The Ups and Downs of Squad leading: Follow my orders, darn it!

[Calhoun]

Originally Posted by Teufel Eldritch

This isn't the real life military. There is no need to be a jerk to other players. If I wanted to get screamed at by someone in uniform I would have joined the RL military.

It's incredibly easy to follow orders issued by your squad leader, and to avoid doing anything that is outright stupid. It's annoying as hell if you have to spend all your time babysitting your own men.

There's some common courtesy that every member of a squad should follow for an overall enjoyable experience.

The squad member should stay closely with and move with the squad unless given an order to do something different. Understand what you are allowed to do and engage and when by asking your squad leader if he has not already told you. If you're waiting to regroup, wait until everyone has arrived or spawned and until your squad leader has given the order to move out, unless ordered to do otherwise.

A squad leader should keep the squad organized as one, moving together or holding their position together. He should declare an objective clearly and if possible allow no room for needless distraction. It's also encouraged to communicate valuable intelligence or information to your men, such as intelligence from the commander that is relevant to you all or your own rules of engagement or what you expect each one of them to do.

[Teufel Eldritch]

No disagreement there Calhoun.

[[R-DEV]Deer]

Squad leading is like playing lemmings =p You have to control lemmings every footstep and tell them step by step what they should or shouldnt do. Thats why most good squadleaders cant be arsed to be squadleaders... its so tressfull =P

[Cassius]

Play with regulars. If you have too many players in the team that are like meh capricious or cant be arsed you can forget about playing. Teamplay works best with a regular player base.

[00SoldierofFortune00]

Originally Posted by gazzthompson

no one has said anything about "screaming" at other players, there is a real difference between "screaming" at other players and saying "stop running off and stay with the squad you f**king retard". You want to be my squad member? you do what i say.

Players in my squad that do what i say, when i say dont get talked down to, these are the players i like. players than run off and do there own thing all the time screwing over the hole squad, these are the players i tell off/kick.

And there's no need to cuss at them like that as it makes it more tense than anything else and doesn't improve squad cohesion. This isn't like the real military, cussing or "motivation" like that doesn't work with the average guy.



The funny thing about insurgency is that on Blufor, you actually do better in smaller 2-3 man squads than 6 man squads as you can inflitrate and take out caches without being noticed. The main problem with insurgency is that players try to hunker down and just kill insurgents rather than keep moving. If you hunker down in one spot, you are guranteed going to get overrun very quickly as they have unlimited respawns while you don't. Really, insurgency is all about rushing and getting to the cache on the first or second shot before all of the insurgent reinforcements spawn in. I've seen others and I've had my squad do textbook tactics before on insurgency, but it just doesn't work. But when I charge straight towards the cache by myself with a teammember behind me and get in the build or on the cache, I have no trouble at all taking it out.

[gazzthompson]

Originally Posted by 00SoldierofFortune00

And there's no need to cuss at them like that as it makes it more tense than anything else and doesn't improve squad cohesion. This isn't like the real military, cussing or "motivation" like that doesn't work with the average guy.

probably true, but as i said i have no patience anymore.

[Vege]

I usually squad lead and play INS only. My patience is known to be big and i never yell to my SM:s.
It's usually just telling what needs to be done and managing the best way to do it.

I can't stand people that tries to yell to his SM:s and I've yet to see something good come from it.

[Cassius]

Originally Posted by 00SoldierofFortune00

And there's no need to cuss at them like that as it makes it more tense than anything else and doesn't improve squad cohesion. This isn't like the real military, cussing or "motivation" like that doesn't work with the average guy.



The funny thing about insurgency is that on Blufor, you actually do better in smaller 2-3 man squads than 6 man squads as you can inflitrate and take out caches without being noticed. The main problem with insurgency is that players try to hunker down and just kill insurgents rather than keep moving. If you hunker down in one spot, you are guranteed going to get overrun very quickly as they have unlimited respawns while you don't. Really, insurgency is all about rushing and getting to the cache on the first or second shot before all of the insurgent reinforcements spawn in. I've seen others and I've had my squad do textbook tactics before on insurgency, but it just doesn't work. But when I charge straight towards the cache by myself with a teammember behind me and get in the build or on the cache, I have no trouble at all taking it out.

I would agree that it works on most servers, however I play on a server where teamplay is emphasized.
Insurgency has at least 15 men sitting on a cache who are discipined enough to not stray too far from it. You can forget about trying to get lucky with even a 6 man squad. If you do not rally a sizeable force and place spawns of your own Blueforce will lose bad.

Teamplay works, get with likeminded people and play toegether with them. The guys who play against you will either change their "I dont like being told what to do" mentality or switch to a server where both sides are similiary disorganized.

[Psyrus]

Originally Posted by gazzthompson

the result of players doing what i tell them:
http://screenshot.xfire.com/screensh...e462459be0.png

destroyed directly or indirectly 3 caches. one death was a discon and 2 from bomb car.

Heh I'm the same as you gazz, been called a few colourful names by players right before the 'kick'-accept button is clicked

And while we're waving our awesome squad leading epeens around, I'll raise you your 3 caches with my 6 [all inf]



Proper Squads: We Get it Done

[combatwombat]

Overall, I find the best SL's have laid-back attitudes and know the maps very well.

Also, I think the server you play on and the time of day matter a lot too. Back in the day on battlearena, I found the quality of the average SM to be much higher. Nowadays when I play on =]H[= Insurgency, it's quite variable. Just learn who the biggest smacktards/noobs are and kick them from your squad early on if they join.