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Fact:Commander needs editing

Fact: The DEVs are unwilling to discuss their progress here. Without them, our discussion is useless.

The DEVs are unwilling to discuss their progress here. Without them, our discussion is useless.

what exactly you talking about gclark???

I was hoping you'd come back to ask.

Has the team actually tried to move the CO away from the role of battlefield radio operator? There have been a lot of quality suggestions to do that since I've been a member of the forum, but they never seem to go anywhere.

Most suggestions are implausible. All the suggestions in this thread thus far are all resuggestions of ideas brought up at least 12 months ago.

Yes the CO position needs an overhaul, no progress has been made yet but hoping for some changes for v0.9
however, commanding in v086 can be very erwarding you just need the right SLs to make it happen. Try out the new spotted icons that were added that most don't know are there they can come in handy.

Well I've lost all hope....again

Fuzzhead don't take this personally but your continued defense of the post .7xx command changes undermines your credibility. The changes are a total failure, full stop.

If you are the one who sided with the voices advocating these changes or they are from you directly then you are not the person who PR should be listening to for .9 Command mod decisions. Map markers, LZ's are cool, no doubt but there is no longer a chain of command and you have through these decisions basically made this an enlisted squad shooter. No offense intended but as someone who really enjoyed the .7xx CO run what seems acceptable to you as a remedy for .9 seems unacceptable to the rest of us who post in support of Dominant Authoritarian Commanders (even if they get it wrong).

You are not qualified to audit the required changes, you need a COMMANDERS perspective as by your own admission your are not a born Commander/leader. No offense intended, really you run a great Armour squad. The game is too soft like this, SL and players need a CO driving them to glorious bloody victory, not a communal democracy.

The fix is simple:


NO CO = NO Firebase

• as a firebase is arguably one of the most strategic assets available

CO death or resignation

• penalty to be determined spawn/tickets

CO is mobile

• penalties to contend with, satmap from a handheld on his uniform skin
• CO is returned to being a high value target as his death yields opfor advantage
• currently killing a CO means nothing to game play

New CO toys

• CO vehicle, more 'death from above', shovel in kit

This will allow for a flexible command style that varies with each map and each commander. I think what we are trying to say is put it back the way it was in .7xx with tweaks and move on. Don't try to create a new 'half-soft' position.

Godfather wants his Airfield....

multiplan:
To each his opinion.... I remember the v0.6 and v0.7 CO quite well (was 2 years ago). I think alot of people forget the negatives of having the CO setup that way back then (CO building stuff + mobile). I think the behavior we get from v0.86 CO's is much much more closer to what the position should be doing rather than back then.

Back then, you'd be lucky to receive a move command from a CO, let alone a CO giving individual squads order via VOIP. The position was used cause people enjoyed building shit and being in the big shoes, even if they didnt exactly know what they were doing

You are not qualified to audit the required changes, you need a COMMANDERS perspective as by your own admission your are not a born Commander/leader.

Well I did not say I have not commanded I've limited play time with v0.86, but I have commanded about 6 times now, each a victory. Previous experience involved some TG scrims and various public nights with teamspeak, and often than not it ended with victory on the team I was on more times than not. Altogether probably about 200 sessions of CO from PR v0.4-v0.86.

But my experience as CO I dont think is as important as observing general publics behavior with the position. From what I've seen, use of the CO is obviously much more rare now, but when players DO step in, it tends to be much more geared towards actually commanding, and less geared towards the attitudes mots public CO had during the v0.6-v0.7 days, of careless dangerous driving right through enemy lines in crazy attempts to build firebases in weird places and to "scout" the enemy.

I'm not saying mobility for CO is out of the question design wise, I'm saying it wont do much in giving the CO more control over his troops and attracting the kind of players we want to the position, but would do the opposite. However, clearly some changes are needed to make the position more enticing, especially to those strategy players who are keen on that sort of stuff. Ideally I think we would want a system that would make an ex military leader feel comfortable and with some degree of control over the squad leaders under him, with enough different ways of gathering intel that he would be able to make some tactical decisions and not feel like he is leading blind. Obviously its still far off from this ideal, but IMO its much closer than what we were at with the kind of CO's back in v0.6 / v0.7.

NO CO = NO Firebase

Tried this for a few versions. Most devs agreed it was just not working out, it forced players too much to play a position that they didnt always want to play. We dont want to FORCE players into the position, we want the right kind of players to be excited to step up into that position when they see its avaliable. We also want PR to still be playable in case none of those type of players are around on the server at the moment.

CO death or resignation

A possibility if mobility is returned, but still would do little to deter the types of players that liked doing that destructive behavior in the past as these types rarely are concerned with abstract concepts like "tickets".

New CO toys - CO vehicle, more 'death from above', shovel in kit

A CO vehicle is I think a big topic on itself, but ultimately I think it would just be too big of a distraction and too easily misused.
More off map support may come in the future, but first we want more "on map" support ala player manned mortar pits.
Shovels in officer kits I think is a bad idea, we dont want to return the CO to role of bob the builder, we want him to look at the big picture and command the entire team, especially with VOIP. returning the shovel just basically reverts him back to v0.7 status, which I know is what your asking for, but sorry to say thats not the direction PR will probably go.

What aspects of v0.7 commanding did you enjoy the most? What aspects do you think could be incoporated into v0.86 gameplay?

# currently killing a CO means nothing to game play

Just wanna say really that being killed as CO sucks donkey balls.

Fact is, because of how teh commander screen works in bf2 (i.e. teh VOIP interface) you have to spend alot of time if not all your time in the commander screen. This means you cannot defend yourself.
it feels bad to get killed in this way since the question comes in to your mind "I'm doing something teamwork orientated in support of my team...which isn't as fun as going around shooting stuff or healing or whatever...yet I am basically being punished for it by being killed?"

There is only 1 vehicle that would be useful under commander's control and that is a Logistic truck, as only a dedicated squad or commander will bring the damn things back for reloading and safety.

Being able to move around the map as commander would not being any advantages unless it was in a resupply role imo.

Fuzzhead don't take this personally but your continued defense of the post .7xx command changes undermines your credibility. The changes are a total failure, full stop.

Lets be respectful please....

NO CO = NO Firebase

* as a firebase is arguably one of the most strategic assets available


CO death or resignation

* penalty to be determined spawn/tickets

I hated the no firebase thing, pissed me off no-end. if two squads wanted to set a FB at the same time, you had to wait ages, even longer if a FB refused to set while the build order was operational.

About resignation/death, what happens if the CO Disconnects from the server? or gets bored and joins a squad?

Being able to resign and do a supply run is the only thing keeping me interested in COing at all.

It may sound like going a little bit off topic but it's connected with the lack of situational awareness of commanders.

SLs should have their spotting ability back (like they had in 0.7 or 0.75), so they can manually put a marker from the list on the comm rose or on the map without the commander present on the battlefield and without his confirmation. It may sound like making commander more useless but here me out...

Currently commander on the field is a rare thing and only commander can approve contact reports made by comm rose spotting system. Without commander there is no point of using that function... and that's the problem, for most of the time people don't use it, it's useless option.... it's useless to the point when even if a commander is present they still don't use it... they get used to not using that spotting system. Those who came to the mod right after bf2 are using that option more often then PR veterans, because they used it a lot of times in vanilla.

TBH, two weeks ago I've been playing with commander and I marked targets for commander just like for my team mates with markers and additional comment on VOIP (like enemy tank on my marker, etc)....

I don't know about you but I just realised I don't use that comm rose spotting option any more

So, in general... SLs putting markers more often = better situational awareness of commander.

I like this idea.

I would go a bit further into detail and suggest that contact reports from SL be added only to that squads map. The commander can see those marks but must then approve them for the entire team, in order for them to make the other squads' maps.

In addition, I think it might be great if this sort of system scaled down to having squad members use their contact option to place a temporary spotted marker on the SL's map, which in turn needs to be approved and/or replaced with a proper contact type (inf., vehicle, etc.) marker for the rest of the squad to see.

I think this wouldn't be too much of an advantage over the existing system yet it would just save time and prevent order markers from being temporarily moved around to mark contacts for a squad.

Sorry for continuing this off-topic thread, but I think it is an idea definitely worth expanding.

Hello, guys. Beforehand i apologize for my English. Also, i haven't time to read all this topic, so, maybe i will repeat someone's suggestions.
I think, all we need is keep reality as a key in this discussion (and all others discussions, when we speak about PR ). And then all things will be clear. Thats what i mean:


1. It's impossible that all soldiers on modern battlefields wears personal GPS devices (ingame map looks like GPS screen, right?), especially terrorists and insurgents. Such devices can be used by SL or commander only (generally speaking, i doubt in this too, but lets pretend ). SO:
- all troops should have simple (paper-like) maps, without any markers (even your own green\blue point should be removed). So, if you dont belong to any squad, you are completely helpless and disoriented in battlefield. You can only determine your position by parsing area landscape with your map and by using compass. You dont know nothing about other allied troops, firebases (cant spawn on them), enemies, captured\uncaptured flags, cant send team-wide requests etc. That's when all this "rambos" and "lone wolfs" will suck!! As they suck in real war. No team work - no victory!! Khm. sorry for that Lets continue.
You have GPS-like map screen only when You are near (50 m by example) to gps devices (your SL, FB, main base, heavy vehicles, which have GPS devices). So, now, i think , everyone will join squads and we removed some unrealistic things from the bottom of military hierarchy. Now, what changes on squad level:


2. Lets start with SquadLeader. SL now is very advanced hitech-dude. He has GPS and some sort of communication devices (lets name it "radio station"). With his GPS he can:
- determine his position on map
- see map-markers, which Commander sets up
- can setup his own markers (and they will be visible by commander and other SLs (if accepted by commander)).
So, SL is overmind of the squad now. Only he knows all situation on battlefield. Other squad -members knows only what SL wants them to know .
As i said before, other squad-members can see their map-coords only when they close to SL (close enough to ask, like in real life, 50 meters by example). Maybe, only exception is for sniper kit. I think, snipers should have gps too, because they need to know map coords to spot enemies precisely and because they are not close-combat units, so they can be far from SL and rest of squad. And also snipers should have portable radio.
You may ask, why SL or sniper needs this "radio" and what exactly it does? This is interesting moment. All ingame voip-functions should work like in real life:
- first important thing: if You are dead - You can't say anything (voip is disabled for You),
- i doubt that on real battlefield everyone uses microphones and head-phones to communicate inside squad. It's expensive equipment to give it to every soldier. Some special forces - maybe, but not in regular armies.
So, all voip communications should looks like simple talks, not a radio translations. Which means that if You press 'B' and tell something - only people which are close to You will hear this. I understand that this is hard to implement due some technical restrictions, but i think this can be implemented on squad level. I.e. if you tell something to your squad-mate and he is in SOME distance from You - he hears You, other - he dont. This helps to keep squad together and adds more realism to squad level. And that's why sniper need portable radio! Now he can tell to SL about all bad guys he saw in his aim .
Maybe portable radios can be taken from supply by other squad members, but it must be limited (by example 2 portable radios per squad). This is all about portable radio, but what about radio, which SL have? O, this is different story.
- Finally, we have explanation about rally points and their unreality! Now all opponnents of rally points will be burried under my arguments Rally point = radio station (remember which sounds comes from rally points ?) SL wears radio station on his back (1) or he can drop it on earth (2):
(1) he wears it, so he can transmitt his coordinates to Commander and request reinforcements, which means squad members can spawn on them (plain old BF2). But if enemies are near to SL (like when they near to rally point) - sorry, chief, no reinforcements (no respawns). In the end, if SL will be killed when he wears radio and his kit (with radio) disapears - game over. All squad respawns on FB\main.

(2) he drops radio. This looks like standard rally point mechanism. Radio works, commander knows Your coordinates and can send reinforcements (squad spawns on dropped radio). Now SL can engage enemies and dies with honor But when he needs to transmit something to Commander, he needs to move to radio and press 'E' by example. In this moment all GPS markers, which SL setted on his GPS, translated to Commander. Or he can press 'B' and communicate with Commander by voice.
Fuf, thanks for reading this. Done with squads and goes to (FINALLY!!!) Commander level!


3. With 1. and 2. i think there is no reason to explain why playing commander will be very interesting now. Because all team wil be blind without You.
- You spot enemies,
- You spot friendly squads (if You dont - teamkills incidents are guaranteed , by the way - teamkills messages should be removed!! No such thing in real life, as i know ),
- You tell to SL what other SLs planning to do,
- You spot allied FBs, to allow all team knows about their positions and spawn there,
etc
One important thing - all chat messages follows same rules as voip !!! This means, no messages to all, no messages when You are dead (dont know why PR devs didnt removed this yet), no messages to Commander if You dont have radio station etc. Chat is just the same as voip for dudes without microphone ))
As soon as reality is the key - all commander abilities which exists in real life, should be presented somehow. More frequently artillery support (every 20-30 min), mine fields etc. This is real life, guys. Artillery solves all Your problems with enemies with easy. But if enemy has trenches, fox holes, hideouts etc - artillery doesnt helps much. So, this forces SLs to build more protected FBs. And this is another one step to realism.
And yes, if commander is killed, then find a new one should take a looong time (which means no one can take its duty in some amount of time).
And no, commanders does not traveling on battlefields with transport (maybe in ancient times this was true, but not now. Army headquarters resides in some bunkers or hard defended bases).


If someones interesting, i can describe my ideas about returning specops kit in game. It fits very well to concept i described and brings interesting things in game environment.
Thanks for read.

Fuzzhead,

You are right about:

[R-DEV]fuzzhead wrote:"Back then, you'd be lucky to receive a move command from a CO, let alone a CO giving individual squads order via VOIP. The position was used cause people enjoyed building shit and being in the big shoes, even if they didn't exactly know what they were doing"

[R-DEV]fuzzhead wrote:"careless dangerous driving...crazy attempts to build firebases in weird places...."
"A possibility if mobility is returned, but still would do little to deter the types of players that liked doing that destructive behavior in the past as these types rarely are concerned with abstract concepts like "tickets".

There is no doubt there were abuses with the .7xx CO, but aren't these server administration issues and not game design issues? There are just as many destructive players now logging on that need to be policed and 'name squad after asset' is a comparable example of admin based enforcement.

What's wrong with NO CO = No Firebase with server admins enforcing a die twice as a CO and get a warning on top of a spawn penalty? If the CO is screwing around like an asset stealer he gets warned/kicked.

[R-DEV]fuzzhead wrote:"it forced players too much to play a position that they didn't always want to play. We don't want to FORCE players into the position, we want the right kind of players to be excited to step up into that position when they see its available. We also want PR to still be playable in case none of those type of players are around on the server at the moment."

I really respect this position from the playability/broad audience perspective but forcing people to 'step up' and command just like with SL's is what makes the game so great. Even if the CO was clueless, he would get guidance from the SL's in .7xx and by the end of the round he had a taste of the massive stress involved and he knew if he wanted more in another round. Usually in the subsequent round after a bad CO someone who knew what they were doing or was better equipped to learn and adapt would step up because they felt they could do a better job.

[R-DEV]fuzzhead wrote:"I think we would want a system that would make an ex military leader feel comfortable and. .... he would be able to make some tactical decisions and not feel like he is leading blind. Obviously its still far off from this ideal, but IMO its much closer than what we were at with the kind of CO's back in v0.6 / v0.7."

The CO controlling firebases is paramount to his tactical plan and provides respect for his authority. The test should be, can a former IRL CO anonymously step on to any public server and have the tools to direct his plan and realize his authority. Currently the answer is no.

Make an investment in 1.0 now and put back near mandated CO's with NO CO = NO Firebase. Let .9 develop the next public group of Commanders that step up and take on the challenge, give them the power to shape the game as before and use server admin to train/expel the disruptive. .7xx CO also had a public Command rivalry where the opfor was likely to have a CO deployed and you had to guess by player list who the CO was and adjust.

We need to see "Someone go Commander!!!" in chat at the beginning of a round again and deal with the delinquent behavior using penalties and administration. Kill Bob the builder with a 240 second CO/player respawn if KIA/resign. The team will let him know he screwed up if they need a firebase or Intel when he is dead.

Remember in .7xx you always knew in the back of your thoughts that somewhere there was a server that NEEDED your services and that was for Commanders a compelling reason to logon.

At least test this in .9 wips. We all want the same thing, more Commanders and that poll a while back illustrated that almost everyone enjoys the game more with a CO.

You will have to mandate this position again to populate it.

With respect.

I have to politely disagree with everything you say fuzzhead. Being a squad leader in the BigD community for a long while now, I have noticed the collapse of structure because there is no need for a commander. If somebody had a reason to be in that position, we might see more serious commanders.

With no higher guidance the game has slowly deteriorated from a team-game to a squad game. It's happening everywhere, and it's only going to get worse. At least in 0.7/0.75 people listened to their commander.... because the commander was there! I strongly, strongly stand behind my opinion of the commander position being a game of bloody solitaire. While your stuck in a bloody box while the team is out there fulfilling your bidding, all you get to see are a bunch of moving dots on the map signifying victory. It's pathetic, I hate commanding so very, very much. Its demise makes me so sad, and I feel even worse reading your responses that we're wrong. Remember my post at the beginning of the thread? This is what I was talking about!!!! People who have being playing the game a whopping amount for a long time just get snuffed. The commander role was more efficient and more enjoyable that in the current version. I could reel together hundreds and hundreds of people but that wouldn't make anything change. We would recieve the same response that we know nothing about the game and we were obviously on crack to ever think the commander role was better in previous versions.

I just don't know how to go on with this conversation anymore without being mildly aggressive. I still think if the commander was out in the field, with a spawn time penalty (not tickets) and doing his role out there it would bring so much life back to this position. I remember how much fun I had as commander in previous versions and I know I did a better job then than what is possible to do now.

ChiefRyza wrote:I have to politely disagree with everything you say fuzzhead. Being a squad leader in the BigD community for a long while now, I have noticed the collapse of structure because there is no need for a commander. If somebody had a reason to be in that position, we might see more serious commanders.

With no higher guidance the game has slowly deteriorated from a team-game to a squad game. It's happening everywhere, and it's only going to get worse. At least in 0.7/0.75 people listened to their commander.... because the commander was there! I strongly, strongly stand behind my opinion of the commander position being a game of bloody solitaire. While your stuck in a bloody box while the team is out there fulfilling your bidding, all you get to see are a bunch of moving dots on the map signifying victory. It's pathetic, I hate commanding so very, very much. Its demise makes me so sad, and I feel even worse reading your responses that we're wrong. Remember my post at the beginning of the thread? This is what I was talking about!!!! People who have being playing the game a whopping amount for a long time just get snuffed. The commander role was more efficient and more enjoyable that in the current version. I could reel together hundreds and hundreds of people but that wouldn't make anything change. We would recieve the same response that we know nothing about the game and we were obviously on crack to ever think the commander role was better in previous versions.

I just don't know how to go on with this conversation anymore without being mildly aggressive. I still think if the commander was out in the field, with a spawn time penalty (not tickets) and doing his role out there it would bring so much life back to this position. I remember how much fun I had as commander in previous versions and I know I did a better job then than what is possible to do now.

im going to commander when i want to make Svastik or some other pictures from markers lol

ChiefRyza wrote:I have to politely disagree with everything you say fuzzhead. Being a squad leader in the BigD community for a long while now, I have noticed the collapse of structure because there is no need for a commander. If somebody had a reason to be in that position, we might see more serious commanders.

With no higher guidance the game has slowly deteriorated from a team-game to a squad game. It's happening everywhere, and it's only going to get worse. At least in 0.7/0.75 people listened to their commander.... because the commander was there! I strongly, strongly stand behind my opinion of the commander position being a game of bloody solitaire. While your stuck in a bloody box while the team is out there fulfilling your bidding, all you get to see are a bunch of moving dots on the map signifying victory. It's pathetic, I hate commanding so very, very much. Its demise makes me so sad, and I feel even worse reading your responses that we're wrong. Remember my post at the beginning of the thread? This is what I was talking about!!!! People who have being playing the game a whopping amount for a long time just get snuffed. The commander role was more efficient and more enjoyable that in the current version. I could reel together hundreds and hundreds of people but that wouldn't make anything change. We would recieve the same response that we know nothing about the game and we were obviously on crack to ever think the commander role was better in previous versions.

I just don't know how to go on with this conversation anymore without being mildly aggressive. I still think if the commander was out in the field, with a spawn time penalty (not tickets) and doing his role out there it would bring so much life back to this position. I remember how much fun I had as commander in previous versions and I know I did a better job then than what is possible to do now.

You don't have to command.
There are guys who like to relax in their box and look at the dots.
I like to do that if the squads listen to me.

I feel even worse reading your responses that we're wrong. Remember my post at the beginning of the thread? This is what I was talking about!!!! People who have being playing the game a whopping amount for a long time just get snuffed. The commander role was more efficient and more enjoyable that in the current version. I could reel together hundreds and hundreds of people but that wouldn't make anything change. We would recieve the same response that we know nothing about the game and we were obviously on crack to ever think the commander role was better in previous versions.

ChiefRyza, you must be passionate about this topic or overly dramatic, as I never said your "wrong" and just asked to back up your stance with some reasoning (which you and others have done). Just because I may not have the same opinion as you, doesnt mean your wrong, and neither does it mean the rest of the dev team shares my opinion. This is what we call debate, no need to break into this side-jabbing kind of talk as its not productive, especially considering I never insighted the things your saying (saying your wrong, saying your on crack, people playing long time getting snuffed, hundreds supporters not making a chance, being told they know nothing). None of that was true yet you brought it up because you feel frustrated that Im not immediately agreeing with you that your opinion is the best course of action. Just please have some integrity when talking on your opinion on this.

multiplan: fair enough, points noted, will keep in mind when v0.9 CO developements are under discussion.

kumade: agree with you all the way, I've wanted to see these map changes happen for a while now.... squad members with just a "paper" map and no live markings, squad leaders with just their squad members marked (and themselves) and the CO with ALL live markings and additional markers to mark out friendly units and more waypoint markers (numbers as well as letters). I think this alone would greatly reinforce the need for a CO, especially on largescale maps. However, map changes are difficult if not impossible, most of the map markings is hardcoded, but if we find a way you can bet your *** it would be similar to what I mentioned above.

Implement mobile assets for the CO on the field. The "sitting in box" "experiment"..well, understand the DEV idea, but make the "box" movable..

The static idea ruins game play mildly so to speak...

[quote=""'[R-COM"]Ragni<RangersPL>;1088041']SLs should have their spotting ability back (like they had in 0.7 or 0.75), so they can manually put a marker from the list on the comm rose or on the map without the commander present on the battlefield and without his confirmation. It may sound like making commander more useless but here me out...

Currently commander on the field is a rare thing and only commander can approve contact reports made by comm rose spotting system. Without commander there is no point of using that function... and that's the problem, for most of the time people don't use it, it's useless option.... it's useless to the point when even if a commander is present they still don't use it... they get used to not using that spotting system. Those who came to the mod right after bf2 are using that option more often then PR veterans, because they used it a lot of times in vanilla.

TBH, two weeks ago I've been playing with commander and I marked targets for commander just like for my team mates with markers and additional comment on VOIP (like enemy tank on my marker, etc)....

I don't know about you but I just realised I don't use that comm rose spotting option any more

So, in general... SLs putting markers more often = better situational awareness of commander.[/quote]
You know, you're right, I've stopped using the in-game spotting as well! I first got into PR at 0.85, and I think I've seen someone command exactly once -- for about five minutes. Then he got bored of it and resigned. So yeah, the in-game spotting is pretty-much always disabled, and I've gotten out of the habit of trying.

Instead, I just communicate contacts to my squad-mates on VoIP. While this feels more realistic and immersive, it does have the side-effect of leaving all other teammates in the dark. Squad leaders certainly don't report these contacts to the rest of the team, because we're all too busy engaging the enemy to type it out in text chat.

[quote="ChiefRyza""]With no higher guidance the game has slowly deteriorated from a team-game to a squad game. It's happening everywhere, and it's only going to get worse. At least in 0.7/0.75 people listened to their commander.... because the commander was there! I strongly, strongly stand behind my opinion of the commander position being a game of bloody solitaire. While your stuck in a bloody box while the team is out there fulfilling your bidding, all you get to see are a bunch of moving dots on the map signifying victory.[/quote]
I haven't tried commanding in PR yet (I still consider myself somewhat of a newbie), but I agree that without the commander, it feels like your squadmates are the only teammates that matter. I've even heard derogatory remarks about "f***ing smurfs" when referring to teammates not in our squad ("smurf" because non-squadmate names show up blue). Inter-squad communications are rare (mostly just transport requests), and nobody takes responsibility for failure -- there's a "some other squad should have been there to defend that point" mentality.

Vanilla BF2 did a good job of enticing commanders by giving them extra abilities rather that limiting them to a box away from the game. Of course, it only worked when actual commanding was enforced by server administrators, but it did work.

multiplan wrote:NO CO = NO Firebase

• as a firebase is arguably one of the most strategic assets available

This is a good start, but we're going to need more reason for the commander to enjoy being in that position. Perhaps the commander should be the only one allowed to place firebases and machine gun nests? But then again, from their box, they can't really see the placement sites as well as someone who's there.

multiplan wrote:CO death or resignation

• penalty to be determined spawn/tickets

I think this would be counter-productive, as it would make people less inclined to take that risk for their team. We have too few commanders already.

multiplan wrote:CO is mobile

• penalties to contend with, satmap from a handheld on his uniform skin
• CO is returned to being a high value target as his death yields opfor advantage
• currently killing a CO means nothing to game play

I think this would be a good temporary solution, at least. Until the commander position is really fleshed out and fun to play, we should let them be mobile.

multiplan wrote:CO vehicle

This sounds silly to me, but maybe I'm just not seeing it right.

multiplan wrote:more 'death from above'

Perhaps. I think it's cool how this has moved to the infantry-manned mortar pits, but it was definitely one of the main reasons people wanted to play commander in vBF2.

On the other hand, it has been a big relief in PR to know that just by capping a flag, I'm not painting a target on my head for artillery -- that was quite irritating in vBF2. The lessened role of artillery was definitely a welcome change when I switched to PR.

multiplan wrote:shovel in kit

I don't see why the commander should be in the dirt digging out ditches and bases when the squad leaders are above this duty. I think a pistol sidearm makes more sense.

I just did yesterday a round as commander (first since about 0.7). Well, the only gripe with me is that Commander is absolutly blind... Squads barerly report any cons or their situation. I need to ask them every 3 minutes about something that they will respond. If I won't ask they are silent. They usually only moan when they NEED something. Then it is my fault that no one wants to pick them up from main etc. U can't command if you don't know what is going around there in the field and without squadleaders reporting it ...