Our play style has felt, I don't know, sluggish the last several times that I've been on. I mean, everyone was in a group, which is good. (Albeit frequently a single group. ;) ) Still, it felt pretty disorganized many times.
It took me a while but I finally figured out what was bothering me. It's actually a couple of different factors that are negatively reinforcing each other.
- When there's just a handful of people on, we're still using just a single Group channel for communication. The challenge is that as more people join they all end up in the same group. That inevitably leads to the same problems with people talking over each other that we had before when everyone was on Side. In other words, same issue on a different channel.
- The other thing that I've noticed that people end up trying to fulfill too many roles at the same time. This inevitably leads to a slower tempo overall as players bounce from focusing on one thing and then another.
An example from last weekend is a classic example of what I'm talking about. The night's goal was to capture the military base west of Corazol then push forward to establish a secure position for a new FOB.
I got on about an hour later than I'd hoped. By that time Bullets, Dark, Raptor, and someone else were all on. That made me the fifth to join. They were already in the middle of attacking the base.
Bullets was acting as Commander. Dark was Squad Leader for all players, including Bullets, plus several bots that he had bought. All four guys were on the same Group channel. In addition, Dark was acting as the sole heli pilot. Raptor was largely soloing, acting as a sniper/spotter most of the time.
The end result was that both Bullets and Dark were overloaded with multiple calls on their attention. Bullets was doing Commander stuff, then diving in to the fight, then pulling out to take care of a Commander task, then diving back into the fight. Dark was flying transport, logistics, and CAS while simultaneously managing his bots to support Bullets, Raptor, and whoever the fourth guy was. Every now and again he would dive into the ground fight himself. The end result was fun but chaotic. It was definitely nowhere near as crisp as it could be. :o
Shortly after I joined, Bullets had to drop for a while so I took over as Commander. I saw that a couple of AI infantry squads that he had purchased the night before were still twiddling their thumbs in the base. I gave them a bunch of short move orders to clear the gate and then sent them south toward the action. I then bought a couple of manned Bradleys and sent them south to provide a little light armor support. (Hindsight being 20/20, I probably should have just used the Zeus function to teleport them and the two squads closer to the action. It would have saved a lot of time.)
I spent the rest of the night mostly focused the Commander's role. Most of my time was spent on managing the AI squads and vehicles in support of the other players on the ground until we got the new FOB built.
Meanwhile, Bullets got back on and focused on just the ground campaign. Raptor continued scouting and sniping. We had a newcomer join who also jumped into the ground fight. That let Dark focus on being a heli pilot after he set up his bots to patrol where we were planning to put the new FOB.
Execution in general was a lot crisper as people fell naturally into different roles. We were able to establish control of the target area reasonably quickly then fight off several counterattacks until the enemy AI got whittled down.
The more that I thought about that night, the more that I realized that we had stumbled onto a fairly common pattern, one that I have seen many times on other servers. It's common precisely because it's so successful. It lets people work together easily with clear expectations about who is supposed to be doing what while not getting in each other's way.
So, here's what I would like to suggest going forward:
- The first 3-5 players who join should set up their own squads.
- Each player should then choose a specific role that they want to fulfill.
- If during the playthrough a player wants to take on a new role, s/he should leave their current squad. Then, either start a new one or join an existing squad already fulfilling the new role. For example, moving from infantry to armor or flying.
- If a couple of guys want to do the same thing, maybe they merge squads. Or, maybe they keep separate squads and each recruit a few AI to boost the available firepower.
- Use the Command channel for comms.
- Whenever there's a designated Commander role, whoever is the Commander should NOT join a squad, although in limited circumstances the Commander may choose to create a HQ squad for jobs like logistics, artillery, etc.
- The Commander remains on the Command channel.
- The Commander coordinates the activities of all squads to accomplish specific strategic goals.
- The Commander keeps track of what role each player led squad is doing.
- The Commander asks for volunteers for specific roles if they are needed.
- When a mission permits, the Commander fills in gaps with AI resources as necessary.
- Quick note: The first person on does NOT have to take the Commander's role. It should be by choice.
- As additional players join, they can either join existing squads or start their own squads.
- All players in a squad besides the SL use either Group or Direct channels exclusively.
- If a player joins a squad, s/he should be a real part of that squad and follow the direction of the squad leader.
- If they don't want to follow someone else's orders, they're still free to create their own squad.
I think that taking these steps will do several things:
- It lets the first few guys on have a common channel to talk on.
- Comms will scale up naturally and eliminate the distracting cross chatter.
- It should be much easier to coordinate what needs doing and make it clearer who is expected to do what.
Finally, I've added an attachment showing typical call signs that I've heard on many other servers. I am NOT suggesting that we have to adopt these, although there is some value in using call signs that newcomers to the server will likely have heard before. I included it as an example of the kind of role breakdown that I'm talking about here.
So, thoughts?
So, say I'm on solo, would I be the defacto commander until an actual tagged member gets on? If so, would I still have my own squad when said tagged member gets on? Just trying to get some clarity.
Addendum, Arty should use the callsign "Longbow" or "Rain-Maker"
A lot depends upon the mod. As I understand the KP:L mechanics, you would be unable to take the Commander role at all. That's because we use a whitelisting function within the mod to limit access to specific Steam IDs. That's why we set the default permissions to allow people to have access to light vehicles, infantry, etc.
What I would recommend is just starting your own squad if you're on solo. You can keep that regardless. Next time you're on with Bullets, Raptor, or another of us clowns ask to get your permissions bumped up from the default so you can buy more interesting hardware.
Make sense?
I'm slow on this - haven't checked gitlab for our permissions - we should do an onboarding with rock/bullets/me/viking for like 5-15 min to sharescreen and show the gitlab stuff for info sharing/ip white list too if we need such things in future