Show me your orders/battle plans!
- Thread starter tossi
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Israelite9191
You should be reading
I don't like long orders, but I even more so don't like extraordinarily short orders. I want details and inovative strategies, I just don't want to be totally swamped with details.
Symphony D.
Deity
There very, very much depends on what exactly it is you're doing.Iggy said:
For example, you could say:"1.) Poison the Drinking Water."
Or, you could say:
"1.) Lace the Drinking Water With LSD. Achieve sufficiently high ppm dosages to induce disassociation with reality. Use this in combination with our psych-warfare units special equipment to induce disorientation in the enemy forces and population and to increase the effectiveness of our propaganda. Desertion and revolt are likely to increase exponentially as a result."
Now, you tell me, which one do you think will get more specific results, the one where you laid out your plans, or the one that only conveys the general meaning of what you want? And that's a minor, random example. I personally find it much easier to go on about the minutiae simply because they're small, highly detailed things. Being somewhat vague with a few key points should be reserved for big operations that require high tactical flexibility, like wars.
Symphony D.
Deity
That's rather more vague though. How are you gaining a psychological edge? What are you drugging the water with? Why does it give you an edge? Some things simply should have short descriptions and reasoning attached to elucidate on them. It can add up when you do it to most things (I'm guilty of this) but still. If you can give between a sentence to a short paragraph on a specific item, that's honestly not so bad, in my opinion.
At any rate, I'd much rather get a few PMs worth of orders than a few lines. Both are hassles, sure, but the former much less than the latter. An overabundance of information allows you to at least filter, pick and choose - too little and you just have to start making stuff up.
At any rate, I'd much rather get a few PMs worth of orders than a few lines. Both are hassles, sure, but the former much less than the latter. An overabundance of information allows you to at least filter, pick and choose - too little and you just have to start making stuff up.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
Lord_Iggy said:
POSTEN DE UPDATE!!!
Sheep
Orange Shrooms!
Do you know how much LSD would be needed for a something like that.
Oh and for people like me, we would just have fun, not have anything else go wrong. haha.
Oh and for people like me, we would just have fun, not have anything else go wrong. haha.
North King
blech
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Going into specifics like that is just stupid and space wasting.
"-Put a disorienting, psychological drug into their drinking supplies to ensure that they won't be able to react with full capacity to the situation at hand."
That would be more than sufficient, really.
"-Put a disorienting, psychological drug into their drinking supplies to ensure that they won't be able to react with full capacity to the situation at hand."
That would be more than sufficient, really.
Kentharu
Zebra Commander
short orders have served me quite well, look at LINESII, i don't think i have ever had a 2 pm long order, i don't see the point of it. Let the mod decide, especially if he as a great mod like iggy or das he will know what to do
Symphony D. said:There very, very much depends on what exactly it is you're doing.
"1.) Poison the Drinking Water."
Or, you could say:
"1.) Lace the Drinking Water With LSD. Achieve sufficiently high ppm dosages to induce disassociation with reality. Use this in combination with our psych-warfare units special equipment to induce disorientation in the enemy forces and population and to increase the effectiveness of our propaganda. Desertion and revolt are likely to increase exponentially as a result."
Now, you tell me, which one do you think will get more specific results, the one where you laid out your plans, or the one that only conveys the general meaning of what you want? And that's a minor, random example. I personally find it much easier to go on about the minutiae simply because they're small, highly detailed things. Being somewhat vague with a few key points should be reserved for big operations that require high tactical flexibility, like wars.
I'd much rather recieve the first order thank you very much. I would purposefully make their plan fail because they thought it out too much. It leaves no room for flexability on the micro level so it would fail.
Plus in the update I can just right
"Poisoned water has killed thousands in nation X and has decreased confidence" rather than
"Psychological warfare has appeared with the use of LSD in nation X's water i nthe conujuction with psyhological soldiers who have brought mass desertion to enemy forces and have brought down dnational confidence."
Both are going to have the same effect game wise (-1 confidence) so I dont see why you would need to go out of your way to make me read, fit in with other events, and write more.
Sheep
Orange Shrooms!
Then again that could just be Warman being lazy and NOT wanting to write more.
North King
blech
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I'll elaborate in great detail in an update and come up with creative things for you to solve and such--but if I get orders which explain down to the letter, what am I supposed to write? In this kind of case, I'll just type some blurb about how their plan worked, and then move on. Where they could have gotten a few paragraphs for their nefarious plan, they would only get like two sentences from me. So I suppose it's however you want to read your updates.
Symphony D.
Deity
Whatever you say. I know for a fact I have several plans that require, at minimum, a blueprint image and a 1 page (MS Word) technical description to be understood and utilized properly. Sometimes detail is not just nice, it's required. The more specific and exacting the operation, the more detail, in my book. Devil's in the details, after all.North King said:
You tell a mod "smuggle troops into the city in tankards of alcohol, then trojan horse city" and that doesn't elaborate much on a setup. Personally, I see that, I'm going to say "And?" and presume most of them tied of alcohol poisoning by inhaling the fumes, if they didn't drown or get drunk. Why? Because there's no detail. If you describe the container, your odds go up. "Create alcohol tankards filled mostly with water, but with small reserves of alcohol attached to the spigots. Put troops inside with airtubes to breathe. Smuggle a caravan of these into the city, using 1 - 2 real tankards of alcohol to bribe the guards, then take the gates and let our forces in."
Oh, hey, wow, it's a small paragraph. So wasteful of space when being so much more precise. I could tell a mod "Create deathray" or "Create fallout-free nuke."
Think I'd get away with it if I didn't bother supplying the requsite information? Detail is sometimes quite essential.
Thlayli
Le Pétit Prince
I'd say that depending on the situation, and the context, and the NES/mod's preferences, different levels of detail should be included to accomplish a task.
Heres some orders I still have from my NES surprisingly:
Nice short and too the point. You dont need "sacrafice my 5 warlock divisons by placing them on alters and draining their energies into the portal being summoned by the demonic imps as the warlocks power is the key to unlocking the inter-dimensional gateway between this world and the next"
And as for your alcohol situation I would have found "have troops in alcohol containers and trojan horse city" acceptable.
You're the leader of an ENTIRE NATION, you can't be bothered with the samantics of micromanaging every situation. You give out an order and expect it to be fulfilled by the best of your commanders abilities. I normally dont screw people over for not putting in detail (unless it's "attack nation B" I want troop numbers and maybe a map). I only expect whats needed at the most basic level, not a micromanaging of every plan and contingency that you can think of.
Normally when leaders try to take matters into their own hands and come up with plans that are expected to be followed to the T, they fail, miserably. Unless you've made a point to make your commanders incompetant, other people orders override your own due to events (or I'm feeling a little naughty) you're plans will most liekly go through without the need for specifics.
Nice short and too the point. You dont need "sacrafice my 5 warlock divisons by placing them on alters and draining their energies into the portal being summoned by the demonic imps as the warlocks power is the key to unlocking the inter-dimensional gateway between this world and the next"
And as for your alcohol situation I would have found "have troops in alcohol containers and trojan horse city" acceptable.
You're the leader of an ENTIRE NATION, you can't be bothered with the samantics of micromanaging every situation. You give out an order and expect it to be fulfilled by the best of your commanders abilities. I normally dont screw people over for not putting in detail (unless it's "attack nation B" I want troop numbers and maybe a map). I only expect whats needed at the most basic level, not a micromanaging of every plan and contingency that you can think of.
Normally when leaders try to take matters into their own hands and come up with plans that are expected to be followed to the T, they fail, miserably. Unless you've made a point to make your commanders incompetant, other people orders override your own due to events (or I'm feeling a little naughty) you're plans will most liekly go through without the need for specifics.
North King
blech
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Symphony D. said:
Those ones would be okay to write more description for. I obviously don't mind long, long orders, since I get those so much that if I did I would have died from despair already. But if you could summarize that 1 page thing neatly, it would be much preferable.
I don't know about you, but the second one is full of superfluous information telling me as much as the first. Obviously, some things do require elaboration, but assuming a moderator is so dumb as to make your plan fall apart at the seams because you didn't include one crucial detail--well, some do that, but not the truly great ones.
Sometimes, it is. But not for other things. A long description as to exactly what mixture of what chemicals you'll use to poison a water supply is too much. A description of how a proposed weapon works that has to have grounded scientific basis is okay. A elaborate exposition on the exact parts by weight of what should go into your gunpowder is too much, and rather annoying (since people inventing the damn stuff wouldn't know anyway!). An elaboration on how you intend to use natural features to your advantage on defense, that's all right. Posting a long, long tirade about how, down to the molecule, a specific rapid-firing gun works, is not necessary. A lengthy argument which would refute a political opponent attached to your orders, that's all right.
See the difference?
The master of writing does not find the most impressive way of expressing something. The master of writing finds the most clear, simple way of getting his ideas across, perhaps with a flourish or two to give it character, but not letting the style interfere with the content.
There's nothing more discouraging for me, as a mod, who's already burdened down with hundreds of pages of reading both for fun and for classwork, than to read this long double PM orderset which could have been written just as easily in five paragraphs.
Symphony D.
Deity
Well, then I suppose we have quite different definitions of detail. Here, for the record, is what I do:North King said:
The summary of the thought is the first thing you see. This example is largely superfluous, yes, but I rarely go over orders more than once or trim them unless they're just a train wreck. You can understand what I want to do from that first sentence (hence why it's bolded). The rest elaborates.
I do this for one simple reason, and that's because I take the exact opposite tact: if I were a moderator, nothing would annoy me more than having to write half a person's orders for them to produce something useful. As I stated earlier, I would rather be supplied excessive details, and trim or ignore them, than not have any details to work with at all. It is always easier to prune down what you have than to conjure up things you don't. If you just tell somebody to do something, and don't include any reasoning or thought process, it's very easy for it to come apart at the seams ("confusing orders") not turn out how you expected, or for something to come along and invalidate the original premise entirely, but not the core motivating idea. Better safe than sorry.
For somebody who prepared a detailed set of (entirely fictional) siege maps for every Bactrashan city his forces were coming across in ITNES, you criticizing information on the selection of a particular psychoactive drug that adds perhaps one to two sentences to induce specific effects on the enemy seems just the slightest bit hypocritical.
I'd also like to note saying "Put a disorienting, psychological drug into their drinking supplies" is about as safe as saying "bombard their positions with chemical weapons."
What type? Blister? Inhalant? Really now, saying "Put enough LSD into the water to make them bonkers" is not excessive detail by any definition of the word (and yes, it would take a lot). Capulet spending an entire PM describing what a flanking movement is, that's excessive.
jalapeno_dude
AKA Panda Judo Eel
Once again, IMO it comes down to strategy vs. tactics. Elaborating a complex strategy is okay, but micromanaging every last detail isn't. That's what generals, subordinates, etc. are for.
