Commanding, Key Involved
SlickWill
Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26642Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2004-02-17 Member: 26642Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">How do you comm (not strat)</div> To start off, I don't need to learn how to comm as in strategy etc. I need to learn actually how to build things. I am a fairly experienced NS player and know the strategy, but how do you learn the actual mechanics involved. I have jumped in the comm chair a couple of times and it's all greek to me. Any advice on how to actually build things, research, order troops, and hotkey. Any advice would be great, thanks.
Comments
Anyhow SlickWill if you've ever played StarCraft or other RTS games you should get to know the interfaces fairly quickly. At the bottom right of the corner is the "main menu", it's there where you can select and drop buildings/equipments. To upgrade stuffs you will first need to drop an upgradable building, for example arms lab which is found in advanced building tab, after that's built (by the marines) you can select the arms lab and you should see buttons at the bottom right with upgrade options.
To order marines, simply select them and right click at a position. To group, press your "duck" key along with a number.
qwer XXXX
asdf XXXX
zxcv XXXX
the commander item menu, found on the bottom right of the commander screen, is a grid, 3 rows high, by 4 rows across, and the X's above represent each box, and the letters correspond with those boxes. Pressing for instance E will change the commander menu to the health and ammo menu, then a will select ammo and s will select health respectively. Hope that helps
Also, to designate squads, you select the group of marines you want in a squad, then press crouch+1-5 and they are designated that squad. A number will appear in the upper left bar on your screen, anytime you want to select that squad either press that number or click that number.
Some advice, bind your voicecomm to a key, not to the mouse, many people have problems with voicecomm being bound to a mouse button when in the comm chair.
Also, you can assign your Observatory to a squad for easy scanning in siege situations.
almost forgot, also when you have a squad or paticular person(s) selected, pressing your crouch key +voicecomm key will make it so only those selected will hear your voice, good for when you have different squads doing different things and you dont want to confuse them.
I've got mine set to the following:
uiop
jkl;
m.,/
The next thing you need to know and practice is spamming. You need to learn your hotkeys for packdrops and equip, so you can rapidly lay down piles of stuff. There are multiple layers of complexity here; it's not a difficult thing to learn, but in the heat of battle, it can be hard to work your fingers over multiple keys with the required speed, and in rhythm with mouse1. With my setup, the three I use most are making a pile of shotguns:
[equip menu], k, click, k, click, k, click, etc.
Spampack:
[assist menu], k(med), click, j(ammo), click, k, click, j, click, etc.
And HA trains:
[equip menu], .(HA), click, l(HMG), click, m(welder), click, repeat as needed.
Other people will be better at telling you how to make and use squads, if you wish to do so, because I never use them. I just hand out waypoints to all marines (laying a waypoint is right-click, after you select your unit, by the way) and if I need them to go to more than one place, I'll lay them sequentially, and just tell them where I need them most by voice-comm.
While I'm talking about voice-comm, know that this is probably the most important thing there is. You can much more efficiently relay your plans, announcements, encouragement, and light sprinklings of abuse by voice comm than through waypoints, typed chat, or any other means. If you don't have a mic, you shouldn't be in the chair, unless you know the people you're playing with well enough that they know the general plan, and respect you enough to not screw around.
Lastly, know this: you might think you know the strategy, but you don't. You know how the tactics play out when you're down in the pit, but you don't know jack about the strategy until you have the god's-eye-view, and you play with the res yourself. As a rule, things cost more than they cost, and no matter how good and level-headed a player you are, you never really grasp the scope of that until you've been in the chair a few times. If you have guys out in the field with more comming experience than you, listen to their suggestions. Chances are they've got the right idea.
If you really want my input, try reading the 10 other posts on the first page of the Frontiersmen Strategy forum that are all titled "Commanding help" or something similar, i've posted in almost every single one of them.
And finally, just to pacify the useless people that will get mad that I make them look for already posted information, my tip is this:
Knowing the interface, strategies, and map details are useless if you refuse to interact with your marines, by coordinating their movement and assisting them with medpacks or ammo. You won't understand this unless you are a good marine.
Out of the entire thread, this is the most relevent and useful advice given
And yet it's shuned
accept all advice given, there helping you for "free"
anyway 99% of the work involved in comming is practicing on a pub.
All you can do on ur own server is learn how to click.
You will learn in time.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->(e)kent Posted on Mar 18 2004, 05:25 AM
practice makes perfect <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Most importantly you've got to play as aliens so you know what strats they use against marines.