Today we shall speak about some things useful that you may wanna know if you want to try SLing.
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Better void than disloyalty
Think about what you gonna say. If your comms are ignored, or your orders ignored, it may affect the image that the rest of your squads have of you. A leader with no authority, nor charisma, will only inspire pity and disloyalty. Be sure that you can enforce your orders and your comms.
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Loyal ones : Pillars of Leadership
Having friends, buds, people that know you and respect your skills/leadership are the ones that you MUST use to create a group dynamic. To control a squad, you may need at least 2 persons following you. They will create the "sheep-crowd dynamic". Marines are like sheep. They follow the crowd. Create the direction, and with enough intertia, the rest of your squad will follow.
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Marine RP =/= Player state of mind
A true soldier doesn't really think about if he has to obey, but how he may obey. All roleplayers and players do not share this state of mind, as they think as themselves, as free humans with no training nor mind-conditioning. Therefore, you need their respect, you need them to understand you.
To ease that you need :
- At least a good reputation as a regular squaddie/SL
- Some decent skills as not being a dipshit
- Not being a cunt/a dick : be nice towards others, or at least, be fair
- Greet and reward people for what they do. If they do a good job, that may not worth a medal, but some "Good shit lad !" or "Keep up the good work !" is largely appreciated.
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Positive state of mind
Do not get confused with being naive.
The positive state of mind is to avoid using too many of the "dark words". Replace retreat by fall back. Replace : WE ARE IN THE SHIT by REGROUP AND RALLY !.
Keep the banter and the light shit talk to lift up the spirits. As a SL, or aSL, you are the steps needed to climb the stairway to victory. Without you, marines are like penguins in a super bowl. You have a duty, not only on your skills, nor your tactics, but your ability to keep your men fighting. They do not fight anymore if their morale is broken.
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Tactical insight and decision making
You may not make the good choices. But make choices. With experience, and with the advice of some good veterans under your command, you will reduce drastically the amount of mistakes you will make.
You are yourself, with your own mind, thinking with your own ideas, your own words. You are limited by yourself. Do not ignore external intels given by your squaddies, Command or other units. You need to have as much intel as possible to avoid bad decisions. Withdrawing through a hostile area filled with X-rays is the last thing you wanna do, but listening to global comms or your squaddies may get you that intel.
Imagine that you are in a location, let's say Dorms, on Big Red.
You have a main entrance north west, south west. Little entrances from rooms west. Access to bar S-E and access to EVA East-N-E.
If reports say that hostiles outside Lambda, or around Lambda. Consider all locations East of yours as contested or potentially hostile. But you can, for example, run as fast as you can north and south and west to flank, withdraw, or regroup. If you are to head east, do not travel fast, but as a moderate-steady path to avoid losing troops on the way.
If you are to push, yeah, run fast and charge. But if you have no hostiles and you just want to go from point A to point B, consider that you need to adapt your speed to the environment you are facing. Clear/Contested ? Fast or normal speed. Contested/Hostile ? Normal to slow speed.
Always consider that areas can has three status : Friendly (FOB/Almayer/fortified outpost), Contested (any location that is not filled with 3+ aliens) and Hostile (basically, the Hive, or any location with a main group of X-rays inside).
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Information transmission and loss
When you say something, consider that only 50% of the people will get the message. To make your comms more interesting, more impacting, you need to make them short.
It's like insults ! Saying : "SHUT THE FUCK UP" is way more impacting than "Please, would you have the courtesy of stop emitting sounds with your mouth ?". Order + short details. RALLY + LOCATION. PUSH + DIRECTION. NAME + ORDER + DETAIL. MCBADLY, RALLY ON ME. Add more details but very short. "YOU ARE OVEREXTENDING".
Use caps like a 9 y-o kid on Call of Duty, when on fight. You need to attract attention.
Do not use caps all the time, especially, when you are not in combat, just to avoid the annoying-boring shit. People will assimilate then that you are using caps-lock for orders with importance, and they will give more importance to your orders. And they will also understand when you are speaking normally and will consider your intel as not prioritary.
Someone talking normally all the time doesn't inspire authority.
Someone screaming all the time, doesn't inspire authority.
You have to mix both, using it wisely to create and attract attention to what you say, depending on what you want people around you to understand.
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Panick/Routed : usual patterns
What is shown on some video games is that a unit, when its morale is too low, will stop responding to your orders, or worse, doing other shits on its own.
Let me tell you that : it's even worse IRL.
When a human being panicks :
- He will not listen to you anymore OR will listen to only ONE order, randomly that you gave. (The randomness of the order folllowed depends on what the players fears/wants. If you ordered a tactical withdrawal and a flank, if the player is panicked and wants to hide, he'll be more likely to simply fucking back off and abandon the flanking order.)
- Your unit will simply stand the fuck at the same place. It's an emotional/body paralysis (you probably noticed it IRL for mates during exams, or facing danger : agression, accident, and stuff). People tend to simple being blocked due to not know what to do.
- Your unit will do completely jackshit and act according to her own agenda/priorities unrelated to your orders.
When falling back, they'll just fucking run in the global direction where friendlies should be, even if they the way they want to take is filled with enemies.
When shooting, they'll not notice the persons in their lines of fire (noticed the increasing FF during stressful situations ? It's a cause of that, people panick, they don't know what to do, they are not calm.)
That's how, as a SL, you have a job to do. Your presence, your talking, and your ACTUAL presence on their visual, that's how you win points. Your "L" icon is a visual landmark. Your presence/aura is rock where they can stand. Your talking is their lifeline giving them calm, giving them a meaning.
Keep talking, repeat your orders, gather them on you. Even if panicked, at least, they'll follow you like sheeps. And if they follow you ? At least they give you their firepower on your precise location, allowing you to pursue maneuvers or to survive a deadly counter-attack.
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That's all for today, I'll try to see if I need to add some other psychology-management shits if I remember using them on leadership roles.
