Deputy commander reporting in. I am sorry but I do not want to throw the game and the hard work of my team just because the commander feels like doing the wrong thing and directing the team to the wrong place. I do not eject but I do give my reasons. Like we have 2/5 main comm stations and the commander asks the team to try to take the comm stations that are already heavily fortified by the other team and has multiple defenses instead of taking the third base that has nothing in it. I also heavily imply how important phase gates are most commanders seem to be getting it.
If the commander is doing a bad job, then simply eject. It's really annoying when someone starts blabbing out commands for the team from the field when I'm trying to command.
On the field leaders are usefull. They may request support (med us, drop an obs, drop a phase ...) from the comm for a consistent action and I see nothing wrong about it. It doesn't interfere with comm's overall strategy.
Not the same as constant whining and yelling at the comm because he don't <u>immediatly</u> fullfill any request from anyone, anywhere at anytime. Don't forget that your relation with the comm is one to one, comm's relation to the team is one to many.
Don't abuse the comm, If you wanna comm, jump in CC anddo it, otherwise, shut the ###### up until it's your turn.
Has it ever happened to you that you are commanding and someone else starts giving out orders over the mic to the other aliens or marines during game. Or maybe someone volunteered to do that since you are a noob commander or just not very good. What do you think about that? Does it get on your nerves that someone is messing with your game or are you just thankful someone is helping you?
What do you think?
By the way I just saw this post about a guy who plays marine commander and is deaf so he can't give orders or hear what marines are saying. Some people think he is legit, some think he is trolling. I think he is really deaf and members of this forum should show they are not unfriendly to new players or disabled and give him some support. Link to that topic: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=126705" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=126705</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Out of maybe my last 50-60ish games as comm with aliens. I would say it's rarely detrimental to the team unless it's a bad call and usually most calls for rushes within the first 5 minutes of a game are bad calls.
As long as the backseat commander doesn't tell the actual commander to shut up, or contradict his orders, there's no issue.
I'm vocal when I play, Shouting out positions, movement and structures. I'll try and encourage commander orders by giving the surrounding players direction, "Comon, follow me" or "This way guys". Not everyone on public servers know the maps and we need this rapid troop deployments at times.
I my disagree with some orders, and I'll ask for a plan/reason/alternate but never contradict. That's just bad manners.
<!--quoteo(post=2056066:date=Jan 4 2013, 01:11 PM:name=xen32)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (xen32 @ Jan 4 2013, 01:11 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2056066"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Comm is only useful for dropping structures and researches, for everything else, there are field leaders and ninjas.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It doesn't bother me at all on Aliens. If someone wants to go more in depth than "harass and kill their stuff, keep them out of XXXX hive", that is fine with me. I can't directly influence the flow of battle without having a drifter near the action, so I don't really care what the team does as long as it's actually productive towards the end goal of winning the game.
For marines, it's a bit of a gray area. I don't like it when the side seat commander attempts to usurp my command position, but I don't mind it when someone works in tandem with me. For example, I could be pushing on a hive with 70% of the team, I don't want to start hearing directions come out over the mic trying to get those marines to go some place that I don't want them. However, if I'm pushing on a hive with 70% of the team and someone starts barking out orders to the other 30% of the team as they push in a different location, that is completely fine, even welcome.
i'm new, i'm so new that i have the map overlay open probably more than i should, mostly for navigation though that is decreasing. i'll shout out troop positions, and alert to base attacks, and annoy for phase gates as soon as we've put up a power node in a tech point. i think i help. I know I'm always happy if someone else is also doing this, and more usual than not, it's not the comm.
i've never commed, and i'm perfectly happy not to, as i'm atrocious at rts games. but I think it's everybody with a mic's duty to add to the team's map awareness.
so my question would be
should I continue to say things like "i think i hear two marines going through mezzanine" and "could we get a power node" and "drop a phase gate right now" and "could we please get an obs in x?" and "we're getting hit hard in terminal, phase gate is down, beacon right now"
is this too much? i'm thinking i might be annoying other players though.
<!--quoteo(post=2055902:date=Jan 4 2013, 07:26 AM:name=Lofung)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Lofung @ Jan 4 2013, 07:26 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2055902"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->no. comms are slack enough already compare to ns1. i can have chips and coffee while i comm and still manage to win.
no.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wouldn't that be more dependent on your team's ability rather than your own? I highly doubt that would work (or anything much really) when your team is mostly made up of greens.
<!--quoteo(post=2055909:date=Jan 4 2013, 07:56 AM:name=Amb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Amb @ Jan 4 2013, 07:56 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2055909"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->my point is, you dont see pro starcraft players with a "consultant" sitting next to them to help them multi task, do you?
/smh<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You still haven't addressed my point of the difference between a "consultant" sitting next to you and someone actually playing the game WITH you and probably has a better grasp of the tactical situation than you do. I'm sure in your head playing Starcraft by yourself and playing NS2 where your units are human players are one and the same right?
<!--quoteo(post=2055909:date=Jan 4 2013, 12:56 PM:name=Amb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Amb @ Jan 4 2013, 12:56 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2055909"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->my point is, you dont see pro starcraft players with a "consultant" sitting next to them to help them multi task, do you?
/smh<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If starcraft let you have two people, with two different perspectives, using two sets of inputs do the commanding, perhaps that would change? More people = more attention = more brain power devoted to the task of commanding.
Starcraft is inherently a single player game most of the time, in the sense you have one player commanding one side. However if you, say, had a team vs team match in starcraft, you might well perhaps decide to allocate different strategic roles to different players. In fact from playing RTS games in teams that's exactly what happens most of the time. You tell players 'you take this flank, I'll take that one, you focus on resource expansion, you focus on teching up' and things like that. You assign areas of play to different minds, that they might focus on one task and do it better than one single mind.
Point is, you have a player on the ground who can see what's happening at the front, he can therefore direct frontline troops quite well assuming he is capable. You therefore do not need to command frontline troops if he is doing that, and can thus direct your attention to other areas.
It may not be the most individually glorious approach to commanding, but it works.
I've done it all. Whether I'm being helpful or not at all. I try not to contradict the comm usually, as they were the one willing to command. I can remember instances where I'd be in strong disagreement with the commander, but only one or two. Some don't enjoy it, and will challenge me. It also depends if there are enough players giving directions, max 2. I also encourage players to listen to the "squad leader".
Normally, as alien I ask some skulks that aren't good at killing to harass certain nodes. I can get pretty verbal closer to the end.
If a team is relying on the commander to do all their thinking, it's already lost. So players assisting in team organization are always welcome, as long as they're not working at cross purposes.
It's far more common for a "deputy" to add <i>significantly </i>to a team in a public game than to detract from it.
These "deputies" are usually giving good suggestions and getting people to work together which is an awesome thing when done right, it's usually very hard to get people moving while commanding. It's so much easier to lead marines where you want them on the ground.
These guys only grind my gears when things tend to fail. They start complaining about something round after round but they are never willing to step up to the chair themselves, even when asked to.
If they're grouping up marines in an area to organise a push to somewhere it's cool, if they're helping a known new comm out it's cool, if they're watching a comm float 30+ res for no reason and giving him a kick in the arse it's cool.
Backseat comming is the ######ing worst tho, I don't play with a mic and it's frustrating having 2-3 droning idiots either ask you to do what's already being done or stand around and request stupid things "comm tell me what to do" "comm why don't you have a mic to tell me exactly what to do and when" "comm we have 5tres can we have shotguns", if I had a dollar for every time I heard "are exos up" I'd nearly be rich. Can we please add current tech researched and tech researching to the marines map or scoreboard. I appreciate people like feedback on things and I certainly give it to them but people endlessly take the piss out of things that could be easily fixed with better UI, I still don't understand how when you're outside the hive/chair you can see the exact % on what you're researching on the building itself as a floating number but inside the chair/hive you just get some |------------| bar to gauge.
I'd go as far as asking for toggle-able scrolling updates somewhere under the map for marines, %s on upgrades on buildings as comm or adding what spectators can see to comm screens/scoreboard/map so comms have a handy visual to what they have and haven't got but I know it'd be asking for a lot.
Also putting toggle-able text on the actual comm screen map could help a lot of new comm players out but I know we don't like doing that in NS2.
Since you decided to create a new topic and post about this, I think you are exactly the type of person that needs someone telling them what should and shouldn't be done.
I am sometimes a backseat com when I play aliens. I usually limit it to just going in to more detail about what to attack than just "mess up the marines" like some coms do. I usually say, "hey can a couple more people meet me in the vent by X and we will attack X together"
Often commanders are busy with the expanding and defending their own infrastructure and don't have time to coordinate attacks on the enemy infrastructure.
I try not to disobey or disagree with coms, but when they say "6 marines heading to hive in bla, everyone get there and defend now" I usually will go and take out some phase gate or something critical on the other side of the map. A few times I have taken out marines main base power right as they went for a hive push and then we have won because they were silly enough not to have had any spare IPs at their other base.
In cases where our commander doesn't have a mic (i don't either atm) I'm usually typing a quick message here or there if I see a hostile push coming or trying to get the team to group up for a push on the enemy. I understand the commander is too busy to be typing every 30seconds, or they should be anyway. Generally, when a commander has a mic though, they're getting that information out there and i can focus on shooting/biting more. I'll still check the map frequently and point something out if the commander missed it or teammates arn't responding and i'm either dead or too far away.
Similarly, I've only played 2 full rounds as commander (marine) , both of which ended in victory... This would not have happened without the support of teammates giving me advice and on one occasion telling me to get my arse in gear as i was sitting on 100+ Tres. they also helped direct the team (with mic's) which proved much more effective than my waypoints, and allowed me to focus on other things such as scanning, dropping assists and checking the map for enemies. Ultimately I feel, whether the commander has a mic or not, a team that communicates and try to force teamwork (even if it's not quite the same strategy as the commander wants - though equally not totally contradictory) is beneficial.
I'd like to note that i personally don't like the idea of being commander without a mic, as your simply not as effective at getting your team working together towards a single goal. Sometimes though, a match starts and everyone runs off to different rooms and someone needs to be there to drop extractors! On both occasions, i've informed my teams of my inexperience and lack of a mic (after giving initial extractor build orders) and given the option for others to take over and will continue to do so until im both experienced and own a mic... something i wish other new commanders would do. I also avoid requesting weapons or tech. A good commander will do the right upgrades etc. as soon as they can, and less skilled ones will get requests from others anyway :)
<!--quoteo(post=2056402:date=Jan 5 2013, 01:49 AM:name=Seahunts)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Seahunts @ Jan 5 2013, 01:49 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2056402"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I try not to disobey or disagree with coms, but when they say "6 marines heading to hive in bla, everyone get there and defend now" I usually will go and take out some phase gate or something critical on the other side of the map. A few times I have taken out marines main base power right as they went for a hive push and then we have won because they were silly enough not to have had any spare IPs at their other base.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You could improve this good decision by telling your team: "I will try to take down their power at X, while everyone else please defends the hive in bla.", if the comm hasn't already given an order like: "Seahunts and Mr. Bile, try to take down the power at X. Everyone else defends the hive in bla."
Imagine a situation in which 3, 4, 5 or even more people think: "The others will defend the hive. - I will take down the power at bla/ stare at the wall to make it collapse/ take a nap in this vent/ happily jump into that minefield/ admire the complete uselessness of these sentries for a minute/ ..."
I get the feeling that most of the time the better or more experienced players tend to listen to their initiative and try to start counter-measures to a hive push like taking down a power node at a marine tech point... but when almost all players of a team take too much care of actively starting counter-measures (or weaseling around the map or doing other "very important" things like chomping on a power node at a res nozzle without an RT - gives me headaches all the time!), the hive will die because there were not enough aliens to defend it.
While killing all marines and destroying their forward base at once during a hive push is the best for the aliens, it can only be achieved rarely, especially if the marines teched up high enough. What most people don't think about in such situations is that buying time for counter-measures can sometimes be better than trying to take out all the marines at a heavily fortifed position directly and thereby losing a lot of eggs/res spent on higher lifeforms.
Difference with people whining about 'Are Exos up' that isnt back seat commanding.
It's like my job I'm in charge of a alot of people now I have to have alot of ideas myself but people can advise me and give me new ideas, it's still up to me whether to go ahead with it or not it's my head on the line in the end.
Like I could be busy in lockers and someone states 'We have a possibility of ARC'ing from stability' I will then look at the area and make a decision Yes or No. This helps any commander because we only have one set of eyes.
<!--quoteo(post=2056198:date=Jan 4 2013, 04:09 PM:name=VeNeM)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (VeNeM @ Jan 4 2013, 04:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2056198"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->thats prolly me, giving out helpful tips to the com, and the team really.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> this pretty much Always trying to help new players who have no idea what they are doing As a commander I love it when players use their mic and tell me stuff I might have missed Say an RT that lost its cyst or letting me know if an area is being attacked if the team is focused on other areas
I haven't played in a while since my computer is in another city but I do remember a match the first week NS2 came out. When attacking an almost dead hive the comm ordered to retreat and attack a hive on the other side of the map, I told the troops to ignore that and keep pushing, comm and some others did not like that but the hive went down.
On another match that same week the troops retreated on command and rofl lost... :)
I absolutely love the fact that people keep trying to compare commanding in this game to playing starcraft. The absurdity.....
To the OP's question tho, I think having someone secondary in charge is never a bad thing as long as the commander is on board with what he's saying. Some people multi-task better then others, and if they're one of the others, having someone competent to take part of that load off them can be extremely helpful. The teamwork aspect in this game is probably the most overlooked factor in being successful, from all the conversations I've seen on here.
Comments
It doesn't interfere with comm's overall strategy.
Not the same as constant whining and yelling at the comm because he don't <u>immediatly</u> fullfill any request from anyone, anywhere at anytime.
Don't forget that your relation with the comm is one to one, comm's relation to the team is one to many.
Don't abuse the comm, If you wanna comm, jump in CC anddo it, otherwise, shut the ###### up until it's your turn.
Has it ever happened to you that you are commanding and someone else starts giving out orders over the mic to the other aliens or marines during game. Or maybe someone volunteered to do that since you are a noob commander or just not very good. What do you think about that? Does it get on your nerves that someone is messing with your game or are you just thankful someone is helping you?
What do you think?
By the way I just saw this post about a guy who plays marine commander and is deaf so he can't give orders or hear what marines are saying. Some people think he is legit, some think he is trolling. I think he is really deaf and members of this forum should show they are not unfriendly to new players or disabled and give him some support. Link to that topic: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=126705" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=126705</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Out of maybe my last 50-60ish games as comm with aliens. I would say it's rarely detrimental to the team unless it's a bad call and usually most calls for rushes within the first 5 minutes of a game are bad calls.
As long as the backseat commander doesn't tell the actual commander to shut up, or contradict his orders, there's no issue.
I my disagree with some orders, and I'll ask for a plan/reason/alternate but never contradict. That's just bad manners.
I really hope you're just trolling.
For marines, it's a bit of a gray area. I don't like it when the side seat commander attempts to usurp my command position, but I don't mind it when someone works in tandem with me. For example, I could be pushing on a hive with 70% of the team, I don't want to start hearing directions come out over the mic trying to get those marines to go some place that I don't want them. However, if I'm pushing on a hive with 70% of the team and someone starts barking out orders to the other 30% of the team as they push in a different location, that is completely fine, even welcome.
i've never commed, and i'm perfectly happy not to, as i'm atrocious at rts games. but I think it's everybody with a mic's duty to add to the team's map awareness.
so my question would be
should I continue to say things like "i think i hear two marines going through mezzanine" and "could we get a power node" and "drop a phase gate right now" and "could we please get an obs in x?" and "we're getting hit hard in terminal, phase gate is down, beacon right now"
is this too much? i'm thinking i might be annoying other players though.
no.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wouldn't that be more dependent on your team's ability rather than your own? I highly doubt that would work (or anything much really) when your team is mostly made up of greens.
<!--quoteo(post=2055909:date=Jan 4 2013, 07:56 AM:name=Amb)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Amb @ Jan 4 2013, 07:56 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2055909"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->my point is, you dont see pro starcraft players with a "consultant" sitting next to them to help them multi task, do you?
/smh<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You still haven't addressed my point of the difference between a "consultant" sitting next to you and someone actually playing the game WITH you and probably has a better grasp of the tactical situation than you do. I'm sure in your head playing Starcraft by yourself and playing NS2 where your units are human players are one and the same right?
/smh<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If starcraft let you have two people, with two different perspectives, using two sets of inputs do the commanding, perhaps that would change? More people = more attention = more brain power devoted to the task of commanding.
Starcraft is inherently a single player game most of the time, in the sense you have one player commanding one side. However if you, say, had a team vs team match in starcraft, you might well perhaps decide to allocate different strategic roles to different players. In fact from playing RTS games in teams that's exactly what happens most of the time. You tell players 'you take this flank, I'll take that one, you focus on resource expansion, you focus on teching up' and things like that. You assign areas of play to different minds, that they might focus on one task and do it better than one single mind.
Point is, you have a player on the ground who can see what's happening at the front, he can therefore direct frontline troops quite well assuming he is capable. You therefore do not need to command frontline troops if he is doing that, and can thus direct your attention to other areas.
It may not be the most individually glorious approach to commanding, but it works.
Normally, as alien I ask some skulks that aren't good at killing to harass certain nodes. I can get pretty verbal closer to the end.
It's far more common for a "deputy" to add <i>significantly </i>to a team in a public game than to detract from it.
These guys only grind my gears when things tend to fail. They start complaining about something round after round but they are never willing to step up to the chair themselves, even when asked to.
Backseat comming is the ######ing worst tho, I don't play with a mic and it's frustrating having 2-3 droning idiots either ask you to do what's already being done or stand around and request stupid things "comm tell me what to do" "comm why don't you have a mic to tell me exactly what to do and when" "comm we have 5tres can we have shotguns", if I had a dollar for every time I heard "are exos up" I'd nearly be rich. Can we please add current tech researched and tech researching to the marines map or scoreboard. I appreciate people like feedback on things and I certainly give it to them but people endlessly take the piss out of things that could be easily fixed with better UI, I still don't understand how when you're outside the hive/chair you can see the exact % on what you're researching on the building itself as a floating number but inside the chair/hive you just get some |------------| bar to gauge.
I'd go as far as asking for toggle-able scrolling updates somewhere under the map for marines, %s on upgrades on buildings as comm or adding what spectators can see to comm screens/scoreboard/map so comms have a handy visual to what they have and haven't got but I know it'd be asking for a lot.
Also putting toggle-able text on the actual comm screen map could help a lot of new comm players out but I know we don't like doing that in NS2.
Often commanders are busy with the expanding and defending their own infrastructure and don't have time to coordinate attacks on the enemy infrastructure.
I try not to disobey or disagree with coms, but when they say "6 marines heading to hive in bla, everyone get there and defend now" I usually will go and take out some phase gate or something critical on the other side of the map. A few times I have taken out marines main base power right as they went for a hive push and then we have won because they were silly enough not to have had any spare IPs at their other base.
Similarly, I've only played 2 full rounds as commander (marine) , both of which ended in victory... This would not have happened without the support of teammates giving me advice and on one occasion telling me to get my arse in gear as i was sitting on 100+ Tres. they also helped direct the team (with mic's) which proved much more effective than my waypoints, and allowed me to focus on other things such as scanning, dropping assists and checking the map for enemies. Ultimately I feel, whether the commander has a mic or not, a team that communicates and try to force teamwork (even if it's not quite the same strategy as the commander wants - though equally not totally contradictory) is beneficial.
I'd like to note that i personally don't like the idea of being commander without a mic, as your simply not as effective at getting your team working together towards a single goal. Sometimes though, a match starts and everyone runs off to different rooms and someone needs to be there to drop extractors! On both occasions, i've informed my teams of my inexperience and lack of a mic (after giving initial extractor build orders) and given the option for others to take over and will continue to do so until im both experienced and own a mic... something i wish other new commanders would do. I also avoid requesting weapons or tech. A good commander will do the right upgrades etc. as soon as they can, and less skilled ones will get requests from others anyway :)
You could improve this good decision by telling your team: "I will try to take down their power at X, while everyone else please defends the hive in bla.", if the comm hasn't already given an order like: "Seahunts and Mr. Bile, try to take down the power at X. Everyone else defends the hive in bla."
Imagine a situation in which 3, 4, 5 or even more people think: "The others will defend the hive. - I will take down the power at bla/ stare at the wall to make it collapse/ take a nap in this vent/ happily jump into that minefield/ admire the complete uselessness of these sentries for a minute/ ..."
I get the feeling that most of the time the better or more experienced players tend to listen to their initiative and try to start counter-measures to a hive push like taking down a power node at a marine tech point... but when almost all players of a team take too much care of actively starting counter-measures (or weaseling around the map or doing other "very important" things like chomping on a power node at a res nozzle without an RT - gives me headaches all the time!), the hive will die because there were not enough aliens to defend it.
While killing all marines and destroying their forward base at once during a hive push is the best for the aliens, it can only be achieved rarely, especially if the marines teched up high enough. What most people don't think about in such situations is that buying time for counter-measures can sometimes be better than trying to take out all the marines at a heavily fortifed position directly and thereby losing a lot of eggs/res spent on higher lifeforms.
It's like my job I'm in charge of a alot of people now I have to have alot of ideas myself but people can advise me and give me new ideas, it's still up to me whether to go ahead with it or not it's my head on the line in the end.
Like I could be busy in lockers and someone states 'We have a possibility of ARC'ing from stability' I will then look at the area and make a decision Yes or No. This helps any commander because we only have one set of eyes.
this pretty much
Always trying to help new players who have no idea what they are doing
As a commander I love it when players use their mic and tell me stuff I might have missed
Say an RT that lost its cyst or letting me know if an area is being attacked if the team is focused on other areas
I haven't played in a while since my computer is in another city but I do remember a match the first week NS2 came out.
When attacking an almost dead hive the comm ordered to retreat and attack a hive on the other side of the map,
I told the troops to ignore that and keep pushing, comm and some others did not like that but the hive went down.
On another match that same week the troops retreated on command and rofl lost... :)
To the OP's question tho, I think having someone secondary in charge is never a bad thing as long as the commander is on board with what he's saying. Some people multi-task better then others, and if they're one of the others, having someone competent to take part of that load off them can be extremely helpful. The teamwork aspect in this game is probably the most overlooked factor in being successful, from all the conversations I've seen on here.