Let Your Commander Command!
DarkATi
Revelation 22:17 Join Date: 2003-06-20 Member: 17532Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Revelation 22:17 Join Date: 2003-06-20 Member: 17532Members, Reinforced - Shadow
[rant]I have been commanding since NS1. I know how to comm for both aliens and marines, although I would never claim to be perfect. I make mistakes and bad calls from time to time.
New players are never the problem for me. Instead, my problem is usually experienced players who want to eject me because they disagree with my strategy. YOU, as a foot soldier, are NOT the commander, no matter how good you are at NS2. Your job is not to harrass the comm, but to follow orders. When you're in the chair, do what you want but when I'm in the chair you need to listen to my orders.
I was just playing a game where the entire team was marching to Sub-Sector with my Arc Train. They were following orders, while some lone marine was off jetpacking Cargo all by himself. I offered med support when possible but I had my focus on Sub, where all my marines were, where all my Arcs were. This marine in Cargo seemed to be upset that I wasn't ordering the rest of the team to come and help him, and that I wasn't offering enough ammo and med support.
Sorry... you decided to solo-ninja a hive all by yourself. You kinda get what you get.
So, seriously... please remember not to be a backseat comm and if you disagree with your comm's instructions just keep it to yourself. Finally, disagreeing with the comm's strategy should never be grounds for ejecting him.[/rant]
That is all. (P.S. Didn't there used to be a rants forum?)
New players are never the problem for me. Instead, my problem is usually experienced players who want to eject me because they disagree with my strategy. YOU, as a foot soldier, are NOT the commander, no matter how good you are at NS2. Your job is not to harrass the comm, but to follow orders. When you're in the chair, do what you want but when I'm in the chair you need to listen to my orders.
I was just playing a game where the entire team was marching to Sub-Sector with my Arc Train. They were following orders, while some lone marine was off jetpacking Cargo all by himself. I offered med support when possible but I had my focus on Sub, where all my marines were, where all my Arcs were. This marine in Cargo seemed to be upset that I wasn't ordering the rest of the team to come and help him, and that I wasn't offering enough ammo and med support.
Sorry... you decided to solo-ninja a hive all by yourself. You kinda get what you get.
So, seriously... please remember not to be a backseat comm and if you disagree with your comm's instructions just keep it to yourself. Finally, disagreeing with the comm's strategy should never be grounds for ejecting him.[/rant]
That is all. (P.S. Didn't there used to be a rants forum?)
Comments
As for players on the field commanding the rest, i've seen it work superbly when i act as co-commander (or when others do the same), coordinating other grunts on the field. Especially since i seem to watch the map large portion of my time and giving others feedback what's going on in the field. And sometimes spotting a sneaky phasegate could mean a difference between a win or lose. Same goes the other way around for aliens with gorge tunnels. It's much easier if someone is constantly giving a team feedback. So comm can just focus on building stuff, upgrading and leading major strikes.
It always goes down to the entire team, but so far such way was always the victorious way.
Do you even know how democracy is supposed to work?
Democracy doesn't? :P
Exactly. Had some elitist comm on the server one time, who held his 100 hours of gameplay (giggle, giggle) to a very high esteem. Well this commander's brilliant strategy was to rush exos. Okay we all know this doesn't exactly work anymore... but this commander had an ace up his sleeve. You see, by not buying any res towers, he was saving a bundle on construction costs, money that he could put towards AA and the proto lab.
So as much as I loved his charisma (which consisted solely of screaming at the team for complaining, asking for meds, telling him to drop res, etc.), I DON'T think I'd follow this commander to hell and back.
His military career was tragically cut short by a dishonorable discharge, and a bunch of name-calling resulting in a ban.
Considering a minimum of skill thats usually the way to go.
Yes, I ask ppl if it is ok if I don't use a mike to comm. And I try to nominate a back seat comm (field commander), someone with a mike and WILL speak up to direct the troops on the ground. It mostly works and are good games (mind you we mainly play with regulars on the same tiny number of servers in Aus).
Some one staying away from the main push is great - he might be able to take out several upgrades or better. Or die, which happens (and he should be quiet if he was given meds and ammo).
With that said there are several comms that are in need of small reminders, stuff they have forgotten, like dropping an arms lab and start upgrades etc, which should be asked in a friendly manner. Everytime I play on veil I ask comms for a PG in SWP instead of sub sector. Not once have I've seen it happen. It might be their strategy - but it's wrong. At least I don't start ranting about it but instead briefly explain why it's better
I didn't whine and scream at my comm/team for support, however I did let them know what I was doing and how much damage I had done.
Also if the comms strategy is bad, I see nothing wrong with ejecting him as long as those marines know about comm strategies/see the strategy ineffective in action. However I do find players who are both ignorant and arrogant with strategy quite annoying.
So, if you want to start an eject vote, I guess... go ahead. I think it's absolutely ridiculous to eject a comm because he isn't doing what you think he ought to be doing all the time.
"Hey comm, do you want a ninja PG here? I already have the power to 95%.. and they are out of position..?"
(this worked wonders on my Lt. in the Marines for many years.. he always felt like it was his idea still, hehe)
"Will we have shotguns soon?"
"Yup, I'll get that started right now"
do you want fries with that sg?
Remember they key tools for commanding: add rude comments to every order. Use BIG WORDS. You must inspire AWE In your team, if they look down on you, they will not listen to you!
Remember, BIG WORDS. RUDE WORDS. AWE. Are the 3 things you need
Now can i have some extra cheese on my shotguns please? Oh and an extra patty!
I'm all for the field commander, but not when it directly opposes the strat the comm is working out. Seen that one happen lots too.
annoying guy: "Guys!! We have to get into hydro! If we let them have hydro, they'll build a second hive, and if they build a second hive they'll get leap and more biomass, and then we'll never be able to come back! Forget about everything else and just attack hydro!"
me: "um... their entire team is in hydro right now. If you go in there, you're just going to die. How about instead you just go around the rest of the map and cap res for me while they focus all their attention on hydro?"
annoying guy: "DON'T LISTEN TO HIM I JUST WATCHED A YOUTUBE VIDEO ABOUT THIS GAME SO I'M PRETTY MUCH AN EXPERT AND YOU CAN'T LET THE ALIENS GET A SECOND HIVE"
twenty minutes later
me: "well, might as well go and concede, folks... maybe if you had capped res and secured the rest of the map instead of suiciding into hydro over and over again we could have won."
annoying guy: "no, comm, you're wrong! we didn't send enough people to hydro! if we had sent the entire team there we could have taken it. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT"
Actually my job when playing pub is first of all to have fun with the game and secondly to make my team win.
If the comm is not experienced enough or has not enough gamesense to make the team win I might as well start fieldcommanding or rambo somewhere else.
I have been banned from a server some days ago after a similar situation.
I joined marines about 8 minutes in the game. Marines were desperately trying to hold at least one of their natural rts, but were struggling te get out of base.
So I ramboed somewere next to a hive, got the comm a pg up and he started to build arcs to kill 1 of 3 hives and therefore told EVERYONE to protect the arcs and the pg. In my eyes it was pretty useless to dedicate the whole team to kill 1 hive, when the aliens have every single rt on the map, so I started to run around killing rts.
Of course the rest of the team was unable to hold the arcs/pg without upgrades or commander support. Thats when the comm started telling me it was my fault because I wasn't defending the pg therefore am the weakest player in the team although I had a 'lucky' killstreak (17-2 or something, while the rest of the players where still working hard on getting a KD above 0.25). Well after that insult I decided to just follow the commanders orders, but since he didn't give any I just spammed my request order key. Unluckily the comm was admin on that server and banned me ^^.
Long story short. Even if you think you are the best comm in this game, when you give no or just stupid orders I will do what I think is best for the team.
Also, the whole team in one place is almost always not the best thing (except rushing a hive for example). And since from experience I know that it is even hard for the top level prem comms to micromange every fieldplayer (just 5 in comp play) I doubt there is any pub comm who is able to micro experienced players quick enough. And a thing most pub comms are not aware of anyways is that this game is about momentum and timing. So I am just not gonna sit somewhere and wait until the comm tells me to do something, when I know the right moment has come to push somewhere or not...
Now, if you ask for ammo/meds and then don't pick it up? Then I get angry. Even though it's technically still my fault for not nailing you with it in the first place, but I'm an irrational jerk so there.
Whatever a marine thinks; he's a foot soldier.
He can propose and show opportunities but when the commander make a decision, the foot soldier has to obey; period. Otherwise there wouldn't be a command chair right ?!
(i'm not talking about power stuff, just respect and teamwork).
We are supposed to be, "oh yeah he knows the best way to win! Let me follow u to Hell and back."
Nope. No thanks.
Seem to forget there are bad comms, just like there are bad players..a bad comm has a larger effect on his team than a bad foot soldier does. So yes, they should be under scrutiny and be questioned.
My solution? Join a servers community, comm there often and players will be less likely to complain.
P.S. - if you don't like your motives being questioned, than why join a position where x amt of players are depending on you?
Yea.. I'm pretty sure that works in the real world.
"Hey sarge, I feel we should vote about this"
I'm not saying that having every marine go to cargo is a good idea but 1-2 more and that hive could have been killed in addition to sub. If one guy dies while attacking sub, it's barely a dent in the push but if the guy in cargo dies then suddenly every alien is focused on defending sub.
On the topic of field commanders, sometimes they work if they know what they are doing, I welcome them from time to time when I command and I do it myself but I never disagree with a commanders strategy if it is sound or not totally ridiculous.
Next round = Your strategy+my turn to backseat drive that baby?
If you gave into every player's "personal agenda" request, your "creative freedom" just got took away...which in my opinion is 1 of the funnist aspects.
Real life has the luxury of friendly fire