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Thread: Braindead guide to command: Do's and dont's for tryhards

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    Whitelisted Captain 50RemAndCounting's Avatar
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    Braindead guide to command: Do's and dont's for tryhards

    Evidently there's still a persistent issue of subpar command players and players just flat out refusing to take any kind of command responsibility, even if it's being temporarily assigned SL. It's 2022 and most players seem to have no idea what the fuck is commanding about, and if I see someone genuinely struggling at leading and getting shit done, I'll link them this guide, because the alternative is either reading through convoluted wiki pages or doing the same mistakes over and over again and wondering why other players OOCly hate you. This is not a guide to roleplaying. No fancy formatting or anything like that, and if you don't like this guide, I don't care.

    Okay, real simple, what is command's role? Regardless of what job you're playing: YOU TALK TO PEOPLE, COLLECT INFORMATION, PASS IT ON TO PEOPLE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR AND TELL THEM WHAT THEY SHOULD DO
    To be a good leader, you need to keep these things in mind at all times:




    KNOW THE GAME, PLAY THE GAME

    You can't be a good leader if you don't know how this game works. You can't be a good Squad Leader if you haven't even read the Marine Quickstart Guide at least a couple times. You should go read that, by the way. It's on the wiki, right on the front page. There's a wiki link button at the top of this forum page. If you don't know what squad medics do, what squad engineers do, if you don't know how to position yourself and others so you can fire at the enemy without shooting each other, go play medical, engineering and requisition roles, then come back to read the rest of this guide.




    TYPE GOOD, TYPE FAST

    This is absolutely non-negotiable. If you're a slow typer, you will always be at a disadvantage to those that type faster than you. This will especially cripple you as an important command role because information takes very long to trickle down to the squad marines from the top. You do not need a flashy keyboard for this, I'm playing with a 7 dollar office keyboard and it's more than enough. Practice typing, brush up on your grammar and spelling. You are constantly going to be making decisions on-the-fly and your ability to type those thoughts needs to keep up as much as possible.




    LEARN WHEN TO SHUT UP

    Your words carry weight. The more you talk, the more you dilute the value of your words and the less will others listen to you. No command beats bad command every time for this exact reason. If you're unsure about something, rather don't type anything instead of risking giving out incorrect info and fucking everyone over. Ideally, you'll never be in a situation where you have to question someone else giving you bad info, which brings us to the next point:




    DON'T TRUST, VERIFY

    People make mistakes, including you, including everyone else. It's normal for people to wrongly interpret enemy actions, wrongly identify a xeno type because the sprite was only visible for one frame in near total darkness, or assume a queen is about to attack them from behind when in reality it's a cloaked predator doing queen stomping noises. CHECKING WHETHER MARINES ARE SPEAKING FACTS OR BULLSHIT IS THE BACKBONE OF LEADING.

    This is the most difficult habit to learn because it's nigh impossible to do until you hit enough stupid timelock thresholds to unlock Staff Officer. Until then you mostly have to rely on hearsay from others. However, you can always do the following:
    • Ask another person to confirm what the first person said. If 6 marines yell "QUEEN DEAD" at the same time it's a 99% certainty that the xeno queen is indeed, dead. If only one or two marines say "QUEEN DEAD" and nobody else says or reacts to it, odds are those two are not telling the truth. Use the exact same radio channel you heard this on and ask someone else "is this true?". Ask quick, short, yes/no questions if you don't believe someone's claims.
    • Try to confirm what happened with your own two eyes if at all possible. Even a lowly PFC can grab a pair of binoculars. If you're relatively near the location, whip them out and zoom in to there. Make haste towards there if you can't see anything. Don't consider something a fact if you can check it out with your own two eyes.
    • Ask CIC officers to check it out. It's their job to do so. Have them flip through squad helmet cams to see what you and your mates can see.
    • Wear a helmet, so the CIC can do the same with you. The only thing better than verifying something yourself is having CIC verify it alongside you as well. You may have access to only one radio channel - they can send announcements that are heard by all marine players, anywhere.
    • Wear a SensorMate medical HUD. Help your medics, help yourself, and spend less time yelling at blinking red marines to rush the enemy positions or CPRing permanently dead marines. Did you know you can always check if someone's permadead even without any medical skill or equipment? Right click their mob and press "Check Status", if they're perma, you'll get a chat message saying "Their eyes have gone blank, there are no signs of life".


    If you are playing a CIC role:
    • As above: watch those squad cams. Click the filter buttons at the bottom of the overwatch console screen to adjust the list to your liking. Filter marines by location - marines on Almayer just clog your display and make it harder to navigate it. Click once to set the filter to this setting.
    • Be active. Switch to different marines often. If nothing is happening for more than 5 seconds, click on another marine name on the list and watch their cam for anything noteworthy.
    • Move the overwatch console screen to somewhere it won't block your chat. I recommend you move it to the top right corner of your screen, as well as switching your game to fullscreen (Toggle-fullscreen-preference in bottom command bar) so you don't accidentally press the big red X
    • Wear medical HUD goggles. Don't even think about doing overwatch without them. They're laying on your tables for a reason. COs get one for free from their vendor, too.





    USE YOUR TOOLS AND ABILITIES

    ORDERS: easiest and most common leader ability, and an actual tangible game mechanic for once. It's simple:
    1. MOVE: USE TO CHASE DOWN HOSTILES, OR ESCAPE AN OVERWHELMING FORCE.
    2. HOLD: A LOT OF MARINES IN BLINKING RED ON YOUR MEDHUD, OR ABOUT TO BE? ISSUE A HOLD ORDER SO THEY CAN HOLD ON FOR A LITTLE WHILE LONGER WITHOUT DYING.
    3. FOCUS: ARE THE MARINES BUNCHING UP OUTSIDE OF A CHOKE POINT WITH XENOS ADVANCING ON THEM BUT STILL OUTSIDE SHORT RANGE (3-4 TILES)? A GOOD FOCUS ORDER CAN HELP EVERYONE HOSE DOWN A HARDY XENO AND KILL THEM INSTEAD OF LETTING THEM LIMP AWAY. THIS IS THE MOST SITUATIONAL OF ALL THREE, USE SPARINGLY.



    YOUR SUBORDINATES: deceptively simple, still easy to figure out.
    • Remember who do you have at disposal. CIC and Squad Leaders in particular should worry about how many squad medics and engineers they have in their squad(s). Note it down, keep a rough mental map of who's playing what role and where they approximately are. Keep in touch with them to keep track of your status, if they're dead or not present at all you may be forced to alter your strategy drastically!
    • Don't treat them like drones or NPCs. They're flesh and blood players, like you. You are not playing an RTS. If you want to order people, communicate properly while maintaining a basic standard of respect, and keep your wording simple and straightforward.
    • When playing a CIC role, find a balance between having SLs slavishly obey you and having absolute free reign. Both of these extremes are bad, communicate and work with the SLs to establish common ground, and understand how you can work the best with each other. There's a reason why SLs have to attend briefing every time!
    • Delegate responsibilites. Don't forcefully do everything yourself. Talk to your immediate subordinates, figure out who will do what. A CO can delegate a staff officer to handle brig matters in their name, SLs can assign and manage fireteams for various purposes. Put the "team" in teamwork!


    CO-SPECIFIC STUFF: skip this if you aren't a CO and don't care about getting CO whitelisted.
    Spoiler Spoiler:






    ANNOUNCEMENT CONSOLES

    Overwatch consoles can send messages to entire squads, or just the SL, at any time in the round, even when all comms are down. Use this.
    Groundside operations consoles send those big red letters we all know and love. Reserve them for the most important stuff, don't use it to spam unverified information.
    Ship control console is right below the groundside operations console. If you need to announce something important which useful only to shipside players, use this instead. Deployed marines will likely not care about the Corporate Liaison mugging research for their xeno eggs, but your MPs and medbay officers most certainly will.





    CONCLUSION
    This is by no means an exhaustive guide. Certain other things, like a basic level of interpersonal communication and ineraction skills, are also required for being a good leader, which is something this guide cannot convey. Communicating is a learned skill, learn and practice it.
    Above all else, when playing, try not to "err", "uhm", "erm". Understand that this happens to everyone and that sooner or later everyone encounters something that leaves them completely confused, but work on not letting this happen to you. Play the game, know the game, be confident and don't hesitate. Also, almost every combat leadership role has some medical skill. COs and XOs can fill in for medics, and use autodocs and make chems if it's really, really needed. Just because there should be at least one doctor on every round regardless of pop does not mean you shouldn't be ready to jump in and quickly make keloderm for that medic patiently waiting in chemline, or put a wounded soldier in autodoc. Don't steal other people's jobs, but don't pussyfoot around if someone actually needs help. These roles have these skills for a very good reason, use them. Also, any officer player who doesn't carry an advanced first aid kit, a health analyzer and a defib at a minimum, and can't build a simple cadeline that can't be corner slashed by xenos is a shit officer player.


    Last edited by 50RemAndCounting; 05-05-2022 at 10:10 PM.
    Sheeesh this boy LRP as hell!

  2. #2
    Dev Team Manager Stan_albatross's Avatar
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    if you make spelling mistakes nobody (especially me) will respect you
    Karl Karlsson, the man (and sometimes Captain)
    Maxwell, the synth
    Enhath'vot Guan-Dha, the predator
    Also a feature Coder & CM's Maintainer Team Manager

    Timeline :
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    [CENTER]Retired Synth councilman, forever a member of IO gang

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    Senior Member Usnpeepoo's Avatar
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    Here’s an awesome tip: don’t learn marine law

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    Senior Member AlbertBlackwell's Avatar
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    Also, don't be stupid.

    Marines won't follow super duper complex plan nine-hundred and ninety-nine, use this acronym:

    K - Keep

    I - It

    S - Stupid

    S - Simple

    A moron (PVT) should be able to understand your orders, if your trying to get to point A to C don't add D, E, F etc or talk about how stupid predators look.
    Chaotic puppet-master from hell

  5. #5
    Whitelisted Captain 50RemAndCounting's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AlbertBlackwell View Post
    Also, don't be stupid.

    Marines won't follow super duper complex plan nine-hundred and ninety-nine, use this acronym:

    K - Keep

    I - It

    S - Stupid

    S - Simple

    A moron (PVT) should be able to understand your orders, if your trying to get to point A to C don't add D, E, F etc or talk about how stupid predators look.
    He's right you know.
    Sheeesh this boy LRP as hell!

  6. #6
    Whitelisted Captain TyroneDadWhisperer's Avatar
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    Good guide, a lot of command players decide to do walls of text with little to no actual info that's relevant or accurate. Though a bit of flair in announcements to separate you from other command players doesn't hurt
    Synthetic Unit Adrian

    Former CO Councillor 21/03/21 - 7/11/21








  7. #7
    Whitelisted Captain 50RemAndCounting's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by TyroneDadWhisperer View Post
    Good guide, a lot of command players decide to do walls of text with little to no actual info that's relevant or accurate. Though a bit of flair in announcements to separate you from other command players doesn't hurt
    I agree. Spicing up your announcements to add some flavor and express your character's personality is awesome, but style shouldn't take precedence over substance.
    Sheeesh this boy LRP as hell!

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    Sad this thread has to be made.

    Something I think is important to note is that your focus should be on the groundside operation, not some minor shipside happening.

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    When assigning an ASL do not assign a medic. Also do not assign a PVT.

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    I think it's also important to give cardinal directions. Even most PFCs don't memorize the maps, especially ones not LV. It's a lot better to say "head EAST from the FOB" than "push into construction/botany/etc"

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