Need some feedback on my tactics site

[DviddLeff]

https://sites.google.com/site/planetsidetactics/home

The site is becoming rather large as I work on it, and the initial layout for the sections is not sitting right in my mind breaking it down into Tactics and Strategy and sub sections in each (make sure to click the arrows next to them in the nav bar).

I am currently wondering about having separate sections for the Individual, Squad Leader and Platoon leader. And then further sections for Infantry, Armour and Aircraft squads as well...

Thoughts?

[UlfStein]

First thing I want to say is that I really love the idea behind your website, it hits a warm place in my heart and makes me want to shout out ideals from my recent Sun Tzu readings. Second, in a more serious note, I think, like you mentioned, the format does not feel quite right. A few other things caught my attention as well.

Personally, I would suggest having the stradegy section be seperated into offense and defence stradegies like you have it, however, dedicate it specifically to overall, general stradegies on base/tower/territory capture or defense such as co-ordinated pincer movements and such. You did an excellent job with this on the overview and the offensive section; however, the defense section seemed rather inconsistant to me. For example, I believe that specific tactics should such as the "peel withdraw" should be moved to the tactics section, and methods such as how to keep supply lines open, what to do when the base is under initial attack, how to prevent a seige, how to defeat a pincer, and such should be there instead. also, this may not be critical, but I think your stradegy section could use an intel section as well that not only explains methods of gathering useful information, but reiterates things from Sun Tzu's explainations on when to attack or defend and such as well which could easily be placed as a highlight within the offence and defence sections respectively rather than its own subsection.


Formatting wise, I believe that the stradegy section should be placed before tactics section on the side menu. In addition, I feel that tactics section should be divided into offense and defensive subsections for consistancy with the stradegy section, and the infantry, vehicular, and such being subsections of the offensive and defensive sections. As such, i believe the "peel withdraw" should be moved to the defensive tactics overview since it can be applied to each unit catagory, and ambush should be moved to the offensive tactics overview, while things such as general movement/formation should stay in the general tactics overview.

what I am saying in layout format is essentially this:

*stradegy
--offense
--defense
*tactics
--offense
----infantry
----vehicular
----air
--defence
----infantry
----vehicular
----air

I hope you find no offence in what i've said, these are just my personal opinions and how I would recommend going about it. In addition, after reading your dense terrain article in the vehicular tactics section I was inspired to draw some pictures of how a vehical could effectively retreat to be repaired if one treated the dense area as a hallway which I have attached. The brown lines indicate general terrain obstacles, the red filled circle being an opponent, and the green one being an engineer. I choose essentially an invert V formation as I believe it would help faciliate the act of flushing the enemy into the center as you described, but the flanks could possibly be moved back more to better respond to an attack from the rear. if you decide to go with my formating suggestion and decide to use this, I would put it in vehical defence tactics. I dont really expect you to use this, especially since it doesn't follow the format you've used for the other pictures, but I hope this and other things i've said could be somewhat useful nonetheless.

[UlfStein]

Also, might I ask if you are going to make this website specific to your outfit or empire? I was thinking if so that you may only want to include formation and tactics that you want your outfit to be drilled in if you want it to be outfit only so that you could be like, code yellow 1 left to initiate a left peel instead of posting generalized tactics for an empire manual. I'd personally also make a quiz for new applicants to ensure they read the tactics if it was outfit only, but thats just me lol.

[DviddLeff]

No offence taken ULFStein; your feedback is exactly what I was after!

Regarding your last post first, I intend on using it with my outfit, but I do not mind it being used by anyone playing the game. Giving it a VS theme makes it a bit more interesting, but I wonder about making it a TR training manual that the VS have heavily edited for their own use... Anyway having specific commands is a damned good idea and one I will have to put in.

Funny you mention the Peel withdraw move, I was about to move it last night, but it was past midnight and I needed sleep!

Good suggestion for the site layout, however I am not sure that separating the relatively small infantry/armour/aircraft sections into offence and defence will be worthwhile (at least yet).

Nice suggestions for retreating vehicles, believe it or not I am using PowerPoint to make my diagrams; the Insert shape tool is pretty powerful!

[Coreldan]

I'm really looking forward to PS2 and for this site to get more relevant and applicable content, looks real nice.

As for the tactics or their validity I can't say much, as my military service was cancelled before it even begun cos of sudden case of 1st type diabetes :( Which is sorta why I'm really interested in this, as I've never had any training of this type.

[UlfStein]

In regards to the intent and scope of your website, I personally think that making it more VS themed is an excellent idea, especially if they are making the gameplay styles for each faction as distinct as they are making it seem. To create a general manual would, in my opinion, have too much overhead in this case as some tactics would be too specific to one empire or not specific enough, the magrider and scythe come to mind on this as you would essentially have to do an independent write up on them specifically since they are radically different in nature and capability. And to be honest, i'm now kind of inspired to make a similar website myself. However, since i'm most likely going to be TR, it's mainly only going to contain TR tactics and possibly outfit specific instead as this would greatly cut down on overhead and it would be easier for me to incorporate what tactics I felt were specifically important as a TR; leap frogging TR maxes come to mind here. Including all possible tactics for an empire or all the empires would be overly cumbersome, or overly bland if you only include general tactics. Still yet, we cant really know for sure until we actually see the game.

As for the format, I still believe that an offense & defense section for each division of combat would be necessary in the long run. You already have a decently sized offensive write up in your infantry section detailing how to breech and such. Imagine how big a defense section would be considering most outfits have a detailed plan on how to adequately defend each type of base from the interior. Being a part of the Black Beret Armour Core for a decent amount of time, I could easily do a defensive write up on how to handle being ambushed by a BFR in the vehical defense section as we had a specific drill to respond to that type of situation or perform effective co-ordinated hit and run tank operations on bases. Again, these are all just my opinions, and a sad reminder that we still haven't seen the game yet. :(

[SuperMorto]

Get logged into Teamstarz and we will promote this on our streams. Also get a video up and running and we will show that 2. I Like it!!

[Canaris]

Only thing your missing is some Clausewitz quotes :D

apart from that great guide mate

[UlfStein]

aye, vids of the tactics would be cool.

[SuperMorto]

aye, vids of the tactics would be cool.

See Miir for that, hes good with little snippet vids :) but I do know hes a busy guy :(

[DviddLeff]

Videos and proper pics I'll save for release with my outfit, wouldnt mind making some animations though, any suggestions for software?

[LongBow]

Its good, A website like this - if it wants to be accepted, however is going to need a massive information base. It needs to cover everything from best ways to deploy CE to Gal formations, setting up to hold a doorway to advancing up or down stairs.

granted we will not know much until beta, Just be ready for the amount of research and writing something like this is going to take!

[DviddLeff]

Yeah at the moment I am keeping it very general, Although I already have done too much work on it, I don't want to go into details until we have our hands on the game itself.