As an outfit gets bigger, how do you ensure comms stay relevant?

[exohkay]

Hi,

My outfit has always been a very small, tight knit group of players who have played comp games for a few years.

We have recently recruited a lot of new players, but the only downside is that we have gone from having 6-10 people in Mumble to perhaps 15-20. We generally run as a single platoon, with everyone in the same channel.

We have a loose rule on comms outside of ops, but sometimes it can get a bit cluttered.

How do you guys manage comms in larger outfits?

[Chewy]

It is not easy to handle coms.

There's 2 ways you can do it.
1-all in one channel
2 put each squad into its own channel and only have SLs and PL be able to cross talk between them.

That's about it. Also try to use proxy chat instead of squad chat if ther are in the same vehicle. Coms are one of the hardest things to get right. You either have to tell people to shut-up and kick those that don't or live with them talking.

[p0intman]

member tactical discipline and comms discipline.

[AThreatToYou]

There's an option in TS3 that I'm sure is available in Mumble, i just forget if it works the same or not. Essentially, you should be able to set it up to where if any set users are talking, ALL non-priority users in the channel are muted until they are done talking. You can also set it up to where these priority speakers can be heard across different channels OR can hear each other across different channels.

Combined with squad channels, that's my suggestion. Worked well in the large-team games I played.

[bpostal]

I find it typically starts to get 'noisy' with about three squads (36-ish) worth of people in one channel.
We get around this by restricting channels in mumble to approximately 24 people. Squad and Platoon leaders have access to their own cross channel communication. That can get kinda busy but in cases where the SL can't hear the PL, a quick 'battle comms' (or the like) order or the like keeps people quiet so that orders can propagate down to the SL.

Personally I've found the trick is balancing the amount of non-essential traffic being passed with the necessary and vital inter-squad communication. You've gotta let people bullshit and have fun but also be able to hear when the enemy pulls up a new bus.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by bpostal

I find it typically starts to get 'noisy' with about three squads (36-ish) worth of people in one channel.
We get around this by restricting channels in mumble to approximately 24 people. Squad and Platoon leaders have access to their own cross channel communication. That can get kinda busy but in cases where the SL can't hear the PL, a quick 'battle comms' (or the like) order or the like keeps people quiet so that orders can propagate down to the SL.

Personally I've found the trick is balancing the amount of non-essential traffic being passed with the necessary and vital inter-squad communication. You've gotta let people bullshit and have fun but also be able to hear when the enemy pulls up a new bus.

"Clear Comms" is the order we used back in Second Life, but yeah, same idea.

Since you could rarely pack more then 15-20 Attackers in a Second Life Simulator, our Ventrilo Channel Setup was based around whatever activity you were doing.
So you had Officer Office channels for private one-on-one chats, locked meeting room channels for private discussion amongst the High Command and whoever they brought in, a standing Defense channel for whoever was protecting the Base, Attack channels for when we held multiple attacks, a Training channel for training, and channels for being AFK or other non-Second Life things.

My current Outfit, the Angry Joe Army, is an inter-game casual guild, so they have a VoIP channel set up for each game.
In Planetside 2, they've got one for each faction and three standing squad channels for the Terran Republic, with an option for Guild Officers to add additional channels as necessary.
That said, considering our Guild is focused around an "Internet Celebrity" we've got a lot of "Fanboy" players who don't even bother with the Forums or the Mumble, so we rarely bother leaving Squad One unless we're running a particularly successful Ops Night.

[ShockFC]

My outfit is not large, and I'm in a similar situation as you. 65-75 members, and at prime time we usually have around 20-25 online at once.

We use TS3 and I use priority speaker. Whenever me or a couple others in my outfit talk, we drown out everyone else. It's quite a nice feature.

However, I am very loose on chatter in comms. I do move people between channels if they are talking about other crap while we are focused on something. Luckily, I have an outfit where when we focus on something - everyone is focused and cares about it. Thus, comms are usually very tight.

[Fenrys]

If you have good SL's, you can put each squad in it's own channel, but good SL's are hard to find. The battlefield becomes a much foggier place for members of a squad with a bad SL, and the rest of the platoon loses out on that squad's ability to quickly share intel.

It's good advice to always repeat your orders. Twice in a row when first giving the order, then pause for a bit and repeat until it happens.

Sometimes it's OK to ask everyone to STFU for 20 minutes during a big fight. If your one platoon is defending a base from enemy platoons, the only thing that really needs to be said over voice comms is the location of enemy AMS's, and organizing the raids to take them out.

Try not to let the situation devolve to a point where you need to ask for "clear comms" all the damn time to get anything done. The focused, achivement driven players get frustrated by the mickymouse bullshit they have to work through, and the social, relationship driven players experience un-fun negative emotion. It's lose-lose. Don't go there, and if it looks like you're headed that way, change direction.

You might need to let one or two squads have their own channel, so the players who don't like the chatter of the platoon channel can remove themselves from it. As PL, you lose fast intel from all those players, but your motivated SL(s) is probably micromanaging them to great effect, so its a net positive.

[Brusi]

With an IRON FIST!

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by exohkay

Hi,

My outfit has always been a very small, tight knit group of players who have played comp games for a few years.

We have recently recruited a lot of new players, but the only downside is that we have gone from having 6-10 people in Mumble to perhaps 15-20. We generally run as a single platoon, with everyone in the same channel.

We have a loose rule on comms outside of ops, but sometimes it can get a bit cluttered.

How do you guys manage comms in larger outfits?

You can also handle it like it would be in real life. IRL you just have to get used to allot of chatter over the com radio as a officer and be able to listen to two people talking at the same time.

Also repeating orders 2 times in row helps to brake through the "noise". It's also good to do that as you never know if your team mates that are like me and like to have combat sound on high volume on a high end 1.7 surround system for immersion and might have missed some details because something exploded 3 meters away.

[Rolfski]

Setting it up depends on how you want to run your ops: tactical/formal or casual/fun.

For tactical/formal ops:

• 12-24 players: As Bpostal said, you can have up to around 24 players in a single Mumble channel/platoon as long as you use strict battle coms discipline in formal ops. Running with more than 24 makes a separate channel for squad/ platoon leads desirable. Priority speaking is optional, not required, as it has its down sides as well.
• 24-48 players: Go multiple half platoons/channels with a separate channel for PL's or use a single platoon with different channels for each squad and a separate command channel for PL and SL's.
• Above 48 players: The same as a 24-48 players (either squads or half platoons) but consider adding an extra command layer if you operate on squad level. In the that case you might consider the Devildogs solution where they use a radio operator in every squad (Check the 23 min mark in this FNO video)

For casual/fun/drunken ops:
The options above apply as well but stick to max two command/comms levels/layers only. You also might consider linking the channels (i.e. when going drunken ops after formal ops).

In the end, operating on either half-platoon level or squad level (as part of full platoons) is just a matter of preference, both have their Pro's and Cons.

[Maarvy]

Most programs have facilities to set up squad / command channels with there own binds .

A communal channel to cross chat works nice once people figure how to make separate binds . during ops this becomes the key to press to cry about bieng TK'd , discuss the football , what u had for dinner etc etc .

Its a good option to provide a channel where everyone can run free and cross chat while keeping there squad channels clear . Ofc with the option just to leave the communal channel when you feel it got too noisey . This way you can enforce good teamplay and chat rules without feeling like a bit of a ass asking people to be quiet every 2 minuites .