NRP The Officers' Mess (Tactics Subforum)

[joeriig 9]

The Officers' Mess 

 

Happy new year everyone! I welcome you to the "Officers' Mess"! This is the place to talk about units, weapons and tactics employed on the Mount&Blade: Napoleonic Wars NRP server.

 

 

 

Officers' Handbook:
 

Finished subjects:

-

Planned subjects:

Unit stats, equipment and weapons (No discussion, just stats with pictures)

How to lead a regiment effectively?

How to lead a line regiment effectively?

How to lead a rifle regiment effectively?

How to lead a cavalry regiment effectively?

How to use artillery effectively?

Group charges and melee fighting

Bullet drop and guessing distances

Volleys and Skirmisher

Outflanking 

As you can see, there is much room for more subjects to talk about. Don't hesitate to suggest new subjects as this will only help the discussion grow.

 

 

The question to spark the first discussion:

 

How does one lead a NRP regiment effectively? 
 

Many new officers are often seen asking questions like: "Why is no one Following me!", "Can you guys pls charge?" and "Who the f*ck just kicked me?" What should they do to make their rankers follow orders and what are the do’s and don’ts of any NRP officer? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...

[Niroc 7]

Well as a old sod that's lead my share of regiments over the past year or two. I can rather confidently say that there is no one proper way to lead a regiment. How one leads is as different in style and tactic as the places and backgrounds we may come from. Now that being said I think I could point out a few things that I at least tend to do as a leader of infantry on the field. These points go as follows:  

1. Be confident. Even if you don't have the slightest idea what the devil you are doing you must at least have the face of confidence in order for yer men to have faith in ye.

2.  Save it for the enemy. Now I admit I  have done my fair share of horsewhipping in the past but if you are the sod that ends up leading the regiment of misfits and idiots don't take out yer frustrations on the men. You take what you have and run with it for as long as possible and see where it gets you.

3. Lead by example. I have this old saying that I often toss around, one can not lead from the back or side. Only from the front. If you want you're often cowardly and self serving men to follow you into the mouth of hell you must show them how to. For example ill tell ye a little tale. One time I was leading and I found this half strength unit hiding behind a barricade that the now dead sapper had built, looking about quickly I noticed the enemy had left their center weak and exposed. So I simply said "Fuck this, I'm going to charge those guns, anyone with me?"  and without waiting I leapt over the barricades and rushed forward. And to my surprise I had 15 desperate men rushing a barricade under shot and shell. We won that battle.

4.  Test you're men. Every line you  lead will be different. So test them by trying different tactics. Sometimes you may find that a regiment that cant hit the broadside of a barn will hold a barricade like fucking Spartans even when ordered to retreat.  Other times you may find it more effective to engage the enemy at a good distance and pick off their officers and flagbarers. If you find yer men cant melee for shit then adapt. Find a way to win even when the odds might be stacked against ye 10-1.

5. Never use the same plan twice. Even if you have just won a amazing victory and didn't lose a single man always switch tactics at the start of a new round. Always assume the enemy is just as competent and just as organized as you are. Now there are some cases where you can not avoid using the same battleplan over again. But those situations are rare and often happen only when nothing else has worked.

6. Be humble. You may think you are the big cheese and know everything there is to winning the war. But truth is that a leader is not a leader if no one follows. So never proclaim you're self to be a great leader or tactical mastermind. And NEVER. Never, guarantee victory. Only thing you should ever guarantee to yer men is smoke, gunpowder, and blood.

That be all I got for the starting question. I hope this helps young start ups a wee bit.

[Pew Pew You're Dead 39]

[redacted-minimal shitposting here thanks]

[Scandypandy 78]

Ideally keep posts in this thread realistic and genuine, aka talk about actual tactics and ways to lead and not just glitches and trolly stuff.

Example:
"Keep in touch with the men on the cannons so they can focus fire at key positions."
^This is good.

"Make your whole line fake-surrender and hope the admin doesn't slay you lol"
"Spam planks/glitch so the enemy can't reach you."
^Not so good
 

 

[joeriig 9]

@NirocFirst, I would like to thank you for such a clear and well written response! This will most certainly help new players, as well as some veterans, a lot! I will immediately quote your reply to the officers' handbook! I know you have quite some experience so feel free to return anytime and share more knowledge with us!

@Scandy Thank you! I am indeed talking about tactics, not exploits. 

@Pew Pew You're DeadI like your enthusiasm but we are not really looking for exploits! Maybe you could give in-depth information about group melee some time in the future!

The one thing we didn't really touch upon is the amount of text an officer should write in chat. As most of the communication is done via the group chat button (standard = y), the chat easily clutters. Many a time, officers spam this same chat in order to make themselves understood. How much should an officer write and what are some easy ways to explain yourself in order to avoid spam and potential loss of situational awareness.

 

[[19th] Fringo 0]

I think for the leading cavalry bit we need Warclever's input.

But I guess the basic principles are:

-Use teamchat to issue commands and make sure your guys know when to pull out of an engagement

-Be patient. Suicide charging is pointless. Even if you have to wait all round for the ideal time to charge, it will be much more effective.

-Avoid Cav vs Cav engagements without friendly infantry support

-Prioritise smaller units without bayonets (i.e. rifles, arty, etc)

-Try picking off isolated units that cannot be reinforced in time

-Lenghty engagements are detrimental. The value of cav is in the shock and speed; getting bogged down spending 5 minutes fighting one unit will just damage your cav unit, and the success of the team. If you feel an engagement isn't being resolved quick enough, or you're losing too many men, pull out.

-And once again, be patient. This is probably the most important piece of advice.

[Lexxe 10]

 

1. Your number #1 duty as an officer is to have your men have fun. NO ONE likes standing and shooting for 10 mins or running around map just to get to the enemy when rest of your team has done the work. Winning is only #2 of your duties as an officer.

2. Tactics wise? Charge. Charge. When in doubt? Charge.

Just 2 days ago i lead 2 charges, outnumbered 5 to 1 each time, and 2nd time was up a steep mountain against artillery, riflemen, grenadiers, 5 amazing melee fighters and a whole regiment of infantry. I won each time.

Charging trough the ranks, cutting down all around you and inspiring your men to go into the same ape-rage like state to kill everything in sight. There is nothing better than that.

And everytime i have charged, it has made my men have their entire days worth of fun, and an easy victory if i'm not shot straight away.

3. ^ Bear in mind, this does not work if you are a pansy by nature, like a certain someone who talks of tactics, but always runs around corners of map, letting his team die, and then himself.

[Niroc 7]

@[19th] Fringo I would tend to agree with that. However I myself am not much of a horse jockey so my input on that would be minimal.  However I would contest the idea that we should avoid cav v cav engagements. I have always found that the best purpose cavalry serves, and again this is coming from a officer of line infantry so my experience is minimal at best with these things.  Is that cavalry should always try to lure their cav into a bad position, be it within firing range of a infantry company or forcing them to react to you're movements rather then the other way around. Reason I say this is because far too often I see our cavalry run off, charge the artillery. And then just disappear into the fog of war never to be seen again.  

In my mind I find it often more effective to engage the enemy cavalry indirectly and shadow their movements. This puts them in a holding pattern as they cannot move without risking a Cav v Cav engagement. This does two things. 1. it buys time for our infantry to break the enemy lines and push through to assist our cavalry. and 2. it prevents our artillery from being ransacked not five minutes into the round.  However, this is a double edged sword.  So that's my two cents on the matter. 

[TeddyPicker 0]

RIFLES

I've found the best way to lead the rifles is fairly aggressively. I usually try to stay close to the rest of the infantry until all enemy cavalry is dead UNLESS our cavalry cooperates and allows the rifles to flank as soon as the round begins, with them in close support.The best way to position your men otherwise is  to flank enemy lines while still being in close proximity to friendly infantry. Your increased running speed is key should you need to fall back. As an officer moderate- godly melee skills are essential, particularly blocking- to keep the enemy busy in close quarters and give your men time to either retreat and reload or smash heads with rifle butts while the enemy is inevitably focusing on killing you. Good melee skills are also required to deter any stray cavalry that try massacre your men. I've found showing a good display of sword skill boosts your teammates resolve for later rounds too as they know you will have their backs in CQC. The accuracy of the rifle is great for bringing down horses if you can safely position them close to the enemy cavalry. Ultimately, I view riflemen as frontline skirmishers that are at their most effective when mobile, constantly changing position as the fight goes on to draw  the enemy into kill zones.

[gokibouri 6]

I would make a point on global tactic that could help some beginners officers to have the good comportement with the other regiments, allies like ennemies. I see many things have been said about your own regiment management, but be sure there is two big part in leading :

- Managing your own regiment, making it organized and keeping a good morale to be sure your men follow you

- Managing the tactic to be on the best place at the best moment with the best ground and weapon avantages.

I'll concentrate on the second point. 

I. How to have the best comportement with your allies.

The first thing that would make a team efficient is communication. Communication will give you opportunities to make advanced tactics that i'll explain in the second part of this intervention. You can communicate on the Discord and on the Team chat and really usually on the team chat. The first normal thing is to say what you are willing to do so your allies may react and help you/adapt. For example "[Insert name of your line here] is going to flank right side" or "We will hold this position". This the base to have some cohesion in the team. 

After it, you'll have occasion to elaborate more tactics. Always keep an eye on the chat, but dont stay on all the time you need to see everything that is happening.

But there is two possibilities in your team : The team wants to communicate and some officer propose plans between two rounds and they give a lot of informations and propose to you some actions to be coordinated with you (I recommand you to support allies actions even if it looks dangerous, first because miracles happens and most important if the other officers is angry about you because you didnt helped him, you will destroy your chances to keep up the cohesion in the team.)

But in the other case if the team doesnt communicates, its not a fatality for your changes to win. The best thing to do here is to stick with the biggest regiment, or with the cav if you are the bigger regiment. The idea here is to keep allies together to enforce the cooperation and to always know what your allies are doing without using chat.

So lets recap these ideas : 

- If Team communicates : Use it and talk with allies, try to make it an avantage and not a way for rivality or hostility with other officers.

- If team is silencious : Follow the big part of the team to keep some cohesion. 

The second thing that is important to contribute to your team's victory is to make sure the regiments are balanced. A good team haves at least 2 big lines of infantry (12-20 each) + 1 line of light and The cavalry. If there is only one Big line, this line will have two big disaventages :

- Impossibility to flank or to keep her flank sure

- There is less leadership so the only officer alive haves to manage more thing, there's no leadership if this officer dies. 

As you can see, having two balanced lines will give you opportunity to occupy and ennemy while another line flanks, or flanking while your allies occupies the ennemy. :

But it doesnt means that since you can see a part of your team under ennemy fire you are free to go everywhere, you have to manoever close, you should not try to get over the whole map to flank if it takes too much time. Stay with your team  if you are not sure to get support. Or you'll be isolated and your ennemy will be in local superiority :

 

A local superiority is when you manage to engage a little part of ennemies with more allies, the first thing to see on the battlefield at the beginning of a round is if the ennemy splitted their forces, if they splitted, call all your cooperative officers to attack the same target, be agressive and quick so the ennemy lost 1/4 of their forces really fast :

So the idea here is to stay with the team and splitting ONLY if you have the idea to flank or to protect the others flanks, dont split at the beginning or it will invite your ennemies to rush you, but you can lure the ennemy by splitting and going back fast to your allies. 

 

At 3:00, you can see an example of local superiority exploitation, Two lines are holding a covered place, and push back ennemies attack when they see cavalry are attacking. In this battle, the ennemies were splitted, one part that got rushed at the beginning and other part was in the city, waiting the prussian team to attack them, thing that have been done with number avantage since 1/2 of their team was already dead. The prussian team had time to reform because the ennemies didnt counter charged, but if they did, maybe they would have beaten the prussian team because they lost organisation in the charge.

When the team is communicative, you have a lot of tactics that appears.

In my opinion, the best opportunity you can get with some cooperative officers is to use it as a agressive tactic. 

The simpliest tactic is to make a charge from two sides on a entranched enemy. 

With communication you just have to say that you are charging and that you ask your allies to do so, the idea is to be sure your allies are in a different position than yours with the ennemy. It does usually works because when you charge, you are mobile, the campers usually stay here and reload, what is harder to shoot between a mobile soldier and a fixed soldier ? This tactic will help you to destroy the ennemies faster and if you were in local superiority, it will give you more time to reorganize your forces to face the potential interventions from the other lines of the ennemy.

II. How to have the best comportement with the ennemies.

In this second part, the first idea i would like to share is to be sure to have the biggest number of informations on the battlefield, and finaly with experience being able to anticipate what the ennemies will probably do. Dont be shameful to stay a little in the spawn at the beginning to see what the ennemy is doing, then ask yourself :

- Are ennemies splited ?

- What type of ennemies are they, cav, inf or rifles ?

- Are they agressive or they are prudent/camping ?

- How balanced is their team ?

- Are their artillery under protection ? 

- What is doing your team ?

With your spyglass you'll be able to answer most of these questions, and this will determine how you react. 

Globally, the best thing to do if you can is to neutralize the ennemy in this order : Cav/Arty then Infantry. The priority is to destroy cavalry because its harder to manoever if you can be intercepted by ennemy cavalry. To have chances to get a good fight with cavalry, you can isolate yourself to lure them and being prepared, as a line officer, be sure you can destroy cavalry if you prepare your men to, so just say to them to stay close, when the ennemy cavalry is close to you, stop moving and let your men firing but care to make them being close to each others and care to watch flanks. You can destroy many cavalry with 10 bayonets if they dont give a flank. If you see your cavalry rushing their, help the cavalry with fire and you'll have great chances to destroy their cav. Then your cav will probably be able to destroy the artillery. 

Second thing, when you have enough informations about the battlefield, you can begin some psychological war with the ennemies officers. More you'll have experience, more you'll be able to anticipate what they will do, so you can lure them. For example :

If you are alone against a covered infantry, you can use a classical tactic that consist in luring a mistake, again, where you try to get closer to your ennemies (so you accept to be under hard fire  for sometime) then simulating a retreat to strongly invite your ennemies to abandon their position, then you can reform your line and have a fight in open insteand of having a disaventage in skirmish. If you have entranched allies behind you, you can use it as a retreat base so the avantage changes to your team.

 

Luring a retreat is actually what made Napoleon bonaparte in austerlitz against assured russians on their pratzen hill. So the russian counter charged and abandonned their position without organization. You can manage to make confident the ennemy, and more confident they are, harder it will be for them to not be routed after seeing you managed to win. Cause yes, there is some morale system with this playing mod : Players are not all supposed to be ready to lose their live (and wait loooooooooooooong minutes) for nothing. So if you manage to shake the ennemy with a great number of loses in a single time, you will disorganize them. 

In all the tactics i presented to you, consider that you managed to have disciplined soldiers with a high morale ready to hold the line and to follow you in a suicidal charge for example. But this is the first and most important job of an officer to manage their soldiers. I will maybe develop it more later.

 

BIG RECAP :

- Always try to communicate, or at least having informations about your allies and giving them informations about you

- Always see where your ennemy is and what he is doing

- Understand how the ennemy officer is thinking, and how he would react to your moves.

- Always try to establish local superiorities to win

- Concentrate on cavalry and Arty, so you dont give opportunity to your ennemies to make combined forces tactics (that are awful to counter)

- If you dont have a strong plan, stay with your team, stick with it until you need to flank or to make a tactical move

 

 

 

[Gio 4]

On 1/4/2018 at 11:08 PM, gokibouri said:

I would make a point on global tactic that could help some beginners officers to have the good comportement with the other regiments, allies like ennemies. I see many things have been said about your own regiment management, but be sure there is two big part in leading :

- Managing your own regiment, making it organized and keeping a good morale to be sure your men follow you

- Managing the tactic to be on the best place at the best moment with the best ground and weapon avantages.

I'll concentrate on the second point. 

I. How to have the best comportement with your allies.

The first thing that would make a team efficient is communication. Communication will give you opportunities to make advanced tactics that i'll explain in the second part of this intervention. You can communicate on the Discord and on the Team chat and really usually on the team chat. The first normal thing is to say what you are willing to do so your allies may react and help you/adapt. For example "[Insert name of your line here] is going to flank right side" or "We will hold this position". This the base to have some cohesion in the team. 

After it, you'll have occasion to elaborate more tactics. Always keep an eye on the chat, but dont stay on all the time you need to see everything that is happening.

But there is two possibilities in your team : The team wants to communicate and some officer propose plans between two rounds and they give a lot of informations and propose to you some actions to be coordinated with you (I recommand you to support allies actions even if it looks dangerous, first because miracles happens and most important if the other officers is angry about you because you didnt helped him, you will destroy your chances to keep up the cohesion in the team.)

But in the other case if the team doesnt communicates, its not a fatality for your changes to win. The best thing to do here is to stick with the biggest regiment, or with the cav if you are the bigger regiment. The idea here is to keep allies together to enforce the cooperation and to always know what your allies are doing without using chat.

So lets recap these ideas : 

- If Team communicates : Use it and talk with allies, try to make it an avantage and not a way for rivality or hostility with other officers.

- If team is silencious : Follow the big part of the team to keep some cohesion. 

The second thing that is important to contribute to your team's victory is to make sure the regiments are balanced. A good team haves at least 2 big lines of infantry (12-20 each) + 1 line of light and The cavalry. If there is only one Big line, this line will have two big disaventages :

- Impossibility to flank or to keep her flank sure

- There is less leadership so the only officer alive haves to manage more thing, there's no leadership if this officer dies. 

As you can see, having two balanced lines will give you opportunity to occupy and ennemy while another line flanks, or flanking while your allies occupies the ennemy. :

But it doesnt means that since you can see a part of your team under ennemy fire you are free to go everywhere, you have to manoever close, you should not try to get over the whole map to flank if it takes too much time. Stay with your team  if you are not sure to get support. Or you'll be isolated and your ennemy will be in local superiority :

 

A local superiority is when you manage to engage a little part of ennemies with more allies, the first thing to see on the battlefield at the beginning of a round is if the ennemy splitted their forces, if they splitted, call all your cooperative officers to attack the same target, be agressive and quick so the ennemy lost 1/4 of their forces really fast :

So the idea here is to stay with the team and splitting ONLY if you have the idea to flank or to protect the others flanks, dont split at the beginning or it will invite your ennemies to rush you, but you can lure the ennemy by splitting and going back fast to your allies. 

 

At 3:00, you can see an example of local superiority exploitation, Two lines are holding a covered place, and push back ennemies attack when they see cavalry are attacking. In this battle, the ennemies were splitted, one part that got rushed at the beginning and other part was in the city, waiting the prussian team to attack them, thing that have been done with number avantage since 1/2 of their team was already dead. The prussian team had time to reform because the ennemies didnt counter charged, but if they did, maybe they would have beaten the prussian team because they lost organisation in the charge.

When the team is communicative, you have a lot of tactics that appears.

In my opinion, the best opportunity you can get with some cooperative officers is to use it as a agressive tactic. 

The simpliest tactic is to make a charge from two sides on a entranched enemy. 

With communication you just have to say that you are charging and that you ask your allies to do so, the idea is to be sure your allies are in a different position than yours with the ennemy. It does usually works because when you charge, you are mobile, the campers usually stay here and reload, what is harder to shoot between a mobile soldier and a fixed soldier ? This tactic will help you to destroy the ennemies faster and if you were in local superiority, it will give you more time to reorganize your forces to face the potential interventions from the other lines of the ennemy.

II. How to have the best comportement with the ennemies.

In this second part, the first idea i would like to share is to be sure to have the biggest number of informations on the battlefield, and finaly with experience being able to anticipate what the ennemies will probably do. Dont be shameful to stay a little in the spawn at the beginning to see what the ennemy is doing, then ask yourself :

- Are ennemies splited ?

- What type of ennemies are they, cav, inf or rifles ?

- Are they agressive or they are prudent/camping ?

- How balanced is their team ?

- Are their artillery under protection ? 

- What is doing your team ?

With your spyglass you'll be able to answer most of these questions, and this will determine how you react. 

Globally, the best thing to do if you can is to neutralize the ennemy in this order : Cav/Arty then Infantry. The priority is to destroy cavalry because its harder to manoever if you can be intercepted by ennemy cavalry. To have chances to get a good fight with cavalry, you can isolate yourself to lure them and being prepared, as a line officer, be sure you can destroy cavalry if you prepare your men to, so just say to them to stay close, when the ennemy cavalry is close to you, stop moving and let your men firing but care to make them being close to each others and care to watch flanks. You can destroy many cavalry with 10 bayonets if they dont give a flank. If you see your cavalry rushing their, help the cavalry with fire and you'll have great chances to destroy their cav. Then your cav will probably be able to destroy the artillery. 

Second thing, when you have enough informations about the battlefield, you can begin some psychological war with the ennemies officers. More you'll have experience, more you'll be able to anticipate what they will do, so you can lure them. For example :

If you are alone against a covered infantry, you can use a classical tactic that consist in luring a mistake, again, where you try to get closer to your ennemies (so you accept to be under hard fire  for sometime) then simulating a retreat to strongly invite your ennemies to abandon their position, then you can reform your line and have a fight in open insteand of having a disaventage in skirmish. If you have entranched allies behind you, you can use it as a retreat base so the avantage changes to your team.

 

Luring a retreat is actually what made Napoleon bonaparte in austerlitz against assured russians on their pratzen hill. So the russian counter charged and abandonned their position without organization. You can manage to make confident the ennemy, and more confident they are, harder it will be for them to not be routed after seeing you managed to win. Cause yes, there is some morale system with this playing mod : Players are not all supposed to be ready to lose their live (and wait loooooooooooooong minutes) for nothing. So if you manage to shake the ennemy with a great number of loses in a single time, you will disorganize them. 

In all the tactics i presented to you, consider that you managed to have disciplined soldiers with a high morale ready to hold the line and to follow you in a suicidal charge for example. But this is the first and most important job of an officer to manage their soldiers. I will maybe develop it more later.

 

BIG RECAP :

- Always try to communicate, or at least having informations about your allies and giving them informations about you

- Always see where your ennemy is and what he is doing

- Understand how the ennemy officer is thinking, and how he would react to your moves.

- Always try to establish local superiorities to win

- Concentrate on cavalry and Arty, so you dont give opportunity to your ennemies to make combined forces tactics (that are awful to counter)

- If you dont have a strong plan, stay with your team, stick with it until you need to flank or to make a tactical move

 

 

 

Awesome, Napoleon Bonaparte made in Turkey!