What we need for command

[kidriot]

Originally Posted by StumpyTheOzzie

How do you decide who is just the squad leader and who is platoon leader or company leader?

In an outfit this is usually handled internally but it looks like you're talking about the zerg squads there.

I'm really curious how this is going to work, too. what does the xp the Commander get for successful missions go towareds; cep stuff? bep stuff?

is it as simple as a waypoint system?

I don't know if I even like the idea of people being able to get in on my missions as a Commander, bearing in mind we're doing quick flank or behind the lines work. I definitely don't want any joe blow being able to get in on some action that the group I'm a part of is trying to setup quietly.

I wonder if you can setup your missions to be broadcast to certain people and if so, what determines a "good" mission from a "bad" one? what determines difficulty, if anything at all? sometimes the things you do when no enemy are around are more important than slamming your head against the zerg.

edit: actually, the more I think about this the more I dislike the general idea. usually when you setup a plan and you start to execute it in a game like Planetside, something will hit the fan and turn your plan on it's ass, meaning you have to immediately adapt on voice comms and get people moving in different directions. unless the system they have in place can be shifted as quickly as I can get 10 dudes on Ventrilo to do something, then it's gonna be a royal pain in the ass.

[DviddLeff]

Here are my thoughts for upgrading the PS system to what I want to see in PS2. Just adjust certs/CEP/CR for specialisation or whatever we are using in PS2

Just give us the tools we need to organise large numbers of troops, be that platoons or even companies via the mission system. A set platoon of troops will give the commander more ownership over them, and be able to coordinate them better I believe.

[ringring]

In my view we don't need much for command.

Outfits don't need missions per se. The headless zerg will find them useful I think.

Outfits need squad and platoon units and an ability to cordinate with other outfits whether by text chat or an assigned VOIP channel. Way points would be useful also.

As I understand it there will not be a /comall nor a /comxx, these being replaced by missions. I think the reason is it was occasionally abused in PS1 but mainly as they're expecting higher populations. However, I asm not a fan of elections for the most popular guy in town.

There should be encouragement for the unattached to join an outfit, perhaps an xp boost but only if squadded and on target / in the vacinity of the PL.

Perhaps there should be a outfit recruitment function. Outfits could explain their requirements and candidates could contact those that potentially fit their playstyle.

Tools should be simple.

[Coreldan]

I still want platoons!

[Shogun]

what were the most important aspects of platoons in ps1?

1. platoon chat (ps2 will have a lot of chat options, so i think this is covered)
2. colorcoded squadpositions on map and minimap (extreme useful, want it back!)
3. the healthbars of all platoon members (good to determine if operation is lost)

so if platoons are out, give higher commanders the ability to inject infos about other squads into their maps. something like the colorcoded numbers we had in ps1 platoons.
but the old platoon system would be so much easier because forming a platoon was just one or two invites and everything was set up.

the big list of platoonmembers with their names and healthbars may look like a waste of screenspace, but i liked to know that orange player 6 was down and marked on the map, when i played medic or engineer.
those should even get more info, now that we can change to every class at will. the little window with soldier name, health and armor should now also get a symbol for actual class, and maybe a symbol of the vehicle he is in at the moment, if so. and highlight the window of the soldier who is talking on voicechat for easy identification like it was used by many players in ps1 via teamspeak overlay

make the whole block a toggle, so the average grunt in the squad who doesn´t think he needs that info can free up his screen. if turned off, it should still show the soldiers color and number so he knows he is yellow 5 if the commander orders y5 to storm the doors.

[Lonehunter]

There's still some issues with the twitter-like following of Commanders to acquire missions. How does a Commander gain experience/rank if he isn't popular? Some people only want to interact with their core group of 10 players, and don't worry about a popularity contest.

I think we can all agree the pretty platoon colors need to return

On a Squad Leader level we could certainly use improvements.
There needs to be a way to see what class your troops are, a simple icon by their name in the squad window would be good.

I'd like to be able to open up their certs, or just see a list of what they have. Knowing who in my 20 guys has AA or AV capabilities at a quick glance would be awesome.

I can see the "tactical drawings" coming back

[waldizzo]

Bring back platoons and tactical drawings. Platoons will allow for improved multi outfit operations. Tactical drawings were either useful or hilarious. Either way, I'd like to see drawing on the map return.

[Reni]

Originally Posted by waldizzo

Either way, I'd like to see drawing on the map return.

^^This.

Still stand on my opinion about the "popularity" or "twitter" concept...no, thank you.

[Crator]

Free-form drawing on the map? I could care less. The ability to direct troops by placing static markers (such as way-points) with descriptions or predetermined placeholder names, YES!

[Hamma]

I will offer custom titles to any followers I get in PlanetSide2.



See this is why I hate it..

(and no I won't do that)

[Lonehunter]

Originally Posted by Crator

The ability to direct troops by placing static markers (such as way-points) with descriptions or predetermined placeholder names, YES!

Such a thing kind of exists in the "Objectives" toggle of a continent map. Lil icons that I'm guessing are the targets of missions, set by a squad leader.

[Shogun]

about the too many cr5 = OS-rain or other mass abuse of cr functionality i still have a simple solution.

make everything a commander can gain through leading only usable while he is squadleader. so if you drop the SL all your nifty commandstuff gets deactivated. evil stuff like orbital strikes should also still have a coldown, but it should affect everyone in the squad to prevent sl rotation for orbitals. works easy: if the leader uses orbital, the os-cooldown of 2 hours starts for everyone in the squad, and even if a random soldier leaves the squad and forms a new one, he will have to wait 2 hours before he can use an orbital strike.
in ps1, it got very annoying that there were more orbital strikes than bullets in the air sometimes.

[sylphaen]

How does a Commander gain experience/rank if he isn't popular?

Experience/rank is not and should not be needed. Commanders should not be given combat bonuses for being commanders. They should only be given the tools that help them command.

Certs in the command tree should be taken by those who want/need them and people who do not command should not have a reason to want those certs.

CR benefits in PS1 were a mistake and just created a farm. Command certs in PS2 should only give command tools, not combat tools.

[basti]

Well then, took a look in my notes again (yes, i have hand written notes for Planetside), and did some brainwork:

What we had:

Pretty much just squads (10 people), Platoons (3 squads, means 30 people total), Outfits (whatever amount of people, only gave us chat between those), and /c (whoever was CR5 could talk there)

How we used it:

Larger Outfits usually filled their own Platoon and used stuff like Teamspeak for Communication within said platoon. If they had more than one Platoon, Then they had more than one platoon. All coordination was done using Voice, even with several platoons. Depending on how the voice was set up, and the discipline of the peeps, this structure worked more or less good.

Smaller Outfits usually stayed with themself (1-2 Squads), or several smaller outfits teamed up to fill a platoon. As above, voice was used mostly for coms, and it worked rather well. People switched all to one voice server, or had one guy on the other groups server. Wasnt perfect, but worked.

THen, we had loads of Randoms forming squads and Platoons. Usually, those platoons didnt work very well together, given that they for once lacked proper communication (simple chat is just not enough), and people usually didnt care much anyway and went for the XP. If it was just a squad of randoms, then those squads stayed mostly together (at the same base, that is, not at the same area of a base), but if it was a full platoon of randoms, then they usually split across all battles. IN any way, a squad/platoon of randoms was rather pointless, as all it did was giving you an idea of where the fight is, and extra XP.


What we also had was Smaller outfits filling their Platoon with Randoms, and trying to find the few good between those, to fill up their ranks with new members, or just have more bodies to get stuff done. Worked, if those randoms payed attention, and only then.

/c was used mostly for two things: Inter-Outfit communication (if two+ outfits wanted to hit the same target) and herding the zerg, means sending all those randoms into one general direction. Possibility of herding the zerg depended on a lot of different stuff, and only very few ever managed to really send the zerg around (most of us could just direct it lightly).




What we had in planetside worked because we made it work, and used the tools we had as good as we could. /c was mostly a fight of few sane against a horde of random fools, a fight that got lost by the sane sooner or later. In other words, /c became rather spammy and useless because of the very nature of how you archived access to /c (simply form a squad and get bases for command XP, so it really was just a question of time, without any efford needed)



What we need:

Take a look above, and you should see the issues we had. All moment to moment communication was done by using voice (stuff like fighting inside a base, having a galdrop, holding a bases Gen down, etc), and only long term plans (go there and attack this, inter outfit communication to coordinate attacks, etc) was done via text. It simply didnt work any other way, as getting randoms on your voice server was usually a pain.
The new In-Game voice stuff may fix this, but only if it is strong enough.

But what we really need is this:
Squads and platoons: Their main purpose is to give you exact info on who is where, how many health they have, etc. The color code and the numbers worked wonderfully well to figure out who that dude is thats at the backdoor, and how much health he got. Platoons made it extremly easy to send a squad to a certain area (backdoor for example), see if everyone of that squad is really there, and see in what condition that squad is.
Platoons are the very backbone of larger outfits. Without them, i dont think larger outfits could be as effective doing their thing as they have been.

Ingame voice fixes most, if not all, of the issues we had.

Large outfits willing their own platoon will keep using Teamspeak, no matter what. It just IS that way.

Smaller outfits wil likley still use Teamspeak, but also use in game voice in to communicate with other outfits in their Platoon/communicate with the whole platoon, or communicate with the randoms in their platoon.

Squads and Platoons of randoms wont really change. People who just zerg will most likley simply switch ingame voice off right away, as they want to avoid the random fool spamming the voice. A few randoms may turn out to be good leaders, and fill their squad and platoon only with useful players.

In any way, platoons work wonderfully, and i dont see any reason not to have them. Heck, i dont see a way how stuff could work without them. We really really need them, thats a fact.

As for /c, thats a more complicated topic. Gotta post something about that later, need to wrap my head around a few ideas. :>

[Malorn]

The twitter-like concept of following is quite terrible. Hate it for all the reasons Hamma and others have mentioned above.


Lets get back to the roots - what's the purpose of command?

Organization - To organize the mindless rabble into something that can function effectively.
Strategy - To direct the now-organized rabble toward objectives that serve the Empire/Greater Good. The efficient allocation of personnel.

But it isn't as simple as that. The "mindless rabble" are already somewhat organized into random squads and outfits which have squads. Thus, organization already exists to some extent in squad leaders. And the second part, Strategy is difficult because those squad leaders are not in direct communication with one another and may have conflicting outfit goals. In PS1, command chat was utilized to organize squads, but it was also diluted with a lot of idiots, people who didn't have squads, or people who were members of squads not leaders. It slowly grew to a general "Barrens chat", though in the very early days CR5s were people who did lead squads and platoons/outfits and it was used to organize.

We have to separate Organization from Strategy, in fact Strategy strongly depends on how things are organized.


Organization Options

Auto-join squad -> random people getting together and making a squad. This could eventually turn into a new outfit (My outfit more or less started this way). So auto-joined squads need to have a seat at the table. I assume it's also possible to provide criteria for auto-join so it only joins a squad in your outfit.

Outfit squads -> less-random people getting together and making a squad, presumably with some specialization or goals already in mind.

Outfits - Outfits are more than just squads, they are potentially collections of squads - 2, 3, 4, maybe more squads working togehter to achieve a goal. We generally called these "platoons" in PS1 though they weren't limited to just outfits. The key organization value of Platoons was that you could see your other platoon members on the map, and specifically which platoon members. So if someone wasn't in position or someone calls for help you could look on the map and see exactly where that person was.

Alliances - Sets of outfits working together. There are many instances of this in PS1, but they were more or less forced to either use /c to organize, or /tell to organize, unless they shared a vent.

This is how players organize in Planetside and Planetside 2. Any attempt to facilitate strategy between and among these groups has to take into account these constructs.

Platoons - I believe platoons were important in Planetside because they bridged a gap in the organization structure. Without platoons, multi-squad groups are effectively limited to outfits. This hinders grass-roots organization by imposing an artificial outfit boundary. Squads don't have outfit boundaries, so why should larger constructs? Platoons were a great solution for this, as a platoon could be organized from mulitple outfits working together.


Strategic Planning Options

The fundamental of strategic planning is that it must only involve people with the power to act. Talking to the general population does no good, and it compromises strategy. The more people that know about your strategy, the more likely the enemy will find out about it before you can execute. For this reason you want to limit any form of communication to only the people that have the power to execute it. Need-to-know is a good guiding principle here for strategic communication. Squad leaders should know what the platoon is planning. Platoon leaders should know what other platoons are planning. Squad leaders should not know what other platoons are planning. And other platoons should not know the detailed workings of another platoon.

Verbal Communication (chat)
Talking with one another is the most fundamental way of coordinating organized groups. Chat is important.

Visual Communication (waypoints/markup)
Allow groups to put down a waypoint or otherwise markings on the map where their organized group will be going. This helps facilitate communication with others so they can see how different platoons will be distributed across the battlefield. Only organization leaders should see these markups. This helps protect against spies and also reduces map clutter for the rest of the players. Of course it should be its own filter option on the map.

Missions (custom objective)
Missions are a fantastic way to communicate to people outside of platoons or to the general population. As long as the mission giving is restricted and scales, then there should be a way for people at the top of an organization chain to give out an objective to the rest of the empire. This is in lieu of "globals". They are persistent. They are specific, and they are visual. They will stand a much better chance of being followed, and by restricting the ability to create them to people who have many people under their command it naturally controls spam.

Between the missions the general empire sees, and the individual waypoints showing platoon positions, and platoon communication, you have a viable command system set up for success. It controls the flow of information. It scales well to increasing population. It keeps things simple and concise for the typical zergling, while giving people in command the ability to easily coordinate and take the battle to the next level.



Recommendations for Command in PS2

1) Bring back Platoons.
They are important constructs because they can be cross-outfit, and facilitate grass-roots organization. Consider this - players group up and form a squad (auto-join or whatever). That squad communicates with other solo squads that have yet to join a platoon. The purpose of non-platooned squad-based organization is to help them form platoons. This may later lead to outfits forming of people who like to squad/platoon together.

2) "Command chat" is effectively platoon-leader chat.
The people who talk on command are people who are actually IN command. It also requires some minimum requirements on platoon formation so you don't have 4-man platoons getting involved in command discussions with people who have 20-30+. A key benefit here is that the number of people in that command chat is also highly restricted and will be a much smaller subset of the total population. It scales also -as more people play, more will join command, but the dynamics of command never change - it's still people who are in command of a larger group.

3) There is no need for "cont all" and "globals"
If help is needed, a platoon leader reports it, and other platoons can respond. Also, missions are better than broadcast messages, they can be tangible, and they persist and avoid spam and other garbage.

4) Provide an easy-to-use tool for finding squads and platoons.
For example, someone who has a squad can mark it as advertised on the list of squads. By default, all squads/platoons should be on this list, but it is also necessary that we allow a squad or platoon the ability to be hidden from the list. This is to prevent spam of that squad, to 'lock' the squad, and to limit the effectiveness or ease of spies from other empires getting in on the command & control of your empire. It is necessary that the list show squads and, if you are a squad leader -it also shows platoons. A platoon might have an "open" squad which they advertise to keep the platoon full. A platoon might also be looking for more squads to join it, so squads advertising themselves as "looking for platoon" help this. This is effectively the "LFG" tool of Planetsid, but it isn't just for people finding squads, it's also for squads finding other squads and taking organization to the next level.

5) Platoon waypoint visible to other platoon leaders.
So Platoon leaders don't just get the ability to chat with one another to organize what they want to do with the platoons. They should also each get a special platoon-leader-visible-only waypoint. The purpose of the waypoint is to indicate to other platoon leaders where on the map they intend to be or attack. With platoon leaders marking up the map like so it facilitates planning and strategy among platoons.

6) Platoon-leader-created-missions for the rest of the empire.
Aside from the mission the Platoon itself has, I think the platoon leaders should also be given ONE mission that they can give out for the entire empire. This, in addition to coordinating with other platoon leaders, is how they 'command' the rest of the empire. For example, if platoon leaders want a specific territory taken, they can all put a mission to capture it. That indicates to the general population that a lot of the empire's leading figures believe that to be a good and important objective, and rewards them for following those objectives. The mission should of course have an "issuer" field so people can see what player created that mission. This is how you get your popular leaders. If the missions someone puts out are enjoyed and trusted by lots of people then people will seek out missions by that player or put more value on them. If for some reason that player cannot create missions because they don't run a platoon, then the followers can help form one to make that happen.

7) Platoon requires 11 players.
Since platoon leaders have a significant amount of power, there needs to be requirements for forming (and maintaining) a platoon. This does two things - 1) it encourages platoons and squads to keep recruiting more people to join them, and 2) it keeps the number of platoons and platoon leaders restricted to people who have a significant number of poeple actually following them. I would recommend that a platoon should contain at least 11 players - that mandates two squads that are at least over half full. One squad a platoon does not make. If a platoon drops below 11 players, the platoon should be converted into a squad. That would encourage people to maintain not just the bare minimum of 11 players, but a fair buffer above that. So typical platoons would likely be in the 15+ range. If a platoon gets converted into a squad (platoon leader becomes squad leader) then they can use the platoon / squad tool to either find another squad to form a platoon with, or look for an existing platoon that might be looking for another squad.


I believe it all comes back to platoons, which are groups of squads that may or may not span multiple outfits. Give people the tools to easily form squads, and then form platoons from those squads. Then give platoon leaders the ability to better coordinate and command with each other and you have a natural chain of command that formed from the ground-up and contains only people that actually have command. Large outfits will naturally have platoons, as will smaller outfits. Really large outfits might have multiple platoons. It seems to scale well.

I also think it might be worthwhile to consider having more than 3 squads in a platoon, and possibly scaling the number of missions a platoon leader can put out by the size of his platoon. The more people he has under him, the more influence he has and therefore the more missions he can put out.


If you want a TL;DR version for this post, see this link