Milsim medic muppetry moan

[Rogerborg]

At the previous milsim-lite at my local site, we ran assigned medics who had a stack of heal tags (tiny carabiners) to parcel out to our (own) squads.  I thought it worked really well: it gave squads (thrown together ad hoc) a focus, kept them in play, and most importantly kept them together.  Players could play boldly, knowing that a medic could keep tagging them back in until the whole squad ran out of tags and became combat ineffective.  Also, there's no disincentive to call your hits as you'll always be healed, until the whole squad has to fall back in a body.

 

This time, we've ditched the idea, and each player is going to be given one individual tag which any player can tie on them.  If they can be bothered. On our 2nd hit, it's fall back to respawn, in dribs and drabs.

 

This seems like a step backwards in milsim play, and more like just another skirmish.  Any assigned squads aren't going to last beyond the first engagement, if that.  And if you're at the arse end of the site with your tag already tied on, I can see players deciding that a "hit" was probably a ricochet, or an acorn, or their imagination.

 

Personally, I suspect I'll be sodding off the whole idea of squads, and will just go and pew anyone I feel like, anywhere that I feel like doing it.  Why wouldn't I?  There's no tactical reason given to play as a team, or a squad.

[Nick G]

That seems pretty much just a normal skirmish, original system sounds good

[Rogerborg]

It was great, I don't know why we're not using it. I've queried it and just been told flat out, nope, no medics, although I can "act as a medic" if I like.  I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

 

I don't know if there was grumbling about the assigned medic system from stick-in-the-mud types after last time, but it seems like a missed opportunity to do something a bit different from a normal skirmish day.

[Wo1f]

I imagine that’s what it is. People being given the medic role when they just want to spray people. It’s like getting told you’re the goalkeeper as a kid. Suddenly you can’t be arsed playing anymore. 

[Adolf Hamster]

That original system sounds pretty good actually, just a shame people arent taking the role seriously.

 

I recall we had a game with assigned medics who acted basically as mobile respawns (no karabiners, medic just tags people back in infinitely).

 

The medic had to trudge back to spawn when they got hit and surprise surprise who else would be seen leading any charge but the medics.

 

Its not just medics, i once got scorned for wasting ammo when i was using the mg by someone who evidently didnt understand the point of a support gun and how suppresive fire is supposed to work.

[Druid799]

Yup I like the sound of that as well , my site if it’s a medic game , you get hit hand in the air shout medic any team member can medic you back in , hand on shoulder stand still not alowed to medic on the move (but you can go to cover first) 6sec count back in , or some times they’ll have a couple of dedicated medic in each team ,and they do ask for volunteers .

As to the carabiner idea , if players don’t like being the dedicated medic then everyone has one each then when hit you go to a particular marshal who has the rest of the tags and you keep getting a fresh one from him till he runs out ? 

[Rogerborg]

2 hours ago, Wo1f said:

I imagine that’s what it is. People being given the medic role when they just want to spray people.

 

Eh, probably.  They called for volunteers last time, and there was a general step backwards. I gave it a try and loved it. It was a pivotal role, and an interesting challenge to crawl through the undergrowth and sneak a tag onto someone's bootlaces without being lit up.

 

Rather than canning the idea, it could have been bigged up.  "Limited places available" is always a good one...

[Wo1f]

For the general skirmish, I’ve found people aren’t interested in any sort of objectives. You can tell this when 40 minutes into a game you hear them ask “what are we supposed to be doing again”. I like objective games (which is why I’m doing a battlesim at Anzio tomorrow).

[Tommikka]

Back in the olden days we had elimination and walking back to the safe zone, it was a ball ache and cheating was rife (the magic bush respawn)

 

Then there were other methods such as zone reapawns, Marshall respawn (from where ever the Marshall decides a little back from the action), objective respawn (capturing and holding a particular spot moves your spawn forward) and medic spawn

medlc spawn being a person who can respawn players wherever they are but if the medic is hit they have to head back, or paper arm bands which you rip off when hit but the medic has spares 

 

Medics are a resource but need to be kept safe, and can be used as a tactic by the faction leader - keep your medic safe just behind you’re advancing element to a key objective and you can push ahead

 

We have mixed up a few uses of the medic rule, one of which was that every player wore a pass with x number of lives. When hit you could take the hit and leave or you could stay out and call a medic. If the medic was willing then they had to get to you alive, open their medic kit and punch a hole in your tag

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rogerborg]

Interesting stuff.  All of them sound better than what we'll be running today, a single tag then back to a single respawn.

 

I'm not minded to slog to the other end of the site in this heat just in order to get shot twice  and slog back, and I pity the fools that do.

[Tackle]

16 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

nope, no medics, although I can "act as a medic" if I like.  I don't even know what that's supposed to mean.

Lol, sounds like their just humouring you (aka taking the piss), hoping you'll leave them alone if you got a "speshul purpose", what it doesn't sound like is a site that takes its customers concerns or ideas seriously ?

 

[Nick G]

Some really good ideas there, I actually quite fancy being a medic for a game if its along some of those lines. Just carry a pistol for defence and a medic pack, lots of fun to be had trying to get to fallen team mates without being shot ! We did an easter egg hunt earlier in the year with similar rules, only the egg collector could pick the eggs up so we had to protect her and she had to make it to whoever had found an egg. If she got shot she had to leave the eggs and go to respawn, we made damn sure she didn't get shot ! 

 

Played a 2.5 hour game last Sunday objective based which was Awesome and could have worked with medics, mind you the follow up was described by the marshal as and I quote an attack/defend game standard respawn for 50 minutes , no respawn for last 10 , just go shoot the shit out of each other . He got a standing ovation 😁

[Gepard]

Original idea sounds great. Might even have a word with my local and see if we can get a similar system going. 

 

 

[Rogerborg]

Multi-tag medics work very well. Better than what happened today, which is pretty much what I expected.  Most folk spent most of the time  walking around.  Towards the end of the day, Yellow was supposed to assault a Blue structure on the very opposite corner of the site.  The majority of them didn't even bother setting off, as far as I could tell.

[EvilMonkee]

Sounds like you are ready for the transition that occurs at most airsofters 'careers'.  Moving away from skirmishes to either hardcore Milsim, or in my case historical based Film Sim.  Trust me skirmishes are boring after you have done a line attack on a NATO bunker as East German infantry or played hit and run through the jungles of Nam as VC....

[Rogerborg]

Nah, not really, I was happy in jeans and t-shirt.  The issue is with gameplay, not orfenticity.

[ghostwalker]

At our local site its usually mixed over various weekends or events.

Most weeks its atleast 1 medic respawn in the field then back to base, unless the game is an attack/defend game.

Some weeks its milsim light with multiple medics via bandages tied on (usually 2 bandages so 3 lives) then back to hard respawn.

Other bigger games usually run in a domination style. there's multiple bases and a hard respawn. Fight for each base, whilst secure it acts as a respawn point until it comes under fire at which point you respawn at the next nearest base. Throughout this you have a one off the shoulder medic system. That usually causes some fun gameplay as you have the bases you really need to take and hold and the objective of disrupting the opposing force bases.

[Adolf Hamster]

52 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

Nah, not really, I was happy in jeans and t-shirt.  The issue is with gameplay, not orfenticity.

 

agreed, i'd love to do more milsim type games in terms of game rules and team based gameplay, but i can't afford to kit myself out with specific loadouts.

 

but i'd love to see more teamwork and proper tactics usage in airsoft. some of my finest plays have been the result of ad-hoc teamwork in the field, traditional skirmish rules have a habit of encouraging the lone-wolf time of play.

[Albiscuit]

I had to read it twice to see why you were moaning about "Muslim Medics" before I realised it was me not you!!!

[Rogerborg]

3 hours ago, Adolf Hamster said:

but i'd love to see more teamwork and proper tactics usage in airsoft. some of my finest plays have been the result of ad-hoc teamwork in the field, traditional skirmish rules have a habit of encouraging the lone-wolf time of play.

 

I agree, and dedicated squad medics provide a functional reason to stay and play together as a squad.  It's something that I enjoyed last time out.  This time, I mostly saw "my" squad in bit and pieces as we passed on the way to or from respawn.  Sure, we could have waited around for the whole squad to die and respawn, but that's just more time spent not pewing.

[Adolf Hamster]

3 minutes ago, Rogerborg said:

 

I agree, and dedicated squad medics provide a functional reason to stay and play together as a squad.  It's something that I enjoyed last time out.  This time, I mostly saw "my" squad in bit and pieces as we passed on the way to or from respawn.  Sure, we could have waited around for the whole squad to die and respawn, but that's just more time spent not pewing.

 

indeed, i've never been a fan of fixed respawns. i much preferr games with single life per zone or something like a 30 step back rule.

 

especially if you have a one-sided game design, eliminates a lot of the competitive element and subsequent "need" for people to bend the game mechanics.

 

although you do still sometimes get folks who are beyond saving.

[Tackle]

4 hours ago, Rogerborg said:

Nah, not really, I was happy in jeans and t-shirt.  The issue is with gameplay, not orfenticity.

Me too, nowt wrong with a bit of attack & defend, or capture the flag, sometimes overly convoluted rules go out the window for many players after the whistle blows, you just want action, ideally without cheating.

combat south woodland had an unusual respawn system, big clocks on posts all round the site, only had minute hands & the faces were divided into "pie" sections of red & white, so only a short walk to any respawn, if you got there & it was in the red (your team colour), you were straight back in the game, if it was white you had to wait for it to reach the red section (other team used the white sections for tespawn), system worked very well indeed but also promoted great banter between opposing team players.

an alternative to medics ???

[Rogerborg]

25 minutes ago, Tackle said:

combat south woodland had an unusual respawn system, big clocks on posts all round the site, only had minute hands & the faces were divided into "pie" sections of red & white, so only a short walk to any respawn,

 

Well, the laugh is that we were supposed to be using just such a respawn clock.

 

But there was only one.  At the very extremity of the site.  With 15 minute intervals.

 

That idea got laughed off as soon as we'd hauled our gear (including litres / kilos of water) three quarters of the way there, and we just spawned from a handy structure instead.

 

Multiple clocks might have worked, but wouldn't have solved the issue of squads staying together.  A pool of squad specific heals does that pretty well, and it's a system I'd advocate trying if it comes up for discussion at your local site.

[Druid799]

5 hours ago, Adolf Hamster said:

 

agreed, i'd love to do more milsim type games in terms of game rules and team based gameplay, but i can't afford to kit myself out with specific loadouts.

 

but i'd love to see more teamwork and proper tactics usage in airsoft. some of my finest plays have been the result of ad-hoc teamwork in the field, traditional skirmish rules have a habit of encouraging the lone-wolf time of play.

Problem you’ve got is your second point vary rarely happens which cancels out your first comment , which is why I’ve not bothered going to any immersive games (refuse to call them mil-sim as they bare absolutely no resemblance to the name !) for yrs now . You’ll get the small teams of friends working together and every now and again you’ll get a clump of players working together but on the whole i found it always just disintegrates in to a scurmish in the end . It’ll never truly work due to the fact everyone there has paid a substantial amount of beer tokens to be there and they want there money’s worth out of it (and you can’t blame them for that) but to work you need a fairly ridged structure of command , and there in lyes your true problem on the whole Airsofters don’t like being told what to do , so soon as an objective has to be planned out , an attack on a building for example instead of the commander say “you do X ! you do Y! And you do Z !” And the players doing it , it just descend in to a Chinese parliament where you’ve got everyone clamouring for there opinion to be heard and taken and players sulking off and doing there own thing because no one would listen to there masterful plan (of course it would have worked , he’s been playing CoD for years you know !) .

If  you’ve dropped 80 notes on a game are you going to sit in a bush for several hrs providing cover for other players to run around having a whale of a time because the company commander allocated that role to you , so you don’t get to fire a single round at the enemy during that time ? I wouldn’t and don’t know any one who would either . 

Sorry they just turn in to a big disappointment every time for me . Saying all that though there’s plenty who do enjoy these games so have a go and make your own mind up on them , this is just my opinion and as the old saying goes ‘opinions are like arseholes , everyone has one ! ‘ 😁

[Adolf Hamster]

it is a fair point, its just a shame that more often than not the lack of teamwork leads to a grindy stalemate.

 

for example one of the sites i use has a central kill house with gaps either side, realistically speaking if you had a couple of guys with support guns you could hold the outside freeing up the whole team to push through the centre (or one of the sides, it doesn't really matter).

 

of course if you take a support gun and try holding one of the sides what happens is you still end up with an even spread on all sides and the game grinds to a halt with the only advances made by the folks who subscribe to the call of duty school of sprinting into overwhelming fire.