Useless Commanders

[ZapStarfighter]

I usually do alright as commander IMO, I stay out of the fight unless someone comes to my HQ, and I try and give orders reasonably. Only one time did I just use the position for points...I think I was playing Oman Gulf with a smacktarded team who wouldn't listen to a word I said and like 3 people out of 16 were in squads. So, I left the game on, grabbed my keys and headed to Wendy's to get some food. I was probably AWOL for about 7 minutes until the round ended.

[[160thNS]neighto]

I just hate being commander. period. too many idiots playing.. running into the arty, squads that dont follow orders.. people who call you a noob for not supporting them, when in fact you dont get requests for anything (how the hell am i suppose to support you if you dont ask for it?!?!?.. since when did the commander get ESP???) Too little team work means I prefer leaving the commanding to someone who like putting up with that BS

[Cotizi]

i found that everytime i have a 150+ point game its because i always had a commander that would have a UAV over where im going and drop supplies so i dont die or run outta ammo. kinda take it for granted but i know that when i do bad its usually because there is no commander.....UAV's are insanely helpfull to me... esp since i dont puss out and use tanks or jets, its nice to know where the enery is and how to best attack.

[Devlyn]

Thats why i use scan exclusively. If i see a bunch of blue guys hangin around a newly taken flag... and a bunch a lil red dots movin in on em. I'll plant a UAV and drop supplies. is the blue guys get wiped.. ill drop artillery and give em warning.

I play commander as if its an RTS. Usually helps.. but only if your freakin squads listen to you.

[ZapStarfighter]

I use the Follow Orders! sound a lot, but still no one pays attention. I gave a squad leader a simple order on Karkand, simply move to a vacant flag with the M1A2 and he just kept spawn camping, and spawn camping, and then he got blown up, and we were down to one flag...it's like, don't say affirmative if you aren't going to follow the order! AGH!

My new favorite is the teammate who says something like "I'm bingo on ammo" somewhere in East Bumble and then after dying is like, "gee thanks for the supplies cmdr"...you aren't in a squad genius...oh wait you are, but you're not leader, and you're not anywhere near where I told you to go...sigh

[Cotizi]

the best is when your friend is commander and he dedicates his time to telling u exactly where the enemy is comming from over VOIP... as in "turn around turn around" or "hes comming from the left in 5 seconds"....thats just brilliant.

[Thelron]

Useless commanders suck but the reason we see so many of them is probably because on many (most?) servers the teams are so useless those of us who would normally give a crap have rather quickly come to the conclusion that the game is a hell of a lot more fun when you're running around fighting with the enemy than when you're sitting around fighting with your team.

Without any good ways for commanders to set up a natural flow for the team beyond what already exists on the map itself (and thanks to the myriad transport options there isn't much of that anyway) you can only plead with your team and hope the 25% who are squadded up listen to you and end up dragging half the lone-wolves behind them. If the folks are in squads just for the heck of it though and all run around ignoring orders (both yours and the SL's if they're trying) all you can do is hope that the other team is even less organized than yours is, and you might as well ignore the scan button, use the UAV as your personal toy, and just arty the areas you're about to try to cap solo because nobody will leave their sniper position (watching a road nobody has walked down for 15 mins) or throwing themselves at enemy tanks to actually do something helpful (YAY! I killed teh tank! OMG why can't I respawn!?!). That's a bit extreme, but I've seen plenty of rounds where that's about all I'd be able to do if I took the empty comm seat. So, since so few people are willing to be in command it falls quite often to a random schmoe who simply wants a chance at doubling his tank/copter/jet score.

[Habloc]

Would be nice with an anti-commander mod... Could be without all the artillery and UAV scans...

[Roderick]

What is worse is that it takes way too many votes to bump them out.

Last night we had to plead with the server we were on to help kick this guy out of command. He totally refused to drop supply boxes or UAV anything. He just sat back and scanned for the entire time of the map looking for easy kills. He refused to even strike at hot targets. Just ones where he could see a sniper or two and kill them off safely.

This is a complete horror for players. This is what a useless commander is all about. Stuff like I posted above.

[Wicked0ne-=RPK=-]

What i hate is when im commander and i do my job as best i can i help out, give supplies when asked for or if i feel they r needed sumwhere. I try to direct squads to the closest destination and not off to the other side of the map... not to mention we are actually winning!! and sum ***tard starts a bloody mutiny kick! an then people actually vote to kick me off commander!! geezus that is annoying! an then there are the times that u get a mutiny vote, so u just resign...then no one takes the commander spot....LOL... anyway thats my rant! BTW ya commanders that are just point whorin or plain dumb are annoying as hell too

[BobStoopsHatesJesus]

I don't know, I think a lot of you guys are being pretty unreasonable. When people have a few hours to play, they want to hop in the game and do whatever the hell they want.

I usually play commander about 1/3 of the time and combat about 2/3 of the time. Sometimes when I play I just want to do my own thing at my own speed, and I refuse to follow orders from my commander. If I paid my $50, I shouldn't have to listen to some other anonymous guy giving me orders when I'm just wanting to do my own thing. My friends and I will form a squad so we can spawn on each other and work towards our own objectives. In that case, its the commanders job to do his best to support whatever the team is doing, that's his job.

When I play as commander, I constantly ask my team and squad leaders if they want orders or not, if they don't request them I don't give them. I give the team intel by telling where major thrusts are coming from and by spotting enemies, but I figure that most of the people are just playing the game at their pace, and I'm fine with that.

Where it does get annoying, I'll agree, is when you call in an arty strike, only to have a few dumbasses rush in on hum-vees blasting away, get out of the car, and get blasted to smithereens, and then give you the punish. Also, there are way too many damned kids playing with their online pissing matches. I hate it when my own team keeps sending **** like:

"Dood, i'm 6'1" 200 lbs and press 285. I'll kick your ass." Freaking losers.

[SVTcobra281]

I don't know, I think a lot of you guys are being pretty unreasonable. When people have a few hours to play, they want to hop in the game and do whatever the hell they want.

It depends what your objective is when you play.. are you there to win the round or win most kills?

You should be there to win the round, otherwise go play Halo or something where you just go run around shooting people. In this case, listening to the commander / squad leaders is the best way to go, assuming you have competent leaders. The commander can see the whole map and all the badguys, where you sometimes cant. I really think this game was designed for the team aspect rather than lone wolf, they put a lot of effort into commands and squad tactics.

I don't see it so much as "why should I listen to Joe Blow Commander" but "whats the best way to win"

[Gulf_War_Syndrome]

I played commander for my third and fourth time last night, of course only because no-one else did. I'd done my research and read up on the tips (here on totalbf2 of course) so I wasn't totally useless. In fact, people noticed me spotting every little red dot on the radar scans, the suppy drops etc and... wait for it... created or joined squads!

A tip: Don't be afraid to tell the commander what to do and what you need, you probably have more experience than him! A squad leader told me over voip: "Don't deploy the UAV directly over the enemy, the little icon blocks them out." Now that I think about it... "duh". But I will remember it for next time.

Another tip: If you are a pre-pubecent male whose voice hasn't broken yet, don't scream and let your mic distort - it makes you even more annoying and less comprehendable than usual. A commander is going to hate you and ignore you and you'll never know why.

Last Tip: For squad leaders who request orders or type/viop stuff to the commander, please identify your squad number. If the commander is not looking at the flashing "Talk" symbol at the time, it's really annoying having to push tab, scroll through the player list to see which squad that person is in, forget that persons name, guess which squad it was... etc. Using voip to state "Squad 5 requesting orders" is much better.

Edit: And the after-last tip: If you are "doing your own thing" as a squad, that's great. You shouldn't need a commander to tell everyone when to wipe their arses and blow their noses. Squad leader should hit capslock, and give his squad orders "Attack Here", "Defend this position!" etc. Then the commander can see what you are trying to do and attempt to help you out. He will also know that a decent squad is on the job and can utilise the other squads elsewhere.


Just what I picked up as commander last night anyway.

[Wreck0]

Yeah, being commander has its share of flak, but it is pretty dang cool to pretend it's an RTS with live people running the units.

That said, I rarely give orders, unless an empty flag is just begging to be taken or someone asks for orders, or to try to get rid of a pesky lone-wolf enemy flag-capper. I normally just try to direct the attack by giving intel, with UAVs and spotting troops outside the UAV coverage. That works pretty well on its own. I think BobStoops has a good point; this is a game, and if people want to relax and do whatever, you have to understand that. Just try to help however you can.

My biggest annoyance when being commander is when people walk or drive straight into a bombardment zone. Look at the map please! I've sometimes taken to warning everyone in all-caps when I think there might be a problem. But if the audio message when a bombardment is called in your area isn't obvious enough, I don't know what is.

Precious arty...