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Tactics Classes

Holy.Death

Grizzled Veteran
Sep 17, 2011
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This looks like the best place to post my question, although it doesn't necessarily make it good.

I intend to buy Red Orchestra 2 at Tuesday and I have a couple of questions about classes in this game because some things aren't mentioned or shown in videos.

There is a lot of classes. Some of them seem obvious (like anti-tank soldier, rifleman or elite rifleman) but some of them are not.

Commander - what this one is doing? There is little to no information besides that he is allowed to force spawns, call artillery strikes or recon. Is he important on the battlefield? Is he giving order what to attack to specific units?

Engineer - what is his role comparing to that of anti-tank soldier?

Tank crewman - he is obvious but when orginal tank commander is killed can he somehow replace him? Can he run away from a tank? Can you open a hatch and push granade inside to make the crew die in pain?
 
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This looks like the best place to post my question, although it doesn't necessarily make it good.

I intend to buy Red Orchestra 2 at Tuesday and I have a couple of questions about classes in this game because some things aren't mentioned or shown in videos.

There is a lot of classes. Some of them seem obvious (like anti-tank soldier, rifleman or elite rifleman) but some of them are not.

Commander - what this one is doing? There is little to no information besides that he is allowed to force spawns, call artillery strikes or recon. Is he important on the battlefield? Is he giving order what to attack to specific units?

Engineer - what is his role comparing to that of anti-tank soldier?

Tank crewman - he is obvious but when orginal tank commander is killed can he somehow replace him? Can he run away from a tank? Can you open a hatch and push granade inside to make the crew die in pain?

The commander (a.k.a. TL in-game) essentially is the "leader" of your team and as such, he is responsible for the following duties:

-Giving orders to squad leaders: At present, there is no reason or incentive to do this at this point since no one listens and there is no real benefit to you to do so. However, if you are on a server that really tries to team play, try throwing out a few commands for fun. Also, just to remove confusion for you in advance, squad leader's and their squads are apart of what is known as a Fireteam, designated as FT# in-game. i.e. the first squad + squad leader is apart of fireteam 1 (FT1).
-Operating the radio to perform a number of duties: i.e. Call Recon Plane/Artillery at various radios dotted around the level. Usually these are in the relative safety of buildings, fortified trenches, or generally near objective cap zones (but rarely within them). When interacting with the radio, the commander is very vulnerable as he is looking at a map that covers most of the screen. The call recon/artillery abilities will be explained in the following points.
-Call in recon planes: Very helpful to do whenever possible as it provides EVERY soldier on your team the capability of seeing last known enemy locations (marked by a red exclamation point inside a circle) and what type of enemy it is (i.e. Tank, Rifleman, etc.). This is a huge duty of the Commander to perform as it can assist your troops with knowing relative locations of enemy troops, number of troops spotted, and the types of enemy troops. This "may" only spot enemies in the open; i.e. if enemies are hiding in a building, the recon plane may not display them on the tactical overlay. [Someone please clarify this last part, I swear I read that somewhere, but in actual practice it seems like it's 50/50 in-game] *This ability has a cooldown & you MUST stay by the radio interacting with it for the recon plane reports to come in.
-Call in artillery strikes: Currently, you can call in mortar (multiple barrages, small AoE, very precise) or cannon-based artillery (multiple barrages, large AoE, fairly precise) on marked artillery locations which are marked either by yourself (the commander) or by one of the squad leaders on your team. Marking targets can be done via left click when looking through the binoculars as either class, or by holding F and right-clicking your mouse on your preferred target. Once a target is marked, you interact with a radio and call in the artillery barrage. Generally, if you have a team that actually knows teamwork and/or you and your squad leaders are talking via text or voice chat, you can get coordinates set by your "eyes in the field," aka the squad leaders so that you can safely call in the artillery barrage in relative safety behind the front lines a radio. Teamwork is magic! A word of caution is that if you see a lot of teammates very close to the marked artillery position, you should avoid calling in the fire mission or if failing that, you can select "cancel artillery" at the radio. The reason why you should be wary when ordering artillery barrages near teammates is that teamkilling is extremely frowned upon in this game and on most servers, if you get 3-4 TKs in a single map, you might get session banned until the map changes on that server (which is a real pain). *This ability has a cooldown & after calling in the Arty barrage/getting confirmation, you can leave the radio.
-Force Respawn: This ability can be used at the radio or conversely by pressing the 'N' key as long as it is not on cooldown. What this ability does is it takes whoever is dead/waiting to respawn on your team and immediately respawns them. In territory mode, this basically is a situational ability to use when you know your team just respawned and you took a ton of casualties; popping this ability gets those dead troops back into the fight. In countdown mode, this is used only as the attacking team and should be used IF and only IF your attacking team is nearly all dead and/or you don't think you will be able to take the objective with the troops left alive; I would recommend against playing commander if you don't feel experienced at it as you will cause many people to rage at you. *This ability has a cooldown.
-Provides a point bonus for teammates actively killing enemies near you: Whenever a teammate kills an enemy when you or that player's squad leader is nearby, they will be given additional points (+1 for commander, +2 for their squad leader) much like how you get additional points for kills on enemies inside of cap zones and/or when you are in a cap zone. Generally speaking, this is a relatively "hidden" benefit of the Commander class in that it does nothing for you, but can provide your teammates a small point bonus. However, being close to the front lines is hazardous to you and you should be focusing on calling in recon planes/arty strikes and generally speaking staying out of harm's way; this isn't a rule of thumb, per se, but it's generally accepted that the commander class should hang back by a radio preferably off the front lines and leave the fighting to his squad leaders/troops.


***

As far as the Engineer class is concerned, in RO1:Ostfront 41-44', he was a more than capable close combatant (much like the assault) but had the focused objective of blowing up destroyable terrain (usually tank traps blocking the advance of friendly tanks). In RO2:HoS, I've encountered a few walls here and there that can be blown up with a satchel charge, but it's not indicated on the tactical overlay ('T' key) for the engineer; hopefully this is changed at some point soon to give the Engineer more focus on what he is supposed to do.

At present, think of the Engineer as an Assault class that has a very powerful explosive charge strapped to his back that can be used to destroy enemy tanks if the engineer can get a flank on it. Satchels on top of enemy tanks result in awesome explosions and a really satisfying "wow, I really just did that and survived?!" feeling. Conversely, I suppose you could always use a satchel charge to throw into an objective, a room, or over a wall to clear a large number of enemy troops due to it's high power/large area of effect, but it does have a significantly longer timer on it compared to a grenade and the chance of a teamkill is high.Comparing the engineer class to the anti-tank class at present, it is the "assault anti-tank" (Close quarters focus) whereas the anti-tank class is the "rifle anti-tank" (Medium distance focus).

***

I don't really choose the tank commander/crewman roles too often (I prefer being an infantryman), but it was my understanding that if your tank commander dies, you can move into his space in the tank (I believe it's the '2' key). You just move his body and relocate to his position, allowing you to take over that role. However, I've only tested this with an AI-only tank, not a tank with a full human crew, but I believe the "switch spots in the tank" action still works. As far as if your crew is pretty much all dead besides yourself and your tank is half-destroyed and about to burst into flame, you are NOT able to exit the tank to flee. Essentially, you're committed to "going down with the ship," so to speak. In RO1:Ostfront 41-44, you could jump out of your tank and go it on foot if your tank was destroyed or if you felt silly, but they have changed that in RO2:HoS so you basically are incapable of leaving your tank if you are a tank crewman or tank commander.


Hopefully this helps out a bit, just let me know if you want some more clarification or information on the game, I'll be around a bit.
 
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First of all thank you* for your replay. It is very helpful.

-Giving orders to squad leaders: At present, there is no reason or incentive to do this at this point since no one listens and there is no real benefit to you to do so. However, if you are on a server that really tries to team play, try throwing out a few commands for fun.
Why is that so? Wouldn't it be good to give people more benefits for following orders of their team leader? As far as I understand job of the leader is to lead people, to give them purpose. Some men needs incentive more substantial than verbal encouragement.

You mentioned squad leaders. What is their role? I heard that they (de)cap points faster, can be used as mobile spawn point and can request artillery strikes (can they ask for mortar strikes instead?) but other than that? Do they have any tools to react with their subordinates?

Is it possible to train certain roles on servers with bots?

* - I use small letters because I see forum speech as informal method of communication among equals. If you're offended by it, let me know. Not all people approve lack of capital letters.
 
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First of all thank you* for your replay. It is very helpful.


Why is that so? Wouldn't it be good to give people more benefits for following orders of their team leader? As far as I understand job of the leader is to lead people, to give them purpose. Some men needs incentive more substantial than verbal encouragement.

You mentioned squad leaders. What is their role? I heard that they (de)cap points faster, can be used as mobile spawn point and can request artillery strikes (can they ask for mortar strikes instead?) but other than that? Do they have any tools to react with their subordinates?

Is it possible to train certain roles on servers with bots?

* - I use small letters because I see forum speech as informal method of communication among equals. If you're offended by it, let me know. Not all people approve lack of capital letters.

Oh, I'm not offended at all; For each point I couldn't find a happy medium to highlight the general point before discussing it, so I largened the font/emboldened it.

As far as players following their Commander/Squad Leaders' orders, people don't seem to understand how the squad system functions and most players are oblivious to who's in their squad and who isn't. What I mean by this is that in relaxed realism servers, you can actually see on your situational map ('M' key) if a teammate is in your squad or not (blue=teammate, green=squadmate) and despite this, most players currently just disregard it. I've tried to work with my squad, but it is more frustrating at the current time than it is beneficial except on the teamplay-focused realism servers I've been frequenting.

Since squadmates usually tend to not stick by their squad, their squad leader's orders become meaningless to them; some will follow the orders because they are new and/or trying to play as Tripwire intended whereas others will completely disregard the orders entirely. I think a big issue of this is that following orders does nothing to their point totals and a lot of people are still learning the game, but we'll see in a couple months. There's been a lot of suggestions to Tripwire about rewarding commanders/squad leaders/squads for putting out orders and following them, but Tripwire hasn't made a public response to it yet.


***

As far as Squad Leaders are concerned compared to the Commander, Squad Leaders are the "eyes in the field" and generally are close to the front lines whereas the Commander generally is hanging back by a radio in a relatively safe area. Squad leaders are expected to be in the thick of an assault/defense of a point because of their slightly higher cap rate and because players in their squad can actually spawn on them in lieu of the two preset spawns further back on the map. Furthermore, a Squad Leader is expected on maps with artillery to use their binoculars to pick out good artillery locations and mark them (Note: They cannot call in the strikes, only the Commander can); After this is done, Squad Leaders can let their commander know via text or voice chat what type of artillery barrage to utilize (mortars or cannon-based). This requires a good deal of teamplay and a commander who is inexperienced or doesn't care may very well disregard the squad leader entirely.

To answer a couple of your previous questions in regards to Squad Leaders, yes, they are capable of being mobile spawns. To my understanding if your Squad Leader is in an enemy-controlled cap zone, you will be unable to spawn near them and thus will default to one of the two preset spawns which are farther away. Some squad leaders that have realized this part of the game's mechanics actually hang out in cover just outside of a cap zone so that their squad can spawn on them and get into the fight significantly quicker (Some squadmembers realize this, but most are oblivious; again, we'll give it some time for players to learn the ropes). If you are chatting with your squad and working together, you can become the unstoppable force of your team responsible for pushing cap zones & winning rounds; it's all about team play.

Also, Squad leaders (and I believe commanders) do have a 1.5x cap rate compared to a regular trooper at the 1.0x rate. What this means is that if your team has 2 troopers/1 squad leader in a cap zone and the enemy has 3 regular troopers, your team has 3.5x capping power versus the enemy team's 3.0x capping power- this will result in your team slowly taking over the objective unless your team suffers casualties in the cap zone or the enemy team moves more troopers in to "block" your cap. The reverse is also true- if you kill enemy troopers in a cap zone, you'll reduce their capping power in that cap zone and if more troopers move in from your team to the cap zone, you will start capping the zone faster. Squad leaders play a more than important role in assault/defensive operations in regards to cap zones due to their slightly higher cap rate.

On your final question about interacting with your subordinates, the commander/squad leaders share the same way to interact- this is in two ways; one is a menu that allows you to select which squad (or fireteam) to give orders to followed by a few options, notably the Attack/Defense option. To select which squad (fireteam) you'd like to give orders to, you can press 'X' until the squad you want to give orders to is selected, or press 'B' (I believe it's B, anyhow) and click the middle button until your desired fireteam is selected. For example, if you chose squad 1 (fireteam 1) and wanted them to attack the enemy-held objective A, you'd select fireteam 1, hover over attack, and then select the objective you want them to attack. The same goes for the defend command, albeit only in regards to points that you have to defend. For both commands, the fireteam that you've given orders to will now have a marker directly on the cap zone you have ordered them to attack or defend (i.e. Fireteam 1 ordered to attack Objective A, Objective A has a FT1 symbol on it in both the situational map and if any player pulls up the tactical overlay ('T' key). This method of giving orders can be used to quickly let squad(s) know where to go, but is more of a "general" set of orders compared to a pin point "move here" order; as such, this set of orders is most commonly used by a commander who is behind the front lines and doesn't have a good idea of what exactly is occurring on the front (enemy troop movements, fortified positions, etc.).

The second set of orders is done by using the 'F' key which brings up a little arrow over a circle (we'll call it a marker) with two options- the right-click is to mark an artillery target, and the left-click is used to tell the currently selected squad to move or attack the position indicated by the marker (i.e. If you want Fireteam 1 to move into cover by a wall, you'd press the 'X' key until Fireteam 1 was selected, Hold 'F' until the marker is by the cover by a wall, then left click). Conversely, if you see an enemy soldier or tank and you want to tell your squad specific orders to target them, you can move the marker over the enemy unit and it will turn into a red crosshair; once you left click, your squad is given the orders to attack that enemy. These types of commands can also be brought up using the situation map ('M' key) or by checking your tactical overlay ('T' key). This style of giving orders should be more commonly used by Squad Leaders as them being on the front gives them far more information on how to order their fireteam around than a commander behind the front lines. Again, the issue with both is that most players disregard Commander/Squad Leader orders because there is no point benefit to them (yet) and/or because people are still learning how to play the game and don't fully understand the squad system.

Oh, and I just realized you had a question about training certain roles on servers with bots; it would definitely be a step in the right direction, but given how the bot AI is rather.. poor, you have a rather horrid experience to learn how to play the Squad Leader/Commander roles. In my personal opinion, I'd say hop onto an online server with players and play the other classes to get an understanding of how those classes function as well as how they fare with killing the enemy, how you react to incoming enemy fire, and how you react to assaulting/defending cap zones. For example, as a rifleman I'm generally very timid about crossing open areas without doing a very thorough check for enemy troops hiding in cover before moving up whereas with the assault class, I'll put down a few short bursts here and there, wait for teammates to move up to my position, and then try sprinting forwards into the next available piece of cover before repeating the same process over and over again. Understanding how each class plays and "feels" will help you understand whether or not players are going to listen to orders or friendly suggestions mid-game (if they are paying attention and/or care). After you get a good grasp of the basic classes, definitely give the squad leader and/or commander classes a shot and go from there- they can be slightly different playstyles, but good communication and basic skills built from playing the assault, rifleman, & machine gunner classes will pay off big time in your Squad Leader/Commander performance.

EDIT: I missed one very important section on Squad Leaders/Commanders that I'm rather ashamed about: Smoke Grenades! As a squad leader/commander, you are issued two smoke grenades per life with which you can use to throw into areas that have no cover and/or you can use to block enemy line of sight so that your team can advance. 15 meters may not be a very far sprint for your team, but if there is a couple enemy riflemen and a machine gunner watching that route, your team can get mowed down rather quickly and easily. Smoke grenades allow squad leaders to help your team push forwards into objective zones in relative safety where without it enemy fields of fire would normally result in an untimely death. Another bonus for smoke grenades is that if you know enemies are really concentrated down one street and you and your team need to cross it to achieve a flank on them, you can toss a smoke grenade or two to block their line of sight/fields of fire so you and your team can sprint across to continue your mission. Another wonderful use of smoke grenades on combined arms maps is to cover the movements of your troops from enemy tanks, which generally speaking tend to stay further back than their infantry and are usually sniping with high-explosive tank rounds and machine guns on infantry; one or two smoke grenades thrown allows your team to move around with the enemy tank/infantry unable to see your team's troop movements.

Simply put, effective use of smoke grenades can easily make you a real credit to your team as you are directly giving your team the benefit of concealment so that they don't get mowed down as easily when going through streets or locations with limited or poor cover. Just do a quick common sense calculation before tossing to get the most out of your smoke, let your team know via text or voice chat before you pop it, and then hoof it forward or into new cover. Also, this should be obvious but a limited few players I've encountered believed that the concealment of smoke makes them invincible- I can assure you, it does not. If anything, enemy machine gunners/assault classes typically start firing into the smoke in the hopes of getting a random kill shots; riflemen (bolt-action/semi-auto) sometimes will do so, but it's nowhere near as deadly as massive amounts of SMG/LMG fire.
 
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