Charlie Podcast - Episode 3.

In this podcast episode, 1st Sergeant GLX Solar discusses promotions, recruits, and the importance of a recon role. He congratulates Tommy Hud and T. Ritt on their promotions to private first class and introduces Master Sergeant Mitch as the new Master Sergeant of Armor. He emphasizes the importance of attendance for ranking up and mentions that after reaching the specialist rank, leadership positions can be pursued. He encourages communication and teamwork within the group and highlights the recent recon training led by Master Sergeant Happy. The training focused on the responsibility of a recon team, timely call-outs, and communication with snipers. Lastly, he reminds everyone about upcoming game nights and the need to react in the Discord channel. Hey, welcome back to Charlie podcast. This is 1st Sergeant GLX Solar coming back to you again with another episode of the Charlie podcast. I'm going to be giving out some information of some things going on with Charlie, some updates on some things that we've seen coming down the line, mostly talking about our promotions and some recruits. I'm going to talk a little bit about another role that I think is a very important role to be mastering as soon as you possibly can and be playing it as often as you can. I'm going to give a little bit of an update on a recent training that went down and just kind of give you the footnotes for that training if you weren't able to attend and things along those lines. So again, just welcome back and thanks for tuning in. If you ever have any other updates or things that you think are important to be adding to these messages and these things that I've been sending out every week or so, let me know. Reach out, comment at the end of the podcast and just tell me what you want to hear, what you want to listen to. That way I can kind of get that stuff on the docket and get it on the agenda to be more active and more things to really discuss that people want to listen to, not just hear me ramble on as I do sometimes. But the first thing I just want to do is I just want to say congratulations to some of our most recent promotions that went in. We had Tommy Hud and T. Ritt moving on up to private first class. So I just want to say congratulations to you guys and thank you for getting your game nights in, getting those required game nights in to reach that role or that rank. And just continue to put your effort in and support for this group and our company. We always want to see big numbers on our game nights and having you guys there on a regular basis really helps with that. And it helps create a better connection with us and just developing our strategies that we're working on and continue to implement those the more times people show up and the more the same guys show up on a consistent basis. And so we understand it's a video game, it's not your life. And so we know when you are putting that effort in it's a valued time for us that we see. A lot of us are older, we have families, we know what's going on, we know how this works and so we really appreciate all that. Also can't forget about our new Master Sergeant of Armor that is Master Sergeant Mitch. And so he is taking on that extra responsibility. Mitch was a sergeant before that I believe, but he's decided that he wants more responsibility, he wants to take on that extra role. And so he's going to move up to that Master Sergeant position and he's going to be in charge of training our armor groups. So he's going to be the one that you look to now for those trainings, for those specific type of skill set and things like that. So if you have some questions on armor, reach out to Mitch and I'm sure he'll help you out. He's always there, he's always available and ready to help out whenever he can. So we're going to be looking to him to run a training probably here sometime in November. That's kind of the deal with Master Sergeants is they do run a training a month or they try to run a training a month. And so that's what we try to hold to and help them get to that as well. And so we'll be looking to Mitch to do that and we really appreciate him stepping up and taking that leadership role. And that's really kind of what it takes sometimes. It just takes a couple people that want to step up and take on a little bit added responsibility. So those of you that are just kind of getting into the group, recruits and stuff like that, maybe wondering how do I rank up, how do I move up? You can always tune into episode one of this podcast. I talk a lot about rank there. But right now as new recruits and new players, it's all about attendance. So the more you attend, the quicker you will rank up. And then once you get up to that specialist area, then you're going to be looking at more of a leadership position. And so then those that are interested in that, that's when you're going to have to reach out to us and let us know that that's what you want to do for those types of things. But otherwise, just again, thanks guys for taking on those extra responsibilities. Thank you guys for attending those game nights and reacting to those things too. As I talked about with new recruits, we actually have quite a few new recruits that recently joined our group. And so we want to thank those guys that are coming in. Make sure we as a company are reaching out to them or just at least messaging in the Gen Chat saying, hey, welcome aboard and things along those lines. New recruits, if you have any questions on how the Discord works, how game nights work, any of that kind of stuff, let us know. Reach out to the command staff or reach out to your sergeants, and they'll be more than willing to help you out or answer any questions. Of course, we play on Wednesdays and Sunday nights as the Charlie Company. And so you're going to want to head over to Charlie Attendance and get your reaction in for game night tomorrow. Sunday nights are always a great turnout and really good nights to play. And so make sure you get over there and get that reaction in on what role you'd like to play for Sunday night game night. If you are not able to attend, you're still going to want to head over to Charlie Attendance and still react. You're going to react with an absence, and that's fine. But we just want to make sure that we are seeing people react and being active in the Discord as much as they possibly can. And even just getting that little bit of an absent attendance reaction in lets us know that you're paying attention and that you're reading and following the kind of the stuff that we have going on. So get in there, get your reaction in for tomorrow night. And then, of course, after that, we'll post the one for Wednesday night. You'll have time to react for that and things like that. If something comes up and it changes, that's fine. Get in there again, just change your reaction and let us know so we can make sure we get a good following and a good roster built for the night of the game. So Sunday night game coming up tomorrow. Be ready for that. Well, it is tomorrow unless you're listening to this later in the day. If you're listening to this on Sunday, then it's today. And so, yeah, it's just great to be aware of that. But otherwise, recently we had, not recently, but probably a few weeks back now, we had a recon training. Your Master Sergeant, happy, rounded Master Sergeant of recon, ran a training for us. And he did a fantastic job. He knocked it out of the park. He was well prepared, and he just had some really, really great information. And I'm just going to hit on just a few things that I took notes on. Happy, you're definitely welcome to correct anything that I missed or highlight your own types of things that you want to do. I was going to have happy on the show today, but due to just timing, I kind of put this together last minute. I actually didn't think I was actually going to get a recording in today, but I had a few minutes here. I was able to stop in. So the notes that I took from happy training, just kind of starting from the top and going through what he went through, the first thing was just talking about the responsibility of a recon team. And I think he made one of the points that I highlighted was just being on time with call-outs. So, you know, when you are a recon team, your main job is reconning, right? And that stands for just reconnaissance, and you are observing the battlefield and what's happening on the battlefield and who's on the battlefield, tanks, infantry, all that kind of stuff, and you are relaying that information back to command. If your call-outs are late, like you've seen a tank, but you got distracted with something else, and then later somebody else is like, oh, hey, there's a tank here, and you're like, oh, yeah, I saw that. You know, that's not helpful. And so you need to make sure that you're on time with your call-outs for that. And so just communication, obviously, is key with this game in general, but more information is going to win us the battle, and so that's what we need to know. He talked about having communication with your sniper as well. You know, not just as a spotter when you're running recon, your main role is to just relay information to command staff. You also need to be communicating with your sniper and helping them get into position of, you know, what's going to benefit them because they're actually communicating with you just as much as you're communicating with command staff. They're going to see things that you may not see, and they're going to need to be able to communicate that as well. So make sure you're staying in contact with them, talking back and forth, and there's typically more than one recon team on the field, and so you're going to want to communicate with both parties and do your part to try and get into white chat with them. That way you're not cluttering up some of the chat together, but you guys are working together with your communication. The more set of eyes that we have on the field, of course, is going to be able to see more and give out that detailed stuff that we need to know. And so communicate together with your recon unit and your team, working together basically as a full squad and kind of cutting up the field a little bit so you're able to watch all sides or more of the battlefield and not just kind of one section. You can kind of split up or whatever kind of dictates the role, but work together is the big part and just communicate together. And he, of course, added have fun. If you know Happy, he's always having fun, and he's always a fun time to play with. He talks a lot, which is great because if you're a person that doesn't talk a lot, he'll talk for you and he'll make sure that you're having a good time when you're playing. And so I always enjoy playing with Happy as well. But some goals that he talked about as a recon that you want to be doing, of course, is providing information about the enemy team, relaying the information about the tanks, where they're moving, where the teams are spawning in at, where you're seeing a majority of them, where they're building up defenses, where their next objective is if it's an offensive game mode and you're not sure where that next point is because it doesn't show up on the map for you until we cap one and relaying that information to you so that command can start pre-dropping supplies and doing those types of things. Finding the enemy weakness and reporting that information, that is the key. We want to exploit their weaknesses in our favor to win the game. That is the point of the reason why we play. We play to win. It's kind of the top thing. We want to have fun, but we want to win. We don't have fun when we lose, that's for sure. As I talked about that white chat, there are four radio channels in the game. There's the white chat, there's the leadership chat, there's unit radio, that's your squad chat, and then there's proximity, and that way you can talk to everybody. And as a recon unit, especially as a spotter, you really have to navigate all of them because you are one of the backbones of the game because of what you're able to do. You're able to move much deeper behind enemy lines earlier in the game, and you're a smaller unit and so you can typically move more tactically and get behind them and get in positions where they can't see you, and you're going to need to relay all that information. So being able to navigate all the channels so that you are communicating with everybody on the field is going to be important. And it's kind of a key thing anyway that we all need to work on, especially as anybody running the squad lead or a spotter position or any of those, is being able to navigate all the channels and understanding that part of it. And so there are four radio channels, and so working on all of those, getting used to all of those is going to be important. And so even messing with the settings is pretty important. I know for me, I have the leadership chat turned up higher than I do unit chat or the squad chat because typically I tend to play a leadership role, and so then I want to make sure I can hear everything coming through that part of it. I don't have it turned all the way down or anything. I don't have them that different, but one just a little bit higher than the other. I typically have proximity chat turned up a little bit higher too because to me in the game, it's a lot harder just to hear everybody in proximity chat. Just the distance and stuff like that. The farther away, the quieter it is and such. And so I think you have to have that one turned up a little bit more too. And so mess with those in your settings. It can really make a difference on your settings. It's not the, you know, you can't just get into a game and just play all the time. You've got to get into your settings too and get those things set the right way. He talks about it as a sniper. You know, obviously there's two roles of the recon unit. You've got the spotter and you've got the sniper. And so running as a sniper, I think the key there that he pointed out was knowing when to shoot and when not to shoot. It's not just about going out there and getting 100 kill games. You know, it's about knowing when you shoot, you're going to alert the enemy of where you're at. Right? And so if your recon unit is, the goal of their objective at that time is to be maneuvering around in a position to get into spots and calling information, and you just start popping off shots because you see a guy running across an open field, then all you're doing is setting your squad, your recon team to get hurt. And so that's not, that doesn't help much. So you need to know when and why you're shooting. And it's important to know, like, who you're shooting. Is it going to help you or is it going to make it just going to pad your stats? Right? You know, taking out squad leaders and taking out command staff, commander, is probably the most important thing, right? If you can take out those guys, you're going to really hurt the other team. Taking out tankers, you know, if they hop outside their tank and taking out their driver or taking out their gunners or their extra player in it, that hurts that tank, having that one less guy in it. So just know when to shoot and when not to shoot. And I thought that was a really good point that not a lot of people always talk about as a sniper. It's just like, oh, I'm going to get in, snipe, and run around and shoot people. Know when to shoot and when not to shoot. That's the difference between a good sniper and a bad sniper to me. The other part is knowing your tanks. This cannot be stressed enough for every player in the game to me, but, of course, as a recon, that's your job is to scout things and call it out. And so knowing the difference between a heavy tank, a medium tank, and a light tank can determine the life of another tank of your team when they're moving. If you've got a tank over here and you've got a recon tank or a light tank, oh, I'm going to move in that direction, and then all of a sudden they pull up on a Tiger tank, well, they're screwed, right? And all you did was set them up for failure on that part. And so you need to be aware of what the tanks are. And so we have a school circle. We have two school circles. We have a Charlie circle and we had a regular school circle in the Gen Battalion. And they have, I think, Happy and some others have posted great pictures of the different types of tanks. And so do your research and study those so you can notice the differences between what's a heavy, a medium, and a recon tank and a light tank. And so that way you are giving the right information, the right details. The last bit here is just talking a lot about awareness. That is the key to any recon, of course, and any squad lead as well, but just being aware of what's happening on the game. Supply drops, spotting supply drops and calling them out. Spotting supply trucks, where they're going. Usually when a supply truck is moving across the field, they're doing one or two things. They are driving to drop supplies for a garrison or they're driving to an objective to drop supplies for defensive builds. And so knowing, seeing those and knowing where they're going can help determine on what this next strategy is for your team. Map awareness as well is a key of knowing what's on the map and the different terrains and what those mean. High ground can definitely be an advantage to everybody in the game, especially you yourself as a recon unit, but as well as your team, making sure that they have the high ground and the other team doesn't. Troop movement. And so when the recon planes fly over or the flares go up and you see the little ant trails on the map, that typically means that those guys are coming from that direction because there's a spawn point there and knowing what that is. And that doesn't just because there's a bunch of guys there doesn't mean, oh, that's a prime target for kills. No, that is a prime target for knowing to go there to get rid of their garrison so they can no longer spawn. Spawning is the name of the game for this. Whatever team has the most spawns in the best position is probably going to win out in the game. And so knowing what those enemy spots on the map, what the trails and where they're coming from, that is key. Utilize your surroundings, of course, being aware of that, using cover, finding those little things that you can jump on top of this that's going to get you to jump on top of that, which is going to get you a better spot to view as a sniper or as a scout and those types of things. And as I talked about spawns, a recon's OP is the lifeline, and I think that that's a really good definition of how he put it. That is your lifeline as a recon. That's going to help you push into those middle HQs when you're trying to take out artillery. So if your objective is to stop arty from shooting, then you don't want to just plop your OP up right next to their middle HQ just so you can get there quicker. You're going to need to strategically put it in a spot that it can stay up and you can continue to assault that artillery. And so knowing where you're putting it and paying attention when it's getting pinged. When you start seeing the red exclamation mark on it, that's when you know it's time to start moving that OP or you need to protect that OP and change your route of where you're going to put that. So pay attention to your OP and what's happening with it and where it's at on the map. That is, as I said, that is your lifeline to the game and to your being able to stay in the fight, staying on the other side of the enemy line, and doing what your objective is. And we talked about attacking arty and being in that position. If you can keep that OP up and you can keep those guys off those guns, the less times they fire, that means the more guys that we are keeping alive on the game. And so the more times that they're firing and dropping those rounds and the more guys we got blown up, it's tough. It's going to be tough for our infantry squads, our offensive squads, to do anything with that. And so just be aware of those types of things. And so that's a big part of the game, awareness for that. And he talked a lot about that awareness part, and I thought it was some great stuff. And so, again, happy, did a fantastic job doing that training, really appreciate him doing that. Master Sergeant Mavs did an artillery training. I unfortunately was not able to sit in on that to take any notes, and so he'll have to drop some of that information, some of that knowledge in the school circle for us so that everybody can hear what's going on with artillery. But if you're running artillery and you don't already have the artillery calculator on your phone, you should get that for sure to get yourself acquainted with that on how to use it. Unless you're a math whiz and you already know the calculations, then great. Then it's even easier for you. But if you're like me right now and I don't run arty much, I need that calculator. And so if you're not aware, you have to have that to use arty in the right way, until you know what the actual numbers are and all that kind of stuff. And Mavs might already be able to tell you that too. And so check in with him. I'm sure he ran a great training as well. Like I said, I just wasn't able to sit in on it. But I really appreciate those Master Sergeants running those trainings for us, updating our guys and keeping them well-trained, well-informed of those types of things. Well, that kind of rounds out our trainings that we had that came through in the month of October. It is a new month, and so I'm sure we'll see potentially some more trainings. There's obviously some holidays and stuff coming up this month. And so we'll kind of measure those out and see what works best for everybody and make sure we're providing some more information for you guys. But thank you guys for doing those trainings again, and we really appreciate it. Right now the thing I want to talk a bit more before I finish up or wrap up today is another role. Last time I talked about the support role and why I felt it was so important and why I think it's one of the, to me, the most important role in the game. And now I'm going to talk about what I think is probably the second most important role in the game, and that's going to be that engineer role. The engineer plays so many different things for us as a squad in a game. Of course, when you think engineer, you think building, right? They're the ones that build up the defenses. They build the barricades. They put those types of things down on the map. And so when you're defending a location or an objective, they're key assets to that, and that's absolutely for sure. They are a key asset for that part of it. And that's a big thing of what we do with our groups is we play a defensive role in our squads or in our strategy. And so having that engineer, having a good understanding of an engineer and what they do is key to that. They're also the person that puts all the logistics together. So without an engineer, we don't have nodes. Without nodes, our commander doesn't have the supplies they need to drop recons, drop tanks, drop bombing runs, drop airheads, reinforce points, drop the encourage, and those types of things. And so engineer does a lot of things for our team throughout the game. And Krenz does a fantastic job of explaining engineer in his school circle or in our Charlie School message. He put together a really well-detailed engineer class information on ways to run it effectively. And so I'm just going to hit on just a few of his notes that he puts in there, and I'll let you guys kind of read it yourselves and kind of get a little bit more. But, of course, as he talks about, as a builder when engineering, you really want to think offensively more than defensively. If you were that player pushing into that objective, where are you going to push from? You know, what is the strategy for that? And I think that's one of the things that makes Krenz such a great engineer is he also likes to run commander. And so he thinks about those types of things a little bit that way. But when you are playing and building those defenses, it's not just about putting structures up anywhere and everywhere. It's about where are going to be the flanking positions. Where is it going to make sense to put this bunker here compared to not putting it there and those types of things. And so you really want to be looking at that objective from the outside in. So when you're that enemy pushing in, where does it make the most sense for me to push in, and where does it not make sense for me to push in? And those are going to be those areas where you don't have to do as much building. But those areas that are going to make the most sense to put a bunker when you are trying to push in that, that's going to be the key. And the one thing that he talked about was barbed wire. And he said barbed wire is probably one of the best things you have as a defensive builder to put down because of what barbed wire does. It really slows down the enemy in their movement. He talks about not putting it on the objective, which I thought was very interesting to read because that's the first thing I think about is putting these things on the objective to move things. But when we do that, when you put barbed wire on the objective itself, it doesn't just slow the enemy down. It actually slows us down as well when we're trying to push out the enemy to those different positions. So if you've got barbed wire positioned inside our objective, it's actually going to slow our movements and our ability to flank and do different things. So you really want to be getting yourself outside of the circle and into those positions to drop barbed wire to slow them from getting into the strong point because that's the key. The key is to hold the strong point as long as we possibly can and keep the enemy out of the strong point and have more of our guys inside it than them. And so we want to place those barbed wire outside of that circle, especially into areas that are open that we can see that they can push into and those types of things to slow those types of pushes. As far as our barricades and bunkers, then those we put closer to our strong points. That way we as an enemy can get set up on those bunkers and those positions to lay down the fire and suppress them and push them away for those types of things. But never block your entrances where our tanks and our supply trucks are going to be pushing in though because then that's just going to hurt us there. We need those supply trucks to push into those objectives to drop us supplies as engineers so we can continue to build those positions. So when you are building those, it's not just dropping them anywhere. Blocking major roads can be good and you're thinking about keeping the enemy out, but it also keeps us out as we stated. So when you're blocking main entrances, make sure you're blocking them farther out to where the enemy is actually pushing in, but we're keeping our back entrance open. We're keeping that one main road open and then hopefully providing an exit for them to get out. But supply trucks and tanks, they can drive through the barbed wire and so that we don't have to worry about as much, but people can't go through the barbed wire. But our trucks can, but they can't go through the barricades and so we have to make sure that we get those there too. I think too for me when I'm building barricades, I don't right away upgrade them all the way. I first just place them and get them built up to the first level and continue to build more and more and more. And then later on when I have the time, then I'll start upgrading them quicker. I'll upgrade them later after that. I really want to get my layout placed first before I start upgrading everything as well. But when I do bigger bunkers, and the bigger bunker obviously takes the most supplies and so you have to be aware of that. But when I'm putting down that bigger bunker, I actually try to find those more open view points where I can see long ranges. So if I have a high ground area, I definitely want to try and place it there. If I've got a big open field area, I like to place the big bunker there as well. That way I can really set guys up in that position to cover those open spots more thoroughly. That's one thing that I always think about when I think about the bigger bunkers and such for those is find those open sight lines, those wide open sight lines where an MG can set up and just start really just shooting down and continue to suppress guys and things like that. Suppression fire is so beneficial when you're an MG and things like that, even if you're not getting the kills. But if you're suppressing guys where they can't see and they can't move, it really helps disorient them and those types of things. So obviously, as I said, engineering role does those buildings. You've got mines. You're going to want to be placing those on those roads out in front too so you can potentially blow up some tanks and things along those lines. So making sure that you're getting all your munitions out, get everything out, get all your proxy mines out, get all your mines out and things like that and exhaust all those resources that you have as an engineer when it comes to building defenses and such. But the other thing that, of course, the engineer can build is that repair station. And we should always be trying to get a repair station up on our objectives. Anytime that a tank does not have to go all the way back to HQ to repair or hold a position is key. And so having that repair station up just keeps our tanks alive longer. And so make sure you're always looking to put that repair station up on our objective, near our objective for our tanks to hold, our defensive tank to hold longer and stay alive longer. And then, of course, you as an engineer have a torch too. And so that's also a key role that you're going to play is helping our tanks when they're in need. So on offensive mode, when we're pushing out, an engineer also helps with that by keeping our tanks alive just as much as it does a defensive position. So engineers are going to have that torch as well. And the engineer can play a very offensive role too because they do have satchels. And so when you upgrade your engineer higher up, you can play more of an offensive position with that and get in and take those tanks. With a satchel, it's one hit on a tank or one explosion on a tank blows up any tank. It doesn't matter what size it is or anything like that. Where an AT with the rockets and such can take a few different shots. And the more shots that you have to put on that tank, it allows more time for that tank to get away or turn and put fire on you. Where a satchel, you sneak up, put it on there, and you blow it up, and you run away giggling. That's my favorite part about sometimes running engineers is running that satchel and blowing them up and then giggle about it later when you think, oh, those three guys had no idea what was coming. And so it's just a great role. Again, probably one of the second most important roles to me in the game right now and the way that we play it is the engineer role. And so the more that you play it, the more you get acquainted with its abilities and what you do with it and how to play it is key. And so if you're not a guy that plays engineer, start playing it. Start using that role because we need it, and you're going to be a valued player for your service on it. But that's the role I wanted to talk about today. If there's a role that you think is more important or you have some information that you think is good to share about a role, same thing. Let me know. Send me that information, and I'll put it out there. I'll give you the credit for it. I don't just steal credit for information. As I pointed out with Cringe and all those guys, the stuff that they put out is what I shared, and I think it's great information. And that's our group. That's what we do. We share. We provide great information. We love this game, and we love to talk about it, and we love to strategize about it. And so I want to provide more of that insight to everybody. And so let me know your thoughts on that, and I hope you all have a good weekend. This is Charlie Podcast signing out. First Sergeant GLX Soller, you have a good week.