Rogue
Spear Planning
By Sartillies
Making the Plan
If you are new to the Rainbow
Six series, the first thing you will probably get confused
about is the planning phase. The planning phase is where
you will spend most of the time (if it is a good plan)
in the game instead of the action phase. You have 4 teams,
and unless you get those teams to work together, a lot
of your men are going to die. In this tutorial I will
explain the planning phase and then how to use it to create
a good RS plan. First, a small description of what each
thing is…
Recon, Roster and Orders
In your top left hand corner of the
plan screen is a variety of things. There are also three
tabs to choose from. When you start a mission the first
thing you want to check out is where possible tangos,
hostages, and areas are. All this can be located in the
Recon section. Do this by clicking on the Recon tab. The
Recon sections shows were terrorist are located and hostages,
like I said earlier. It also shows what the symbols are,
and mean on the map, ladders, stairs, windows, doors,
etc… The right tab is the Roster tab. In this section
it shows which men are on the team you have selected as
well as the leader and firearms the men are carrying.
The middle tab (saved for last) is the main one; know
as the Orders tab. The Orders tab is the one that lets
you basically tell your men what to do. To better explain
the Orders tab I've broken it up into smaller sections
to explain each part with more detail…
Your Rules of Engagement (ROE) are
pretty much telling your teams how to act. Assault is
the basic one, which tells your team to shoot on sight.
Infiltrate is a little different; it tells your team to
shoot on sight, but only if the enemy is in their way
(EX: If your waypoints are going from south to north and
there is a tango to the far east, your men will not engage
him because he is not in the way.). Recon is used when
you need your teams to get in without being detected.
Your men will stay in the crouched position and only return
fire if fired upon. Also this is important to remember
that your AI will use their heart beat sensors if they
have them, so remember not to equip all you AI guys with
them or if they meet a tango they will have no fire arm
out to defend themselves with. Finally Escort is the same
as Assault really except hostages fallow you.
Speed
Speed is the next thing. Speed tells
your men at which rate to move and how cautious to be
about there surroundings. First and most recommended is
the "Normal" speed. In this speed your team
will move at a walking pace and shoot on site but will
check to see if the target is friendly or foe. Blitz is
different; your men will shoot a lot more but not very
accurate. It is not recommended for hostage saving due
to the fact that in this speed your men don't really check
to see if it is friendly or foe and have a good chance
of killing the hostage, or another member of there own
team if they run into each other. Your men will move at
a running pace, but while faster, will hurt their accuracy
greatly. The final speed is the Cautious speed. In this
speed one man will move forward will another man will
move backwards covering the "six" as it is known.
While this is the safest for the hostage, your men take
a great deal of time aiming and have a good chance of
getting shot by the trigger-happy terrorist.
Special Actions
The last basic thing to know before
you start your plan making is the Special Actions. You
will want a lot of these in your plan so your men will
cover their teammates and have safer ways of entry. The
first is known as breaching which if one of your AI teammates
have a breaching charge, they will place it and blow open
the door with a explosive punch. Next is the frag order,
which tells your team to toss a frag into the room before
entering. THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED due to the fact that
most of the time your AI can't quite pull it off right
and end up killing themselves with a frag that can't quite
go in the door and bounces back at them. Next is the flash
order, which tells your men to chuck a flash grenade into
the room before entering. While it has just as good a
chance to bounce back at your men as the frag, it will
only stun you if it does so go ahead and order them if
you like.
The second half of the Special Actions
is the Go Code actions. Go Code actions are when your
men come to a stop in their waypoints and wait for the
signal from you to continue. When they come to these wait
points they can perform other actions. The first action
is sniping, which when your men come to the will go crouch
and zoom to the max with there guns and snipe a small
area. When you choose snipe, right click were you would
like them to look wile they are sniping. Usually the character
with the highest sniping skills is the one who snipes
while the others watch his six. Next is the cover arc,
which tells your men to cover a 180-degree area. This
is one that you will probably use most due to the fact
that when you have your teams working together you will
want one team covering another while that team advances
or such. You choose which way they look in the same manner
you would with a sniper arc. The final go code to know
is the defensive code, which tells your men to cover everywhere.
This is a great one for when a team finds a hostage they
can defend him/her from terrorist wile the rest of your
men clear a path. Your men will cover a full 360 degrees
so you do not have to choose were they look.
Planning
Ok now that you have your basics down,
we can start with the plan. I will be using the Black
Thorn maps from operation Empty Cloud and Broken Sceptre
as an example.
First off if you're like me, you don't
want your men to shoot off and start the mission immediately.
What I do is after placing my first waypoint down (in
the insertion zone) I give my teams go codes, mostly defensive.
This way I can truly start my mission at any time I want.
You want your men working together as your number one
priority, or you will be in a heap of trouble once the
mission starts. In my example, I have team Alpha and team
Delta working together. By reading the recon reports,
which are also on the planning screen, I know that there
are two tangos and a hostage in one room. What you would
do in this case is position your Alpha and Delta teams
just outside each door way.
Both Alpha
and Delta have go codes to be in a defensive position
just outside the doors. All I have to do now is give codes
A and D and both teams will rush in the same time and
since the tangos are surprised by two teams, A and D should
have it pretty easy being able to take the tangos out.
If you would like you can also assign the two teams the
same go code. To do this just give say Alpha the Alpha
code as normal, but also give Delta that same code. When
they both reach their positions you only need to give
Alpha the go code and they will both go at the same time.
Now that you know how to get teams working
together in entry, you should also know how to get them
to cover each other. I will be using teams Bravo and Charlie
in this example. What I have at the start is Bravo and
Charlie both in cover positions facing north. Say I want
both teams to safely get from the south side of the map
to the north. To do this I would assign cover positions
repeatedly for both team from one side to the other like
so…
Now in the action phase I would get
this to work by first telling Charlie to go by giving
them the order. When Charlie reaches there next go code
they will be covering west and covering Bravo as I give
them the go code to advance to Charlie's position. This
keeps up until both teams are successfully across
the map.
Setting up a sniper in a good spot is
another golden rule. First when setting up a sniper team,
give the operative with the highest sniping skill a sniper
rifle and choose another man (preferably an assaulter)
to cover the snipers "six" with a rifle or other
closer range firearm. You want your sniper far away from
the action, but you also want him to have a good clear
view of it. This can be tricky, so what you do is while
looking for a spot press "V" while on the plan
screen to bring it into 3D view. This will let you get
a good perspective of what cover is available, were windows
are located, etc… Try and get your sniper good views
of were tangos with hostages are. Your sniper will let
you know when he has a tango in sight. What you can do
is then send your teams in, but press "Y" before
you give the go codes, this tells your sniper to fire,
he will take out the terrorist and the rest will be confused
of were the fire came from. Then you can send in your
assaulters to take out the confused terrorist easily and
rescue the hostage.
Getting your men to turn good is another
important thing. Your AI doesn't turn smoothly they turn
very sharp. If you try and get them to turn smoothly by
laying multiple waypoints around a single turn, most likely
they will end up getting shot by a terrorist around the
corner. To get a real nice and sharp turn so that they
can swing around and pop the terrorist what you do is
put a waypoint a couple feet in front of the turn and
one a few feet around the turn. The path should end up
so that the AI will stay right against the corner and
swing around it quickly but surprisingly like
so…
You want to get your men to use the
speeds at appropriate times also. You can switch to another
speed anytime in the planning phase by highlighting the
waypoint you want them to switch and then choosing a different
speed in the Orders tab. Normal is the one you want to
use most of the time, since it is a cross between Blitz
and Cautious. Try using Blitz when you are out in the
open, or trying to get from one building to the next.
Since your men will run they give themselves a harder
chance of getting hit by the tangos, and once they reach
their destination, you can quickly change it back to Normal
with the same method. Try using Cautious when you come
to stairs and switching it back to normal once you reach
the top or bottom so you cant be "sixed" on
the way.
Overall you want your teams to move
quickly and efficiently, but you want them to work together,
cover, and support their teammates, and surprise the enemy.
Try and predict a path the enemy will most likely take
and ambush them with two teams.
~ Sart. June 2002
