So Squads Seem Like A Afterthought To Comming?

aeroripper · July 2005

Just like the title says... this feature I see VERY RARELY used. Do some of you have games where you've used it extensively and what are some good strategies to use with it?

EDIT: And by squads i was referring to selecting your marines as a group

Swiftspear · July 2005

People use squads for structure hotkeys. They are EXTREAMLY useful to a good comm in that respect. Some people assign all the players to a squad for one touch selectall, but I just bind selectall to mousewheeldown so I can use the squad slots for other things like obs and armslabs.

DarkFrost · July 2005

Yea, the voice doesn't tell you often enough that your base is under attack, so bind every structure in base possible to the shortcuts, when the get attacked they flash red.

ReD1 · July 2005

I use squad slots for obs and arms, so I dont have to go back to base to click the structure for upgrades.

People probably dont use squads because people very rarely stick together for the whole game in public, and something like squads isnt really neccessary for competetive play.

Maian · July 2005

The obvious problem with squads is that they the squad will inevitable fall apart, and it's a hassle to form a new squad. All it takes is a marine in the squad to die and respawn, and suddenly the squad is in two locations. Rinse and repeat, and soon the squad will be all over the place.

The only game that I've played and has solved this problem is Battlefield 2, where you can respawn at your squad leader's position. That's not applicable in NS, and I can't think of any other easy solutions.

A more wild idea would be to allow the commander to group areas rather than marines.

Garet_Jax · July 2005

My hotgroups:

1. Every marine (double tap to go to last attacked marine, in case they don't ask for meds)

2. First IP (replaced by Proto Lab later on)

3. Armoury (crucial thanks to the "base is under attack .wav" upgrade bug)

4. Arms lab (for some quick-pro upgrades, meight)

5. Obs (I have full scanning capabilites)

MrBen · July 2005

<i>You're Squad 5.</i>

TOmekki · July 2005

armory in 1, armslab in 4, first obs in 5 second in 3, siege tf in 2

Rapier7 · July 2005

Obs: 1
Arms lab: 2
Armory: 3

aeroripper · July 2005

but what about having marines hotkey'd as a group, what benefits does that provide and is there a comm that you ever see use this effectively?

meep · July 2005

Obs in onetwothreefourfive mkay? Scan scan scan.

2_of_Eight · July 2005

I have every marine in 1 squad for one simple reason, to always see their health. While I could do this with selectall.. I think it's easier this way.

aeroripper · July 2005

So does the squad numbers stay intact even after they die?

BlueNovember · July 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (aeroripper @ Jul 29 2005, 09:16 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> So does the squad numbers stay intact even after they die?  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
Yes.
I use it for keeping my pub marines in 2 distinct groups. I'd like it if a marine could be in more than one group though.

At clan level the mic does all the work and the squads are used for buildings alone.

Redford · July 2005

This is probally because people were used to pre-grouping versions of NS, and got used to the commander interface before it got put in. You can tell it was a feature in progress though. Why? The NS team had the sound bytes pre-recorded.

Zek · July 2005

The reason squads are rarely used for players is because there's no feasible way to keep them in one unit for any length of time. Someone will inevitably die, they'll respawn individually and it's not like they can just wait around base until their whole group shows up. So in a matter of minutes the entire squad system is defunct and the comm either has to re-assign them, or get everybody organized together again based on squad numbers at the expense of efficiency. There's no reason to assign player squads at all as-is.

stallioN · July 2005

There is a hotkey for "select all".

curlydave · July 2005

I use them for the obs and arms, and when the team's doing a great job I make them all squad 5. It's just too hard to give quads because the groups the players are in are constantly changing. The system works in traditional strat games because 1) there are much more units and 2) the units don't respawn.

edit: Zek nailed it exactly as to why they don't work as intended.

Ravatar · July 2005

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Rapier7 @ Jul 29 2005, 01:11 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Obs: 1
Arms lab: 2
Armory: 3  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
what he said

Burger · July 2005

Obs - 1
Arms Lab - 2
Armory - 3
Annoying marines - 4
Handy Marines - 5

curlydave · July 2005

1-obs
2-arms
3/4- auxillary obs/armslabs
5-1337 squad for when we're winning.

SLizer · July 2005

I for one use all of the Squads but only one of them is for troops on field:

1 is for the armory is it upgraded or not (it will be sooner or later and its good to be

2 Is for the arms lab nice next to the armory

3 For obs

4. Usually gets its place for proto lab

5 Is for rines naturally cos its Squad Five!

joee · July 2005

i've never had the comm squad me in any clan game ever

waller · July 2005

I've been in a squad in a clan game before, it was on viel 3 rines went west, the other 2 went topo, me and the other guy going topo got squad 5 >_<, not for long though.

CommunistWithAGun · July 2005

Squads are useless in pubs because the players never listen, and in scrims its useless because youre usually on ventrilo using voice. Other than hotkeying structures its pretty useless

Swift_Idiot · July 2005

God I love your new icons. They're more hypnotic than Coris' funky purple hippo icon. I hope I didn't miss any while I was away.

Squads are cool, you can tie them to buildings, and everyone seems to love squad 5. I always liked how CommanderGuy says "you're squad four,..." like he's about to say something else then just abruptly leaves his sentence off.

One of the benefits I enjoy from being stuck in a squad is that my commo can waypoint me.
I LIKE WAYPOINTS. I don't NEED them anymore, but I like them and I follow them to my death or victory like any good marine. Plus, if I see any green guys on the HUD radar, I'll stick next to them like I was their wife, as long as they're running toward a waypoint too.

I think once the NS team irons out and optimizes everything having to do with the comchair, like marines still being in the squads they were when they died, and little annoying stuff like that, it'll force commanders to start using the hotkeys and various stuff as often as possible to get the win.

The microphone I used to have hanging off my headphones is kind of broken right now, which sucks because the headphones are just dandy if not for the broken boom-mic. So I have to do a lot of silent communication and use the verbal menu a lot for the string of "I got yer back"s and "this way!"s and "let's mmMOOVE OUT.."s required to get stubborn marines to come with me. Voice is handy, but I like using every little thing the NS team put in to play.

Besides, Ventrillo is hard. I downloaded it and assumed it would be some kind of easy-peasy foolproof alternative to in-game VC. BUT IT WASN'T, and I got very confused just looking at it, much like I did with mIRC. IDLE ON #HTFDYGTFTW!?

PS SEE YOU ALL AGAIN IN-GAME AROUND THE 22ND.

TheAdj · July 2005

Like some people have already said, they don't get used in public games because it's too inefficient. People respawn far away from their initial squad and either don't bother or can't go back to where they are, and everything breaks down in short order. If the squads could be assigned to an area of the map it would be much more effective, as someone also mentioned.

TheAdj · July 2005

Like some people have already said, they don't get used in public games because it's too inefficient. People respawn far away from their initial squad and either don't bother or can't go back to where they are, and everything breaks down in short order. If the squads could be assigned to an area of the map it would be much more effective, as someone also mentioned.

aeroripper · July 2005

double post ftw!

So Squads Seem Like A Afterthought To Comming?

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