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Squad Leader - Squad Member Relationship

I don't want to say simplify because that makes it seem like we don't appreciate the complexity. I think we do and I wouldn't want to see it go away. They just need to clean up a lot of the iconography. Maybe some icons need to be bigger, maybe they need to pulse. Maybe the commander screen layout needs to be revisited.
 
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As it stands right now, it seems that in most maps, especially Apartments or any FF maps, there's no real point for having commanders/leaders because there's really no time to order much because people are already gone to do their own thing or the objective is already capped before you order something.

The only thing I see a commander/leader good for at this stage is for their smoke and saying "Attack"

Ok... Attack what?

Maybe I'm missing something, but there's really nothing in my game pointing me in any direction the leader wants me to go..... if there is, then it needs to be more noticable.

In RO1, you at least had rally points, text popping up at the side of your screen telling you specifically where the leader/commander wants you to attack..... people had time to txt & tell others specifically what's going on, or use their mics....

right now, the gameplay is so fast and people are running around doing their own thing so quickly, there isn't much time to do much planning, other than to follow everybody else and shoot the enemy.

The game is still fun mind you, and I'm enjoying it.... but this aspect of the game seems to have a few issues, especially with small & short maps.
 
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Having spent a lot of time as commander I have to say the squad system is so messy, the commander has no information about anyone. someone asked who the marksmen was? Surely the commander should be able to see a names list and squads? an information menu accessible for commander or something?

The whole UI, such as the map, needs a lot of polishing too it all gets so confusing.

edit: as commander i'm more than happy just feeding people information and telling people when it's clear to move up whatever. I asked... the blue dots.. that were just behind a point to move forward, they did and we took it. Feels good. I have no idea what squad that was, if they were infact a squad or anything!

I know! At the end of the day, isn't about knowledge and information - knowing which squads (as a commander) are more effective for you? Thus, you can decide, "Ok, Squad 1 has been more effective, look at their points/kills, i'm going to re-assign them to Capzone D, and move Squad 3 to Capzone C to defend."

As a commander, it should be about being able to assign certain squads to different capzones (macro management), NOT micro management - that's for the Squad Leaders to decide. Shouldn't the commander be able to give all the orders he needs to without leaving the Forward Command Post (HQ)?
 
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1. "Press F4 or F5 to accept or deny": Squad members shouldn't be given the option to accept or deny anything. It should default to accept, that is how real military works. And, furthermore, accepting as default will allow the chat area to not be spammed with two lines of code explaining that your squad leader is giving you orders (over and over, repeatedly ad nauseum). And, it doesn't make sense to have to accept or deny every single order that the Squad Leader gives you. Accept should be default. F4 or F5 is nonsensical.

I agree to this. At the very least there should be an option you can tick in the main options to Auto-accept commands. Which should be on by default.

I've been playing squad leader for a while and some people who are willing to follow orders have to constantly press F4. Others just don't know they are getting a command. Other people are just automatically annoyed.
 
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i was a rifleman, i was helping a sniper cover the closest capture point("*something* Square") and he died, i picked up his rifle and kept the square free of enemies for some time, til suddenly i got the order from my newly arrived Squad Leader to attack the other post.
i was quite glad that i could say "no" through the simple pressing of a button, so that he would know that he couldn't count on me there. at this point he probably should have understood that i was fulfilling a different important task. however, this is what happened: i started to get annoyed by his constant spamming of "attack here" and that eventually costed my life, and the point.

Clearly this point was not the priority at this moment.
 
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As it stands right now, it seems that in most maps, especially Apartments or any FF maps, there's no real point for having commanders/leaders because there's really no time to order much because people are already gone to do their own thing or the objective is already capped before you order something.

Nope, just was playing on Apartments in TE before and our team was humiliating the enemy because we worked together through the squad system and owned the enemy continuously.
 
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I concur, and would emphasize the fact that the UI in general is clunky and unintuitive in terms of fostering cohesiveness and teamwork.

Like most things I've noticed so far in the game, a healthy dose of polish needs to be added. That being said, the core mechanics of an awesome tactical FPS are here, and I've already had some excellent teamwork moments, it's just getting to that point seems harder than it should be.
 
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I copy and pasted this post from another one i made elsewhere

I like playing as the squad leader unfortunately there are a few issues with that:

1. When assigning orders, i dont know who or how many squad mates actually accepted that order

2. come to think of it, you shouldnt really have a choice...you should accept regardless; should you choose to do it is another story. I think maybe the squad leaders should have the choice of declining a commanders order though

3. As a squad leader do i get any incentive to constantly dish out orders? Like do i get more points if i tell my squad to capture the objective and they actually follow through?

4. Squad leaders should offer a moral boost

5. When assigning orders, they need to be highlighted and stand out more. Occasionally when im NOT the leader and someone else is, i never notice that theyve given me an order because it blends in with the other text

6. when you click "F" it brings up the order widget; a few things need to be revised. Currently, holding F and left clicking gives a move OR suppress command. R-Clicking marks area for arty.

instead i think it should be like this. while holding F:

> L-Click = Attack/suppress/assign fire sector
> R-Click = Move to
> Grenade Button/alt fire = Mark coordinates for arty
> Scroll wheel = Cycle through fireteams

The major point here is to split up attack and move to from one another. Sometimes i want my lmg to suppress but the context sensitive action wont come up so ill end up giving a move order.\
 
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Moral boost meaning what? Something like being less suppressed?

Overall thoughts

As for the actual point of the thread, I spent all day yesterday squad leading and enjoyed it very mcuh (and finished first in points every round and it wasnt through kills).

Like one person so far mentioned, you can indeed give orders to the 3 different fireteams you have in your command or you can just give it to all of them. Assault, rifle and machine gunner are these fireteams.

It seems that when Commander dish outs orders to squads, they will only fall down to squad leaders. So from there on it's the Squad Leaders responsibility to repeat the same order down to their squad or the members will have no idea such order was ever made.

Personally the way I decided to overcome many issues mentioned here was just the spawning on squad leader. I can't effectively control whether every squad member will do what I want, but I ensure that I give out orders (either according to commander if it's a good one or usually "improvise" cos the commander does nothing) and follow them myself.

For example, I played Aparments as soviets fairly much yesterday and saw people rush in and cap fe. Propaganda House and then just leave it empty and go for the park. So cos others seemed to enjoy rushig, I told my squad to defend Prop. House, and sticked around there myself. Alot of people spawned on me. Some of them probably left the house, but they kept spawning on me so it somehow worked.

So it's alot down to the SL to do what they order themselves, this way the lazy majority will most likely attempt to spawn on SL to avoid the long run all the way from spawn and they will automatically be in the right place.

It was very important to stay alive myself to keep the squad action going so in Fallen Fighters I admit of having cowardly been proning behind a safe wall near Central Park alot, but if I died, it would mean that we most likely would've lost the spot. I did however also get some 40 kills within two rounds there while staying alive very well. Topped the scoreboard in overall points every time, the people hugging the building windows didn't come even close with their kill points.

Future suggestions?

But yes, I too am looking forward to some things:

1) Perhaps the squad members should not have an option to accept/decline, but at the very least, show me how many accepted/declined/didnt reply. If nothing else, I can kick (if not possible, make it) said people out of my squad and hope that more competent people take the spot. Commanders can see which squads accepted/declined the order, so why can't SL see what the members said?

2) Indeed clearer indications of where my members are as well as for the members to easily find me on the battlefield

3) Maybe better instructions on SL responsibilities when you are picking the class (sorta goes for commander too, nobody knows what they are doing) and maybe clearly saying that they need to forward the Commander's orders onwards to their squadmembers

4) Squad VoiP, would love to have any functioning VoiP as it won't transmit my voice for whatever reason -_-

5) Perhaps some kind of "officer chat" within a faction? Perhaps as a VoiP too, but even a text channel that the Commander and SLs could only read.

6) Incentives (read: POINTS! :D) for SLs to follow Commander's orders, as well as incentives for members to follow squad leaders orders. Perhaps Commander should get something if they assigned Squad 1 to capture Obj.A and it was indeed captured by Squad 1. Overall speaking being a commander seems pretty unrewarding. You are stuck watching a map most of the time, barely get any kills except artilleries and you wont really get any teampoints either, even if your master plans would've won the mission.

Final words

I suppose this thread is also partially tied to it's time. I've seen a lot of progress on most players in these few days. I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to be really useful to the squad on their first day of playing. My experience as a Squad Leader yesterday was fantastic, however.
 
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Moral boost meaning what? Something like being less suppressed?

Overall thoughts

As for the actual point of the thread, I spent all day yesterday squad leading and enjoyed it very mcuh (and finished first in points every round and it wasnt through kills).

Like one person so far mentioned, you can indeed give orders to the 3 different fireteams you have in your command or you can just give it to all of them. Assault, rifle and machine gunner are these fireteams.

It seems that when Commander dish outs orders to squads, they will only fall down to squad leaders. So from there on it's the Squad Leaders responsibility to repeat the same order down to their squad or the members will have no idea such order was ever made.

Personally the way I decided to overcome many issues mentioned here was just the spawning on squad leader. I can't effectively control whether every squad member will do what I want, but I ensure that I give out orders (either according to commander if it's a good one or usually "improvise" cos the commander does nothing) and follow them myself.

For example, I played Aparments as soviets fairly much yesterday and saw people rush in and cap fe. Propaganda House and then just leave it empty and go for the park. So cos others seemed to enjoy rushig, I told my squad to defend Prop. House, and sticked around there myself. Alot of people spawned on me. Some of them probably left the house, but they kept spawning on me so it somehow worked.

So it's alot down to the SL to do what they order themselves, this way the lazy majority will most likely attempt to spawn on SL to avoid the long run all the way from spawn and they will automatically be in the right place.

It was very important to stay alive myself to keep the squad action going so in Fallen Fighters I admit of having cowardly been proning behind a safe wall near Central Park alot, but if I died, it would mean that we most likely would've lost the spot. I did however also get some 40 kills within two rounds there while staying alive very well. Topped the scoreboard in overall points every time, the people hugging the building windows didn't come even close with their kill points.

Future suggestions?

But yes, I too am looking forward to some things:

1) Perhaps the squad members should not have an option to accept/decline, but at the very least, show me how many accepted/declined/didnt reply. If nothing else, I can kick (if not possible, make it) said people out of my squad and hope that more competent people take the spot. Commanders can see which squads accepted/declined the order, so why can't SL see what the members said?

2) Indeed clearer indications of where my members are as well as for the members to easily find me on the battlefield

3) Maybe better instructions on SL responsibilities when you are picking the class (sorta goes for commander too, nobody knows what they are doing) and maybe clearly saying that they need to forward the Commander's orders onwards to their squadmembers

4) Squad VoiP, would love to have any functioning VoiP as it won't transmit my voice for whatever reason -_-

5) Perhaps some kind of "officer chat" within a faction? Perhaps as a VoiP too, but even a text channel that the Commander and SLs could only read.

6) Incentives (read: POINTS! :D) for SLs to follow Commander's orders, as well as incentives for members to follow squad leaders orders. Perhaps Commander should get something if they assigned Squad 1 to capture Obj.A and it was indeed captured by Squad 1. Overall speaking being a commander seems pretty unrewarding. You are stuck watching a map most of the time, barely get any kills except artilleries and you wont really get any teampoints either, even if your master plans would've won the mission.

Final words

I suppose this thread is also partially tied to it's time. I've seen a lot of progress on most players in these few days. I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to be really useful to the squad on their first day of playing. My experience as a Squad Leader yesterday was fantastic, however.

This is good stuff. Should be considered along with what I wrote in OP.
 
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Now that I have played and tried being a good SL in public servers, I can fully agree too all your points listed in this thread.

Being SL is an exercise of frustration, even when playing with friends, we are still having a difficult time coordinating. I wish there was some way that as a SL, you also know where your FTs are when you bring up the tactical map. This is particularly useful when the server is set on Realism mode, since there is no minimap and player names (unless you stand right beside them)

I hope TWI would really fix the squad system post-release (even better if pre-release). It really feels that this system was just a tacked on feature. It's a pity since the potential for team play is there, its just difficult and counter-intuitive to do so.
 
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