Yeah, I get that. It's more the positioning of people in the formation. BUT, with what they have to work with, it's about as ideal as it's going to get. Suppression up front that can take any of three main directions with the same kind of AOE in the back with grenades, or Dodgers serving as grenadier for the unit. Riflemen are positioned so they can coordinate in any direction and keeping their best assets in the middle.
It's very reminiscent of an adventuring party formation in D&D. Fighters in the front, mages in the back with other ranged/melee capable mixed in. Enfilade fire down a line would indeed be a machine gunner's wet dream and would be stupid. A MaDeuce is a hell of meat grinder in that kind of situation, but pass-through or over penetration is a real issue out there.
So yeah... It's not great, but it's about as good as it can get. Eli was mostly just commenting in his head about it, but is on the same page.
On a side note: This is why I avoid letting people into character's head, to see their thought processes. Becaus then tings come up OOC, and people want to start adding in OOC info as far as discussions go. Suddenly characters become psychic, or able to read a person like a book, which is an unconscious usage of OOC knowledge or metagaming and I avoid it often.
And that's not to say that is what RoadRash is doing, but it's something that comes to mind as I write this stuff out. I think that's one big difference between novel type writing, and RP-style writing for me. For a novel, the reader can't interact, or alter things, so by all means, they should be in the main character's head. For RP though, unless psychic, or very good at reading people... I tend to let them make inferences from what is said and expressed. Maybe this has made my writing suffer over the years, but I've been working back into adding thought processes, underlying feelings or emotions.
I've expressed that on the Guild before. It's something that again came to mind as I was starting this post. It's just something to be careful of, and again, not saying Road is doing that.
And no, I'm not angry/mad/upset/irritate.d I'm pretty happy, and calm and collected. Just putting it out there.
Carry on.