BF2S Forums Understanding Orders

@Voss yes totally right. I think having a pro scout would make an awesome addition to any team. Outstanding idea to use the sniper in that role. If more people Q-keyed (default rosette menu) there would be fewer surprises. We use air assault squads sometimes in our squad and do alot of spotting while moving to the next objective. I also do alot of route and rear area security patrolling after respawing to attempt some recon along the way back to the fight.

Unfortunately, I think it will not be a popular mission because recon is avoiding contact to observe and report and EA/DICE decided you get no points for that lol   ...too bad they didn't add recon as a mission in the commanders orders menu and add teamwork points for spotting.

I did a little 19D time myself m8, armored cavalry style.  Scouts out!

@Turtle lol ya i agree man, and once we get good at commanding we realize how much could have been built-in there. I really wish they would somehow let the commander talk to lone wolves mission-wise and maybe a one-way VoIP too. Calling in air-strikes like artillery would be cool so that you wouldn't have to did thru the squads to get a message to the pilots. Call the strike if the pilot does it as ordered then he and the commander can split a teamwork point.

@Teflon thx man

Last edited by OpsChief (2006-02-21 22:05:25)

Wow Impressive to see and read. Great thread peeps! Heres a few thoughts from someone who loves BF2 and war gamin in general. This is not the “be-All- end all comment” merely some thoughts from someone who has played “lots” of strategy games. I’ve left lots out but Im essentially trying to make new commanders and players think about complex organic issues in real time, people laden servers.

Command, Management, giving orders, whatever you want to call it, is about several things but as already stated the hardest part of this is the organic element.

Noobs, score whores, and "people playing" can be problematic for a commander, but thats why the role is so satisfying when you get it right. Instead of their being a bunch of bots under your command (Generals, warcraft etc) these are "REAL PEOPLE". Morale is NOW a real factor in your world, just listen to your team when the tickets are at 50-200, you can hear the resignation in peoples voices. YOU CAN CHANGE THIS IN TEN SECONDS WITH THE RIGHT ENCOURAGEMENT AND COME BACK TO WIN

Your role is not to just give orders, it’s to nurture your team. You must love them and help them along they way. I find that VOIP is one of the greatest additions to FPS games and if used properly is devastating. BUY A HEADSET AND USE VOIP.

Look at the leader boards, the top 2000-3000 players worldwide are over the 50K but most people are not and never will be. By the time you have got there you have learned from hundreds of hours of what I call "The shit happens factor".
Cover, suppression, concealment, spotting, hiding, ambushes, combined arms, and fire Arc's, are all familiar to most vets but to MANY people who play BF2 these are strange words. Many people I have seen play BF2 like its a hyped up version of Quake. Its not, thank the gods of IT we have left the straight shoot and kill generation of games behind.

I showed a friend of mine BF2 for the first time last night. Wake Island was the map and I am moving from point to point with an assault rifle. My friend kept asking me what seemed to me "silly questions", but only today have I realised why they were not silly at all.

Q: Why didn’t you shoot at those guys right in front of you?
A: Cos there were 4 of them, walking past me, away from their spawn, leaving it unguarded and they don’t know I am here.
Q: Why are you hosing down the corners of those buildings, I can’t see anyone there?
A: Its called suppression, makes the enemy keep their heads down, I know they are in there(Radar+ movents+ muzzle flashes), but we cannot see them cos they are scared of getting shot at the moment. See my squad mates moving up to take the point up close.
Q: Why are you driving past the battle, all the guys are over there shooting at the enemy?
A: Its called "Flanking". I drive past; cap the point behind them and this allows us to attack from two fronts.

and so on....

This all stems from years of FPS, RTS and reading. We all probably don’t even think about some of the decisions we make when playing. I crawl into enemy zones, and constantly watch people run from their spawn "STRAIGHT" into the nearest combat with no real awareness of what’s going on around them. Your/Our jobs as commanders is to collect as many of the goalless/aimless players on our teams and give them achievable orders, that are productive and beneficial to the team because you should have a holistic view of the actual battlefield.

Finally. A few quick suggestions to all would be commanders and people who are just starting out.

1.    Play everything, use all the kits and become at least useful with everything. There is no telling when being a great sniper, or AT user can be extremely useful in a pinch. This also gives you a greater understanding of the uses of all of the different tools/kits/weapons/vehicles in the game and thus enables you to give more useful and achievable orders.
2.    Coax, coerce, support and ask. You probably will never meet any of the people you give orders to, so why should they listen to a “DO THIS RIGHT NOW!!!.” If you make “defending” an attractive option, people, will do it. Explain why you are asking (Think of the factory and waterway approaches on Karkand) and people are more inclined to listen. A relaxed and casual order is easier to deal with than a panic stricken voice telling you to go off and die for your country. Remember the point of war is not to die for your country, its to make some other poor sap dies for his!
3.    Squads: Get people to squad up as fast as possible. This allows you to disseminate your orders to as many team mates as possible. Half a team of lone wolves is hard to command and unless they are all gurus, you will probably get flogged. Once this is done, give them encouragement and support. Tell them what a good job they are doing personally and tell the SL’s to tell their squad that the commander loves them.
4.    Read a little. Start with Sun Tzu’s “Art of War”. Not all of it is relevant but the most important chapters are about motivation and attitude. Start there and keep going. They US for eg spend a lot of money on War research and lots of its online. Don’t be shy to do some research about War, why we fight and how we fight. This is also very important in understanding war in real life. War is a political extension of the policies of a country, not a bunch of morons in green trained to shoot.
5.    Don’t put square pegs in round holes. Don’t tell a squad of one guy to cross the whole map to sit and defend a point just cos he is a squad. What is he? What are his skills? Use the kits, not the people. A squad of Engineers is not an assaulting squad and a sniper on their own is not supposed to take on two enemy squads and cap a point.
6.    Enjoy. It’s a game. If you are getting annoyed with players and spend all your time complaining that people are not doing what “You Want” then change your attitude. Its easier to change yourself than change 30 people you don’t know. Learn to use and support not order and chastise. TALK TO YOUR Squad leaders!
7.    FLANKING: I cannot, repeat, CANNOT overstress the importance of flanking. If you see 2/3 of your team bogged down in one fire fight(think of the Mosque), killing, dying, killing, dying then get half of them out of there, and let them re-cap other points. If the enemy team is totally concentrated on one point then that means they are extremely vulnerable to losing other points on the map. 3 guys in a hummer moving from point to point can cap a WHOLE map in under two minutes if the enemy is both suppressed and bogged down. Movement is paramount to winning battles. Don’t fight through an enemy when you can walk around the back of them. I see this in Wake Island all the time. Teams get bogged down between points and allow both points (behind and in front) to be capped and they are left holding useless ground, with no nearby spawn.

I hope this helps; I love the game and love the forums. By talking about the challenging elements of the game we make it better for all of us and also make the programmers bring in more detail for the next level of games.

“The best place to shoot someone is not in the head, it’s the back of the head”. If this doesn’t make sense on at least 2-3 levels then you need to read a little more about strategy. You might disagree semantically but the sentiment is sound.

Lastly, do not get to upset with
a)Noobs
b)People playing just for fun.

Not everyone is as hardcore as us, they just want to be one day. J

The hardest leadership position in the game is that of squad leader.  You can't see as much as the commander on his screen.  You have to depend on him to give you a UAV or Arty Strike when you need them.  You have to make sure that you update orders to your squad as soon as you have accomplished a mission.  You doni't want to be standing around at a flag waiting for orders while the enemy arty starts to fall around you killing 3 or 4 guys in the squad. 

Squad members should help their Squad Leader and Commander by spreading out once the flag is capped.  Your less likely to be killed by the arty.  You should be looking at the next closest flag to be capped as well.

If your riding a vehicle and not the driver, hop out to speed up the flag transition.  It helps you clear the area that much faster.  If your the driver, make sure you passenger(s) get back in before moving out.  It's only fair to them that you let them get back in.

specialistx2324 wrote:

I work mostly as a spec ops.. I create my own team.. lock it so no one would join... I consider myself a soldier, spy, and hitman..  Most importantly... I work alone execpt when my best friend is online... I trust know one in the battlefield. 

I am a shadow.. the ghost that you fear.... i see you before you even get 5 ft towards me... i am professionalx2324

OK, maybe you are missing the point of this post?

Good post Ops, I had the misfortune/ luck to get moved from the line to the 3 shop (Battle NCO) a few years ago, I'm back at Company level thank God, but I have learned the most from the 3 shop. I agree with you completely. I have never played with a Commander that took your post into consideration, and I was worried that if I did things the "right way" BF2 players wouldn't be ready for it. I guess I was wrong.

Great post.

DAGGER37A

1.    Play everything, use all the kits and become at least useful with everything. There is no telling when being a great sniper, or AT user can be extremely useful in a pinch. This also gives you a greater understanding of the uses of all of the different tools/kits/weapons/vehicles in the game and thus enables you to give more useful and achievable orders.
OMFG finally!!!!!!!!!!!!111

Ok OpsChief, I did everything written in this post and I have to tell you that it works like a champ! Scan press V while you scan, let all squads know who is where, repeat... Assign them to missions, let them know your plan. Tell the squads what your priority is for assets... Tell the squads that the assets are theirs and to ask for them... The common theme here is TELL THEM WTF IS GOING ON and they WILL complete the missions with a sense of purpose. When they do complete a task thank them. Commo is the key.

I had to quit after winning 8 in a row, and I added a nice set of scores as well. I just wish I was the only one who gained this knoweledge. Selfish me...

On the money again about the TOC and cold black death (coffee)  . It also helps having a confident voice talking to the SLs every minute or so.

Thanks again OpsChief.

-My quote is an ode to the grunt stuck in the TOC.

Last edited by Dagger37A (2006-02-27 04:10:58)

That's a start.  The more you play, the more you will learn.  You can see arty kills in yellow, squad kills in green, lonewolf kills in blue, and enemy kills in red along the lower left corner of the screen.  The ones in red are you guys getting killed by the enemy.

I believe you can be more effective as a spotter if you do a ctrl click on all the squads when your spotting from a sat scan.  Just make sure to you click on the individual squad # if you want to issue them an order. 

Try not make them go all the way across the map  all the time.  Those things should help you on your way to becoming a better commander.

Just the selected squad will get it, to select all of the squads Ctrl click on squads or Ctrl A, and all of the squads will see it.

Not everyone has VOIP enabled so they won't here that.  Everyone one selected will see the text message, not that they pay attention to it.  I don't play lonewolf so I don't know if a spotted message appears for them.  Even though I do spot for lonewolves trying to cap a flag.

Also...

While holding the Shift key, click on the first and last squads in your commander's squad list and all will become highlighted -

Ever tried being on a server in Karkand, losing as the MEC side but throughout the entire game, never losing the Hotel... After reading a post on this I tried it, and it happened to me.

So next round I became commander, and the moment I saw US troops compromising the more important flags and assets I asked all my teams to pull back and "fudge" the hotel (where we were getting slaughtered anyway). All the squad leaders accepted the orders, but not a single soldier moved north, except me. I found it a little too hard to defend our main base against an entire USMC squad... but hey, we never lost the hotel.

Another server, same situation;

I managed to persuade squads to defend other flags, through using artillery closer to the hotel than usual (indeed helping the USMC capture it), and giving UAV support and supply drops only to squads that were further north. We managed to keep the base throughout the match, although our team really wasn't good enough at killing, and too many soldiers went on suicide missions towards armour in Vodniks...

The next round the squads decided to ignore orders again and defend their hotel at all costs... so I did what any powerless commander would do; I waited for a free slot on the USMC side, swapped teams, spawned near to the hotel and kicked some MEC backside! I got lots more points, more flags, and was quite satisfied at killing MEC soldiers


I think the problem is that EA/DICE, although they said that they would make team work rewarding... well... they lied! There's no incentive whatsoever for an MEC soldier or squad to leave the hotel area in Strike at karkand and go defend the main base where they'll have to wait about 3 minutes for a single attack... To be fair, as commander it's impossible to organise large flanking or pincer movements with squads either. They all engage the enemy as supposed to doing what they're ordered, so the team as a whole is far less effective! But again, who can blame the players? you flank, you lose a whole minute doing so, and don't get a single point for it! Plus, most players don't care if their teams win or lose, so long as they get lots of points.

Quite simply BF2 doesn't really care about team work. Not on the commander scale anyway. The real objective for a commander in BF2 is to provide UAV, artillery and supply drops, and let the rest of the team get on with playing as they would do anyway... ocassionally asking them to attack a point when it's obvious that they have to. If BF2 was serious about team work, then we would get rewarded for winning...