BF2S Forums What is your problem with random spotting?

Random helpful spotting: Good.
Filling the out-of-bounds area with red question-marks: Bad.

Sometimes, as commander, I wish I could say "friendly noob spotted"

I still don't think some people genuinely understand the issues at hand here...

Firstly, I would suggest re-reading polarbearz's initial post, and try to understand what is actually meant by "bind spotting". Perhaps an example is required to clear up the situation?

Imagine you are commanding the MEC team, and your UAV is up over the Suburbs of Karkand. A Humvee  moves out of the UAV radius, pushing past Train Accident. Is it going to Gatehouse, Warehouse or Factory? You randomly right click->Spotted around the roadways. A few "Enemy Forces Spotted" messages are followed by "Enemy Car Spotted", and a Humvee lights up headed to Factory. Fortunately you have a squad leader who notices and begins pursuit, willing to do the clean up work. He kills a couple of US troops on the flag.
Having been distracted elsewhere, you weren't able to watch the events unfold. You see your squad leader at the flag, but there are no sign of enemies. Are they all dead, or is there a squad leader hiding? You right click->Spotted randomly around the Factory area, "Enemy Forces Spotted" and question marks are all that appear. You tell your loyal squad leader using VoIP "Thankyou, the Factory is clear!".

As you can see "blind spotting" is not the same as chat spam, nor spotting every living thing on the map. Any commander who doesn't know how to use "blind spotting" simply isn't using all the tools at their disposal.


Now that we have cleared that up, please read Fierce's post on page two of this thread. Here is the important part:

fierce wrote:

...radar scan ... only faded away dots will appear on the mini map if spotted...

What he is saying is that if you run a Scan, then immediately spot every red dot that appears on your map, nothing - that's right, nothing - will appear on your teams minimap! The only result is a lot of "Enemy whatever Spotted!" chat spam. After a scan you must wait for the red dots to fade completely before spotting them if you want them to appear for your team! This is a major cause of useless commander spam that even people with 500 hours of play time will unwittingly do.
While the red dots are fading out, you should use the time to inform your team using VoIP about the enemies movements. For example, "Three or four troops heading over the Western hills towards Suburb, an APC pushing along the train tracks in the East towards Train Accident". Once the red dots have faded out, then you can spot them to light them up on your team's minimaps.


You can effectively use "bind spotting" when your troops are moving into an enemy flag, leaving a captured flag, one of your flags turns neutral, an empty vehicle disappears from the map, your assets come under attack, you need to find a sniper hiding at your airfield.... the list goes on.

Last edited by Gulf_War_Syndrome (2006-07-03 21:32:57)