Commander needs more power

[M.J.Patterson]

Dont expect BF2 community players to be born general Pattons, ready to lead the virtual battlefield.
Back in vBF2, on one server, there was some **** who applied for a commander and just spammed Page Up/Down...I almost blew up

uhhh.. I had that happen in PR.. so sad.

[Eddiereyes909]

Dont expect BF2 community players to be born general Pattons, ready to lead the virtual battlefield.
Back in vBF2, on one server, there was some **** who applied for a commander and just spammed Page Up/Down...I almost blew up

dont be so sure My first time commanding a few weeks ago was great but we lost, just that the other team outsmarted us,damn militia having no command assets....

I'm still new to PR but i can tell that (not being conceited) that i can learn to be a Patton in a little while, mean while I'll settle for Montgomery

[blackeagle1992]

actually i think it not a bad idea at all there are lots if annoying players that do what he said
but on the other hand think of terrorist noobs who will be commander and start killing everybody for fun and/or nerves they are gonna be angry and start killing everybody "your stupiud"
"you didn't cover me"
and etc'

[.:iGi:.BLACKWIRE]

you are such pessimists! That's why there are open-betas to find the golden middle. There MUST be some way to make squadleaders to follow commader's orders!

Yeah be a good commander and people will follow your orders...
It could be that possibly some squads won't follow their orders if they are not familiar with the player acting as commander?

Also this is PR not WW1 where you would be shot by your CO.

[tupla_s]

Maybe show the flag status only to commander. SL and SM would only see them as white flags on the minimap.Then they would have to follow orders 'cos they don't know what else to do.

[Uncle Blues]

Also this is PR not WW1 where you would be shot by your CO.

Nowadays CO is not shooting at you, but putting you into a plane and sending you back to home or prison. Army is army and there is no room for questioning orders and not obeying them.

I'm not shure about capital punishment in PR, but there is one thing I sure of - Squadleader gets nothing for following orders, and commander can't do anything to him for not following them. And it must be changed!

Squadleader can kick squadmembers form the squad at any time. Commander can't do anything to squadleaders...

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

You are more like a Colonel in the American Civil War leading a regiment.
You know these people from home and they elected you as leader.
If you order them to do something stupid, most will ignore you.
If you order them to commit suicide in an attack, most will ignore you.
But, if you work with the strong SL, provide support and encouragement to the others you may develop a situation where SL will tend to follow in the general direction of your orders.
When that becomes common Pavlov' SL soon learn that following orders leads to more kill, less deaths and capped flags.
If you have reached this point and the enemy has not, the rest of the game is short but joyful and squads coalesce and flow with meaning and purpose.

If the above represents even 10% of the times I have commanded I would be amazed.

The point is that even if only 1 squad is listening you are providing a valuable function and over time the amount of capable people grows.

You must be patient, grasshopper.

[Longbow*]

no way. I've seen loads of retarded commanders ... giving them power to kill\kick squadleaders will be exploited and abused

[Outlawz7]

no way. I've seen loads of retarded commanders ... giving them power to kill\kick squadleaders will be exploited and abused

QFT

Well, how about this: youre commander and you give an order to a SL. He does not respond/or denies
Soon after the same SL asks you to come to his position and build up a bunch of bunkers and defences, cos hes under attack (because he didnt listened to your orders). You denie that, and when he asks, why, you tell him for disobeying orders.
Fair deal and its not as ghey as killing a whole squad etc.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

The only good solution I can think of requires about 10 " what ifs" so it's about on par with a fastroping suggestion.
The brutal fact is we don't have a realistic and accurate ranking system so that element is useless and mutiny never works and the last thing I would ever want is for one of the spoiled children who is 3 Mountain Dews over the line( props to Clavdivs) to have the ability to restructure my squad because I did not obey him.
The first realistic step would be to have ABR working and clear the stats to 0.
The people with the highest cumulative teamwork score would have preference on CO's slot.
But as sketchy as that scenario is I still doubt if it's possible with "hardcoding".

[Outlawz7]

Something tells me, that this whole ABR thing would bring stat padding into PR, since it would work like vBF2 (highest rank gets the commander seat)

[Long Bow]

Something tells me, that this whole ABR thing would bring stat padding into PR, since it would work like vBF2 (highest rank gets the commander seat)

That is what I would fear as well. An example might be you have a more mature player who only gets a limited amount of time per week to play but is very good, he/she doesn't have the shear volume of time say a teenager who can play double the hours per week. Heck even Devs don't seem to get alot of play time and could end up with lower ranks. I don't mean that the teenager would be a poor commander rather he/she would be afforded the opportunity over another player who very well could be a good commander as well.

The original poster is on to something but legal TK's etc. are not the best way to get around this. I think not assisting that squad is one penalty already available. However in PR there are mechanisms in game to enforce team work at the squad level through positive means. You join a squad you have access to limited kits and rally points to spawn forward at etc. A positive gain accompanying cooperation with the CO could be the route to go; no negative exploits.

Just to throw an idea out there if the commander could allow or deny squads to have access to limited kits it could be an incentive to follow orders. The defualt for all squads would be to have access which could be turned off by the commander. The quartermaster could have a message ala "Your squad has failed to follow the commanders orders, limited kit privillages revoked until further notice. Take it up with your CO". The upside would be if you have a squad or two who are being idiots at least you can make sure limited kits are not being wasted on non-core opperations. This cold be extended to include crewman and pilot kits (oh just imagine the plane whores sitting there for 10 minutes to only find out they can't get a pilot kit... that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking about that).When they ***** to you your responce would be to please follow orders and then re-instate the limited kits. This little option would probably be overlooked by most new commanders but I will admit if you get a a-hole commanding then he/she could just do it out of spite.

[VipersGhost]

I love that idea long bow. The commander needs to be able to punish people in a way thats not really fun for the commander. Denying access to kits is a great way to accomplish this I think. Its not like someone is going to get a real kick out out limiting squad kicks out of spite. Just doesn't seem like it would go down like that....eitherway it'd definitely need to be tested. Even if your kits are limited its not like you are unable to play...just no rallys or AT etc. The rifleman+eng+medic squads are always strong.

[Long Bow]

I love that idea long bow. The commander needs to be able to punish people in a way thats not really fun for the commander. Denying access to kits is a great way to accomplish this I think. Its not like someone is going to get a real kick out out limiting squad kicks out of spite. Just doesn't seem like it would go down like that....eitherway it'd definitely need to be tested. Even if your kits are limited its not like you are unable to play...just no rallys or AT etc. The rifleman+eng+medic squads are always strong.

Thanks ViperGhost. For sure this would need some thorough testing, play around with what kits should be included under the ban, if it even is possible. But I know if I was in a squad and had no access to limited kits and a SL without an officer kit (debatable if the officer kit should be included under the ban) I would get annoyed quickly and bug my SL to follow the commanders orders.

[Masaq]

Just out of interest, why are you guys all focusing on punishment? Punishment is the *worst* way to change someone's behaviour- people continue to obey only while the punishment (or threat thereof) is applied.

Positive and Negative reinforcement both work much better in the long term.

For example, currently as a commander I will withhold supply crates, vehicles and artillery barrages for squads that are not/have not been following orders (without a reasonable excuse). Squads lone-wolfing it at the back of the map 3 CPs from where they're needed will run out of ammo- and when they request it, I explain that there are others doing more tactically-important work who will get the crates until they rejoin the battle at a location I choose.

Communication is key. Explain to your squad leaders what you want them to do- and *why*. At the start of each round when I'm commanding I always state that I don't want any squads moving ahead of the CPs we're currently tasked to attack, and that I want at least one squad defending per active D-CP and one attacking per active A-CP. When a squad captures a control point- THAT SQUAD then becomes responsible for holding it until the next CP has been taken.

This way each squad gets a chance to attack, and each a chance to defend- unless squad leaders have specific squad-makeups that make a particular role more attractive.

If people *gained* points for *following* orders, you'd see a far greater take-up of orders. BF2142 awards additional teamwork points to anyone undertaking an action within a set radius of a commander/squad-leader's order location. SLs and Commanders gain points too for placing orders that are then acted upon, so the whole thing reinforces itself. It works very well.

Additionally, if the "Good work, squad!" message imparted some, say, 10 point bonus to all squad members and could only be issued once every 5 minutes or so, a decent commander could influence his squad's actions in that manner too.

It's better to make bad team-players WANT to be good team-players for the advantages than to take bad team-players and basically reinforce that the team doesn't want them around.

Trust me on this, human behaviour is my livelihood

[Long Bow]

[R-Pub]Masaq why don't you STFU!!!!!











No you are correct positive is more productive That was my point that if we take a heavy handed approach like allowing the commander to TK or punish it wouldn't work in the long run. My suggestion was the least negative approach I could think of at the time. I agree a positive results based system could be the fix

[dbzao]

Very good points Masaq...

The BF2142 system of bonus when you are close to the order markers was something we tried to import to BF2. We didn't do that yet, but we have bonus points when you are 50m close to the squad leader and commander. So that doesn't help much with this commander problem.

I really don't know the solution, but all of your suggestions will be taken into consideration.

Also, I like how you said that the commander needs to tell a squad what to do and WHY. That is very important for the squad leader to start trusting the commander.

If I get just a "attack here" command on a CP very out of my way, with another squad closer to it and I'm very active in defending a CP, etc, is very hard to trust your commander and obey that order.

If commanders said something like "squad 2, can you get your men to the Bridge and hold while squad 3 comes from the other side and make sure you don't let any enemy APC pass over it", that is very easy to understand and see what is the commander plan.

Once I was telling a squad to go to the west side of a flag to attack (they were at the south east) but I wasn't using voip, just attack and defend commands. They were saying "negative", "negative" and eventually the SL said "that order doesn't make sense, we are attacking from this side". Then I had to explain to him that another squad was already attacking from the east and had the orders to attack from there, and I wanted his squad to flank around and attack from the other side.

So yeah, explaining WHY they have to do that is very important, and the easiest way is to talk to them instead of just giving random orders. That is not the solution for ALL the commander-squad leaders problems, but is good to pass on the idea.

[blud]

re: OP,

well, I think what needs to happen is like a rewards system. The commander gives a mission, and the squad should get rewarded for following orders - and not just in the abstract way of "well the reward is winning".

So if the commander says attack this base, then the squad should get more points for killing enemies in that area - and then bonus points when they achieve their objective. Or for example, they should get no points for killing enemies anywhere else since they aren't following orders. This could be kept track of by having an objective point on the map and then calculating the player's distance from the point. Too far and you don't get points for anything you are doing.

Likewise if the command was to defend a base, you would only get points for doing stuff in that area, and the longer you manage to defend the base the more points you get.

Stuff like this would be SO doable if ABR was fixed up properly and done standard on PR servers. Couple that with needing ranks to get stuff like request kits and using certain vehicles, and you will have a player base who feels a personal will to follow orders. You could mold the way people play this game through something real instead of just by saying "well thats how you *should* play it". Why? Give people a reason and they will do it.

[Masaq]

A combined approach might work:

- Bonus points for killing/healing/repairing within a 25m-50m radius of an Order Waypoint

-Bonus points awardable in some fashion by a commander (obviously limited number- say once every 5, 10 mins or so)

-The possibility to lengthen the "Can't Issue You Another So Quick" time period for the squad, perhaps as opposed to denying limited kits entirely

-Adding a penalty to "Follow Orders!" (again, time-limited) with say a -10 point teamwork effect so that the stick could be used in conjunction with the carrot, and finally:

-An "auto-mutiny" or something similar that punished commanders once they used a certain number of the punishments- so could be used a few times to encourage a particularly **** squad leader to haul *** in the right direction, but NOT to abuse an entire team for an entire match.

All of this would be a nightmare to code, implement and balance- but it's just a few suggestions as to how software-based options for the commander could be worked upon, as opposed to a "7h1s n33d5 D01ng!!!!111" comment

[Michael_Denmark]

After tournament Campaign 5 is done a commander training program will begin.

Tactically commanders are absolutely needed. Punishment...not sure as for now, not sure if we as a community is ready for that due to the fact that we (again) as a community in general isn’t that tactical founded.

The C program will run the rest of 2007 when started up. No related info available about the final draft to the program yet, so please don’t pm yet.

Thanks

Mike