame and make sure that the objectives are balanced and both sides have an equal shot of winning the frame. Score the frame based on results and look for any violations

This is a relatively tall order and actually rather taxing.

The setup CM job is actually to setup the arena for the event, test the settings, deal with any problems that arise during the event, has to make sure that everyone is signed to a squad (you think you would not have to remind people .. but we constantly have to work on getting people signed to their squads), explain any rule questions (happens every now and then) posed by squads and pilots, and at times help relay orders in cases where the CiC for a frame shows up late (there have been many times where I informed squads of what they were supposed to do because of the battle plan relayed to me as a setup CM). Plus, the setup CM is forced to make on the spot decisions to modify things in case they are out of whack.

Keep in mind most of this is done in a 30 minute window. Then an additional 15 minutes window after the fields open before they close. Remember 30 minutes before the event we usually have maybe 40 players in the SEA. The rest of the 140-160 (we average 180-200 players per frame) show up in the from about 20 minutes to just a few minutes before the event.

The point of this is just to show how much 2 CMs have to do. The only way to accomplish things and make them run as smooth as they do is to rely on a squad structure and squad leadership to help make sure everyone is aware of objectives, responsibilities, rules, and take some of the load of policing. Without that extra help there is no way we could run an event that actually has had better numbers than scenarios with 2 CMs on this type of turn around.

• The event was built with an egalitarian edge. Meaning that everyone gets a shot at command and putting together a battle plan. Everyone will eventually fly for a side that is not their first pick, and everyone will at some point not fly a plane they are thrilled about. The squads do this and their leadership helps with this because hey today you fly a Ki61 but next frame a Ki84. Everyone has to agree to the fact that there won’t be any special treatment and sooner or later you have to pull the worst detail and have to accept this fact.
• So the event is built on trust between the CMs and Squad Leadership. And also trust between squads. As a CM I trust that the squads will do what they can to not go under their numbers or over their numbers. When signing up for the event they are given a chance to pick a reasonable range. We have to trust that people will not blow through their max. We used to deal with in on a private base. But that just resulted in the reprimanded squad realizing what they did and addressing it. Problem was that other people would get lax over time and then do it also. So it was like putting out a whole bunch of small fires. So we changed and said their will be a point penalty for going over because turn out above your max +2 can drastically effect an event. The public penalty helped to remind or motivate other squads not to go over.

But there is also trust between squads. The selected CiC trusts that you will follow his orders or ask to modify them before doing it. If squads don’t trust each other then a battle plan will never work.
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Those are some of the core tenets.

[ghostdancer]

Now lets address the walk on situation.

You may ask why no walk ons? Well basically it boils down to a administrative issue and trust issue. But first what is a walkon? A lot of people are confused about this. So as Squad Ops Team lead here is what I consider a walk on.

“A walk on is an individual who has not made any previous arrangement of any sort to fly with a specific squad. It is an individual who is not known to a squad or have a relationship with a squad. And by this I do not mean he is a part of their squad in the MA. I mean the person is a stranger / unknown element to the squad(s).”

So lets delineate what is acceptable for getting a slot to a squad:

• A person who contacted the squad via email, BBS post, or text or VOX chat in the MA, DA, TA, or SEA (but not during the actual frame they want to fly in .. they could ask to fly next week) about flying with the squad.
• A person who the squad actually gave a standing invitation too and is now taking them up on it. Best example of this is the person coming in an saying “hey Nightmares where are you forming up at and do you have a free slot?” I email out to about 40+ people for the Nightmares and several people such as Stang have an open invitation to fly with my squad. I know him and he knows me and I trust him.
• A person recruited from the MA by squaddies you send out to fill out your ranks. This is acceptable because your guys are going out to scare up people you know and trust to fill out your ranks.
• Coming into the SEA and saying “hey I want to fly with a squad tonight, prefer allies” shows that the person is not associate with a squad, is not familiar with the event, and is an unknown quantity.

So why am I talking about trust and a squad having a relationship of some sort with its pilots? Well because this event runs on trust. If trust if lost things can go very badly very quickly.

The CMs don’t have the time or ability to place true walk ons. He can do it for maybe 1 or 2 people but remember for the most part in 30 minutes he is gearing up to deal with running the event and managing 200 people or so coming in. In the case of a walkon we would be asking the setup CM to assess which side needs the pilot (to keep the sides balance), be aware of which squads are under strength (for example maybe the allies have very few bombers but bombers are critical to their plan) and then assign the person, get an okay from a squad to take the person, brief the guy a little bit before handing him off, etc.

All of this is a bit of a tall order to do in 30 minutes, 15 minutes, or say 5 minutes before the event.

We could pass this off to the squads but then there is a danger of a little bit of bidding war happening. A squad that doesn’t really need the pilot snatches him up or he ends up flying for a squad that has one of the premeire planes (1 of the 20 P51Bs that were assigned). Both examples can lead to hard feelings developing between squads.

i.e. Hey if you were under strength why not let some of my guys fly the P51Bs?
i.e. Hey my squad is under strength while yours is not .. you don’t need him I do?

Also in the above sited case (which happened) the CM told the person I am sorry but this is a no walk on event. The person then got signed anyway. Eroding the trust the CMs have to have with the squads that is so necessary to pull off the event (which requires decentralization).

Next lets look at another issue. If a true walk on .. who doesn’t know the squad or the people he is flying with, no commitment to come back, no real briefing time except rapidly before the event .. flies for a squad. You the squad are putting your rep on the line. If that person does anything out of line it reflects on you.

I personally have experience / seen a newbie up find out killshooter is off and start firing on blowing up allied bombers. We allowed the allied bombers to reup but the plan required very tight timing of strikes. The time delayed wreck the plan.

I have also seen newbies assume that since the fields opened that they could up again. Not realizing or not being told that they were open to give the Vals a second life. These newbies then upped and attack and sank an enemy ship. Sort of hard to undo that during the event since we didn’t realize it to later.

In both cases they flew under somebodies colors and it reflected badly on those squads (even when it was determine it was not a malicious intent of the squad) and caused hard feelings (erosion of trust).

The point is when somebody flies with your squad you are vouching for them and their actions. This is why when squads go to the MA to find people to fill out their ranks they go looking for people they know. Because they trust that these guys will not go and purposely mess with things in the event because doing so will impact their relationship with that squad.

A true walk on has no relationship. They have nothing to lose by messing with things. They simply don’t come back but if they behave badly the show mistrust and hard feelings that everyone has to live with afterwards for a while.

What the setup CM does and Squad Leadership should do is go .. “hey its too late to fly in this event. But give me your contact info and we will hold a spot for you next week.” The person can wait a week .. if he comes back he is really interested. It also give the squad time to brief him and get him up to speed on the rules and all the particulars about the event (can’t tell you how many have said .. what only one life?), etc. .. which is difficult to do just in minutes.

[ROC]

Valuable bit of clarification GD, thanks for the writeup.

[Ghosth]

Well said GD Thanks &