Inexorable's Rules Of Command.
Inexorable
Join Date: 2002-09-28 Member: 1360Members
Join Date: 2002-09-28 Member: 1360Members
<div class="IPBDescription">How to command without going insane.</div> Here's a few things I've picked up which help me keep going during command sessions. These aren't here to help you win, or beat down a mass of Onos, but they should keep your blood pressure down in the face of all the annoyances commanders face.
#1 Pick your battles: There's only so much of your commander love to go round. You should only have 3 points of interest, Your main base, A staging area prefereably close to at least 2 hives, and wherever the front lines happen to be. Everything else is a distraction, feel free to ignore it.
#2 Use your Veterans: There may or may not be one on your server, but you can spot these guys by the fact they take <i>DEdNOOB187</i>'s shotgun and clear our a hive on the other side of the map. Keep tabs on this guy. Whatever he wants, give it to him. Then have him do what needs doing. Make him squad leader, or a covert Rambo, whatever.
#3 Permanent upgrades are your friend: You will never be hounded about dropping motion tracking every 30 seconds. Once Weapon lvl 3 is researched, you never need to worry about it again. Your marines get more powerful, <b>AND</b> you can pay attention to something else. It's a win-win situation.
#4 Nobody "Needs" anything: See that guys saying he needs HA and a HMG right frikken now? He doesn't. Trust me. Feel free to ignore him. Perhaps <i>somebody</i> needs a welder, but chances are that if the guy asking for it doesn't get one, the world will not collapse. Pop one or two down quick if you team needs them, and then move on to more important things.
#5 You are not a tour guide: There are a lot of people out there who aren't familiar with all of the NS map's twists and turns. That's OK, but don't expect me to put a waypoint down every 30 feet because you don't know the way from Marine base to Powersilo. Guide people if you can, but remember that hand-holding a marine group through corridors should be very low on your priority list.
#6 You don't need the resources: After the 4th resource spot or so, you just don't need any more. Sure, marines love to jump up and down like kids at Christmas yelling "I found a vent! I found a vent! Put a resource tower here!!!11", but you don't need to be brining in 30 resources a second. Extra resource nodes are simply more places for the aliens to annoy you with "Your base is under attack" messages. If you feel you really must put something up there, place an Armory. It screams just as much when under attack, and give out free ammo as well.
#7 Ignore voice commands: This ties in with #1. Since you're no longer trying to take in the whole map at once, it's very easy to keep an eye on the marines which matter. Have they been fighting for a while? Drop ammo. Has one lost health? Drop a medkit. Important marines should never have to use voice commands because if their command isn't looking at them now, he will be in a few seconds. This also prevents you from pressing space to see a marine who desperately needs health because he decided to take on 2 Fades with a pistol in Middle of Nowhere, Wyoming.
#8 Bind important drops: Nothing sucks more than trying to drop a few medkits on marines, only to have your menu selection messed up by lag and put down an Observatory directly on your marine. Then not only do you have one marine who can't move, another couple of marines who either have to build the Observatory so you can recycle or kill it, and bunch of wasted resources; You have to mess around with the menu again before you can start dropping more ammo/medkits. It's annoying, don't let it happen.
#1 Pick your battles: There's only so much of your commander love to go round. You should only have 3 points of interest, Your main base, A staging area prefereably close to at least 2 hives, and wherever the front lines happen to be. Everything else is a distraction, feel free to ignore it.
#2 Use your Veterans: There may or may not be one on your server, but you can spot these guys by the fact they take <i>DEdNOOB187</i>'s shotgun and clear our a hive on the other side of the map. Keep tabs on this guy. Whatever he wants, give it to him. Then have him do what needs doing. Make him squad leader, or a covert Rambo, whatever.
#3 Permanent upgrades are your friend: You will never be hounded about dropping motion tracking every 30 seconds. Once Weapon lvl 3 is researched, you never need to worry about it again. Your marines get more powerful, <b>AND</b> you can pay attention to something else. It's a win-win situation.
#4 Nobody "Needs" anything: See that guys saying he needs HA and a HMG right frikken now? He doesn't. Trust me. Feel free to ignore him. Perhaps <i>somebody</i> needs a welder, but chances are that if the guy asking for it doesn't get one, the world will not collapse. Pop one or two down quick if you team needs them, and then move on to more important things.
#5 You are not a tour guide: There are a lot of people out there who aren't familiar with all of the NS map's twists and turns. That's OK, but don't expect me to put a waypoint down every 30 feet because you don't know the way from Marine base to Powersilo. Guide people if you can, but remember that hand-holding a marine group through corridors should be very low on your priority list.
#6 You don't need the resources: After the 4th resource spot or so, you just don't need any more. Sure, marines love to jump up and down like kids at Christmas yelling "I found a vent! I found a vent! Put a resource tower here!!!11", but you don't need to be brining in 30 resources a second. Extra resource nodes are simply more places for the aliens to annoy you with "Your base is under attack" messages. If you feel you really must put something up there, place an Armory. It screams just as much when under attack, and give out free ammo as well.
#7 Ignore voice commands: This ties in with #1. Since you're no longer trying to take in the whole map at once, it's very easy to keep an eye on the marines which matter. Have they been fighting for a while? Drop ammo. Has one lost health? Drop a medkit. Important marines should never have to use voice commands because if their command isn't looking at them now, he will be in a few seconds. This also prevents you from pressing space to see a marine who desperately needs health because he decided to take on 2 Fades with a pistol in Middle of Nowhere, Wyoming.
#8 Bind important drops: Nothing sucks more than trying to drop a few medkits on marines, only to have your menu selection messed up by lag and put down an Observatory directly on your marine. Then not only do you have one marine who can't move, another couple of marines who either have to build the Observatory so you can recycle or kill it, and bunch of wasted resources; You have to mess around with the menu again before you can start dropping more ammo/medkits. It's annoying, don't let it happen.
Comments
Other than that, I wholeheartedly support all your other points. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' valign='absmiddle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Cant tell you how many times health gets droped to some clueless marine because they say need health right after I did, and right before commander jumped.
Its cost us hives before.
I agree with most of it except the above. ^
If you have 4 nozzles, and already have plenty of resources, stockpiling even more is NEVER a bad thing.
Being able to repeatedly spawn HA/HMGs to people who suck and repeatedly die keeps them happy, which also keeps you in the chair.
Idiots have a fun time booting any decent commander who will not give them stuff.
As for empty resource nodes, I see it as a waste. You might get some extra resources out of it, but you're either going to spend time building defences there that could have better been used to build HA/HMGs, or your going to leave it undefended and it's going to distract you with attack messages when your concentration should be elsewhere.
10. Anytime a Marine walks off by himself
Write him off, your going to be seeing him soon at base anyway
If you stop taking nozzles after the 4th, on a large map with many nozzles the aliens will take, and attempt to defend, the rest. And once they do, the marines are in serious trouble, because gorges can make m-m-m-massive chamber farms, and if they get the 3rd hive they'll all go onos at once because they're so loaded.
On the voice command remark, it's much much better if they use voice command then type (by the time you typed it it's too late or you die typing), but it's very hard for a comm to find who asked what. Not only do you have to look at the voice command name fast enough to see it, you also have to find the person then. So if I get a voice command request from someone who is not in the group of ppl I'm looking at, he better use the special menu or he aint getting it (Then again, those in the main group shouldnt need to use voice command to request items, I will be keeping them good anyway).
2 or 3 resource towers outside the base well defended. other towers only lightly defended (possibly just with trip/land mines), or not defended at all.
setting up a well defended resource tower takes at least two marines (preferably more) several minutes and a load of rp's. all that will be lost when the aliens attack it unless you have marines there to defend it. no way you can defend all resources like that, so most will be lost at some point anyway.
during start- and mid-game, to counter such losses you'd have one or two small roaming teams just to find resource spots that are free or lightly defended; once they'r done setting up a tower they move on to find another one. no large investment in men, time and resources so it's not to bad if you lose such a tower.