Marine Commander Squad Menu
nils
Join Date: 2011-06-23 Member: 106039Members
Join Date: 2011-06-23 Member: 106039Members
Hi folks,
i like to play the Marine Commander, but something ist really disturbing. The Assist Menu were you can give your Marines orders, or support them with some stuff is really crappy. Besides the bug that you sometimes can´t drop weapons, it is not very intuitive. And you didn´t know your Marines. they are like anonymous drones, who can do what they want, and you have no overview where they are.
So i like to put them into squads to have a better orginzation of your team. But i also want to change the strcture of the Assist Menu. You should get better feedback what´s happenig to YOUR Marines. And you can help them more personally. So i post the Screenshot of my Layout and then describe what i really mean.
<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/commassistview.png/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5413/commassistview.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Uploaded with <a href="http://imageshack.us" target="_blank">ImageShack.us</a>
In the middle of the Commandview you can see the three Squads that i have assigned A,B, and C
I have only filled the A view totally so you can have a look there. You cann see there actual Squad order, and there are portraits of the marines with there nicknames to personalize them. Over there pictures are a health and a munition button to give them support. When you click on the health Button the Marine with the lowest Healthpoints gets a Healthkit.
But in order to make it not so strong it should work like the armory, so they refill your health after some time.
When you click a second time on the HP button the next soldier in the Squad will get a Healthpack and so on. The HP are not stacking so every soldier just can have one HP by the time.
As you can see the Squad A is highlightet so over the normal build menu comes another one with the Marines of the Squad. There you can click on them and give them orders as single Marines, or give Healthpack to a single Marine. You can also see in big how much HP they got and which weapon they have at this time. When you think the squad needs a Flamethrower just click on the weapon and choose from a drop down menu.
When you have clicked on a Squad you give the orders for all members, unless you clicked on a single marine in the squad.
To kick some Marine out of the squad there should be an X on his Portrait (like in the squad Menu, just forgott it)
Over the Squad menu comes a Symbol for unassigned marines. When you click on them they will all come on the right hand sight as if you highlight a squad. There you can assign them to new squads. When there are very much marines you can scroll them.
Perhaps it is good to limit it to 3 sqauds, because this should be enough for normal games and you can make 3 Buttons for Squad A,B and C
I hope you can understand what i mean and think this will help to organize the team, and will be better for the teamplay.
And fell free to to give suggestions.
greetz nils
i like to play the Marine Commander, but something ist really disturbing. The Assist Menu were you can give your Marines orders, or support them with some stuff is really crappy. Besides the bug that you sometimes can´t drop weapons, it is not very intuitive. And you didn´t know your Marines. they are like anonymous drones, who can do what they want, and you have no overview where they are.
So i like to put them into squads to have a better orginzation of your team. But i also want to change the strcture of the Assist Menu. You should get better feedback what´s happenig to YOUR Marines. And you can help them more personally. So i post the Screenshot of my Layout and then describe what i really mean.
<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/commassistview.png/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5413/commassistview.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Uploaded with <a href="http://imageshack.us" target="_blank">ImageShack.us</a>
In the middle of the Commandview you can see the three Squads that i have assigned A,B, and C
I have only filled the A view totally so you can have a look there. You cann see there actual Squad order, and there are portraits of the marines with there nicknames to personalize them. Over there pictures are a health and a munition button to give them support. When you click on the health Button the Marine with the lowest Healthpoints gets a Healthkit.
But in order to make it not so strong it should work like the armory, so they refill your health after some time.
When you click a second time on the HP button the next soldier in the Squad will get a Healthpack and so on. The HP are not stacking so every soldier just can have one HP by the time.
As you can see the Squad A is highlightet so over the normal build menu comes another one with the Marines of the Squad. There you can click on them and give them orders as single Marines, or give Healthpack to a single Marine. You can also see in big how much HP they got and which weapon they have at this time. When you think the squad needs a Flamethrower just click on the weapon and choose from a drop down menu.
When you have clicked on a Squad you give the orders for all members, unless you clicked on a single marine in the squad.
To kick some Marine out of the squad there should be an X on his Portrait (like in the squad Menu, just forgott it)
Over the Squad menu comes a Symbol for unassigned marines. When you click on them they will all come on the right hand sight as if you highlight a squad. There you can assign them to new squads. When there are very much marines you can scroll them.
Perhaps it is good to limit it to 3 sqauds, because this should be enough for normal games and you can make 3 Buttons for Squad A,B and C
I hope you can understand what i mean and think this will help to organize the team, and will be better for the teamplay.
And fell free to to give suggestions.
greetz nils
Comments
I think the Commander menu needs massive tweaks and this is one of the most important ones.
Even if you have completly other ideas it would be nice to know.
Many Commanders didn´t use the Assist Menu because it is so complicated, and not practical. And since the MACs and ARCs cost teamres (which is wrong in my opinion) the personal res of the Comms are nearly not used at the moment, which is caused by the lack of an effictive and intuitive menu.
The commander viewpoint definitely needs some work, and I'm loving this idea, obviously with some tweaks and more ideas.
But it would be nice for a com to group people and maybe see the weapon they are using/hp/armor to make those decisions.
Was playing some Empires again a few days ago and they also have a nice squad system, it makes things easier for the com, but for players you basicly pick a random squad (or the one with ur friends in my case) just so you can see the others and have some orientation, which is imo a bit of a shame, in Empires the squad function just lacks that extra benefit for the FPS players.
so i would say, having a com make the squads but let a player have some input in this as well, the devs stated in NS2 the FPS is more important then the RTS part, compared to NS1
So having the com say exactly what weapon/role to do is a bit counter productive as they didnt want to take away the players choise to play how they want to play.
Thus having a com pick what weapons you should use and such isnt all that great to do this (like me, i dislike the flamer but i love the GL and the shotgun (rifle as well but it loses its potential fast as hell, and GL has the same problem. your basicly food with it in lategame) so suddenly dumping a flamer in my hands and telling me to play completely different wouldnt exactly make me happy.
In the so far system the weapon system is too stupid. You put 2 FTs and a Shotgun on the map and tell your team there are weapons near you. They will rush forward and when you are lucky one will take the gun. The other PRes are gone for nothing. And two minutes later they ask you for guns und you into your keyboard.
Not that bad, but also stupid is the system with the medpacks, the players realize they are red and ask for medpack, but the fastest takes 3, one didn´t notices at all and the other one didnt saw anything because it is behind a box.
This is very frustrating for the commander. A more direct system would make the Commander more important and really helpfull. Think of this. A Scout of 3 people saved a hive position and is low on hitpoints, one has no ammo and you just invented shotguns. Now you can heal the whole scout, give one ammo, and have enough res for 1 shotgun. That would be brilliant for both sides. Yes it is also possible with the actual system, but it would be massive more klicks and the marines run here and there, and you don´t know which marine is injured most until you have clicked on everybody...