Getting Started

Welcome to Sigma Security Group, this guide has been created to assist new Candidates that are looking to take part in our Operations. If you are here, I believe it safe to assume that you have already read our Unit Information page, and know our Charter and Goals from front to back. If you have not, click here.

In this guide, we will cover the three fundamentals of designing a kit for operations here at Sigma Security Group. We will also briefly go over the radios we use in the Advanced Combat Radio Environment mod ("ACRE" for short), and how to treat yourself should you suffer any injuries during an operation. As you already know, the two game-changing mods we use here are ACE3, and ACRE. These mods allow us to increase the immersion levels by communicating within the boundaries of authentic radio limitations, as well as enhancing the base game's ballistic and medical simulation.

Deployment
Before joining an operation, ensure that you have your TeamSpeak open and connected to our server. Next, simply load our mod pack and ensure that there are absolutely no other mods loaded. Once you have completed the previous two steps, launch Arma with the aforementioned mod pack and connect to our server with your server browser.

Once you have connected to the operations server, you will be greeted by a deploy screen, now this portion is crucial if you are a Candidate or Associate, do NOT select the FIRST slot in a team. The reason we suggest this to new members is to avoid any confusion with the structure of our unit here, as the first slot of every team is a team leader position. Having Contractors and up to be our main leaders allows us as a unit to give the new candidates a good example to follow and sets standards they will be expected to reach as they progress. Additionally, if you are NOT familiar with ACE3 medical at all do NOT take a Medic Slot. The ACE3 medical system can have drastic consequences for those who have little to no experience. If you would like to learn how to be a Medic, I would implore you to ask anyone with a Medic Certification, or a Medical SME, to consult you and teach you how to best practice that role.

Pre/Post Operation
At Sigma Security Group, playing an operation can best be separated into five parts.
 * 1)  Briefing - Briefing is given within 5 minutes of the scheduled start time. This is the time the Curator of the mission will be in character, and give you the mission objectives and mission parameters. This is also the time the team leaders and team members will ask any questions about the aforementioned.
 * 2)  "Barbie" & Planning Phase - The 'barbie' and planning phase is the time allotted to the team leaders and teams to draw a plan for the operation and build their contextual kits appropriately for the tasks they might need to accomplish.
 * 3)  Kit Assessment & Step Off - Kit assessment is the time your specific team leader will take to ensure your team knows the plan and mission directive, as well as the tasks your team is specifically responsible for. This is also the time when your team leader will ensure you have the correct equipment and if not, will assign you a role to fulfill. Once that portion is complete, you will all step off to begin the operation.
 * 4)  The Operation - Self-explanatory, but this is the time you will actually be playing the operation.
 * 5)  After Action Review - Or "AAR" for short, is the time you will enter the discord "Command Channel" to hear how the mission went, and receive and offer constructive criticism for both yourself and your team members. Once again this should be purely constructive criticism. Additionally, there will also be a portion for commendations, and recommendations for promotion. Lastly, we like to throw in "war stories" and let the community share some awesome moments that they had in an operation.

The Rifleman's Way
Now that you know all the steps to take part in both before and after an operation, let's talk about actually playing one. Firstly, we will be discussing the ACE3 Interaction Menu. Your ACE interact and self interact menu are what you will use to climb in vehicles, rig explosives, and access your equipment, as well as a plethora of other functions we will not discuss today. To ACE interact on something, press your "Windows Key". To self interact press "Left Ctrl + Windows Key".

Now that we know how to interact with things we will cover loadout building for operation. When building a loadout for operation here at Sigma, I always employ three points that allow me to build a kit appropriate to my mission. The three points are as follows; "Stop Holes, Plug Holes, Make Holes".

"Stop Holes"
"Stop Holes" refers to your armor system. With ACE3, wearing body armor will allow you to stay up and in the fight longer than without, and can reduce the chance of gunshot wounds fatally killing you to the chest. This includes your plate carrier and helmet system. Additionally, when you select a helmet system, I would implore you to consider selecting a helmet that has electronic hearing protection with little to no volume muffling. Electronic hearing protection on your helmet allows you to filter out most loud gunshots and explosions while not deafening or muffling player speech levels around you. It also protects against most noise levels in-game so as to prevent your character from having their ears blown out.

While useful, electronic hearing protection is not perfect, and for sitting in certain vehicles you will have to double up with earplugs. Lastly, to discern which head accessories have "EHP", you may look on the top left of your screen while browsing the arsenal on a selected helmet and find "Hearing Protection" on the dialogue box.

"Plug Holes"
"Plug Holes" refers to ensuring your kit contains the medical equipment necessary to sustain yourself, should you become wounded during an operation. Your kit should include a healthy amount of bandages and a minimum of four tourniquets to prevent you from bleeding out and eventually dying. Additionally, always be sure to carry a minimum of four splints. Should you sustain a fracture to your leg, for instance, you will not be able to run, and splinting this injury is your only solution.

For the sake of simplicity, we will not be covering every single bandage type and the differences between each, lest it become too esoteric. Pictured to the right of this section is what I carry as my Infantry First Aid Kit, or "IFAK" for short-- in my characters uniform. This allows me to be somewhat independent in regards to dealing with my own injuries. Note that I do not carry a stitch kit or personal aid kit as a standard rifleman, as they are of no use to me. At Sigma Security Group, only Medics and Team Leaders can use those items.

Now, how do we deal with injuries on the infantry level? To access your Medical Menu, simply press "H" to bring it up and tend to your wounds. As a rifleman, I have broken up the safe application of my IFAK into three points; "Slow the bleed, Staunch the bleed, Stitch the bleed." For this example, I will be using a wounded arm.

Firstly, once you have sustained this injury to a limb, your immediate action should be to apply a tourniquet as quickly as possible, this will allow you to slow the blood loss from that limb until you are in a safe enough environment to begin bandaging or being tended to by a medic. You may access your tourniquets by opening your medical menu and navigating to "Bandages/Fractures", as pictured to the right of this section. Once you have applied the tourniquet, you will notice a blue band appear on the wounded limb--as pictured in the next section.

Secondly, your next order of business--should the environment permit it--is to begin bandaging those wounds to prevent further blood loss. Doing so will in-turn allow your team's medic to spend less time on you and more time on critical patients as the battlefield situation progresses. The less work you can create for your medic, the more efficiency the team has a whole, so remember, treat yourself as much as you can as long as the environment permits it is safe to do so. You can access your bandages from the "Bandages/Fractures" tab in the medical menu, as pictured at the bottom right of this section.

Lastly, your final action should be to double-check your character via the medical menu, and ensure that you have taken care of everything in your ability as the rifleman. To denote whether a wounded extremity has successfully been bandaged, the body part should be dark blue(as pictured on the right). Additionally, if your character is in extreme pain, you may give yourself morphine, which you can access from the medication tab in the medical menu. From this point on, you would seek your team's medic, and once the situation permits it, they will stitch you, provide you with blood, and lastly "PAK" you to ensure you are completely green.

"Make Holes"
"Make Holes" refers to--well,...bullets. In this section we will also discuss how to set your kit in the most useful manner the best benefits your team. When you load into the operations server, you will begin with a default kit that contains the bulk of what you will need to complete an operation, but we will briefly go over the importance of making your kit more multi-faceted and we will also cover mission-essential gear(MEG for short). Something to always remember as a rifleman, is that it pays to be as light as possible. Always do your best to cut back the weight of your character when designing a kit, as this allows your team to give you more responsibility by carrying items such as spare ammo for your Gunner, or filling that extra load capacity with a disposable anti-tank weapon. As a rifleman, you should always carry these items; 1x Vector 21 NITE, 1x AN/PRC 152 Radio, 1x MicroDagr GPS, 1x Maglite XL50, 1x Earplugs, and 1x Entrenching Tool.

The Vector 21 NITE is a rangefinding binocular that allows you to quickly tell the distance between two points. To range-find something you are looking at, simply bring up your binoculars and place the crosshairs of your binos on the target area and hold "R" then release. The Vector 21 will then display the distance from your position to the object or area you are looking at. As the name implies, the Vector 21 NITE has a night vision setting. To switch to the night vision setting, while looking through the binoculars, press "N".

The MicroDagr GPS allows you to path to your objectives and find your team leaders more quickly, as both the map and GPS will allow you to track the exact position of those individuals. The Maglite XL50 will allow you to see your characters map at night. To navigate to the MicroDagr, simply press the "Home" key on your keyboard twice and click the map icon at the bottom right. Once you have selected the map function and it displays, simply press "ESC" and it will seat at the bottom right of your screen.

The Entrenching Tool, or "E-Tool" for short, is your most overpowered piece of equipment. It allows you to dig trenches on any soft ground quickly and easily to better provide cover for yourself and your team. To access your E-Tool, simply self interact and select "Equipment", and then, "Entrenching Tool", followed by which trench you would like to construct. You may also assist others in digging larger trenches by approaching the ground they are digging and ace interact on it and select, "Help Digging".

Earplugs will be the most common tool you use during operations. As the name implies, they assist in preventing your character from developing tinnitus, and offer some solace from loud noises in-game. They can be accessed by self-interacting and navigating to "Equipment", and selecting "Earplugs In". To remove them, simply repeat that process and select, "Earplugs Out".

Mission Essential Equipment (MEE)
Mission essential equipment pertains to tools or sensitive items that are a necessity to mission completion. MEE can range from plastic explosives, intel, Night Optical Devices(NODs), to infrared strobes. IR strobes emit a beacon of light in the infrared spectrum, which is invisible to the naked eye. IR strobes will allow your team to find you at night under the perspective of NODs and IR optical viewing devices. To equip an IR strobe, you may find it in the miscellaneous tab in the arsenal. Once you have one in your inventory, self-interact and select "Equipment", and "Attach IR Strobe".

Basic Infantry Tactics
When in an operation, you will almost always be attached to a five-man fireteam. This team is comprised of a Team Leader (TL) and a team medic, along with three Operators who will hold various roles, e.g. marksman or anti-tank. Typically, this role will be assigned to you by your Team Leader after briefing, and he will request that you carry mission-specific equipment.

When moving with your team, it is important to maintain approximately fifteen meters of spacing from other team members at all times, unless circumstances dictate otherwise (e.g. trading gear, assisting with medical.) This is due to the high likelihood of entire buddy-teams or fireteams being easily wiped out or made ineffective by explosive munitions when clustered together.

If moving in any sort of formation, it is important to note that each team member is responsible for a sector. The Operator at the front of the formation should be sweeping roughly a 90-degree field to his front-left, front, and front-right. Similarly, the Operators at the right and left of the formation should be constantly sweeping their right or left, and the man in the rear of the move order should be periodically looking behind the team to ensure they are not being followed. When stopped, team members should be watching all sides of the formation, not simply the direction they had been moving. Maintaining security is paramount at all times, as one properly executed flanking maneuver can easily decimate an entire five-man team.

Radios
The radio you will use most commonly as a new Candidate during operations is the AN/PRC-152. This radio will serve as your basis for communication with your team members. Your PRC152 hosts a slew of other functions we will not be discussing today, but most importantly, it allows you to set your radio to independent ears, control its volume output, and switch channels.

The most important thing to remember for radio speech is that there is no "I" or "me" and that you should always speak in the third-person, as this allows your team leader a chance to know exactly whos speaking.

To switch channels on your PRC152, simply use your self-interaction key on ace (default is CTRL + Windows key). While holding your self-interact key, hover over "Radio", the ace menu will expand, then hover over "Open" and let go of your self-interact key to open your PRC152 interface. Then press the physical button on your radio labeled "PRE+ or PRE-" until you reach your associated "Echo" team on the radio display screen. If you are in "Echo 1," press "PRE+ or PRE-" until you see ECHO1 on the radio display screen. To close out the radio interface, just press "ESC". If you would like to set which ear your radio will transmit from, simply self-interact and select "Radios", "AN/PRC-152", and select one of three options; "Left Ear," "Right Ear," or "Both Ears".

" ACEREPs/CASREPs & Everything In Between"
A common phrase you will hear repeated over your radio during operations is "ACEREP". ACEREP stands for "Ammo, Casualty, and Equipment Report". In crayon talk, it means; "How much lead you lugging?", "Are you or anyone else asleep or dead?", and "Do you still have the MEE?". It is primarily used as a method to tell whether a player or team member(s) have succumbed to their injuries. Dead men don't talk. If someone does not respond to an ACEREP on the radio, they are likely dead, or unconscious. You should always immediately notify the rest of your team that this person might be dead/down. Additionally, always be sure to know your condition before responding to an ACEREP. If you only have a scratch on your arm, you are likely very green. If you are fucked up to all hell and back and look like swiss cheese, you are likely very red.

In Closing
I hope you all enjoyed this guide, and that it serves you well during your operations here at Sigma Security Group. Remember, you are only as strong as you choose to be, and that this wall of text is only a summation of what I found to truly help me as a new member. With that, I have nothing further to say but; Keep trying, keep improving.

-E.