Squad Leader mechanics - Major Concern!

[Gimpylung]

Do we have any idea of what the CR5 certification shown in the screenshot earlier in this thread allows you to do? For that matter what concrete facts to we know about command abilities?

Higher level command ranks means setting higher level missions... is this a given?
What does this mean if there are a few dozen 'CR5' certed players setting conflicting missions? Does it mean a 'grunt' gets to pick and choose from a host of missions set by a host of 'CR5's, leading to a situation where the zerg once again does what the hell it likes and 'CR5's are inclined to start setting missions where the zerg happens to be so their is a higher likelihood of that mission being completed and the 'CR5' in question gets the XP for that completion.

I can see a situation arising where players start ignoring missions away from the main fight(s), and the myriad of 'CR5' certed players start electing to set the missions near the main fight in the hopes that the mission just gets completed regardless of its tactical worth.

If there are dozens of certed CR5's, is their some system to establish who's the boss or whose authority has priority. Cont Leaders kinda thing.

Will anyone who has got the command certs be able to global spam any old shit at all

I hope this Orbital Strike/Artillery cert is not connected to the command certs in any fashion. It should not be a motivation to cert command stuff as it was in PS1.

Is there a hierarchy of missions and abilities? along the lines of...needing to be a CR4 to set up a Platoon, Only a CR5 can set Platoon level missions which can only be accepted by the CR4 level Platoon leaders... with this kind of pattern and hierarchy going all the way down to squad and individual level.

So many questions! I hope the command structure gets as much scrutiny during the beta as the usual stuff like TTKs and OP whatevers.

[Synapse]

Abilities have to be tactical as there realy is no strategic game that we can see so far.


...other than k/d ratio farming by directing zerg ofc.

[vVRedOctoberVv]

People actually read all that shit in global? You're kidding right? Well, all I can say, is anybody who is taking orders from an anonymous random person deserves what the get.

I joined an outfit. I take orders from the outfit COs. I ignore everybody else, unless what they say sounds particularly reasonable. If a person is so inexperienced that they don't recognise what is and is not reasonable, then... Trial and error is a great teacher. If after a while, you're still unable to make that decision... Meat shields have their uses.

[Karrade]

Originally Posted by Gimpylung

Do we have any idea of what the CR5 certification shown in the screenshot earlier in this thread allows you to do? For that matter what concrete facts to we know about command abilities?

Higher level command ranks means setting higher level missions... is this a given?
What does this mean if there are a few dozen 'CR5' certed players setting conflicting missions? Does it mean a 'grunt' gets to pick and choose from a host of missions set by a host of 'CR5's, leading to a situation where the zerg once again does what the hell it likes and 'CR5's are inclined to start setting missions where the zerg happens to be so their is a higher likelihood of that mission being completed and the 'CR5' in question gets the XP for that completion.

I can see a situation arising where players start ignoring missions away from the main fight(s), and the myriad of 'CR5' certed players start electing to set the missions near the main fight in the hopes that the mission just gets completed regardless of its tactical worth.

If there are dozens of certed CR5's, is their some system to establish who's the boss or whose authority has priority. Cont Leaders kinda thing.

Will anyone who has got the command certs be able to global spam any old shit at all

I hope this Orbital Strike/Artillery cert is not connected to the command certs in any fashion. It should not be a motivation to cert command stuff as it was in PS1.

Is there a hierarchy of missions and abilities? along the lines of...needing to be a CR4 to set up a Platoon, Only a CR5 can set Platoon level missions which can only be accepted by the CR4 level Platoon leaders... with this kind of pattern and hierarchy going all the way down to squad and individual level.

So many questions! I hope the command structure gets as much scrutiny during the beta as the usual stuff like TTKs and OP whatevers.

I've been saying this for awhile. The mission system if done right will be excellent, if done wrong will be spammy and horrible.

Right:

Task forces to filter out who is doing what where, +Task Force Commanders.

Lots of filters for Outfit/Player selection, so we can immediately keep a filter list of those commanders spamming nonesense or instead highlight those we know are skilled.

Intelligent Public Stats for Commanders Ratings. Not just following the Zerg where 50,000 other missions are posted, which is precisely the issue we are both concerned about.

Instead - Opening up new flanks on less defended targets, should equal a higher rating as one example, Whether its successful or not. - The ability to filter out commanders with low ratings. The first to react to a base being attacked, or the first to react to supporting a CAP behind enemy lines. These things should increase a commanders rating much higher than a simple, hit here because everyone else is mission.

Originally Posted by vVRedOctoberVv

People actually read all that shit in global? You're kidding right? Well, all I can say, is anybody who is taking orders from an anonymous random person deserves what the get.

Why would I ignore a good order/call, no matter who it came from? Your logic makes no sense.

[Kezz]

Originally Posted by vVRedOctoberVv

People actually read all that shit in global? You're kidding right? Well, all I can say, is anybody who is taking orders from an anonymous random person deserves what the get.

When you see a couple of guys agreeing on one primary after another, and those primaries just keep getting capped, and the CRs are saying "Good job. Now for [next primary]," what's wrong with jumping on that bandwagon, when the whole map is turning to the colour of your empire? The more people pushing, the faster the bandwagon rolls.

For those without an outfit, or whose outfit isn't on line, any direction is better than none. Sometimes only barely, because it gives you hope others might be along to help in a bit, but a good whack of the time, it seems to be effective.

[MCYRook]

Originally Posted by Ukrai

This would work i reckon and a simple addition to the game, if squad leaders could see how successful a commander was in the past, they could determine which is best to follow. And successful missions should determine the ability to go up in the SL certs.

i think you're on a winner there!

Absolutely not.

Guide to gain top command rank with a perfect mission success record in this system:
1. Only set up missions that are absolutely trivial to complete.
2. Profit.


You could now expand on that by giving missions weighting score factors, i.e. "harder objectives" are worth more command score. Except that doesn't really help, because what's a "hard objective"? Is taking the central base on cont "hard"? Well not if your troops there outnumber the defenders 5:1 it isn't. If numbers are 1:1, then it's "hard".
But, that still doesn't tell you whether or not it was a strategically good decision to go for that base in the first place.

[Karrade]

Originally Posted by MCYRook

Absolutely not.

Guide to gain top command rank with a perfect mission success record in this system:
1. Only set up missions that are absolutely trivial to complete.
2. Profit.


You could now expand on that by giving missions weighting score factors, i.e. "harder objectives" are worth more command score. Except that doesn't really help, because what's a "hard objective"? Is taking the central base on cont "hard"? Well not if your troops there outnumber the defenders 5:1 it isn't. If numbers are 1:1, then it's "hard".
But, that still doesn't tell you whether or not it was a strategically good decision to go for that base in the first place.

Surely you credit the developers with a little more sense.

The system doesn't reward multiple clustered missions with any gains or losses to ratio - Simple.

The system rewards successful missions that are not clustered up, or are the first to react to setting that type of mission.

Defend a Cap, Air Cover where there is none, a flanking attack. The details here are for the community not for me to highlight specifically, but why give up on something just because it may take some thought/tweaking to be good? Missions that are needed get rewarded, want to know what missions are needed, ask the playerbase.

[MCYRook]

Originally Posted by Karrade

Surely you credit the developers with a little more sense.

If by "sense" you mean "they will come up with an elaborated magic algorithm that cannot be exploited and lets The System accurately assess which missions make strategic sense", then no.

The system doesn't reward multiple clustered missions with any gains or losses to ratio - Simple.

The system rewards successful missions that are not clustered up, or are the first to react to setting that type of mission.

Who was talking about clustered missions? Those will be an issue no doubt, but it has nothing to do with the faulty concept of "gain command rank via mission success rate".

Missions that are needed get rewarded, want to know what missions are needed, ask the playerbase.

If the playerbase already knew what needs doing, then why would we need commander-generated missions in the first place?

[SgtMAD]

all these pages over a /ignore solution?

are you friggin kidding me?

[Traenor]

I havent read the whole thread, but it sounds like people misunderstand a couple of things.

Squad Leader Certs: You use certs to help your squad, such as squadspawning and boosts.

The Mission system is different from this. That is based on "followers" like twitter, where you broadcast objectives to all your followers and a common pool of missions everyone can see. Therefore a person cant just spend certs to go "hurrr durrr everybody here" since he has no following.

[JToTheDog]

I just think we should leave Tom alone. He's a good kid, he just needs some extra help.

He's probably VS tough... little bastard.

[god free]

I understand peoples passion here and it is nice to see.

My only thought is that people being concerned about 10 years from now, or even 3 are thinking way to far ahead. There are many pressing concerns and simple ways to alter this down the road (even 6 months in if there are starting too many commanders) by simply increasing cert costs etc.

The general short term concerns of leadership will work like all other MMOs, there will be those who lead the zergs because they are good at leading and pointing objects, those who are elite outfits who will attack objectives based on strategy and the trolls.

[Kezz]

Originally Posted by god free

I understand peoples passion here and it is nice to see.

My only thought is that people being concerned about 10 years from now, or even 3 are thinking way to far ahead. There are many pressing concerns and simple ways to alter this down the road (even 6 months in if there are starting too many commanders) by simply increasing cert costs etc.

Duh. Doesn't matter how much a cert costs. Someone can always buy it. That's why you have to think these things out at the beginning so you don't have to tear it all up and start again later since just doing the simple obvious thing either pisses off your player base or simply doesn't work.

It's why you design things, rather than eating some blue ink and vomiting on a pad.

[Phantomdestiny]

my idea is that squad leaders could have some sort of historical page of all their exploits and achievements (not stupid steam achievements , more like military campaign proofs ) such has successful captures , outfit ops , number of successful missions led .

With some comment section for the squad members to write in ; so when people try to look for a reliable squad leader they can find the one that suits their play style instead of a stupid 11 year old that does not understand the meaning of blitzkrieg or encirclement

[Kezz]

Originally Posted by Phantomdestiny

...leader... does not understand the meaning of blitzkrieg or encirclement

See, this is why there should be a written test. It can be multiguess if you want, and for the sake of simplicity of administration...