Maers

[b]Unit HQ,[/b]

I feel the need to voice the ongoing disruptions caused by 1LT Myers in the planning of this operation, and the FTX cycle leading into.

To be clear, I am not trying to shift any blame for work performed by my teams within S-4, I fully accept my responsibility for the faults in my respective teams and in the work that I personally perform.

That being said, I have taken above-average care to engage with 1LT Myers in the S-4 planning of Operation Black Spear and so far this seems to have been a pointless endeavor. Due to this, S-4 Mod Team will now be forced to produce a hotfix under incredible time pressure.

Below is an abbreviated summary of the events which have transpired, or the issues which have arisen, of recent times.[list]
[li]1LT Myers was provided a spreadsheet of faction assets for his approval, unknown yet if there are any problems with that;

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[li]1LT Myers was provided a mission template showing all loadouts for each faction, which he approved, and are now reported as incorrect;

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[li]1LT Myers was briefed about the expected performance issues of the Mogadishu map, and the extremely narrow window Ares will have to work within around the Task Force, yet the first WARNO patrol routes cross almost the entire city. This will almost definitely be unworkable by Ares to produce an entertaining mission for all 60+ participants;

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[li]Throughout the FTX cycle, S-4 Missions received almost no briefing and/or feedback from 1LT Myers, leaving us to either "guess" at what S-3 needed/wanted, or deliver nothing. I need to acknowledge the desire of the guys on the mission team to actually build missions, blank templates aren't the reason anyone joins the team;

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[li]The FATA map was selected for our deployment despite not having an airfield, meaning extra objects will have to be present on all templates just to support the airfield, further limiting the S-4 Missions team on the work they can perform due to our low object count ceiling;

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[li]Multiple times throughout Operation Lionheart, I had Ares contact me directly in an S-2 capacity as the Task Force briefing hadn't been relayed to them, yet it was after 1800 EST day-of;

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[li]Multiple times throughout FTX, 1LT Myers failed to approve a template in a timely fashion, resulting in me having to either seek an Assistant Battle Captain's approval or upload the template without it and simply hope that the information had made it's way to Ares (which, normally, it had not);

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[li]Multiple times I have seen and/or heard of Zeus guides being published quite close to the start of the mission, sometimes after Ares had already begun work - sometimes to the detriment of the Task Force;

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[li]Multiple beta builds of the modpack were posted for testing, and almost no feedback was received until after we launched the update;

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[li]Despite spending the first 4 months of the year on FTX, S-2 has had almost no time at all to produce usable intel as we are expected (and want) to do. I don't foresee any situation whereby it was necessary to put the S-2 team under such incredible time-pressure to produce an output - regardless of the quality level desired; and

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[li]When the initial intel briefing did make it's way to S-2's hands, we have things like the district name of "Mayor District". This reflects poorly, and solely, on the quality of material S-2 is capable of producing, in the eyes of the average trooper, and unavoidably sounds like a lack of creativity.

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If the plans we have for the S-2/S-3/S-4 co-operation this deployment are to be successful, they require time investment from the Battle Captain to ensure continuity between the intended outcome and the work being produced, as well as provide all of the cross-shop communication that only they have the forum permissions to perform.

Without a significant uptick from what we have experienced in the past, it will simply not be possible to deliver consistent, quality, output - and we should abandon those plans now before we risk producing sub-par output or inconsistent results.

With that complaint off my chest...

When you all spoke with me the other night and were concerned about burning out etc, it's not the workload that is burning me out.

It's asking my guys to work more late nights and asking them to reduce their turnaround times even further, even though we could have spent the last 4 months doing this in a more controlled, deliberate manner.

It's the ability of those I work with being, in part, reflective of the material we have to work from - in the eyes of the average trooper. I'm seriously not excited about the amount of times I'm going to have to work "Mayor District" into a serious/professional-sounding intelligence report.

It's spending weeks of time working on a product, trying so hard to get it as good as possible, and then realizing that something foundational like unit loadouts wasn't actually reviewed when it was put forward.

To be honest, [i]that[/i] is soul-crushing.

Again, I acknowledge that some of those problems originate in the teams I lead (e.g. the GAU-8) and I'm sure you know how much that irritates me that something I was told is working, turns out to not be. I'll be working hard to ensure that everyone on the mod team understands the importance of accurate testing, and I won't take things for granted on our next update.

You're all well connected to what goes on around here, I know that little of this will be a surprise to you. But I wanted to voice it, for the good of my teams and for the overall success of the 506th, Operation Black Spear and for all future deployments. And, no doubt in a moderately-sized part, for my own personal sanity.

Thank you all for the work that you do for this unit, while a lot of people around here may misunderstand [size=7pt](at least two of)[/size] you, I know it wouldn't be the same without you, and for that we all owe you a great debt.

Will All Respect,

TSgt Hardman