The Commander Comment Corner

[BobTheJanitor]

"Rambo in the general direction of satcomm" means that you're simply lining up your marines to die one by one. Marines are flighty little creatures with small brains who think they can all take down 5 onos, 7 fades, and all three hives with nothing more than armor one and a lot of medspam. You've GOT to keep them under control. Marine games with teams of basically even skill are won or lost exactly at the point that the commander loses control of the team. By their nature, marines will not go to the place you want them to be. They all have their own ideas about how the game should be played, and most of them involve dreams of them ending up with a 50-0 kill-death ratio while 'someone else' takes down that hive, builds that RT, guards the tfac, welds up base, etc. etc. Well I'M someone else, and I'm tired of it!

As a commander, YOU must make the plans, and YOU must inform the team of them, and YOU must deal with those that don't follow the plan. This is where the beloved commrage comes from. You MAKE the team go to those waypoints, whether they want to or not. You tell them EXACTLY what you want them to do once they get there. A waypoint in a hive is worthless. You want us to rush? Build a PG? Get up a tfac? Are we just going in to take out their DCs? Are we distracting for you while someone gets a PG up in another hive? Do you want us to spawncamp? (BANT!) You have to communicate. Otherwise every marine will get to your waypoint and then each of them will decide to do one of the above mentioned things, and no two will do the same thing. About two minutes and 100 res in medpacks later, the hive is still up and the fades are moving in on base.

And since I'm ranting: KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM!!! Do not slow down for any reason. You've locked down a hive? Good. Just because there's a fade on your TFac doesn't mean you should send the whole team trudging back to that hive. The solution to aliens being in your bases is marines being in theirs. Get some shotties in another hive and I guarantee that fade will lose interest in beating up your Tfac pretty fast. You cannot get walled in to a defensive stance. As soon as you lose the offensive, you've quite nearly lost the game. And yet I see so many comms wasting precious minutes sending marine after marine off to save an unimportant base in some hive. Killing skulks and welding phase gates will not win you the game. If they take out a PG and Tfarm in a hive, while you're taking out a hive, you have gotten the better deal on your exchange. Now you're fighting aliens with one less hive, and that hive that they just cleared out? It's probably building right now, a prime target for a rush. Go get some free gorge kills!

Man, I love ranting at comms. Ask me some more!

[XeroDream]

For those of you who dont comm and are ranting you gutta learn it hard up there and I know that I hate it when Rines dont use the Little voice things to tell me where they are they just start shouting MEDSPAM! or AMMO! But if you dont tell me where the hell you are I can spam ya. also Usually YEs i do know how annoying it is when coms dont drop stuff thats why u try to give ya a heads up sayin "imma Drop Laser Drillin" so if your somewhere else you know to move on so any comments about me as com plz share cuz I love every minute of it and I want to be an Awesome Com LIke Rad on LM! Thanx :help:

[Majin]

The Comm has his hands full so I like to try and be a Sub Comm, leading the team and directing them to the orders.
Works well when PPL listen and not RAMBO.

[Mr.Ben]

If the comms not talking then i'll either:
a) rambo but i know what needs to be done to make marines win so i'll get it done even if no one else will
B) Try and organise the team if it has people i know on it and then just let the comm drop meds

By the way bob, me comming without a mic is total sux + my medspam that day was so slow.

[fatty]

fatty as far as i know, "in position" doesnt bring up a alert to the cc
hitting the requesting orders butten works alot better, unless its' being spamm'ed by fools

when i command, i see the in position thingy.

some commanders need to learn that "guy with no mic, but types" is just as important to pay attention to as "guy spamming his mic"

ARRRRGGGG it happened yesterday multiple times. DHP didn't see me in sewer on mineshaft for a GOOD 4 minutes. i was typing and requesting everything i could. very next game it happened too. things like this make little gorgies just want to go play warcraft / civilization and forget ns...  

[devicenull]

Lacner, I have that problem with a few maps, I usually just siege the hive from as close as I can get, and drop an armory near the marines.. Haven't figured out how to solve that lag problem.

Commanders, when someone asks for a welder, its not because they want to go use it to wank in the corner... ffs drop damn welders, your marines will last longer because they regenerate their armor, and your structures will be at higher health levels

[Diablus]

Dont beg for medpacks and call for them every 5 seconds when you rambo. unless i tell you to nubs

[rad4Christ]

X-S-Z: Thanks for the comments. I try to keep my marines happy, even if it's just a verbal "good show ol' chap".

Actually, I won THREE straight games yesterday on that other server I couldn't ever seem to conquer. And I found out my shortfall. Exactly what you said X-S-Z. I'm too gradual. I started implementing W1 BEFORE OBS, and W2 before phase tech, and really pushing my marines to be aggressive instead of capping every node they can. Once I have four nodes, I change to pressuring, and cap as available, it seems to work wonders. In the three wins, 2 were total 2 hive lock downs, and one they're second hive was only up for about a minute. And this on CoFR, wow! So, if I see I have a competent team, you're going to see more shotty rushes and hive 1 sieges under 5 minutes if we're doing good. Look out scrims, I'm ready to try it again.

Jefe: I've never seen you comm, so I can't comment.

Seth: I think you're a good commander, but you spend so much on beginning base defense it usually puts us at a disadvantage early on. If we don't hold nodes quickly, it will go south. However, I will say that I've never seen someone win as much as you do when they place TF in base.

Isamil: You are altogether TOO QUIET when you comm, and you need to drop MED and AMMO. I remember a game wher we were trying to hold crucial points on the map, but we never got med/ammo support, and kept dying so quickly. But there's a whole other thread about that.

Mr.Ben: I love your comming, I always try to figure out your tactics and stea.. claim them for myself. Really good work, except the quiet mic  

Decimator: Never seen you comm

fatty: Not a comm, but the best res gopher EVAR!

Alot of you are great marines, and I will say listen very well. Thanks for the feedback and I'd love to hear more!

[Mr.Ben]

Decimantor: Just got off a few games with you. Comments: Not enough meds or ammo. You need to watch your marines more, particulary in danger zones. Also i disagree with not medding rambos, actually random ramboing is very effective as long as when the time comes and you give them specific orders to go somewhere, they do it.

Not enough mircomanaging. I can see there are uncapped nodes but you're not telling anyone to go there. You're just saying generic go here, do this, go there. In those situations most marines think either a) someone else will go B) lets all go together. Micromanaging like "ben cap archiving" is a much better way to get marines to follow orders.

Teching was too slow, we didn't get A1 till really late and whilst okay we got MT first we didn't make the most of it. MT first is great for pressuring a hive but we weren't, we were just running around like headless chickens.

Rad: Come pug sometime, i think you could learn some stuff which could take you from a good commander to a very good commander, you own pubs, step it up, you know you want to. PUG play calls to you.

If you want rad next time i catch you on IRC we can talk comm talk.

[fatty]

fatty: Not a comm, but the best res gopher EVAR!

res gopher? you mean getting r4k for you?  B)

[Decimator]

MrBen, the MT first games were an experiment that failed horribly.  Normally I won't even get MT until very late in the game and get armor and weapons upgrades instead.  I'll try to follow your advice when I comm again, but right now my brain is fried...

[BobTheJanitor]

MT is a glorious bonus, but it's awfully expensive. I'd love to see MT split into basic and advanced MT. Basic would just be minimap, advanced would have the tracking circles. Basic MT really helps out those that keep an eye on their minimap, whereas the advanced MT with the circles, I could do without. Stupid circles are just a distraction, and they get in the way when I'm trying to aim. = (   /offtopic

[Mr.Ben]

MT is a very powerful first upgrade but you really need to capitalise on it. Send some of your marines to pressure their starting hive, not to try and kill it but just to get the aliens attention. They'll be able to defend themselves very easily with a bit of medspam + mt. Meanwhile have your marines mop up any skulks and start working their nodes. Taking out an alien node with MT is much easier.

Also it's important to be able to recognise what is going on with MT, this isn't done through the circles but more through red dots. Most comms have an idea of what hive will be up next, if you see a red dot go into the hive then stop moving then start moving again a short while afterwards then get your marines to check out that hive. If you see blips stop moving inside the hive at 4/5 minutes, that's your fade egg. Also the speed the dot moves is a good indication of lifeform. This mixed with location and disaperances gives you a good indication of what is going on, far more than the circles or just knowing red dot is bad does.

Building off the point about red dots, in base defense place your obs in a place that will give you as much coverage as possible, your obs as well as giving you upgrades and decloaking acts as localised MT on mini map only. Makes it much easier to defend base if your obs covers a lot of the entrances.

Bob: the worst thing to get in your way are waypoints, i hate waypoints that are smack bang in your field of view :|

[BobTheJanitor]

Check the customization forums for the waypoints. I found a replacement that's still visible, yet smaller and more transparent. So when a comm likes to put a wp right in the middle of a cramped hallway, I can still usually see the skulks coming.

And yeah, that's why I love the MT on the minimap 100 times more than the MT circles. One is for strategic and intelligence purposes, the other is just a weak wallhack for those who don't use their ears.  

[Diablus]

MT is a glorious bonus, but it's awfully expensive. I'd love to see MT split into basic and advanced MT. Basic would just be minimap, advanced would have the tracking circles. Basic MT really helps out those that keep an eye on their minimap, whereas the advanced MT with the circles, I could do without. Stupid circles are just a distraction, and they get in the way when I'm trying to aim. = (   /offtopic

Nah, i think Basic MT would work only in a small radius of the area your in at the time. not the whole map thing...

[BobTheJanitor]

The whole point would be to cover the whole map. MT on minimap is a tool for watching enemy movements. MT circles are just blah.

[Seth]

since we are on MT i'd like to say, get that plugin that turns the flashlight to a proximity alert thingy, you know like what rippley had in Aliens...

[Lito]

MrBen once commented that i don't keep an eye on marines in important areas, which leads them to dying before they can cry for a medpack.  I realised that he was right.  I just sent him and a buddy off to a node near a hive and went off to other business.

A Comm needs to be all over the place, but generally focused on an important area.  

Thanks MrBen~ you can be my Field commander anyday~

And i'm noticing the lack of magic squiggles in recent posts.  This has got to end.  Now.

[Doobie Dan]

The Comm has his hands full so I like to try and be a Sub Comm, leading the team and directing them to the orders.
Works well when PPL listen and not RAMBO.

I'm a big fan of field commanders - its difficult to tell some of the nuances of what's going on in the battlefield sometimes, and sargents can help this situation a lot - ie. the commander knows that marines are dying at the waypoint, but it'll take him a little while to figure out exactly why.

I'm a big fan of MT first on the big maps (Agora and Hera in particular) - the fighting at first probably won't be constant, so intelligence is more important than pure combat stats.  You can still get A1 quick on these maps because you'll be capping 4-5 res immediately.  Smaller maps where you're fighting tooth and nail for the first few RTs obviously favor armor.

MT first is also nice for games that start slow (3v3) as you can get away with covering the whole map with RTs without dying if you know where they are.

rad and Deci are great comms, keep up the good work you two.  Seth, everyone already knows you can comm.  :p  Anyone have any comments on my commanding?

[Mr.Ben]

Lito: Yey! ~~