Putting the Squad back in leader

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

Currently, the role of squad leader does not have very much to do with leading the team. The only incentives, or benefits if you will, of being a squad leader are as follows: Carrying smoke grenades, having access to some of the better weapons for the map, and having a 1.33 capping bonus. What I propose is that since there is a player maximum of 16 players on each side, that there be four positions delegated as "Squad Leader", with four squads per team, and a seperate mic channel for your squad, and a seperate mic channel for the squad leaders.

This opens up a multitude of possibilities. One is the designation of an entirely new position, "platoon leader", who would function the same as a squad leader, yet he would give the basic orders for the map. "Lt. X and Y, I want you guys to focus on Ammo Storage/Apartments", etc. Although not entirely necessary, it would make the game more team oriented with a set of executive officers.

The squads could even be differentiated if desired. Three Assault Squads and a support, Two Support Squads and Two Assault, etc. "Squad" is just a generic term. Perhaps they could be called Fireteam A-D, etc. Whatever is reflective of the time period.

A squad leader would not have to fill the "squad leading" position on the map, because there are certain limits. I.E., a rifleman/MG/assault trooper can also be squad leaders, remaining with their own class's weapon loadouts, but the squad leaders who have chosen that class are automatically delegated squad leaders. This might be a problem on a map such as Koitos1944, but the introduction of a lottery system for which squad leader gets to be the head honcho would solve that (currently squad leaders are unlimited in Koitos1944).

I believe this would help increase the order of things through each map, instead of giving 16 guys all seperate orders, one guy/or four squad leaders sets/set up a basic plan, relays that plan to the other squad leaders, who then relays that to their squads. This would leave open the squads choice on how they wish to take their objective, using their assets (weaponry and communication) on how to best tackle the problem.

 

[Teq]

I beleive that the squadleader should have the following options/responsebillities:

1) Able the Sqd Lead to open his own squad (add squad joining).
a) There should be 2 or 3 squad leaders that will have their own 6 member squad for which each player may join for increased teamwork experience.
b) The squad leader may choose weaponclass for each member in the squad (server side option)
c) The squad leader may draw on the map for his squad to see
d) The squad members may perform mutiny on their leader for bad conduct.
e) There should be a separate Squad VOIP for each squad
f) THere should be channels for Squadleaders only (so they can coordinate their movements)
g) While in the squad each member may see teamtages anywhere on the map within 100m and VOIP icon within 50m)

2) The Sqd Lead. responsibillity is to lead his squad and coordinate attack and defence with the other sqd leaders.

3) The sqd leaders have a collective pot of arty strikes

4) Each squad have their own reinforcement respawns.
When their reinforcements run dry, the members of that squad may not spawn again.

What do you think of this?

 

[Zell]

Great idea, but it may feel somewhat empty, considering the player limit is 16 per team. I think the most squads per side should be 2, if you don't want it to feel like Raven Shield and more like WWII.

 

[Colt .45 killer]

this really requires more people to have a flippen mic, and as it is .. NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE HAVE MICS .. .. grr i wish i could force people to buy microphones... but yes the ideas are good. im just thinking that they could make teamwork harder but more rewarding in the end. because if that were implemented you would need 5 people concentrating on teamwork for your team to work as one. whereas now you only need 1 good team leader to get people moving and working together....

 

[Xiao]

Good idea. It would be cool if you could right-click a friendly sniper, click "attack" from a dropdown menu, then right click the guy or area you want him to attack, etc, to order direct commands.

This system would be good at least if the squad thing cannot be done.

 

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

I beleive that the squadleader should have the following options/responsebillities:

1) Able the Sqd Lead to open his own squad (add squad joining).
a) There should be 2 or 3 squad leaders that will have their own 6 member squad for which each player may join for increased teamwork experience.
b) The squad leader may choose weaponclass for each member in the squad (server side option)
c) The squad leader may draw on the map for his squad to see
d) The squad members may perform mutiny on their leader for bad conduct.
e) There should be a separate Squad VOIP for each squad
f) THere should be channels for Squadleaders only (so they can coordinate their movements)
g) While in the squad each member may see teamtages anywhere on the map within 100m and VOIP icon within 50m)

2) The Sqd Lead. responsibillity is to lead his squad and coordinate attack and defence with the other sqd leaders.

3) The sqd leaders have a collective pot of arty strikes

4) Each squad have their own reinforcement respawns.
When their reinforcements run dry, the members of that squad may not spawn again.

What do you think of this?

1) Too complicated for what we are trying to accomplish with a 16-man team, at the maximum. Leaders with bad conduct are automatically booted for TKs or by votekick on the server. C, E, and F are perfectly fine by me.

2) Yes

3) Yes

4) Yes and no. It would be too harsh of a penalty for a squad to not respawn; it takes players out of the game with others still playing. This can happy too early and could lead people with a bad taste, myself included.

 

[Field Marshal Rommel]

Here be mine ideaers;

1.Both sides should get different maps since they have different intellignece about the on comming battle.
2.The ablity to draw on the map would be nice to tell people where to go.

3.Perhaps, a limited addition of a field radio that a another soldier has strapped to his back to call for artillery/airsupport while on the move. A two man weapon. The radio guy must be close to the squadleader to call artillery on squad leaders artillery postions.To decrease potential abuse perhaps when a certain area is reached the field radio becomes useless or there is a high wait time between artillery . Here are some American field radios;

 

[4th Reich]

I don't agree with being able to create your own custom squads, but otherwise this is a good idea.

Have two support fire squads -- MGs, anti-tank (for russians) and riflemen -- and have two assault squads -- smgs, anti-tank (for germans) and riflemen. The players must join a squad, and they can only get points if they follow the squad leader's orders and stick close enough to their squad.


The only exception to this should be snipers and tank drivers, but everyone still has to follow the platoon leader's orders.

 

[Nestor Makhno]

Trying to get individual teams to co-ordinate on a public server is never going to happen. Similarly with having squad channels. Some clans have used various refinements of teamspeak with rooms for each squad and bound keys for whisper channels for leaders to talk to other squad leaders and it gets very very confusing and requires a helluva lot of practice before it becomes an aid to tactical play rather than a bloody mess.

As for the squad leader choosing his unit's weapons loadout...well that would not really happen IRL. On the other hand, you have to remember that realistic squad loadouts would make certain maps difficult on the Soviet side: a PTRD squad in the early years would need 3 PTRD's, 3 loaders and an NCO and the loaders would not be abandoning their gunners to run off and storm buildings etc. Later version SMG squads would be all SMG (a bit like in Lyes Krovy), whereas early rifle squads would have a sniper and an LMG but virtually no SMGs (apart from trophies or scrounged PaPaSha's). There would prolly be similar problems for the Germans as well.

I am not saying that the present system is good. I would dearly love to see the game tending towards more tactical play but, given that you don't often get full pub servers, the only way at present to get proper tactics and chain of command is in Clan or Realism Unit games.

If anyone can come up with a workable way to encourage realism and tactical play that is technically doable I would thank them from the bottom of my heart. It's just that I don't think that many of the suggestions here are the way to do it. Although some kind of tweaking of 4R's ideas would be a step in the right direction.

What I am saying here is that, as long as you have certain features required to make this game pub-player-friendly (e.g. respawns) and as long as you need to balance teams of 16 men you are always going to face a situation where realism takes a back seat. An ultra-realism mod would prolly need:

zero respawns (designed to cope with all the problems of different loading times that that entails)

some form of squad structure inbuilt (into VOIP and the map's squad loadout) and

a 'carrot and stick' approach to team play (e.g. you only get points for capping an objective if you have ben recently told to do so by the ranking player in your squad or you lose your team points if you are killed somerwhere where you weren't supposed to be according to your squad leader)

 

[Alec]

When I play as a leader (without mic btw, don't want to disturb other people in appartment nor give everybody a headache with bad pronunciation ) I miss couple of things.
Most of all not enough map interaction. I get what - a cloud for arty (not planned but already in action), a flag, a circle around one objective and a hand at point I screamed for help.
What I could use - arrows for attack routes. Separate designation flags for MG, sniper, enemy MG and enemy sniper positions. Could use something to force players to gather together before charging.
Then, a way to mark enemy arty position...

 

[Tripper]

How about something like this:

Someone takes the SL slot, and this opens up a sub-menu where people who would like to play within a squad can sign up for the open slots within the squad, which then enables a "squad only" voip channel.

For example, Player A opens up a rifle squad, with 4 rifle slots and 1 MG slot (these numbers are for illustration, not hard and fast). Other players who already are playing the role of Rifleman or MGer can then volunteer to fill the slots and these folks can act as an organized squad during the game. If the players don't like the SL, they simply leave the squad.

There can be different types of squad; rifle, assault, AT, etc., each having a specific number of slots for specific weapon classes.

Good SLs will get a rep on these boards, and folks can append an SP (Squad Player) to their in-game names much like the TT folks do.

 

[Teq]

Great idea, but it may feel somewhat empty, considering the player limit is 16 per team. I think the most squads per side should be 2, if you don't want it to feel like Raven Shield and more like WWII.

-----------------------------------------------
SUGGESTION 1 (Specific squad joining)
16 men team on typical Combined arms map:

* At the beginning of the game, the players may select 3 Teams.
* As a player select a team he may choose between the availible slots in that team (like selecting weapon classes)
* If the players do not choose to select the Sqd leader they may not be able to see team tags on their teammates nor will they be able to use the Squad VOIP.
* All squadleaders may talk in their own Sqd Lead VOIP's to coordinate attacks and defence without anyone else listening.

Assault team: (6 Member slots, 2 reserve)
1 Squad leader w/SMG or Semi
2 SMG's
2 Semi autos
1 Engeneer/AT w/SMG

Fire/suppression team: (6 member slots, 2 reserve)
4 rifles
2 Semi auto

Support squad: (6 member slots, 2 reserve)
4+2 members consisting of Engineers, AT personell or tank crew.
-----------------------------------------------------------
SUGGESTION 2 (flexible squad joining)
* At the beginning of the game, the players may select 3 squadleaders.
* As the player select the Sqd LEad class he auto start a squad.
* The players may now join his squad and select what ever availible class)
* In this way, all players may choose to stay on Team 1, or they might divide up in 3 teams IE 1 attack team, one defence team and a support team for armour etc.
* In this mode, if a squad leader ****s you may just choose another squad to join, with no fuzz.
* You may create your own tank team being able to communicate with only those in that channel etc

Team 1 (Unlimited slots)
All weapon and classes valid
Team 2 (Unlimited slots)
All weapons and classes valid
Team 3 (Unlimited slots)
All weapons and classes valid

 

[Teq]

hm as usual most of the threads end with my comment haha

 

[JAKL]

Just like to resurrect this discussion as it is something that I've really been missing from RO. If not this game (unlikely) then perhaps the next game from TW contains a squad system like BF2. Keep the normal weapon selections and just let people choose what squad they want to be in. Allow respawning on the squad leader. This system works really well in BF2, especially PRMM and it promotes teamwork.

 

[Oldih]

Sounds great idea.

And for offtopic part, I wonder why no-one have began saying "OMG RO TURNING TOO MUCH BIAISH CRAP!!"

 

[SchutzeSepp]

this system is existing already in the americas army-game, and it doesn't really make people work in the squads they picked.
you need to give people advantages when they work together, otherwise they simply won't.
advantages like: if a player with high teamwork-points wants a better gun, he can pick the gun from any other player with lower teamplay points than him.

or, you only get grenades when your teamplay score is above a certain limit

or players with high teamwork score, wil have better stamina, health, accuracy


to give players teamplay-points, they simply would need to stay close to the leader of their squad, and for every 10 seconds they stay close to their team, they get a point or so, but it only works whebn the leader is a good player

 

[Kurtz]

And for offtopic part, I wonder why no-one have began saying "OMG RO TURNING TOO MUCH BIAISH CRAP!!"

Because everyone knows the squad system is one of the few good things about BIA.

The problem with squads is that most pub-ers won't bother participating, and (good) clans can already coordinate themselves. Squads work in say, BF2 because you are given the advantage of spawning on your squad leader, which is great for that game but too unrealistic for RO (imagine German SL getting in the courtyard tower on kaukasus). If your squad is across the map and you die, most people are going to go to the closest objective that needs you, not bypass a point being capped to get back to your squad.

Other problem is the lack of communication. I like the fact that we have ingame voice but unless I'm mistaken it still is set up so that everyone on your team gets the message, and there's no way to tell who said it. Kind of hampers teamwork a bit. Having mics with squad channels would work (though I would just prefer local channel for realism, if that is fixed by now), but you can't force people to buy mics. If you could tell who was talking somehow and if the ingame voice was streamlined (something like bf2 where you can do it by clicking, not by pressing number might be good) maybe teamwork would be better.

As for better stats when you have certain teamwork score... please God no. If an mg or sniper is behind a squad but is doing a great job of supporting them there is no reason why they should have less accuracy/health. Besides, when I lose to someone I want to know it was because they did something better, not because they had a 1.3X health modifier (this is not an RPG).

 

[dogbadger]

Good ideas but beware too many chiefs and not enough indians.
Mind you ,as it stands now you often have just one chief doing random smoke signals no-one understands......

 

[SiC-Disaster]

Good idea. It would be cool if you could right-click a friendly sniper, click "attack" from a dropdown menu, then right click the guy or area you want him to attack, etc, to order direct commands.

This system would be good at least if the squad thing cannot be done.

or a bia style way of ordering people around: hold a button, point the mouse to the ground where you want your squad, and let go, and your squad will have a waypoint there. if you hold it over an enemy you can give the order to fire/suppresive fire etc.

 

[slyder73]

Currently, the role of squad leader does not have very much to do with leading the team. The only incentives, or benefits if you will, of being a squad leader are as follows: Carrying smoke grenades, having access to some of the better weapons for the map, and having a 1.33 capping bonus. What I propose is that since there is a player maximum of 16 players on each side, that there be four positions delegated as "Squad Leader", with four squads per team, and a seperate mic channel for your squad, and a seperate mic channel for the squad leaders.

This opens up a multitude of possibilities. One is the designation of an entirely new position, "platoon leader", who would function the same as a squad leader, yet he would give the basic orders for the map. "Lt. X and Y, I want you guys to focus on Ammo Storage/Apartments", etc. Although not entirely necessary, it would make the game more team oriented with a set of executive officers.

The squads could even be differentiated if desired. Three Assault Squads and a support, Two Support Squads and Two Assault, etc. "Squad" is just a generic term. Perhaps they could be called Fireteam A-D, etc. Whatever is reflective of the time period.

A squad leader would not have to fill the "squad leading" position on the map, because there are certain limits. I.E., a rifleman/MG/assault trooper can also be squad leaders, remaining with their own class's weapon loadouts, but the squad leaders who have chosen that class are automatically delegated squad leaders. This might be a problem on a map such as Koitos1944, but the introduction of a lottery system for which squad leader gets to be the head honcho would solve that (currently squad leaders are unlimited in Koitos1944).

I believe this would help increase the order of things through each map, instead of giving 16 guys all seperate orders, one guy/or four squad leaders sets/set up a basic plan, relays that plan to the other squad leaders, who then relays that to their squads. This would leave open the squads choice on how they wish to take their objective, using their assets (weaponry and communication) on how to best tackle the problem.

This sounds great. I would love to see more in depth squad oriented gameplay. Unfortunately, in an online game (and I've said it many times before in forums on many games), you have to set it up for the lowest common denomintor; the IDIOT factor.
As good as your idea sounds, I envision the non-teamoriented players joining squads and not doing what the squad is doing, no voice chat and no communication.
It is already frustrating enough when playing and knowing the best possible defense or offense as a team, with many teamates VOIP'ing the intented plan, yet 4 or 5 guys or more (most of the team sometimes) still insist on sitting around on their belly shooting halfway across the map, not even aware or caring that they are not helping in a capzone by their presence.
A slightly more complicated and in depth teamwork/squad system would suffer even more from this. The system would reduce communication between squads, while at the same time giving license to those who refuse to join a squad or join but dont' care, to just go off and not pay attention to what their little squad is doing. It is already hard enough to get the "lonewolves" and naysayers to go along with even a litlte teamwork as it is.
The kind of system you suggest is a best possible circumstances, and I'd love to play it, but I think it would only work in clanplay or private servers where the "idiot factor" can be kick/banned.