JTAC Functionality for Squad Leaders

[maradine]

I've been mulling over role specialization for a bit. We have a lot of fun rolling from battle to battle, setting up no-fly zones. We advertise this service in /leader frequently, and it's led to a number of really great saves and lots of back-patting after the dust settles. One of the reasons this is successful is that you don't have to be particularly precise with the request. "WE NEED AA AT TI ALLOYS ASAP" is pretty hard to screw up. Roll up a bus, dump a bunch of lobster suits out the back, and go to town.

On the other side of the coin is air support, and here, the existing tools aren't as useful. "WE NEED AIR SUPPORT AT TI ALLOYS ASAP" can mean a lot of things. Obviously, you can get better instructions from the requestor, but that's not usually a conversation he/she has time to devote attention to. The cavalry can, of course, race in as it sees fit and do a lot of damage. But will they hit the sunderer that's the actual root cause of the ground problem? Or is it the snipers on the ridge that are the big issue?

So, squad leaders have smoke. The appropriately certed squad can change their call to "NEED AIR SUPPORT AT TI ALLOWS ASAP ORANGE SMOKE". Now, the incoming cavalry has a reference point. But where should they start their run from? If they're coming from Vanu Archives instead of Allatum, are they going to overfly a burster nest? Should the requestor take that into account? Can they communicate it effectively?

Finally, there's general presence information to be considered. Would squad leaders want to know there's air cavalry on call? Is leader chat sufficient for this?

====TL;DR====

What do you think of the existing toolset for inter-squad communications? Is it sufficient? Should more be added? If you run a squad or platoon, what do you wish you could communicate to other squads quickly? If you run an air cavalry squadron, what would you wish to hear from the boots on the ground?