The Current State of Command

[Kasion]

There seem to be a few posts on CR5s and the common opinion of them. They tend to be empire and server specific, but I would like to have an educated discussion on the current state, and some possible ways to improve the situation. Below is a fairly lengthy post, and based on my experiences the last two months.

I have recently returned to Planetside, and in the past couple of months I have noticed a few points of interest concerning the Vanu CR5s. They mainly deal with bleeding dry a continent if we do not outnumber the other empires, and the determination of the order of continent target priorities.

Almost every single time that the VS seem to start losing ground on a continent or another empire begins to get equal numbers as us, there comes a global message from a CR5 telling everyone to leave the continent and start filling up another one or resecure a currently threatened captured continent. The big problem that I have with this is that the call goes out when we are starting to dig in and make a stand or our offensive starts to slow some, and then people start to leave and we lose ground, if not the entire continent. If the CR5s would request X number of squads or platoons, that would be better vice the all call and give up on the current on-going fights.

An example: We start to make a push on a continent. We are making some progress, but then start to stagnate. About this time, a CR5 makes a call to make another continent our primary target, so that we will not be down to only owning one. There is some banter back and forth on the global channel between the CR5s stating that we should stay and fight from one side, and leave to take more territory on another continent from the other. End result is the first continent is bled dry of people, and we start to lose the bases we controlled and not able to make an offensive due to the people being funneled off to a new target. The new target lasts about 15 minutes, and we began to face some fierce fighting. Sure enough, a CR5 comes over global telling everyone to leave this new target for another one. They want us to move to a continent that does not have nearly the resistance as the current �new primary� target. The overall outcome was losing all of our bases on two continents vice staying and fighting for at least one of them.

Overall, I think that the CR5s need to realize that battles have their ebbs and flows. Do not have a knee jerk reaction to give up just because things look bad right now, but have contingency plans ready for any circumstance that will improve a situation. Also, do not bleed a continent dry of people with an all call, but ask for squads and platoons to support another battle or resecure a continent.

People are starting to lose faith in the CR5s, and more and more commands/requests are going unheeded because of the current situation in the leadership. If any changes are expected, the CR5s need to take the first step and work out a new system in commanding the troops. Just telling people it is their fault because they did not listen to the multiple calls of multiple �primary� targets, a continent was lost will not fix anything. If people are not leaving a continent, stay and command. Do the best you can with the people you have, and listen to them. When there is a massive amount of people that stay in a fight when they are told to report somewhere else, maybe they believe they can win if a good leader stays behind and organizes them. Maybe it is best for the empire to stay in a fight if the remaining force thinks that way.

Commanding is not an art of telling people to act and expect them to do so. It is leading the people that follow you and doing the best you can with them. A leader with nobody to lead is just an individual that is alone in a fight.