Who wants to command? Anyone?

[[R-DEV]fuzzhead]

What has worked well for me and I would love to expand on this concept, but dont know a way to integrate it, is a company sergeant or warrant or whatever you want to call him, and the CO.

We have played many rounds like this and it works extremely well, but it requires forethought, an admin presence and the cooperation of your team, which is usually easy to win over when they see how amazing a huge force in PR looks and plays out.... truly epic largescale troops movements and tactics used makes even the most spammy of arcade players take notice and want to try it out:

Heres the setup:

Squad 1 Infantry

Squad 2 Infantry

Squad 2 APC/Transport/Logistics

Squad 4 Anti-Tank/Anti Air


Squad 1 is the company sergeant. He is on the ground, making the immediate decisions and directing how the tactics go. He is on mumble with the other squad leaders, and is the man in charge, the guy everyone is looking up to for orders and the guy who "leads from the front". However this is an extremely demanding job, cause not only you got to lead all these men but you also got to not die, yet put yourself in harms way whenever necesary.

So to help the company sergeant, there is his buddy, the CO. The CO is in a unique position because he can see things from a "bigger picture", and can put in place a long term strategy for the operation. He is the one who calls the shots, if a mission goes badly, he is the one to plan the next move, where to fall back to for defense, where to lay ambush etc etc. If things are going well, hes the one to arrange what the next position to advance to, what is the Line of Advance, where they can get resupply, etc etc.

What most fail to realize is you can play PR in a much more proper military manner, with a functioning chain of command and using proper protocol, tactics, strategy, etc. Having the above setup makes a CO extremely useful and important, but its not very pub friendly, meaning you have to come into the game with some buddies to do this, so its really up to the players.

Yes, for most pub games there is no CO, and that needs work, but to say CO is useless... watch the video again... hes NOT useless he is the driving force behind the whole team!

But yes you need a CO on the ground as well, to direct the actual combat and tactics used, but you really need both, having one or the other means your going to be disorganised and lacking in important areas.

Also CO is extremely useful for coordinating the other squad leaders that are not part of your group. CO is an excellent admin tool, a charismatic and professional CO can muster an entire team together, get everyone on the same TS channel, get them using proper comms and military protocol, get them properly calling in targets and disciplining their squads. New players that join into the server and create a squad will have someone who immediately contacts them and gives them orders and gets them on their way.

Sorry but if your on the ground running trucks back and fourth, your not doing any of these jobs and your really only doing a tiny percentage of what a real CO can muster out of a team. Most players will say hey at least thats better than nothing, but I'd like to think PR has some players in its midst that really do enjoy commanding an ENTIRE team, using all resources avaliable. And it REALLY helps if that CO has total power to remove anyone from the server whos not following orders, some servers (like TG) have this rule and it really helps truly give the CO power over the team. But its not a role for everyone and very few players have the kind of experience, skills and mindset to be put in that position and do well.

Basically, its a complex issue, and someone telling you that simply putting the CO in trucks and driving to the front would fix everything I dont think has a grasp of the entire situation.

[[R-DEV]fuzzhead]

You do that by doing the following simple cool stuff:

1. Make a simple plan for what you want to do on a PR map as CO.

2. If you downt have any other CO friends out there post parts or the whole plan in the Commanders forum here on the main site and ask for criticism from related players. Or ask players like my self or other CO´s if you can PM x of a plan in order to get some feedback.

3. Find a server with the map and attempt to execute it.


You have a massive proactive learning tool in front of you as PR CO. Please use it as such.

Thank you Micheal, I believe you and I are on the same page in what we hope can be achieved by the CO position.

I'm not trying to say that the position is perfect in v0.85 and doesnt need any changes - far from it, its still got a long way to go. But I am discouraged by most of the posts in this thread that are urging the CO to go back to its vanilla state, and simply become another soldier with a few perks.... I personally see (and have witnessed first hand) so much more potential for the position, but its all up to the players to take it to that next level.

I think that, for most players, the CO position has just too much freedom that requires some serious thinking in order to have fun in it. When you step into that position, unless you've put some thought into it before hand, made some plans or tactics that you want to see implemented, or you've spent some serious time reading books or studying theory and art of modern warfare, then your going to be at a loss of what to do.

If your a tactics and strategy nutcase, who lives and breathes warfare and can spend hours reading AAR's of real battles and what kind of strategies were deployed, then taking a CO role for you is essentially giving you a chance to try out some of the theory you have been learning. But of course it does require you to earn the trust of the SL's under you, without that your experience will be very shallow and just a means to frustration. Making a bond of friendship between yourself and the SL's is I think critical to having a positive CO experience, and thats why its alot easier to command on servers of known regulars and where servers enforce SL obeys CO (or get kicked).

I encourage all would-be commanders to get to know some SL buddies first, before trying commander. play together with your SL friends as 2 squads acting as one unit, then try it on a bigger scale with 3 or 4 squads. Winning or losing the map is not important - its all about doing things as a unit, whether its attacking or defending... your going to need to take it slowly at first because at first it will be very challenging but it gets easier the more you do it. Now once you've got this experience under your belt, you and your SL buddies will be familiar with this style of play, and you can move into the CO position to help them execute these kinds of tactics, but on a larger scale. If you get into the CO role in this manner, I guarantee it will be a much more positive experience than simply hopping into the position on some random pub server and hoping that one SL will actually listen to you, when you dont have much experience and he has no idea if you are capable of the job.

[Michael_Denmark]

Yes [R-DEV]fuzzhead, think we are.

Now we just need around 50 other Public CO Players on the same track within this community. Thus only 48 left I´ve thought about suggesting that CO training program again but with a dedicated server - thus now the thought is surfaced.

Regarding the allocation of responsibility I created and used this AOR system in the tourney back in 2007-2008. In that system was implemented a function called the AOR leader that pretty much is what you describe, although only situational related in the battle-round.

But much more about that when I deploy the AOR text it self in the CO thread I am writing on. I actually also went further than that and used a solution-officer being off-game coming up with tactical solutions for the rounds them selfs while those were executed against the enemy. That kind of team work I hadn't much success with, so it still need some work i think.

The function it self also only relates to specific maps...big ones normally, where the time 2 battle factor provide space and time to implement such a function in the command structure.

Fuzzhead, thank you to you and the dev team for providing CO geeks like my self this awesome fun-learning tool.


---

Suggestion deployed:

http://www.realitymod.com/forum/f18-...tml#post959634

[Anderson29]

i just don't see why the CO and CO SGT cant be done by 1 man. CO has been replaced by SLs being on other forms of comms. then someone switches to commander when its time to drop an area attack.
the whole reason we need other forms of comms is because no one want to be the man in the box. this wasn't an issue till .8.
if the commander wants to drive around and check on his troops fighting....as long as he is filling all the needs of the team then why not allow him that freedom. if he dies...give him a long re-spawn like the civi to punish the CO for not playing smart.
this commander/strategy game thing you guys are doing with the commander slot is not working out so well

[nick20404]

Face it, once they stuck the commander in the main base in that damn box no one wants to do it anymore. Being commander was actually fun since you could go out and do stuff for your team, now you are just sitting at a computer, I mean who wants to sit at there computer while they sit at there computer?

[Michael_Denmark]

I do.

I like both dynamics, but for the most part ive done the tin box thing, although I never played using the tin box, I just deployed static below a bridge, a vehicle or something - for the entire round.

But map sizes also has something to say. Small maps as example...tin box position not really needed. Big maps...needed. (With exceptions to both dynamics of course)

[[R-DEV]fuzzhead]

Yes, commanding on 1km maps is just pointless IMO...

really, commanding will come into its own once more of the 4km maps start rolling out, expect alot more of these largescale maps in the future, and a reduction of 1km and 2km map sizes.

I've said this alot in the past but its worth repeating: the pacing and scale of PR atm is based around 4km maps, and the smaller maps really have a pacing and gameplay that is just not suited to proper tactics,planning or logistics. Although the smaller maps can be fun, the large scale maps is where I believe the best gameplay to be had especially when it comes to organizing an entire team and making proper strategies and executing them, and outwitting your opponent. The smaller maps usually play out where each team bashes each other over the head till one falls over.

[Michael_Denmark]

Copy

Still - i hope you at least will make sure some small maps are in use, cause they provide good training ground for basic O stuff as well. At least in my opinion.

[ReaperMAC]

Originally Posted by Michael_Denmark

Copy

Still - i hope you at least will make sure some small maps are in use, cause they provide good training ground for basic O stuff as well. At least in my opinion.

I believe small maps will still be in use... primarily as seeder maps till the server gets populated.

[Michael_Denmark]

Copy sounds good. They are useful.