Project Reality Forums

What is your command technique?

Do you tell a squad that you want them to defend X or attack Y and let them get on with it?
Do you send Move orders to each squad as they go, attempting to enact a pincer attack worthy of Rommel?
Do you keep quiet, and just act as an Artillery/Supply provider?
Do you find one competent squad and keep in touch with them, using them to shore up holes in your defence or attack?
Do you tell squads when armour is available?
Do you take close control of your attack choppers?
Do you just fill the position and run around shooting wildly?


I am pretty much the first sort, but since only squad leaders tend to notice what the commander is doing there may be all kinds of commanders that I haven't noticed.

Depends on the quality of squads.

You usually have the one squad that you can give a general objective and let the leader do whatever he sees fit for the majority of the match, but if i need a specific task they will do it.

But with alot of offensive squads ill give them move waypoints and what not instead of just sticking my icon on the flag.

Sometimes ill give defensive squads specific orders more so than just "defend" ill tell them to mine if its necesary, where to mine, where to put certain kits, what kits they need to defend (IE get a heavy at in the hills between bridge and east beach asap to hit any slow moving helos or apcs)

With choppers though, unless theres something very specific (armor, other heli, etc etc), i generaly let them do whatever they want, ill let the squad leader decide how he wants to manage his helicopters

if theres unused armor or humvees ill tell certain squads to send a man back to base on respawn to grab it, and i intermittenly call out supplies and arty when available, as well as requesting arty on specific targets

armor however though i like to have more direct command over. theres nothing worse than playing ejod and have every apc and tank drive themselves in to the city and get cut up

95% of squads can't keep up with me, but that happens with the squad members I lead too.

El_Vikingo wrote:95% of squads can't keep up with me, but that happens with the squad members I lead too.

i remember playing on igi, you were one of the squads that i pretty much let you do whatever you want. Any squad that goes to destroy rally points at the beginning of the map is a top notch squad.

Today I have had my first go at Commanding ... and its pretty damn fun!!

I was quite involved (on TG server), and freely admitted to all SLs that it was my first time commanding. I commanding twice, once for the last 10 mins on Steel Thunder and the whole round on Qwai River.

Steel Thunder, we were losing badly, so I thought I would give it a go. Managed to go from having 1 flag (the main base) to two and 1/2 flags. I didnt do much, just tried to get squads grouped for a simutanious organised attack and defence. Worked well.

Qwai River (I had a round of being a grunt ... I prefer being in the action, before Qwai), I tried a more direct role. I got squads (there were 5), 1,2 to take Fishing, and 4,5 to go to Govt, and 3 as a inbetween-where-needed squad. We got Processing, but after a pretty hellish battle, we had to stick with Fish and Govt.

So in answer to the OP:
Do you tell a squad that you want them to defend X or attack Y and let them get on with it?
Yes

Do you send Move orders to each squad as they go, attempting to enact a pincer attack worthy of Rommel?
Nope ... SL knows the surroundings better than I do. I do explain what I am doing (IE, telling S1 that they have S2 helping from the north)

Do you keep quiet, and just act as an Artillery/Supply provider?
Hell no!

Do you find one competent squad and keep in touch with them, using them to shore up holes in your defence or attack?
I kind of ... if I see 2 or three really well oiled squads, I use them for difficult objectives, rather than using a squad that has 1/2 the members spread acrosss the whole map.

Do you tell squads when armour is available?
Didnt even think about that.

Do you take close control of your attack choppers?
No ... they know whats going on better than I do.

Do you just fill the position and run around shooting wildly?
No no no.

I try to command everything but it never works out because some squads just dont listen. I end up just having like a squad on foot and the planes listening to me. Everyone else is just doing there thing.

Jump on TG now... there are listening squads everywhere on there at the moment.

Yeh, i tell squads to attack/defend flags or spesific spot. I also tell squads if they have a enemy squad or rally point near and point them to it. Ofc, i always tell my team if theres enemy armor coming up or if the artillery, supplies or vehicle drop is rdy. And I we got planes I give them targets whenever I see good targets. So over all I command alot for a public.
But then again, I command rarely, mostly only when Im pissed when our team can't do a sh*t.

Do you tell a squad that you want them to defend X or attack Y and let them get on with it? Yup
Do you send Move orders to each squad as they go, attempting to enact a pincer attack worthy of Rommel? Yup
Do you keep quiet, and just act as an Artillery/Supply provider? No
Do you find one competent squad and keep in touch with them, using them to shore up holes in your defence or attack? Sometimes
Do you tell squads when armour is available? No
Do you take close control of your attack choppers? Depends whos piloting and what map.
Do you just fill the position and run around shooting wildly? Hell no

El_Vikingo wrote:95% of squads can't keep up with me, but that happens with the squad members I lead too.

LOL

What? So you are a terrible Commander and Squad Leader?


...or are you just TOO good for the rest of us?


edit.. to get back on topic:
Really depends on the SLs.. as Commander the less responce you get from SLs the less i end up 'giving' as Commander. But i go Commander to command, so i try and do as much as is possible.
TBO if I dont get responces from SLs I'll end up resigning.
(but what really gets my goat as Commander is SLs that say YES to a command and then bugger off and do something totally different.)

Looking forward to a re-vamped Commander in 0.6

well the first thing you have to do is get a guage of your squads. If you see a squad is full of "inexperienced players" whose ADHD is going to prevent them from defending flags or do anything else productive for that matter, I'll send them to attack flags they cant capture just to keep them out the way of the vet squads. The rest of the more experienced squads ill use to defend key points (not just flags mind you) till our team is ready to back up the smacktard squad. i guess i constantly try to remind squad leaders that arty and suppliers are available at least once every 2 mins. It all depends on your ratio of vet squads to tard squads.

My first (and only at the moment) experience in commanding is in EJOD, half round.. so i'm not an expert and I don't think I could gain some skill as a commander cause of language comprehension problems.
It was traumatic because none of 5/6 squads reply to my VOIP communications, only once a SL said "Okay" when I told him artillery was ready.

Do you tell a squad that you want them to defend X or attack Y and let them get on with it? Y
Do you keep quiet, and just act as an Artillery/Supply provider? I didn't want that but no one reply/follow my orders.
Do you find one competent squad and keep in touch with them, using them to shore up holes in your defence or attack? no, but I was commander only once (not statistically relevant sample).
Do you tell squads when armour is available? N
Do you take close control of your attack choppers? N
Do you just fill the position and run around shooting wildly? N

On rare occasions that I'm a commander, I'll do a variety of things, depending on what I feel will help the most. I'll try to bring to squads' attention that a flag is being retaken by the enemy, for example, and I'll use the attack waypoint while recommending that they go back and attempt to recap. I don't like to issue demands, since the SLs on the ground probably have a better idea about the current situation, and my orders can look near impossible from where they're standing, so if they say they can't, they can't.

I spend a lot of time cooperating closer with individual squads. The situation does not change rapidly enough to require the commander to change orders every second, so pointing out concentrations of enemy forces and RP positions to squads operating in the immediate area can do a lot more good.

Also, I found that reminding people that arty and supplies are available helps a lot. People seem to forget all about them until you remind them.

When I command I do a variety of things, and for the most part I like commanding but I usually only do it when the teams yelling at each other "We've got no commander," so I'll wait see if anyone takes in within a few minutes then hop in. I remember on one map, I was fighting with an attack squad while we had no commander, so I took it and sat about 80 meters away from the flag, which was deep in enemy territory, in some trees stayed down there half the game. As to what I do when I command, truthfully if you don't talk or have voip as commander your useless and if you don't like the sound of the my voice, (as I've been told I sound 11, go figure) then you need to resign from SL, i'm talkin' and if you don't follow my orders i'ma piss you off all day. Well, unless your actually kickin' arse. If i'm not commanding i'm a Defense SL, because most people don't like Defense, and usually I can do it was a minimum of three good tactical players on any flag, any map. I usually get a full squad that listens though, which is always fun.