The future of NAK Tac

NAK Tac General
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This post is to discuss and request feedback and ideas in regard to the future of NAK Tac. Everything in this post is open for discussion, NAK Tac is run by NAK Squad for, you, the players. This topic is open for everyone to discuss not just NAK Tac members.

Before I continue, I would like to thank the members of NAK Tac who make an effort and attend the NAK Tac missions. We have 10 - 12 players that attend on a very regular basis.

If the current mission attendance does not change NAK Squad would have to disband NAK Tac to focus the manpower into other areas. What we need are ideas and suggestions on how to increase attendance so we are not forced to disband NAK Tac.

NAK Tac was originally created for players who wanted to play in a more organized, squad-based environment, were your score (total kills) was not relevant and one man armies were discouraged. So the first thing we should do is decide if this is still the objective of NAK Tac. Feedback and opinions on this point are requested.

Next, below, I have a couple of recommendations that may help increase attendance. The first two changes recommended below could be implemented quickly and easily based on your feedback. I would propose is that we implement any ideas and suggestion in phases, so we can measure the effectiveness of any change and we can decide whether or not to implement some of the more extreme changes.

The first idea to improve attendance is to make all events open. Only NAK Tac members will receive awards/medals for the mission and only NAK Tac members will be eligible for any ‘special’ roles (Squad Lead, Fireteam Leader, Pilots, etc) otherwise anyone that meets our standard server rules/restrictions would be able to play.

The second idea is to change the start time of the mission. We chose 5 pm ET for a few reasons but maybe making it a little earlier would help with European attendance. If we change the start time to 3 pm ET, the start time for the major regions would be:

Raleigh (East Coast USA)             3:00:00 pm          EDT          UTC-4 hours
Dallas (USA - Texas)                 2:00:00 pm          CDT          UTC-5 hours
San Jose (West Coast USA)            12:00 noon          PDT          UTC-7 hours
London (United Kingdom)              8:00:00 pm          BST          UTC+1 hour
Copenhagen (Denmark)                 9:00:00 pm          CEST         UTC+2 hours

I really would like to see NAK Tac continue so any feedback you have on these ideas to improve attendance would be apprecioated. If you have a suggestion on how we might improve attendance please post a reply.

The ideas below are a little more ‘extreme’ and would greatly affect NAK Tac, therefore they need a lot of consideration and feedback from the members of NAK Tac. I am not suggesting that we implement the change below immediately, but they are options to be considered if the above changes do not help. I also listed them here to help springboard any ideas that you, the players, would like to see for NAK Tac.

  • Remove mod requirements missions would be played on standard Arma maps using standard Arma weapons.
  • Remove mod requirements and allow standard NAK Squad Allowed mods. Missions would be played on standard Arma maps but players would be allowed to use any mod that is allowed on NAK Squad Invade and Annex servers. - The negative is we would most likely not continue to stream missions, as we would have players without uniforms and players shooting invisible silent guns. Does not make for a very good stream.
  • Remove more complex mods such as Task Force Radio and ACE
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I like the idea of changing the events to open but maybe we could do 3 open events and 1 closed or “special” event to give players an incentive to sign up and be a part of NAK Tac aside from the badge. Would the badge be reserved for approved members of NAK Tac only?

I like the idea of changing the time to 3pm EST, nothing to add.

I can understand the idea of mods, especially ACE and TFAR, being removed for the benefit and ease of all players both new and experienced. Let’s hope we can get some more players on board so we don’t see this happen, they really bring a nice touch to the gameplay. Would opening the server a bit earlier be an option so that our new players have time to set up and learn TFAR and ACE interactions? If this is feasible I was thinking maybe half an hour to an hour earlier so we aren’t struggling to get teams set up, get classes loaded, plan routes, and help players that need it all within an hour or less of mission start. The extra time in the channel before mission start may catch the eye of new players as well.

Another idea, if we open the events, would be to move the NAK Tac channel higher up on the list ether on the day of the event or permanently to have better visibility.

As far as the mods go, could we limit the list of mods for NAK Tac days? If we could find a list of the most frequently used mods maybe we could use a handful of those so the pictures still come out nicely? I offer this as a suggestion in Tactical Tuesdays if anyone wants to be included in the pictures. Since this was inspired from a few of the frequent players I continually ask players for input and have built a list of commonly used weapon and equipment mods so that could be a start if anyone else likes the idea. I just incorporate that into the mission briefing before they start. A link to that list can be found in the description of the Tactical Tuesday channel. Keep in mind this is only 2-3 missions old so the idea is still in its infancy stage but has been working well so far.

Good post, I hope this helps spark some new ideas!

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I feel like this is the best experience one can have and greatly amplifies some of the community aspects. Players might meet in Altis, but bonds are made and built in NAK Tac when your buddy pulls you out of the dead man’s land and patches you back up. Its this comradery that carries quite often back over to Altis.

Big yes to this idea, however it would take a bit of a strain on current NAK Tac members and the zeus. Both on policing and explaining ace/taskforce radio to players. I’d recommend lowering the bar a little bit for kicks in this mode.

How big is the European attendance currently? I feel like (and therefore would like to evaluate the amount of eu members) most members participating are on the North American continent, even at the current reasonable EU time. Moving the time earlier might help out a few EU players, however I wonder if pushing it back to 8 ET might be more helpful pulling in some fresh souls from the american playerbase.


We would have snipers clearing flats, medics firing RPG’s and alot of bad equipment. I do not like the idea of this.

The other two suggestions do not really have my favour either, but could be considered a last option to increase the player base for NAK Tac i’d prefer removing the alternative maps (which are too big to download in a hurry) over removing the other mods.

Additional suggestions from me would be to:

  1. Reduce/remove the 40 hour minimum on our servers. If a soldier can shoot, has played a tactical tuesday and was able to teamwork, this minimum needs to go.
  2. Moving the TS room upwards (as bandit suggested)
  3. Advertise the event on main servers in the future (add the NAKTAC logo to big billboards, paint the floor/walls of the hangar with logos/events, add it to the message bot)
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I will reply to this with direct points just to keep it clear here so I hope it’s ok. I will add my ideas and sum it all up with this;

  • yes to open events.
    I like the idea of 3 open events and 1 privet. we can make the open events on standard Arma maps…, we can make one week with no mods at all, which will help with making any new player join without download time to try playing with us, other weeks with mods and last week privet to make it interesting.

  • I find the current time is perfect. for me(+1 zone) is ok to finish the game and go to sleep after that, and if it’s changed, you will lose American players.

-I think adding more ops in the week will help, one that is perfect with the American players run by an American admin, and another op with the perfect time for EU players and is run by an EU timed admin.
But it will need an extra person to do yes. but I think it might help big time (if planed correctly).

  • rework on the TS and structure it to represent the events. By changing the order of the channels, deleting old/unneeded channels(every alpha and bravo channels that are not used a lot)(which will help in seeing the other stuff).
    (“you can delete the alpha and bravo channels on Altis, Malden, and others and make it that if needed an Elite can make one. which will make the TS more clear and dynamic and one extra thing an elite can OR even this as a thing that a NAK Tac tag player can do”, just an idea I had)

-yes to more Billboards with NAK Tac on it by the main base on Altis and make it the helo jump button so everyone has to look at it every time. ( i can work on some designs for that that help atract players maybe if needed)

  • I don’t think TFAR or ACE is part of the problem since I never had a bad time teaching someone the basics in 2mins. its just part of a more tactical game that we love.

*I love NAK Tac the way it is and i have no complains. this is me trying to think outside of the box. @VileAce Thank you for what you have done till this moment.

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I have a selfish request, and I know I have tried to talk you into it before :laughing: but some pilots would really enjoy flying transport and heli cas. I know you say it would be boring for the pilots but I know a lot of us our craving a more “realistic” support role where we all our on the same page working together. Even if that means flying around for 2-3 hours with calling in troop locations, resupply, or just mock patrolling would not be boring to us. Maybe some missions you can have objects to create a fob while infantry is busy fighting. It would give them an extra objective while not in service. I think people would like to have assigned roles with specific tasks that role has to perform sometime during the mission. Example having bombs for bomb disposal, repair objectives for repair role, radio man for air support, spotter for cas, you get the point…I think creating multi role missions such as having armor, air, infantry, and support would be more appealing giving each division a task sometimes working with other divisions sometimes having there own mission. Having only infantry positions available now I think discourages a lot of people that maybe don’t like infantry roles. We don’t necessarily have to include jets unless the need arises but I think trying to come up with some missions to try it maybe in an open event and advertise it on the website twitte etc. we would get a great turnout. As for the time lately it’s been hard for me to get on during the weekend because I’m usually out flying or when I get on the mission is mostly through and don’t want to come In half way through. You guys know me I’m 99% air and I’ve been dying for some real cooperative play with capable alies. I have a couple mission ideas in mind that I’ve wanted to do since I started zuesing. I think it would be neat if a few of us get together and design a mission together. Maybe also give some approved Zeus players a chance to help Zeus on open NACTACs or help design the mission. That could also take some stress off Vile and Volcano. I know it’s easy to get burnt out on coming up with new missions all the time. I deffinately won’t be able to make it this weekend or next but hopefully the next Saturday I’ll be able to join you guys for a full mission. Maybe we can have an NAKTAC reunion and get some off these old School guys in.

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By big drawback is just personally Saturday’s, I work nights on friday and saturday now so I havnt been able to attend. But if days change or alternate in the future I’ll definitely be there, but for now I have to get my fix on tac Tuesday, which has been going really well as a side note

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REAPER6: I will consider more Pilot related tasks. It is hard to have to add a bunch of elements into a mission to keep a pilot entertained, as well to give up a ground role when we only have enough players for two fireteams. We have always wanted to add additional roles, such as pilots we just need more players to show up. If we had 20 players then having pilots would make sense.

As far as approved Zeus’s doing missions that has always been an option (there has been at least one post regarding this in the past). The Zeus just needs to submit the mission outline 3 days prior to the event.

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Bandit-Angel 1- The server is normally open 2 hours prior to the event (worst case it has always been open 1 hour prior), and in the NAK Tac announcements I post when the server is open. Members will receive a Steam announcement, but everyone can read them. When we have new players we assign a more experienced player or Wave if he is available (not implying that Wave is not experienced, lol) to give training to new players. I did the training before the last open event and it took less than 10 minutes. If we switch over to all open events we will schedule training at a specific time prior to each event, say 45 min prior. Players would go through the training, practice healing a few AI then they could spend another 15 - 20 minutes creating a loadout at the firing range. We also have videos on how to install and use Task Force Radio - https://youtu.be/jk4tUIERm38 and Enhanced Movement - https://youtu.be/A0wH55ZwVTg



As far as having a list of commonly used mods I’m not really worried about the end game photo, I could reload with all mods just to take the photo, I’m concerned with streaming. Even loading the most common mods, while streaming, I would run into issues quickly. If I had to load all of RHS, CUP, SMA, VSM or MLO, NIArms on top of the mods needed to Zeus, I would not be able to stream as well. I would happily accept donations for a new computer to Stream from, lol,

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Sry for a longer read, but I’m a bit late to the party. There is no TL:DR so bear with me :slight_smile:

NAK Tac was originally created for players who wanted to play in a more organized, squad-based environment, were your score (total kills) was not relevant and one man armies were discouraged. So the first thing we should do is decide if this is still the objective of NAK Tac. Feedback and opinions on this point are requested.

I can’t agree more with Wave on that point, NAK Tac is what realy creates friendships here and secures bonds between players greatly.

The first idea to improve attendance is to make all events open. Only NAK Tac members will receive awards/medals for the mission and only NAK Tac members will be eligible for any ‘special’ roles (Squad Lead, Fireteam Leader, Pilots, etc) otherwise anyone that meets our standard server rules/restrictions would be able to play.

Big YES for that idea.
In my NAK Tac experience closed events always felt much more tight knit than open events to me, but on the other hand usually new players who join in open events are easy to control and to keep on task, its a bit more dynamic and sometimes requires a bit more micromanagement (Which is GREAT for practice C2 at lower levels imo) but its fun all in all. And we must consider the strain an open event has on zeuses, especially when Vile is streaming and zeusing t the same time and has to deal with some new player doing something. That could be controlled by, as stated before, with assigning experienced NAK Tac members to train newcomers. Non NAK Tac members would be restricted to private or specialist role with C2 reserved for NAK Tac members. Maybe to have 2 NAK Tac members report early to attend the event and to log in early and to organise new players.

I agree on the point of training new people too. It would be a help it the roles are assigned before training. For instance:
I know on Friday I will attend NAK Tac, and I report it to the Zeus for new player duty. This would mean that I will have a 3-4 man squad with me as a Lead.
I log in early as server opens and wait for new players to join. As they come in I take them on me until squad is full. I talk to them a bit to see what they believe are good in and assign roles. Medic, AT, MG and AA.
I also find out who is most experienced one and assign most green one (or two as per teams size) as my buddy, other two are the other FT with most experienced one as second in command (If a team is bigger than 4 ppl I advise 2 NAK Tac members in one squad. Second member does not need to come early or prepare, just be second in command and lead the other fire team in the squad)
I take my squad and we go over basics (gear, setup, tactics… the works) I estimate around 45 min work all in all to get them up and running.

The second idea is to change the start time of the mission. We chose 5 pm ET for a few reasons but maybe making it a little earlier would help with European attendance.

I agree with Wave on that, we need number of European vs US attendance. Personally I think there are more US based players than European. Also on the note of changing time, being that it is on Saturdays, 11 pm for me is not much of an issue (Compared to 2 in the morning :slight_smile: )

Volcano gave a good Idea too about returning the weekday slot in some form. There is Tac Tuesdays though that is doing good and has a nice buzz in the community. I think the openness and simplicity of starting on Tac Tuesdays is a reason for ppl to jump in. So the idea about it beeing open every time would be a step in that direction.

Remove mod requirements missions would be played on standard Arma maps using standard Arma weapons.
Remove mod requirements and allow standard NAK Squad Allowed mods. Missions would be played on standard Arma maps but players would be allowed to use any mod that is allowed on NAK Squad Invade and Annex servers. - The negative is we would most likely not continue to stream missions, as we would have players without uniforms and players shooting invisible silent guns. Does not make for a very good stream.
Remove more complex mods such as Task Force Radio and ACE

On the note of mods restrictions, I personally LOVE TFAR and ACE and imo its not hard to train a person to use it. What is a stepping stone is installing TFAR and getting used to using ACE. For that I propose
“NAK Tac administrative hour”. In a nutshell for a person who applied to train the new players jumps on TS for one hour sometimes before the event to offer assistance and guidance on installing and prepping ARMA for NAK Tac event. That, on the other hand requires more man power.
Concerning weapons and load outs I don’t mind them being vanilla or to use one or two mods for weapons to have some choice. For instance that NAK Tac requires only TFAR, ACE and one or two orher popular gear and weapons mods. Thematic events will always have a custom mod list anyway.

I disagree with the idea of bring your own gun mod idea. List of mods can be small, but should be standardized for all.

  1. Reduce/remove the 40 hour minimum on our servers. If a soldier can shoot, has played a tactical Tuesday and was able to teamwork, this minimum needs to go.
  2. Moving the TS room upwards (as bandit suggested)
  3. Advertise the event on main servers in the future (add the NAKTAC logo to big billboards, paint the floor/walls of the hangar with logos/events, add it to the message bot)

BIG YES on all points. Maybe be more active during Saturday on the main server and advertise it in chat, like gureilla advertising :slight_smile: Wave and I chat in side channel: wooow doode NAK Tac today , can’t be more excited! Best event ever!! and Wave goes yeah, I love the feel of the game there… anyone on the server here wanna join us tomorrow, will be a blast!!"… something along those lines :slight_smile:

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Unless i am unaware of such a thing. I think there needs to be monthly poll or forum post on what the missions will consist around. Such as navy, ww2, etc… and not surprise missions.

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Vile, I like all of your ideas, but I also think it could be beneficial to have more NAK TAK events every week, like 3-5 events a week, with one or two of those being only open to NAK TAK members. I think all slots, (ie. pilot) should be available to all so potential applicants for NAK TAK would recognize how each role is fundamental to the operation.

I think that there should be an earlier start time for each event, or vary throughout each event. Say Tuesday is at 5, Friday at 12 pm, Monday at 3 and so on. I cannot make it most of the time to the events because I usually get called in for work.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope my input helps.

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We do not have the manpower to run any more missions that what we currently run, we do have lives away from Arma. Each mission takes 6 - 10 manhours to run. Running 3 - 5 missions a week would be a full-time job.

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Good point, still an extra open would be nice.

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As a relatively minor way to improve turnout I would suggest adding a billboard sign right by infantry spawn stating the dates for TAC events that month with the time of the event and a simple “Details on ts3.naksquad.net”. Just having that little ease of convenience with a clear set time should be enough to invite more casual and curous players who have yet to try the full Arma experience.

Would like to play more TAC events but the times don’t match up for me anymore. TacTuesdays will have to suffice.

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Hey! I recently got accepted in NakTak and have not been able to play my first mission yet. I would still like to say the main thing that caught my eye was the “milsim” experience and I would find it a shame to lose some of the mods enhancing it.

As for ideas,


I think that keeping a training routine for new players AND making it obvious is very important. Using the hours before mission start could be useful. Theory is one thing, practical is a whole other : New players will feel welcomed leading to a participation. idk about you, but being clueless on a battlefield is the worst feeling so practicing things like squad movement and medicals could be nice, same for roles etc…


I haven’t seen a lot of how the team management works, but if this isn’t the case;

Implementing dedicated squads from the first enlistment on. This will forge a team spirit and give a feeling of belonging. based on what I’ve been through, it could possibly lead to a friendly rivalry… boosting the will to participate (idk ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

Appropriate ranks (The current server ranking system reminds me of service medals). By participating in missions players would prove their rightful rank and having those ranks appear on teamspeak gives them a satisfactory feeling.

I’m sure I can come up with plenty of ideas, but I would like to participate in missions before rattling on.

Mathias

P.S. Mathias is pronounced Ma·tee·as

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Today will be my first NAK Tac event so I don’t have enough experience to say what should change and what shouldn’t. What I can however offer is my support for a couple of the suggestions offered in the replies thus far:

A few of the replies have mentioned a billboard and/or use of the auto-message system in-game and in TS. I think that would be a great addition and inform a larger audience, considering we get many new faces every day and a lot of returns who have yet to visit the website. I’m sure a good amount of those returning players have the required hours for an application.

Another possibility could be moving the NAK Tac channels in TeamSpeak up a few levels, or placing the NAK Tac Q&A channel with all of the information in the description next to the lobby, maybe provide a brief description of what NAK Tac is and what we hope to achieve before providing the proper link to the relevant page on our website.

“Implementing dedicated squads from the first enlistment on. This will forge a team spirit and give a feeling of belonging.” – I actually really like this idea Mathias, even though people who come would change week-to-week, in my opinion having that feeling of being part of your own team would be great for forging lasting relationships in the NAK Community. Maybe a TS tag “NAK Tac Blue Squad” or something with a little more ring to it :laughing:

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When we first started NAK Tac we did have dedicated squads, but the problem was when your squadmates do not show up for events, the squad would get filled with alternates. This happened so often that the dedicated squads were removed. The benefit of the way we do it now is, most people do get to play with who they like to, players do not feel as if they are a second choice to fill a squad and we can balance squads with an even mix of new and experienced players.

If we get better attendance we may switch things around a little, but the way we do it now works well, and I believe that most players like this method.

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Since most people a mentioning moving the TS channel, advertising and billboards I will go ahead and reply.

There are some of the obvious things we could do, but there are issues in implementing them.

I am very against moving NAK Tac above the Altis channel. Although it might help draw more players into NAK Tac, you have to understand that Atlis is NAK’s number one priority, it is what draws players into NAK Squad. I will not do anything that might diminish that. Would you focus on a server that gets 4500 new players a month and 18000 unique visitors or one that get 0 new users and 25 (in a good month) unique visitors?

Second the billboards. One proposal was to just have a basic advertisement for NAK Tac which we will do, it has been on the to-do list for quite some time but just keeps getting bumped for more important issues. There was a proposal regarding billboards, to display the month’s upcoming events. The only issue here is updating the billboards. With this, someone needs to make the images with the schedule monthly, and right now we are even having issues with enough manpower to update the Steam Group schedule. Also anytime that you update an image the mission needs to be pushed to the servers and all players would be required to download the mission, so we try to limit this as much as possible.

The last issue is in regard to advertising, this is easy to do and we have in the past used the in-game and TeamSpeak advertising, but because we saw no increase in attendance, therefor we removed it in favor for more critical notices. We can try again, but we do try to measure the effectiveness of changes we make, and if it does not show a measurable increase, then it generally is not worth doing.

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I am going to try moving the NAK Tac channels just for the few hours before and during the event to see how it goes.

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I don’t mind NAKTAC being open. Starting 2 hours early I’m not sure; I could probably go yes or no, I don’t know. East 3pm Saturday isn’t an issue.