The rules of engagement

[Cyanide]

Here are some rules that one should follow while playing PS. These rules form a structure that will give you maximum enjoyment from the game without interfering with another person�s fun. Follow them and you will be successful in PS.

Foot soldier / everybody rules:

1) Join a squad. Not being in a squad is stupid in this game. The benefits are too great to play solo.

2) As an infantry man you must be aware of your surroundings at all times. Use your mini-map when ever possible and constantly check your surroundings, even while running. Look left, right, forward, and backwards every once in a while so that you know where your allied soldiers and vehicles are. This prevents you from missing opportunities for kills as well as keeping you out of the way of friendly fire/vehicles.

3) When assaulting a base or tower you should attack as a group. Spread out to consume the entire width of the hallway or room you're moving through. This prevents infiltrators and anything else from escaping your sweep. Also, if you're traveling through tight places where you have squad members behind you, crouch when you engage the enemy. This not only gives you better accuracy but it allows your teammates behind you to shoot over your heads. Thus increasing your squads total damage dealt per second. The importance of this CAN NOT be stressed enough. If you are in the front of an attack squad crouch when you engage the enemy. If you are not in front, stand and shoot over your teammates.

4) If you are a max unit stay behind your front line troops during inside base/tower assaults. Your troops (assuming they follow these rules) will crouch and add to your fire power. If you are in front of them you will block their view and will decrease your squads total used fire power. You must learn that just because you as an individual have more armor and fire power than one other squad member, you do not pack more power than the entirety of the squad. You or any other soldier as an individual are an easy target for an organized squad who follows these rules of engagement.

5) When traveling on foot outside, stay in places where vehicles do not go. The center of base courtyards, the center of roads or bridges are where vehicles MUST travel. You on the other hand are a foot soldier and therefore you are not forced to travel in these places, so you should not. Stay on the side of the road or completely off of the road when possible. Hug walls when moving around the base courtyards. Do not stop on bridges and stay to the sides of the bridge so that vehicles may pass, without running you over. Always give vehicles the right of way. They are bigger and harder to control so you must stay out of their way whenever possible.

6) When clearing a room you should enter as a group. The first person to enter picks a side to sweep to and you following behind them should go in the opposite direction when you enter. This insures that the room is quickly and easily cleared with minimal friendly fire incidents cause by twitch reflex.

7) Create chat macros that assist you in common communications. Macros are created by typing the following into your chat window.
/macro crh /s Down in front!
This will create a chat macro that you can attach to F1-F8 in your HUD. This macro will have the letters crh to help you identify it and will tell your squad members to crouch if they are in front of you. Create macros that are conducive to your roll in the squad. Leaders, maxes, hacker, engineers, etc will not all have the same macros. Everybody should have macros for North East South and West. Giving directions is VERY important in many different situations.

8) Just because you can not identify somebody at range does not mean you should shoot them. If you are unable to ID them, they can not ID you. Do NOT EVER shoot at something unless you see that red name.

9) Most important of all. Follow your squad leader. The squad who thinks as one person is much faster and more deadly than the squad who votes on everything. If success and fun in battle is your concern then do what your leader tells you as fast as you can. If you think your leader is an idiot or you do not like his tactics there is always the option for you to leave or form your own squad.


Squad leader rules:

1) Be decisive in your decisions. Even if you have no idea what you're doing, people will follow you if you're 100% sure about that decision. There is nothing worse than a democratic squad leader. You are the leader for a reason and your squad members have agreed to follow you. You make the decisions. They follow. The faster your squad is the more combat effective it is, and voting on every little thing is not conducive to speed.

2) Either be the transport driver or know the transport driver personally. The last thing you want as leader is to be stuck with an unskilled or disobedient transport driver. The most effective way to avoid this is to have both galaxy and sunderer certs yourself. This also minimizes the amount of communication about where the squad should go, thus preventing errors in communication.

3) On the note of communication errors. TYPE YOUR ORDERS IN ALL CAPS. As you can see, sometimes it's annoying, but it is annoying because it stands out from the other crap that is on your squad members chat HUD. Missed orders are a primary cause of combat failure.

4) Use voice chat as much as you can. Though the in game chat has problems as of now, and not a lot of people have good mics. It still helps the squad organization and speed tremendously. Even if your squad members can't respond via voice they should still be able to hear your orders. Which is much better and faster than having to read them on the often fast scrolling chat HUD. Also, you or a trustworthy person should run the server. It's a bad thing to have your server cut out on you unexpectedly.

5) Surprise is your friend. Since we only have 10 man squads, the amount of fire power you bring to the battle field is limited. This means that stealthy attacks are a big must. Hot drops are NOT stealthy or surprising for the enemy. Dropping into a hot zone WILL result in near instant death for you or some of your squad members. The sunderer provides a much stealthier and more versatile attack platform. It allows you to team with tanks and AMSes to create an effective assault force. The Galaxy should be used more for quick insertion into undefended areas. Right now its novelty is making it the troop transport of choice when in fact the sunderer is much more versatile and powerful.

6) If you must use the Galaxy transport for your assaults. DO NOT drop into hot zones. Land away from the hot zones, unload your vehicle from the gal and move into the hot zone as a squad. Dropping into hot areas separates your squad and reduces combat effectiveness. Not to mention it eliminates any surprise or flanking opportunities and throws you the commander directly in harms way. Which is bad because you're the one giving orders and the squad is much less effective without you.

7) When you are trying to cap a base your first priority is securing a nearby spawn point. If you're using the sunderer, get an AMS to tag a long with you. If you're using a gal then you must cap a tower first. In an assault on an undefended base it is best to send 2 maxes and a hacker to secure the CC of the main base (using the side wall entrance as the insertion point) while the rest of the squad assaults the tower. Simultaneous capture prevents the enemy from respawning nearby in hopes to thwart your effort.
7a) An adv medic in the squad slightly changes these needs. If you have an adv med in the squad, tell them to remain in the back of the group and inform all other squad members who the medic is and that they should not respawn without asking the medic if he can revive them. It would be good to have a chat macro asking if the medic is nearby to revive you.

8) Diversify your squad. A squad must have diversity and some overlap in its abilities. The more versatile a squad is the more powerful it can be.

9) Use the side base entrances. Nobody uses these in squad assaults. Most squads run straight through the front door. This is stupid. This is where the most defense is. This is where you will die. Your objective is either the CC or the spawning rooms and those are inside. Your first priority therefore, should be getting inside, and the side wall entrance is the easiest way in. It also usually leads to the main floor of the base.