How do you get over the fear to Comm?
Armymonger
The spacebearing Country of America Join Date: 2014-04-04 Member: 195135Members
The spacebearing Country of America Join Date: 2014-04-04 Member: 195135Members
A commanders purpose is to ensure the well being of his troops, to bring victory to himself and his army, and tactically bring about e destruction of his enemy.
I haven't seen any other game apart from NS2 in which commanding really MAKES you feel the importance of being the leader and makes you feel the weight of the dependence of your subordinates in relying on you to bring victory and their survival.
Because everything you do impacts them.
And because of that I have a fear to commanding.
All of my time as a ns2 marine, I prefered being on the frontlines rather than lead. To be a chess piece than a chess player.
I know it sounds silly, but I have always wondered how my commanders reached the point where they are today, and how they overcame themselves to command. If they even had any fear to command.
Any ideas?
I haven't seen any other game apart from NS2 in which commanding really MAKES you feel the importance of being the leader and makes you feel the weight of the dependence of your subordinates in relying on you to bring victory and their survival.
Because everything you do impacts them.
And because of that I have a fear to commanding.
All of my time as a ns2 marine, I prefered being on the frontlines rather than lead. To be a chess piece than a chess player.
I know it sounds silly, but I have always wondered how my commanders reached the point where they are today, and how they overcame themselves to command. If they even had any fear to command.
Any ideas?
Comments
Make a local server, train to deliver a medpack shower (shortcuts). Also train to make shortcut (CTRL+1,2,3,etc.) on Obs and other things.
Once you got it and feel comfortable; things will be less impressive. When you know how to do; it's easier to select what you want to do.
This is really an underused tool in many aspects. When it comes to any role in the game, you need to first master the fundamentals. When it comes to commanding, that is your mechanics. How do you medpack efficiently? How do you place structures efficiently? How do you pan the camera efficiently?
When you have this down, you can start thinking of a basic build order. Do not over think this part, you just need a basic one that you can execute, then you can move on to more advanced stuff later.
The above should really not take you much more than an hour or two at most. But it's a tool that I'd recommend that you return to. Test things out throughout your gaming career. It's a great tool to study the game in-depth.
But ultimately, the only way to improve, is to jump in there and give it your best shot.
And if they blame you for losing the game, just remember that experienced commanders get that too and it doesn't have to be true.
1.) First thing is to understand the game in a broader sense ie. Route blocking to hold your own res and pressure to kill alien red. There are plenty of guides out there.
2.) Learn to med engagements. It's probably the number one reason people will biitch at you and should be 90% of your job as comm. Decent comms learn to med when marines call for them and good commanders med engagements without the marines even requesting.
Marines are your number one asset. More marines alive keeps the aliens off your res.
3.) Develop your build order.
Simple guide:
Can your marines aim? If yes, get upgrades first. If no, mines first then upgrades. Gates first is bad on most maps.
4.) Let people know you are learning and don't forget #2.
"Stfu carnts, if you don't like how I command then you should've done it instead."
My favorite example: after a horrible loss for marines. Marines start whining about a "stack," but you and I both know that it was a perfectly capable team that just didn't have focus. I like a challenge and decide to command.
Me: "Okay guys. We can do this, all we have to do is focus on securing RTs and we got this in the bag. We didn't do this last round and ended up losing."
Game Start
Me: Go go go! Get those RTs up and running!
Three guys stand in base. Everyone else runs past the RT blueprints and "attacks" the main hive. Four skulks kill my three guys standing AFK in base.
Beacon.
Me: "Guys, don't all go and attack the enemy hive at once... we need RTs first"
Them: "WTF COMM WHY NO RTS"
You have been kicked from the server
What an example of human trash. I pity you, I really do for taking command of such players.
But that brings up the second part of my fear.
Losing my soul and becoming desensitized from other players insulting me because of my command.
I understand that fact because it's the Internet, but That dosent mean I'm prepared for such bashing.
Still better than some other games...
I haven't had that experience commanding in awhile. Possibly because they playerbase shrunk, or I just play on better servers.
- Be the med bitch
Forget the "im the brain" stuff.
You are not the brain, you are only one who throw meds and ammo to your troops.
Rule Nr1 for you should be:
Keep your troops alive
Do everything that help your team to survive and dont wait for requests.
- active medsupport during engagements
- scans
- cat packs
Rule Nr2 should be:
Dont care about people who "know" what "we" need.
"Com we need grenades", "We need jetpacks", "we need bla bla bla"
Most people with zero aim and gamesense are thinking "if i had this cool grenadelauncher i would kill them all"
Well, they dont kill them all, so dont care about "we need" stuff.
Rule Nr3 is:
Support your carry players the most.
This is nothing against weaker players and you should support them too, but your 1-2 carrys are your most important players.
After a few time you know some names and if you see good players on a servers, these should be your 1st priority.
A player with zero aim @ Armor2, weapon2 and 7 medpacks cannot kill a single skulk should be low priority.
You can win as com without saying a single word if you have enough people in your team who knows how to play.
Now its up to you to identify these people and support them as much as possible.
Edit - supporting the best players more often than others... how are bad players going to get better if they are dying all over the place while the good players are nearly invincible if you're babysitting them with meds.. it does lead to easy wins, if that's the point.
What are we talking about here?
Isnt this thread about winning as com?
If i am a com and "wasting" med after med into the same people again and again they didnt get my full attention anymore cause they die anyway.
Sure, im supporting them too but not the same way like the inportant players.
This is about res efficiently.
Why should i waste money to not have enough in needed situations?
And people dont getting better with 10 meds pumped into them for one skulk again and again.
Most coms didnt med in pub anyway, so my less meds on the bad players is more than they get normally.
So in the end of the day: Everyone is happy.
It's more or less about how to begin as a comm.
Winning is nice, but it's just icing on a proverbial cake from portal.
I have a similar approach, though its less....angry
When I get in the chair, I make it clear that we are going to lose, but that we are going to go out fighting! That way if we win, its that much more exciting <:-P
I can relate to what you feel as I was quite nervous and unsure when I started commanding. However, the only way to really start to get over your fear is to push yourself and just go for the command chair or Hive. Just accept that you suck in the beginning and don´t be too hard on yourself. You will mistake for sure but you will learn form them and in the end become a better player.
What personally helped me when I started was making a general build order which I wanted to use. To start out you can go with popular builds like arms lab first / second ip first or pg first depending what your team wants. Feel free to ask them in team chat (e.g. "Arms first?"). There are more builds of course (like arc rush on veil) but they are very risky and need you to manage your marines so they can be successfull. Furthermore, I would suggest you to practice one build until you feel confident using it.
Furthermore, if you begin to command I would suggest you to focus on the mechanical aspect of the game. Try to get familiar with your hotkeys until you use them naturally. Important ones for marines are especially the med and ammo hotkey which you will need to use insanely often in games. Force yourself stopping to click to build and instead use the hotkeys. After you have become more or less familiar try to communicate more with the team. Become vocal and tell them what you need them to do and call out tech which became avaible (e.g. SG up).
If you play public people will not listen to you. Don´t take it personal. Same goes for vocal players who will tell you that you are a bad comm (which you naturally are if you just started out). Just accept that, ignore them and mute them if the harass starts to make you angry. Don´t react because getting angry will only make you perform worse and their attitude is only their problem.
I promise you if you stick with commanding for some time you will see yourself improve so dont be afraid of the pressure. In the end this is just a game. Losing as commander has no consequence. Dont be afraid of making mistakes but embrace them. Every failure, every loss and every mistake gives you the option to learn from them. Bascially just try to have fun.
Greetings,
NoobComm aka. Warforce17
Upon doing that, just relax and ask your team for help.
What u need for first commanding on public servers:
1. A mic to talk with youre team to tell them where the party is going on, veterans are willing to help you when you have one!
2. Know the techtree!! (hold J to show it), know what is where and for what do you use it
Marines: Structures, Medpacks/Ammo, Destress Beacon, Upgrades and Improvements
Aliens: Structures an theyre abilities (a Shift can teleport), Liveforms and theyre skills (to know what you research), Hiveupgrades and Upgradechambers, active commskills (like Nutrient Mist)
3. While you command you will learn the tactics, you don't need to know them.
4. Just do it!
The other option is to jump on Wooza's at peak time and put yourself in the deep end.
Somethings you can learn before you even get in the command chair.
*Spend countless hours just patiently learning how other commanders have done it.
*There is no real reason why a commander doesn't have a microphone unless you actually don't want to talk, if you can afford a machine that can run NS2, you can buy a goddamn $20 headset. The amount of times I have died because a commander was typing a sentence arguing the whys and fors with a troll.
*Study their upgrade order, you'll soon realise the top 10 commanders have a generic pattern to respond to certain situations.
*Take the best strategies from each of the best commanders you have seen and implement it into your own strategy so you are equipped to deal with all kinds of situations.
*Learn the strategic parts of the map, the more map knowledge you have the easier it is to respond to changes and tactical situations (some of the worlds best military generals knew their battlefield and used it to maximum effect).
*LEARN TO PRIORITISE, this is the one of the most important tricks of the trade (Do I keep a marine alive with medspam building a vitally important phasegate or do I respond to a ammo spam rambo with a KDR of 5/3/13.
*Learn your keyboard shortcuts well and how to hotkey vital structures, observatories, armslab, powernodes etc.
*Most importantly stick to what you know works that said don't be afraid to try out different strategies sometimes but not all the time as chances are your strategy has already been done 100 times before and if you find 10 people on your team all telling you to try something different, chances are your strat doesn't work.
That right there is at least part of the problem :P
Did you allready tried to command those lemmings? ^^
Totally recommend watching some matches on youtube or something and seeing what order the commanders build structures and get upgrades etc.
Learn the hotkeys.
Press space bar to go to the last request from a marine.
Armor 1 before weapons 1.
Crazy fringe builds like PG first or exo rush are 'crazy fringe builds' for a reason. They are less likely to result in a win, so dont make them your bread and butter.
This thread has lots of examples of build orders various commanders on the forums use.
Be prepared for the fact that Late game commanding is totally, totally harder than early game commanding. There will be LOTS of things going on, you will have to scan around and remain vigilant for rushes. You WILL totally bottle it and lose the game for your team at least a few times before you get the hang of this.
Early game is much more comfortable- make sure you're following your marines actively medding and giving ammo when needed.
Use your map and address marines by name if you want them to do something!
There seem to be a few misconceptions about how a marine comm is meant to operate. Everyone has their own approach.
Some players like commanding to issue orders and punish or verbally berate the team if those orders are not able to be followed. Dont be one of those dickheads.
A commander is a support. It's a coordinator. Stay calm and be aware that sometimes (very often) your intended strategy will not work.
If your aim was to get a phase gate in X location and pushes on X have failed repeatedly, dont be afraid to change up your strat.
Edit- In fact, try not to have a 'strat' from the start of the game. Instead, see what happens in the early throes of the game and try to exploit any advantages your team gets.
My personal approach to builds is 'safety net'. Marines in public games are not reliable. You are not reliable. I always make sure my marines have mines, 2nd IP, obs and stack 10 res in case a beacon is needed. Not having these things means that if your team fails on the ground, you have no power to prevent a loss from the sky.
I could go more into detail about things but these are the main tidbits of info I dont think a lot of people mention / seem to even realise in the first place. Having this internalised from the start will put you ahead of the game for your experience level.
Oh, and if you DO lose the game for the team (if you fail to have res for a beacon/ 2nd chair, or dont spot a rush on your base altogether (this WILL happen)), just try to take it in good humour, apologise to your team and dont take the insults to heart. If you're cool about it chances are they will be too.
Work WITH your team. Just because you're "the commander" doesnt mean you always have to be GOD. Some teams require you to be, but many dont.