Modern Day Publishing's Official Breach 2
Advanced Tactical Training School
From the Author
This Advanced Tactical Training School (ATTS) is not part of the Federation Collection. It was never intended to be, it is however, designed and conceived to be a supplement, a utility of sorts. Its sole purpose is two fold. One, it is to be used to advance your Squad Leader's (SL) accuracy, detecting, and cracking abilities, in turn, to simply advance your SL and promote his/hers rank. Second, and more importantly, it is an educational tool to teach you proper military tactics and strategies. The ATTS disk is a utility for you to use time after time to advance your skills and rank and also to be used as reference material. The official Federation Manual is a tutorial aid to literally allow you to be the best Squad Leader you can be.
11/6/89
Steve Nolan
President Modern Day Publishing Co. Inc.
INDEX
I What is the Federated Worlds Special Forces?
II Rules of Good Leadership
III Rule 1: The Key to success, the Squad Leader
IV Rule 2: Taking Advantage of Your Resources
V Rule 3: The Nature of a Squad Leader
VI Securing the Landing Zone
VII Summary
Created By: Steve Nolan & Robert Ballantyne
Written By: Steve Nolan
Scenario Design: Chuck Parrott
Copy Right 1989
I. What is the Federated Worlds Special Forces?
What is the Federated Worlds Special Forces? The Federated Worlds Special Forces is a subset of the Federated Worlds Marine Corps. It is a rapid deployment, quick response force that has many roles. Marines and the Marine mission have long been associated with the sea as with space. Marines today have a duel responsibility. To serve on land, sea, air and in space; and to develop and exploit the advantages of their quick readiness and response times. The capability to project orbiting naval power is still an essential element of Federation national strategy. This includes the ability to execute orbital landings. The Marine Corps is expressly charged with this task throughout the Federation Armed Services. Marine forces operating within Starfleet, provide the Federated Worlds' only major capability to forcibly enter any hostile area from space. They can proceed without interruption from a naval to a land campaign with the ability to build up a strong fighting force. They are a combined force having all the elements of modern combat power.
Their versatility and responsiveness lend a significant dimension to the options available to the Federated Command Authority in times of crisis. Today's Marine Corps and Special Forces emphasizes three fundamentals: readiness, versatility, and the totally integrated capabilities of the Marine air-ground-space teamwork. Operational readiness is the Marines' top priority thus they created the Special Forces. It is the cornerstone of the Marine Corps' existence as a fighting military organization and you are now a proud member of it. Versatility refers to the marines' method of tailoring air-ground-space teams in size, from the very large to the Special Forces Squad Units, with structure and striking power to meet Federation needs. It ensures, too, that Marine Forces will remain flexible enough at all times "to perform such other duties as the Federated Security Council may direct..." a mission deliberately expressed in general terms to permit the Marines to respond swiftly, when needed, as a general purpose force. This capability greatly enhances the combat effectiveness of the Marines and their total response to any situation. It is consistent with the Marines' primary mission as stated in the Federated Security Act: "... to provide fleet marine forces of combined arms together with supporting components for service with the fleet and beyond..."
The great majority of Marines still come from space and return by way of space in training and deployments, in orbital landings, in crisis situations, and in combat. So, today, as in the past, Marines must and do cast a constant eye upwards towards space ... and beyond.
II. Rules of Good Leadership
Rule 1: The Squad Leader (SL) is the key to completing your mission. Regardless of the progress of your mission, if your SL's life is jeopardized, then so is the mission. If your SL is killed, your mission is thus a failure. To be an effective SL one should at all times remain alert to his/her surroundings, know where your men are, know their capabilities, keep your mission's objectives in sight at all times, and come up with a solid plan on how to execute the necessary steps required to complete that objective without unnecessarily loss to your men.
Rule 2: Use your resources to your advantage at all times. These resources include hardware (Cracking and Listening Devices), firepower, and your men. As with your men, your weapons have different capabilities and functions. Learn what each weapon can do and can not do, then determine when is it best to use them. It is this delicate balance of execution and coordinated timing that is an essential trait that all SL's should strive for.
Rule 3: A good SL will be conservative in nature yet bold in decision and execution. He will know when to accept calculated risk and forfeit his conservativeness and execute his plan to obtain his objective.
III. Rule 1: Key to Success, the Squad Leader.
The role of your SL is one of the most important questions you will be faced with when in the field. Should I keep him in the rear away from the action? Or should he lead the men across the beaches?
The answer is simple, one should always be conservative in nature, but starting out in rank is like a two edged sword. At first, your SL's accuracy is so poor he rarely can be effective and God forbid you stumble upon a situation where you are relying on his accuracy to save the mission. Use the SL to your advantage. For one, he has the most encumbrance then any one of your men. Let your SL bear the weight of the heavy objects. Keep him close to your main body, yet not close enough to endanger him and the mission. Assign a personal body guard or two to your SL. If a crisis situation should arrive and the SL can't defend for himself, it helps to have a man or two there to come to his aid.
When a mission's objective requires you to recover Data Packs or POW's, give them to the SL to hold on to. Thus you can concentrate on your mission and protect your SL and his objectives at the same time. I don't know how many times I've seen beginner and experienced SL's alike, enter a situation where they have several of their mission's objectives (POW's or Data Packs) spread out amongst three or four marines. The odds alone of having just one of those marines getting killed in action is exponentially increased when compared to having just one man hold them. And what better man than your SL, for if he is killed, the mission is over regardless of your objectives.
Don't be afraid to use your SL. That is why we have created the Federated Advanced Tactical Training School. To obtain promotion, one must not only increase his/her accuracy, cracking, but also detecting skills as well. To humanly be able to do this, one would be forced to play scenario after scenario, risking all in the meantime simply to get promoted. Here, in ATTS, you can do that safely and quickly time and time again.
IV. Rule 2: Taking Advantage of Your Resources
One must know his resources to effectively us them. How far can I throw that grenade? How large is the effective blast radius of a Neutron Bomb? How much can my Psionic Talent carry? How many moves does it take to launch a rocket? How does one activate a remote detonation device? If you can answer each and every one of these questions than you have half of the battle won. But the more important tactical question is, when to use these weapons?
Many SL's will tend to use most if not all of his available weapons too early, later regretting have used up all of his grenades, rockets, etc. As a rule of thumb, if you can take out two or more enemy with a grenade then use it. However, if you have enough laser fire power concentrated within firing distance next to the targets, then use your rifles. This same rule applies to neutron bombs as well. Special care must be used when deploying these weapons. Not only is the blast radius much larger than a grenade, but one must learn that they are totally ineffective when used against gun emplacements and tanks. They are only effective against living targets. The proper use of a rocket launcher can often determine the outcome of a mission. Rocket launchers when used against large concentrations of enemy are truly the ultimate in fire power. Not only does one have the explosive capabilities inherent to a grenade blast, but one can use the rocket launcher to cover great distances. In fact, for all practical purposes, they have an unlimited range.
To use weapons like the rocket launcher effectively, one should assign this rocket launcher to a three man team. More often than not, two man teams will have to suffice. But if ideal conditions do apply then one should use a Scout to recon ahead of the gunner and find the best concentrated targets. Utilizing his scanning capabilities, pinpoint the enemy for the gunner and direct the shots. The second man of this team should be the mule or ammo carrier. Armed with a pistol and grenade the mule can carry up to four additional rockets for the gunner. The third man of this team is of course the gunner himself. The gunner, usually a Marauder, can carry the launcher, two rockets, and a rifle. One should assign the Marauder with the least accuracy to act as the gunner. Accuracy applies only to rifles and pistols, not to the launchers themselves. What this does, is tactically makes the weakest man in your squad more of an asset and frees up a man to act as rifleman thus utilizing his resources to the maximum.
V. Rule 3: The Nature of a Squad Leader
The amount of firepower given to today's Federation Special Forces is in fact, a vast array of a broad base of weapons including, explosives, armor piercing projectiles, laser and nuclear based weapons. It is the delicate balance of usage, deployment and execution of these weapons that separates one SL from the rest.
The balancing of firepower is one of the most fundamental characteristics of a good SL. During the course of battle, weapons are used, men become separated and scattered, thus your firepower also becomes separated. The better SL should quickly rectify the situation and redistribute those weapons amongst his men and retain that earlier balance he had at the outset of his mission. In addition to the balancing of one's fire power, the good SL should have a general plan in mind. This plan is determined strictly by his mission's objectives. A good SL will not only have one plan in mind, but a backup or alternative plan as well. For example, a hostage is being held up in a building. The rash SL would most likely either send in all of his men guns blazing away or would try blowing a hole in a wall, both cases risking the objective by inadvertently killing the hostage.
A good SL would first recon the building, send in a camo-suit equipped scout and try to locate the exact location of the objective as well as the enemy's defenses. Once the information is achieved a good SL would quickly come up with a plan of attack. Theoretically that could mean sending in a diversion with a marine equipped with smoke grenades to tie up the enemy and confuse him as a second team attempts to secure the objective. If that fails, an alternative plan should be attempted. Usually the alternative plan involves sending in men into a riskier situation. This is where the good SL will learn to put aside his conservativeness and gamble on the calculated risk to obtain his objective.
VI. Securing the Landing Zone
In many operations that you will find yourself participating in, you will undoubtedly have to land in a "Hot" Landing Zone (LZ). More often than not, you and your Special Forces will be conducting covert operations, thus taking advantage of surprise and landing in an Area of Operations (AO) behind the enemies front lines. Occasionally you will be forced to land in an unsecured LZ that may be directly on top of the enemy's position. You still have the element of surprise, but in this circumstance, you will be fighting against time. Basically you will have 30 seconds (or one turn) to utilize this element of surprise and secure a LZ for the remaining men to deploy. When going in on a HOT Landing, it is best to send one or two men down and completely saturate the area with heavy firepower or smoke screens thus buying yourself more time to deploy. As a rule of thumb, the good SL will always send down his Scouts first, recon the immediate area and secure the LZ before sending in the rest of his men. This practice enables the SL to refrain from committing his entire squad without prior intelligence information about the LZ and thus, not jeopardizing the overall mission.
VII. Summary
To sum it up, to be the best SL you can be, you will have to realize what it takes to manipulate all your resources to your advantage. This includes not only all the previous points that we have covered but several more tactics you should be aware of. First, cover your flanks, left, right, and rear as well as your front. The deployment of your weapons is very important. If your rocket launcher marine runs out of rockets how will this effect your deployment? If your deployment is well thought out before hand, you shouldn't have this problem.
Learn to utilize the terrain to your advantage. If it takes 6 moves to walk through a jungle square, try skirting around it. Conserve your men's vitality. Never commit your men by running out of movement points. Also never bunch your men up, one well placed grenade, rocket or hidden proximity charge could easily wipe out half your unit.
As with anything, practice, practice and practice. The Advanced Tactical Training School is designed especially for this. Picture it as a utility for you to use, time and time again. There are several advantages to building up your Squad Leader's stats, one it will get you promoted, but more importantly, it will make your Squad Leader more of an asset to your unit than a liability. It is highly recommended that when attempting to play the rest of the Federation Collection you should first send your SL through the ATTS disk and build up his stats. When OmniTrend Software releases the second of IGS (Interlocking Gaming Systems), Rules of Engagement, you will be asked to command large warships. With an increased Rank you will be able to command huge fleets of warships. As you prepare to send down a landing or boarding party into the fray of battle, the Federation will be looking for those Squad Leaders who not only knows how to lead men, but how to gain their respect. You can have this ability as you advance your own Squad Leader from Ensign to Fleet Admiral. Now you can have that opportunity with ATTS and the Federation Collection. After polishing your tactical skills, we hope that you will not only be able to handle more and more difficult crisis situations, you should be able to capitalize and turn every one of your resources into an advantage. For it is the true trait of a Federation Squad Leader to not only balance these resources, but more importantly to know how and when to use them.