» Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:32 pm The only addition I am going to make is that this is a Fan Fiction section and if someone wants a character in a story (or RP if accepted by the others there) who can shoot three opponents in the eye whilst doing a back flip from a 20 foot high ledge I can see no problems with it. Impossible things happen in the games, we are not here to play real life we are here to escape that reality and be who we want. 
If they want real life, then this is going to be helpful.
If they want real life, then this is going to be helpful.Thanks to D. Foxy's great guide in TES Fan Fiction for inspiration.
I've noticed a lot more on this forum that people are being unrealistic about their combat posts. Quite often I'll see what's commonly referred to as "Ubering", the act of doing something well beyond normal realm of possibility. Normally I could just pass this off as posting impatience, but it's bothered me too much about it. Hopefully some of you may benefit from this guide and improve the qualities of your posts, fanfics, RPs, and in turn improve the story experience for participants and readers alike.
Quick Reference for Weapons
Pistol - A semi-automatic or sometimes fully automatic handgun with a relatively shallow clip. Usually found with 9mm, .44, and .45 rounds. 9mm has low stopping power with less recoil while the .44 and .45 hold high amounts of stopping power, sometimes firing through metal, and can knock men over at the cost of high recoil and loud firing.
Submachine gun - Literally a machine pistol. Uses typically 9mm and .45 rounds. Accurate with the ability to have stopping power depending on the round being fired. Quiet with silencers. Usually with multiple firing modes, semi-automatic, three round burst fire, and fully automatic.
Assault Rifle - What infantry use. Typically found with the heavier 5.56 and 7.62 rounds. Fairly high recoil and typically fully automatic or with multiple firing modes. The 5.56 is not enough to fire through bullet proof vests and has less stopping power, but is more accurate. The 7.62 has very high stopping power with very high recoil. Can sometimes pierce through bullet proof armor but almost always knocks them down with the sheer kinetic energy. Can be silenced.
NOTE: There is a .50 caliber assault rifle variant for the M4 called Beowulf, but this is sort of overpowered. Use with caution and ask the OP for permission.
LMG - Light Machine Gun. The Rambo gun. You fire a lot of high caliber rounds for a long time on a huge radius. It's the bullet shower. Not accurate at most ranges, very heavy, and slow reload time. Immense stopping power and near impossible to survive if caught in its grasp. Used typically for suppression fire. Cannot be silenced. Includes the minigun.
Shotgun - Short range, typically pump action. Not known for killing people at mid range, but will definitely injure due to the pellets it fires. Can be semi-automatic, bolt-action, pump action, sawn-off, or fully automatic. Can be silenced. Yes, really.
Sniper Rifles - Accurate, deadly shots from long ranges. Can be found from 7.62 to .50 cal rounds. High recoil and immense range. Comes in bolt-action and semi-automatic. Can be silenced at the cost of reduced range.
PART 1 - Basic Tactics/Being Realistic
While being an incredibly deadly assassin who can run into a group of enemies and easily dispatch them with a short series of head shots, no one in the world can do this, and you're no exception. You're not going to expect to run headfirst into a firefight and take everyone out without any trouble. Prepare to be cut down within seconds. Unless you severely outnumber the enemy you're going to be in for a duck and cover fight.
Let me give you a scenario: you're in an abandoned factory warehouse. Small stacks of crates fill it, creating an almost maze like battlefield filled with great, suitable cover. You're part of a three man scavenging team searching around this warehouse. An unknown enemy starts firing from in front of you.
Stop. You're not going to begin firing right away. The first thing you're going to do is get behind cover. The enemy has the initiative. If you can first identify exactly where the shooter is, you may be able to pop off a few inaccurate shots in their direction, but nothing else. If you have an LMG in your group, which is a large machine gun with 100 - 250 round clips, this person could provide suppression fire for you while the rest of the team gets behind cover and identifies the threat. Let's continue.
Your team is safely behind cover without any injury. You find the gunfire has come from a catwalk above you. You can guess there are at least two of them. All three of you take aim and empty your clips into the enemy.
No. You're not going to do this. Your enemies have the exact same instinct as you do. You're not well trained spec ops soldiers armed to the tooth with plasma weaponry. The basic tactics here would be to poke your head out take a few quick, controlled burst before retreating. Typically a burst would be 3 - 6 shots with each consecutive burst being a second after. If you happen to have a sniper in your group, make sure they get a good sight on the enemy before firing, but we'll discuss that later.
Right now you have two options: try to move in closer to score quick kills and finish them off, or achieve fire superiority and hope they retreat. We're going to go through both.
Moving in on the enemy is relatively simple depending on the landscape, but is very dangerous. The most important thing here is suppression fire. Typically suppression is reserved for LMGs, but can also be done by assault rifles and drum clip shotguns such as the AA-12 or Combat Shotgun. Suppression on the enemy will keep them under cover for fear of being fired upon while the rest of your team moves to cover closer to the enemy and gets a grenade in, or just pin them and fishing the fight.
Fire superiority is the safest bet. Basically, you're aiming to throw more rounds at the enemy than they throw at you. Give them more than they can handle and wait until the pressure forces them to retreat. Not always going to work, but is always worth a shot. Suppression is important here also; but the enemy's going to be trying the exact same thing.
PART 2 - Close Quarters Fighting
Originally I planned on adding in the hand to hand aspect of close quarters battle, but it should be in a league all its own. This section is going to deal with the quick, heart pounding firefights that happen in small rooms, and also delve a bit on how real life special forces and police forces deal with threats in small, tightly spaced rooms.
First off, let's talk weaponry. The SAS, Britain's Special Air Service, is one of the most skilled an renowned special forces groups in the world. They've been in countless operations dating back to World War II and up to the Iraq War. If there's anyone you want to learn CQB from, it's the SAS.
The SAS "kit" or "load out" is typically a submachine gun, specifically the MP5 and its variants. Submachine guns are accurate, small, and can deliver plenty of rounds on target in a short amount of time, ideal for taking out a room full of enemies with minimal injury. While similar fully-automatic weapons and shotguns can be used for CQB, Assault rifles tend to be too bulky and inaccurate. The shotgun is a special case. Depending on the situation, it can be ideal, or it can be a hazard. A shotgun shell sprays a large radius of metal pellets towards the enemy and has a huge kick. The golden rule for shotguns is "if you want to hit 'em in the head, aim for the belt". I'll explain this in a later paragraph, but use with caution.
One of the core parts of CQB is room clearing. Again, let's begin this with a scenario.
You're part of a four man mercenary crew hired to take out a slaver encampment. This particular encampment is inside of a blown out office building complete with tight rooms, lots of floors, and lots of staircases. Your team all line up outside of a front door and "stack up".
Stopping here. This move isn't necessarily bad, but a usual tactic for room clearing is to come where they least expect it. The front door will surely be guarded, so maybe you could search around for a side entrance, or maybe get more creative and go in through the windows?
Your team stacks up on the front door, bracing for your breach. One of your men pulls out a shotgun slung to his side and proceeds to shoot through the top hinge, followed by the lock, followed by the lower hinge. He pushes over the door.
Stopping once more. This, again, necessarily isn't a bad tactic. You actually have several options for breaching through a door. The most obvious or which is a breaching charge to completely annihilate the lock mechanism. Maybe the wasteland version could be a frag grenade covered in wonderglue? The next tactic is breaching it with brute force. There are specially designed sledgehammers that can knock open a door with a good swing, but it's highly doubtful you'll have one in the wasteland. Just use a normal sledge. The last, as I've shown here, is the shotgun entry. Blowing out all of the hinges and the lock guarantees entry. Usually this is done with a slug round, but causes the most threat to any innocent people inside due to it retaining enough force well after it penetrates the door. The safest here is buck shot and bird shot. Of course, though, the easiest way to breach a door is to just check if it's unlocked.
Now that your team has entry to the building, you immediately move into the room with the usually breaching formation. You're all cut down almost instantly.
Now, this is assuming that the enemy inside is alert and on guard. You're going to want some form of distraction before you proceed clearing a room. Typically a flashbang grenade is used. The flashbang, sometimes referred to as the stun grenade, creates a high intensity flash and a deafening bang that disorients the everyone within view, allowing enough time for you to deal with them accordingly. Is you happen to not have any available, maybe go around back and bust out some windows to create noise, or enter from multiple doors? Let's continue with the revised tactic.
Your team topples over the door. A flashbang grenade follows quickly behind it. You all look away from the blinding flash as your unwitting foes are immediately disoriented. You enter the room.
Here's a quick lesson. when you enter a room, you want your weapon at eye level, prepared to aim. Every second counts. Every single second. Sometimes you won't get the luxury of a distraction like the flashbang grenade and will have to hope your trigger finger is quicker. The first team member will hug the left wall, dispatching anyone in the corners or sides. The second does the same maneuver in the opposite direction, then the rest of the team comes in and finish off anyone else inside. If done in a quick succession, this is a devastating tactic.
Close quarters fighting is all about speed and getting the initiative. You have very little time to take care of an enemy before they take care of you. You need a decent weapon to put enough rounds into someone to keep them down, but steady enough to not spray bullets all over the room.
Note: If I can find or make a proper diagram of the room clearing tactic, I'll post it here.
PART 3 - Snipers
Everyone loves a sniper, unless you're on the receiving end. Too commonly today, mostly by movies and video games, the true purpose of the sniper is misconstrued. The sniper rifle has been bogged down to be on par with a bolt-action assault rifle. It isn't the job of a sniper to stay in the thick of a fight. Snipers deliver accurate, deadly shots from very long range. Chances are if you encounter a sniper, you won't know it until it's too late.
Now, not all snipers are condemned to be behind the scenes. There are some snipers who use semi-automatic clip variants to deliver ranged kills while in a midrange firefight. Here's an example.
You're walking from the front gates of Megaton towards the center next to the trademark unexploded atomic bomb. On the catwalks and rooftops above you, three people with automatic weapons begin raining bullets on you. You have two riflemen and a sniper. While the riflemen return fire with duck and cover/suppression tactics, you pop your head out and line up a decent, quick shot.
What makes these snipers great is that while the rest of your group are engaging the enemy in a typical midrange firefight where most bullets miss, you can deliver those few accurate shots that equate to more kills. This is only useful with semiautomatics though. Their quicker rate of fire is much more useful to the slow firing bolt-action. Speaking of the bolt-action...
Bolt-action snipers are typically reserved for a longer range sniping. If you're going for an assassin type character, or an assassination with a sniper in general, a bolt-action would be what is realistically used. The accuracy, power, and range of these rifles are unmatched. Remember; with a sniper, it's the quality that counts.
Stealth, camouflage, and patience. These are the three most important things for a sniper. Snipers are usually outfitted in heavy camouflage, whether it be full body paint or a ghillie suit. Getting to the perfect vantage point may be a challenge if there are hostiles nearby. Being stealthy keeps them unseen and able to move out of an area undetected after their kill.
Patience is the ruling quality. The patience of moving slowly to not be seen, the patience of waiting hours without moving for the perfect shot on your target, the patience of lining up your shots to ensure a kill. Sniping is a delicate and should be treated with patience.
You're not going to be moving into a large firefight and expect to get a perfect bead within a second. You're not useful in close range and should ditch your rifle for a pistol, SMG, LMG, anything! Leave the theatrics and heavy lifting to the infantry.
Thanks to Ambrose:
On the issue of snipers, there are a few things I would like to add. Firstly, I'm very happy that you brought up the points of the bolt-action being superior to a semi-auto in a regular sniping situation. It's quite the heavily debated topic, actually, and one that I fully support the bolt-action in. Another thing I would like to add is that snipers, especially at very far ranges are not super accurate, contrary to popular belief. Putting your crosshairs on a target at severe range is actually just lining yourself up for a miss, because the farther away from your target you are, the more you have to take into account and the more you have to fix to make sure the shot lands. This is one reason why snipers are almost always in two man teams. One man that handles the rifle, and the other that points out the conditions and how to make the shot. Solo sniping is a very, very difficult thing to accomplish. As it is, sniper teams go through some pretty rigorous training just to be as good as they are.
There was one movie I saw once that treated sniping fairly realistically in the beginning, and then became trash as far as that went near the end. I can't remember quite what the name was, but they did their research well for several scenes, as far as taking shots and balancing everything went. Although, one thing I would also like to add is that while snipers are exceptional at long range shots, they're also often well trained with other weapons, whether they're assault rifles, SMGs, or pistols. They are special forces, after all. Many will carry quite a bit of supplies, also camouflaged, of course. So, it isn't all that unrealistic for a sniper to carry an assault rifle. Because if they're found and engaged, a pistol isn't going to do the trick in a firefight and using a sniper rifle in close quarters is a sure way to get yourself killed.
There was one movie I saw once that treated sniping fairly realistically in the beginning, and then became trash as far as that went near the end. I can't remember quite what the name was, but they did their research well for several scenes, as far as taking shots and balancing everything went. Although, one thing I would also like to add is that while snipers are exceptional at long range shots, they're also often well trained with other weapons, whether they're assault rifles, SMGs, or pistols. They are special forces, after all. Many will carry quite a bit of supplies, also camouflaged, of course. So, it isn't all that unrealistic for a sniper to carry an assault rifle. Because if they're found and engaged, a pistol isn't going to do the trick in a firefight and using a sniper rifle in close quarters is a sure way to get yourself killed.
PART 4 - Large Scale Fighting/Group Tactics
Not very common at all in today's RPs. Group tactics for either small squads or large battalions are very important. I myself am a huge military buff, from reading about Alexander's Companion Calvary defeat the Thebes Sacred Band or to Arthur Wellesley finishing off the Napoleonic Era at the Battle of Waterloo. Military tactics are an exciting and interesting art.
There are many, many different tactics that can be employed during certain scenarios, whoever, unlike a game of chess, you're dealing with real lives. Your men are not pawns, knights, bishops and rooks. They're actual people that will think for their own survival. Most great leaders would never send their men to do something they wouldn't themselves. Your men may rout, retreat, panic, break, or surrender through their own free will.
Let's talk formation. Let's say you've set up your men into a single basic line. It's a horizontal line of men trying to cover a large area. This is usually done in wide open or defensive battles, or if you're trying to overrun a settlement. You have two wings; the left and the right. Think of slicing your line in half, that's how you create your wings. Your extreme left and extreme right are the very ends of each line. A line is made up of many different squads, usually a group of eight men and one squad leader. Remember, this is modern warfare. You're not going to be in large formations out in the open very often, and you're going to try to stay in cover.
The best way to combat a line formation is fire superiority and flanking. If you can put enough pressure on one portion, let's say the length of two squads, you can make them rout and create a hole. This is a complete break in formation, and it would be a good idea to send your men through and begin flanking the other areas. More often than not, people try to break formation right next to the extreme wing to have their forces curl around them and effectively surround them.
Now on to small squad tactics. This is probably the most common form of fighting you'll find in fanfics or RPs. No matter the number, every squad needs riflemen. Usually these men carry assault rifles, sometimes one or two also carry a shotgun. Supplement forces include support gunners; men who carry LMGs, and Snipers; Long range and accurate. Usually flanking and suppression is the most common tactic these squads employ. I briefly talked about this in Part 1, but I'm going to elaborate a bit here.
Suppression and pinning are two identical, but different, things. Suppression is keeping an enemy under cover by showering them with bullets, commonly from a support gunner. You can do this to help a sniper line up a shot, help riflemen get into position, or just to provide "covering fire". Pinning, on the other hand, is completely keeping an enemy under cover, leaving them zero opportunity to move or fire. This is usually when riflemen move up to finish them off with a grenade, try to make them scatter and panic, or just flank and kill. Pinning is usually the precursor to routing.
Now for the defense. The best defense is cover. If you're under cover the machine gun fire can't kill you. What you must worry about is the advancing riflemen. Blind-fire could be useful, but more often than not the enemy will see it is completely inaccurate and move up anyways. Some form of smoke grenade or distraction will help. Throw one down, let the smoke thicken, and make a run for it. If you're caught out in the open by suppression fire, hit the dirt. If you can't run to any close cover, get right onto your stomach. Now you would use smokes if you've got them, but it's probably unlikely in the wasteland. Unless you can find a way to take out the suppression force, this is going to end in your death or a full-blow retreat.
Now, finally, there's surrendering. Yes, surrendering. It isn't being cowardly and it doesn't mean sure death. If your force is too strong and you now you will die, surrender. Very rarely do the heroic last stands you hear about work, and it's only a desperation attempt. The act of surrendering will cause a burden on your opponent and save the lives of your men. Remember though, as a prisoner you are at the complete mercy of your captors. It's not a good idea to make them mad. They'll kill you without a second though. The only information you should release is your name, hometown, blood type, serial number (if you have one), and next of kin.
Next part: Guerrilla Tactics, Revolutions, and Diplomacy - It doesn't have to end with bloodshed, but it is way more fun.
