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Playing Vanilla YJ - does it make sense fluff-wise?

Discussion in 'Yu Jing' started by Varsovian, Dec 6, 2018.

  1. Barrogh

    Barrogh Well-Known Member

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    Well, it could be that we only see that figurative "dozen who went into compound".

    They still do have some implyed support (which provide intelligence, AD, MechDep, cut off approaches / escape routes etc.).

    Perhaps, Infinity is still too small scale for anything real, but there's that.
     
  2. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member

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    In this case, I don't think Section9 was referring to how it was weird that the operations are only centered on the dozen or so operators involved with the direct mission, but rather that the teams themselves are piecemeal conglomerations of disparate units.

    To use the Bin Laden raid as an example again, the team that went in to the actual compound were all DEVGRU operators from Red Squadron. They didn't send in a small fire team of 4-5 DEVGRU, a Green Beret sniper pair, a particularly bad ass Delta Squad gunner, a Marine EOD, a CIA spook, and a couple of US Army grunts for overwatch.

    This is the weirdness of Infinity. When I make a group of operators, it is always with smaller elements than you normally see deploy in actual military operation, even small special operations assignments. Splitting units up below the squad level isn't just a nightmare in terms of logistics and planning, but it is also pretty bad for morale. This is the bit of Infinity where you kind of have to suspend disbelief. The whole thing about grabbing 1-5 units from disparate branches and military units and sort of jamming them together just doesn't tend to happen in modern military operations.

    If you want to build a team, then you're grabbing at least a full squad, if not the whole company (including support) since that tends to just be more efficient. When branches and things mix for operations, it is usually at a much larger scale than each person providing 1-2 personnel for the direct action team doing the operation.

    So the weird part of Infinity isn't the scale of conflict of 10-20 people per side. The weird part is that those 10-20 guys are sort of a mix and match grab bag of operators from completely different units and sometimes even branches of the military.
     
  3. Barrogh

    Barrogh Well-Known Member

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    @Durandal
    Makes sense, and I lol'd at example given.

    I guess in the end, Infinity lists to modern day ops is roughly what 40k's 1850 points to a planetary scale conflict.
     
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  4. tigervx

    tigervx Member

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    While this is normally true, there are examples of really weird units being fielded in emergency situations. Bin Laden's raid was like that because it was a high profile top priority operation with tons of planning. When there are emergency situations, a 'get anyone on hand involved' can occur. See:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Qala-i-Jangi

    "With Spann missing in the chaos, Tyson escaped to the northern and more secure part of the fortress, where he was trapped with a television crew from the German ARD network. He borrowed their satellite phone, and called the U.S. embassy in Uzbekistan, requesting reinforcements.[13] Tyson specifically requested no air support, due to the proximity of allied Afghan forces. CENTCOM sent a quick reaction force from a Task Force Dagger safe house in Mazar-e-sharif, housing members of Delta Force, some Green Berets and an 8-man team from M Squadron Special Boat Service, the quick reaction force was assembled from whoever was in the building at the time: a headquarters element from 3rd Battalion 5th Special Forces Group, a pair of USAF liaison officers, a handful of CIA SAD operatives and the SBS team.[14] The Afghans also brought reinforcements: their personnel and a T-55 tank entered the compound and started firing into the prisoner-controlled area. Several other television crews arrived on the scene of the battle, ensuring it got wide media coverage; the successive stages of the fighting were filmed extensively, providing rare footage of special forces units in combat. At 2 pm, a mixed special ops team, formed with nine U.S. Army Special Forces and six British Special Boat Service operators, one of them a U.S. Navy SEAL exchange Operator, arrived and joined the Afghans firing at the prisoners from the northern part of the fort. From 4 pm until nightfall, they directed two U.S. fighter-bomber aircraft for nine airstrikes against the entrenched prisoners, who continued to put up a fierce resistance. Despite Tyson's requests, 500-pound GBU-12 Pave Way II Laser-guided bombs were dropped on the armory, which was serving as a firebase for the prisoners. He and the German journalists were rescued when a relief action by four U.S. troops enabled them to escape."

    In an ideal world, this type of FUBAR situation would never happen, but I think Infinity is pretty much the opposite of an ideal world when it comes to military and security planning. In such context, I think vanilla Yu Jing can be considered still fluff appropriate. If a Yu Jing base is suddenly attacked by a covert hit squad, anybody on staff a the base is going to fight back. Similarly, if a HVT is struck somewhere in town and time is of the essence, a QRF like the one made in the real life example above could easily be cobbled together and sent ASAP.
     
  5. berynius

    berynius Well-Known Member

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    @tigervx That pretty much nails it on head. That is exactly how it is presented in the fluff. That Ad-Hoc formation is the rule for the kind of low intensity warfare that is daily life in the Human Sphere.
     
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  6. Joametz

    Joametz Chinese Empire in Space enthusiast

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    The Red Veil mission briefings are a good example of how this is portrayed in the fluff. After having confirmation of the Haqqislam troops entering the facilities, a Hsien warrior asumes command over the Zhanshi troops guarding the compound and asks for a ninja spec ops for backup.

    That was the first "fluff" I ever read of Infinity and it reflects how I think about the game from a lore perspective.
     
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  7. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    That one is potentially believable. Depends on relative ranks, and it may have been that the Hsien said, "you're the one with local command experience, I will defer to you for this."


    Well, can just about guarantee nobody was going to inspect that!


    Very much so.


    Good lord, that was an absolute fustercluck!

    I'm assuming that most infinity operations are more like the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi or the scratch rescue force in Blackhawk Down, a mad scramble to get anyone within reach to the scene in time.



    Related horrible story: At the Pentagon on September 11th, you would tell who was in what branch of service by how they responded. Most of the Admirals in the US Navy have a former-submarine yeoman as their personal writer, regardless of what branch the admiral is in. Even the Special Ops guys usually have a submarine yeoman, we're used to having to figure it out for ourselves and having that work the first time (yes, I was a yeoman on subs).

    Aviation and Surface Fleet guys ran for the exits after the plane hit, and got the hell out of the way (I should note that this is a very acceptable answer, getting out of the way of the people who know how to deal with the problem is appreciated!). Seabees and Marines ran for the exits, got organized outside, then went back in (very brave, potentially dangerous due to damage to the building!). They may have borrowed some surface or aviation damage-control, firefighters, or crash-fire-rescue types for specialty support.

    Submariners ran towards the crash scene and organized on the way. Because on a submarine, there's no such thing as being in a place not at risk from a fire or flooding. The whole ship lives or dies together. So we all know how to fight a fire so aggressively that it's dead in less than 5 minutes from detection, and know how to fight flooding, or hydraulic ruptures or high-pressure air ruptures. Yes, even the cooks, storekeepers, and clerks. And that immediate reflex to go to the scene is beaten into every submariner 5 days a week while under way.
     
  8. Death

    Death Well-Known Member

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    Infinity is very much about super small scale covert actions. They are rapid response teams formed for quick attacks and quick defenses. This is not to say that modern military organization doesn't exist, it clearly does from the large scale battles between regiments in the fluff. Such as the fighting on paradiso.

    I imagine this is why a lowly Fusilier can be the LT of a group and not the elite Aquila Guard because the Fusilier is busy in communication with high command while the more elite troop is actually fighting.

    Is it realistic at this small scale? No. Every unit should be at least squads. So a command squad of Fusiliers in charge of a few squads of Zulu Cobras, Kamau, and Orcs. But then this game wouldn't be a skirmish scale game.

    Humans are after all very social animals and we work the best in stressful situations in groups with strong social bonds. Hence why military is organized in mostly the same sized groups around the whole world.
     
    #28 Death, Dec 11, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
  9. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, there are definitely exceptions that prove the rule. Weird shit happening is the one universal constant.

    It's just weird to think that every Infinity game we ever play is an exception, even compared to normal covert or unconventional operations. We will never just play a normal spec-ops team running a "normal" spec-ops mission (at least not with the way unit profiles, roles, and the SWC system work in the game).

    When given too much thought, it can kind of make things feel a bit contrived and convoluted, and certainly makes Infinity seem oddly hyper-specialized in what kind of conflict it seeks to represent. But at the end of the day, just like 40k, you probably shouldn't give too much deep thought to what all the bits of your army list mean. That way lies madness.

    As such, playing a weird vanilla Yu Jing list makes as much sense as any other list in the game in that none of them make real sense and require some kind of convoluted explanation to explain why they exist at all. Because basically every mission is supposed to be some high-ranking dude kicking the barracks doors open and seeing what he can rope in for today's completely unplanned and disorganized mission. It's a wonder all of our models are wearing pants (oh, wait, that explains Reverend Moiras).
     
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  10. Death

    Death Well-Known Member

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    yeah, its the price infinity pays for being a skirmish based game. It would make more sense if the base unit was a squad but then the price of entry into the game would raise dramatically.

    One of infinity's big selling points is that you only need about 10-20 minis to form a team. Some realism was sacrificed for this convenience.
     
  11. SpectralOwl

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    Well, there's nothing stopping us from making all-one-unit lists (except AVA), and things like REMs, Doc/Engi and Kuang Shi would be naturally attached to others in standard operation. Infiltrators and AD could also usually be from different units, specially trained for scouting and operating independently until the mission starts and paving the way for the main assault, like how paratroopers were used late in WW2 on a smaller scale.
     
  12. Durandal

    Durandal Well-Known Member

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    I mean, again, it isn't really a scale thing per se. MERCS does small unit tactics and skirmishes with a handful of models who are all canonically from the exact same squad despite having different battlefield duties and roles. I can write up TO&E's for Tomorrow's War where both sides are single squads of spec-ops dudes no more than a dozen apiece (and likely split in to 2-3 person elements). Hell, Stargrunt II is set for Platoon level skirmish and it can scale down to Infinity's size pretty well. Not to mention Necromunda and Mordheim are both based entirely around running small, homogeneous groups of dudes against each other.

    The main thing isn't that you need to do it Infinity's way to deal with the small unit tactics scale. Infinity does what it does more for visuals than anything else. Because you have a bit more freedom to create distinct visual elements in your force if you have a bunch of different units represented in there rather than them all being part of a single squad. But you can certainly run games with less than a dozen models and still have it hew closer to conventional special operations deployments. You don't need to sacrifice verisimilitude to run small skirmishes (but you also don't need to hew close to it just for the sake of doing so either).
     
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  13. Death

    Death Well-Known Member

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    You have a very good point. I like Mercs a lot too though that game is about merc squad vs merc squad.

    I can certainly see how Infinity sacrifices realism just for unit variety.
     
  14. SpectralOwl

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    Full Auto L2: A talent as rare and valuable as an entire second soldier, consisting of "Tape Down the Trigger".
    Partial Cover: A sandwich board is as effective at stopping bullets as a concrete wall, and both are better than a soldier's futuristic body armour.
    Fireteams: Through the power of friendship, a lone drone can double its firing speed, never be surprised by anything and improve both its accuracy and spotting skill.
    The Navy and Army Cooperating in the Same Operation: Unrealistic, 0/10
     
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  15. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    You laugh, but that is far more true than you would think.

    Shit, we don't even all speak the same language!
    Ask a Sailor to secure a building, he will turn off the coffee pot and all the lights, lock the door behind him on the way out.
    Ask a Soldier (that's Army, for those that don't speak military) to secure a building, he will post guards on the door.
    Ask a Marine to secure a building, he will lead an assault on the building, clear it room by room, then fortify it with mines, razorwire, machineguns with interlocking fields of fire, and probably marksmen on the rooftop for good measure.
    Ask an Airman (that's USAF) to secure a building and he will take out a long-term lease with an option to buy.
     
  16. SpectralOwl

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    It was just a comment on how that, of all the stupid stuff in the game, is where we draw the line. My pet hate in the rules is how to measure range for speculative fire. It's done model-to-model, as long as a path can be traced between them, so it's easily possible in certain boards, especially "indoors" ones, to have a standard grenade in good range despite requiring upwards of 24 inches of actual path.

    It also doesn't help that I'm Australian. It is weirdly hard to find out information about our armed forces, though I suspect the Australian Navy and Army work closely together thanks to the "island" thing. For all I know the Neoterra Bolts could be an accurate depiction of our Army!
     
  17. Daemon of Razgriz

    Daemon of Razgriz Ninja sniper

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    I always knew that bolts were a stereotype of Australian's in general. I mean come on. BTS 6, bioimmunity and veteran. Cause of all the poisonous crap we have down under and that none of that shit fazes us.
     
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  18. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, and how y'all are scared shitless of fun critters like wolves, bears, and mountain lions. not to mention Wolverines (definition of a wolverine: 3500lbs of pissed off somehow stuck inside a 35lb sack. No, I'm not joking, the damn things will hunt and kill grizzly bears!)

    But while my example is a joke, it's also absolutely true, up to the USAF (and everyone not in the USAF is pretty sure that the line about the Air Force is true). I secured the office by being last man out and turning off the lights and coffee pot, then locking the door. That's considered 'secured' by Navy standards. Secured = Put away safely, usually into a 'locker' (which may or may not actually have a lock on it!).

    But it's even bigger than that.
    • Ranks are different. An Army Captain and a Navy Captain are nowhere near the same rank/paygrade/responsibility level. An Army/Marine/USAF Captain is an O3, while a Navy O3 is a Lieutenant. A Navy Captain is an O6, while an Army O6 is a Colonel. Because a Navy Captain is not only responsible for the couple hundred troops, but also responsible for the ship.
    • Training is different. Ground forces can run to a different place if their foxhole gets too dangerous, Sailors can't.
     
  19. BlackCadian

    BlackCadian Well-Known Member

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    A simple like isnt enough to let you guys know how much I dig your posts! I seriously need to look for a “follow” button here!

    Love this thread and the dirction it takes!
     
  20. McNamara

    McNamara Merc Rep

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    I kinda like the odd selection of soldiers for the Merc Companies a lot. There it kinda makes sense, in that they had their training somewhere else and now fight under this new group or they are hired for a specific job, because the fit it so well and offer there services.
    What bends the suspense of disbelief though with mercs, is that it's highly likely that half of those characters will die during the mission, and it's not that likely that all of them will be worthy of recreation.

    Guess in general the smaller the Sectorial the more sense it makes and the bigger the faction the less it makes sense for vanilla.
     
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