Become a better Commander; understanding the Operational Level of War.

I've been lurking around the forum for months now, mostly trying to figure out what's next in the development cycle for PA.

However, there are a lot of threads discussing topics like units being overpowered, how the first two items in your build are the most critical decisions you will make, etc. Tactical level discussions, while fun on the whole miss the bigger picture, and that is that Planetary Annihilation is all about the bigger picture.

The Tactical Level of War deals with small unit interactions like fighter on fighter, and the Strategic Level of War deals with interactions between nations. The Operational Level of War involves interactions between armies and Planetary Annihilation is fundamentally an Operational Level of War game. Victory at the Operational Level of War is decided by your ability to find, fix and destroy your enemy faster than your enemy can.

So how do I fight "faster" you might ask. By understanding these 7 items conveniently taken, with some edits on the side of applicability, from joint military doctrine.
The Operational Environment
The operational environment is a composite of the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the employment of capabilities and bear on the decisions of the commander

What does this mean? The terrain has as much impact on your operations, may be even more, as your enemy does. Look for decisive points, those key positions, that if you can control them you gain a marked advantage over you enemy. Long lines of walls and fixed emplacements can be over run and bypassed or nuked out of existence but your enemy usually can only attack you from the directions that the terrain allows him to and vice versa. Occupy and contest Decisive Points, fight there not at the front edge of your base.

Command and Control
The Command and Control war fighting function develops and integrates those activities enabling a commander to balance the art of command and the science of control.

This is readily apparent in team games but just as useable in FFA. Don't exceed your span of control. make as much use of the routing and patrolling function as possible and area commands as possible. Delegate down to the AI . Don't get sucked down to the micro level. You might win a small scale engagement but will loose the war on the macro scale. Take the time to define roles in teams and split duties either geographically, or my recommendation functionally as in Air, Maritime, Economy etc. But again the goal is to keep your attention on the large scale so your enemy doesn't overwhelm you.

Movement and Maneuver
The movement and maneuver war fighting function is the related tasks and systems that move and employ forces to achieve a position of relative advantage over the enemy and other threats. Direct fire and close combat are inherent in maneuver. This function includes tasks associated with force projection related to gaining a positional advantage over the enemy.

Don't present your enemy with only one threat axis. Maneuver is all about forcing the enemy to react to your presence and split his forces. Build supporting bases at different axis of approach, move large formations behind his fixed positions. Maneuver doesn't necessarily mean speed but absolutely means influencing your enemy's ability to make decisions. And above all deny your enemy the ability to mass combat power without having to make critical risk decisions.

Intelligence
The intelligence war fighting function is the related tasks and systems that facilitate understanding the enemy and the Operating Environment. It includes the synchronization of reconnaissance and surveillance.

Always be looking for your enemy and indications and warnings about what his future operations may be. Your resources are finite and the world is too big to be in everyplace at once. Localizing your enemy will allow you to concentrate force at decisive points and times. And always see to take intelligence away from your enemy.
Fires
The fires war fighting function is the related task and systems that provide collective and coordinated use of direct and indirect actions that allow a force to manuver.

Fires, I'm talking Artillery, Nukes, Bombers, Orbital lasers here are all about fixing and reorienting your enemy so that you can maneuver on him. The use of fires is what will change your opponents risk calculations and seize the ability to make decisions from him.

Sustainment
The sustainment war fighting function is the related tasks and systems that provide support and services to ensure freedom of action, extend operational reach, and prolong endurance. Sustainment determines the depth and duration of operations. It is essential to retaining and exploiting the initiative.

Keep an eye on sustaining your operations, This doesn't just mean Economy, that's important, but the production of new forces to relieve destroyed ones is key. Keep your factories humming so that you can generate mass of force.

Protection
The protection war fighting function is the related tasks and systems that preserve the force so the commander can apply maximum combat power to accomplish the mission. Preserving the force includes protecting Units and Facilities.

Don't accept undue risk. If there is no way to win an advantage in a gamble then all you can do is loose. Make sure that you don't provide your enemy a way to influence your actions and protect not only your Commander but your Center of Gravity or that thing that will allow you to deal a decisive blow to your enemy.

After reading all of this and I know it's long you might say "of course i need to do these things" but coordinating and successfully executing these points are hard. All failures can be attributed in some way to neglecting these points and no game will be won unless you can successfully execute them.

I see a lot of players forgetting to gain map control. Expanding your area of influence obviously gives you access to more metal, but it also gives you more options on the operational level. If you can surround your opponent, you allow yourself to access more metal while slowing their expansion. You also give yourself more routes to attack from, which forces the opponent to spend more time and metal defending.

Once you reach a certain skill level in managing your economy and making basic decisions, your time becomes your most valuable resource.

Nice opening post.

Welcome to the forums!

This is a great post. I was thinking a while back that we should have a thread dedicated to learning the arts/sciences of war.

Here's one!

You guys should play the old Chinese game called "Go". It's about taking territory and surrounding your opponent. I try to apply this thinking to PA.

Books are nice and I love reading the Art of War. I was looking forward to more of the discussion.

From Go it's possible to learn about dividing space - I take this space and I let you have that space (for now). And if you want to attack someone, you should not build right next to them, but leave some breathing space.

guys how hard is go really? because I've heard it has like a bazillion rules. I might learn it but not if it takes an entire lifetime.

I like how abalone is as strategical as it gets yet immediately accessible to the masses.

The book is very easy to understand and very fun to read i recomend

"the balance of the forces must be split like that if you have 10 times more soldiers than your enemy surround him, 2x split your forces 1x attack him"

EDIT: Other sun tzu pieces of knowledge that might be useful

"Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted'

"For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak"

"Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight"

"But if neither time nor place be known, then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right, the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van unable to relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van."

I´m reading the book now and it´s perfect definely recomend

Go is quite simple to learn and it's incredibly difficult to play correctly, in my personal experience.

Oh, and when playing FFAs with friends - Wheedle. Whine. Complain. Bargain. Confuse. Offer alliances. Give away intel on your enemies. Downplay your own situation. Hide your strength if you can. Manipulate your friends (you know them, right?). Don't attack them carelessly. Know their habits, their favorite strategies and units, their weaknesses. Playing the psychological/political game is one of the more important things to do in a FFA.

I'm looking forward to changeable alliances being implemented in PA.

yea that's what makes murder party and phantom alike so monstrously fun

Very interesting post there.
I'm quite new to PA and i think it's also is the first RTS-Game I'm playing since some C&C, Anno, ect. in the past. And that are games i really just played for fun. Well PA is fun too of course but its the first game which I'm approaching with some kind of "seriousness" which means im actually trying to get better and not just skirmish around a bit.
And I have to say it's not easy to really improve just by yourself as a beginner, because you may not see the mistakes at the first time. The start of the round is quite "easy": Pick a good spot which has a bunch of metal in reach and is somehow defendable (I'm not the agressive type of player as I'm still afraid of even more mistakes ) then get your economy going and start building stuff. But every now and then I'm in the situation of not knowing what to do next. Then all of a sudden you remember "dude.. I forgot to scout", "damn i need this and that and this..." and that is the point where experience kicks in.

Long story short: what i wanted to say is, that such guides and watching games of experienced players helps a lot to feed the need in theory but to really improve your gameplay as a "beginner" or maybe even as an "experienced player" you just have to lose a lot and learn from that.

So keep them informative guides coming so my losing wont be for no earthly use.

How do you do that?

Mmh... awesome post. I can see how you are right about basically everything. And I've owned and gifted the Art of War many times. Also read in case you ask.

Just it seems impossible to do what you preach once in game. Man... it's hard! On the other hand, couldn't be that fun and engaging otherwise.

Well, the rest of my post you quoted has some advice on how I do it, but in short:

Don't piss anyone off.

This is the only aspect of strategy games where I think traditional board games still best video games at: the psychological aspect.

If you exploit it well, you can manipulate your opponents with your body language, expression, language, everything. Even a sigh as you see your hand can be used as a trick.

You can certainly use a low level of psychological trickery in PA, but without being person to person it only goes so far.

I love doing this to my friends.

Declaring a peace to take down a larger opponent, only to back stab and begin reciting my speech about how I did it all for peace and the greater good, and how my former ally was truly a evil dictator, and I was just defending myself.

It takes 15 minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.

Numerous Lifetimes.

Go is amazing in that you never stop learning. Ever. It's not a steep learning curve, it's just very, very, very, very long.

The game is also really good at providing accurate handicaps that can actually make better players have a 50/50 chance against worse ones.