Commander CV

CheesyPeteza

I'm enjoying NS2, but I face the same frustrations as NS1 such as nobody wanting to comm, or a crappy comm. For a good game you need to have two commanders who want to command and can do an average job, plus two even teams, plus some luck. It's a hard combination to get which ends in only about 1 out of 3 games being much fun.

You can stick to your favourite servers where you all know each other, but perhaps there is a better solution. Not everything can be fixed, but perhaps some can be improved.


Here is an idea, the game doesn't start until there are two commanders. This would eliminate the case where nobody goes comm and the game is ruined, or one team gets a head start.

But lets take it to the next level, let more than one person choose to go comm and then let the players decide based on a vote who gets to comm.

When choosing who to vote for some basic information should be displayed about each player:
Have they got a mic?
How many times they have played commander?
How many hours of NS they have played.

I little mini NS2 CV.

Whosat

Wouldn't that leave little chance for new players/potential comms to try their hand at being comm?

CheesyPeteza

I don't think so. If only one person volunteered for comm then there would be no vote, so that's their opportunity. It's a pretty regular occurrence in the games I've played that nobody volunteers for comm.

This could be made as a mod. Perhaps not the number of commander hours or if they have a mic, but time played playing NS2 will show up when you look on someone's steam profile.

Zeikko

If someone wants to make a mod that does this ns2stats can provide the data of hours commanded for aliens and marines and number of commander wins / losses, etc. I think we can also incorporate it with ns2stats directly and share the communication code etc.

perso

Nuclear Dawn has similar system where multiple players can apply to be a commander. A commander is randomly selected from among all the volunteers after a certain time (45s by default). Players who have completed a "commanding tutorial" achievement get preference. Of course it doesn't ensure that a skilled commander is chosen but at least everyone gets a fair chance. Some kind of mod which lets the players vote from the volunteers could be quite neat. It could also show for example some "commander rank" besides the player name (based on number of commanded games or something).