[VS] Strategic Giraffes: Thursday nights the Vanu get "a bit more organised"

[CMaster]

I think that the real problem is that when the enemy take out your scythe, and you have 5 minutes left on the timer, what do you do?

Spend some (more) certs on CD reduction? Other than that, ask your squadleader (that should be the default response to a lot of these things I think, that the relevant SL should make the decision. There's possibilites of using Libbies as well, if a couple of people were shot down

Also... I do think that the moto "keep it simple" should be applied more. A lot of complex ideas where people have dedicated roles and all... It should be more flexible in the beginning while people learn how the whole SL -> PL, joining squads, joining mumble thing works...

Which is what every other night of the week, especially purple weds is for. Also, to some extent the dedicated roles thing is exactly for keeping it simple. If say, OnePigeon is Bravo's dedicated sundeerer driver, then you know at every point where you, as a squad member has been directed to mount up, you just need to find OnePigeon. Equally, there's no fussing about who is doing what, when it's time to move out, OnePigeon just goes and gets the sundie.

[izal]

I don't why, but Wednesday seemed more organised to me. Perhaps it was the Platoon approach working better. Or maybe Thursday is Red Zebra night somewhere

[President Weasel]

At one point on Thursday I spawned a scythe, took out a Liberator, got jumped by a couple of mosquitos that I think were supposed to be his escort, failed to shake them off, and hit the ground a fraction too hard trying to land under a tree and fix my busted scythe. That was all in less than a minute from take-off, and that left me a good 7 minutes 30 before I could get into a new one, even with 4 certs in reducing the respawn.
Come up against enough enemy flyers and the entire "air" squad will be pedestrians for 5 minutes.

In cases when you're temporarily between scythes, you can see if someone has a Lib to gun, although Libs work better with some scythe support so if pretty much everyone's grounded I think we might as well chuck the air squad in as infantry for ten minutes, see if we can get some certs and regain some air resources.

[Everblue]

Had a brilliant time. Thanks to all the officers. Sorry I was a bit rubbish.

Adam

[reyn78]

If say, OnePigeon is Bravo's dedicated sundeerer driver, then you know at every point where you, as a squad member has been directed to mount up, you just need to find OnePigeon. Equally, there's no fussing about who is doing what, when it's time to move out, OnePigeon just goes and gets the sundie.

It is simple only until OnePigeon is around isn't? Because if he isn't then you have to appoint somebody and that person does not have certs, but a scythe flier has etc... Then you have to factor in cooldowns and resources. So I would vote for a little KISS flexibility. In my book a simplest solution is to have a squad marker on a designated Sundie until it is full.

I would also second using more squad waypoints in base capturing - especially that people's orientation/map knowledge varies (for example I can run for 3 minutes at a time looking for that jump pad to get into bio-lab and die 30secs later )

[Cooper]

I have the squad objectives stuff. We could try it out sometime, before you spend your hard-earned certs.
http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Squad_Objectives

Currently nigh-useless. They allow you to highlight a capture point (A, B or C) for attack or highlight a vehicle for defence. If you're on comms, they're redundant.

It's clear leadership stuff is early days yet. I'm hoping for the mission system they've been talking about for ages now to be in soon; PLs and SLs can set specific tasks / areas which will feed into extra XP for squad / platoon members who peform actions in those areas.

[Nubbx]

TLDR: I'm thinking of ways to improve my abilities as Flying SL, voice comms needs some refinement. Will improve once people cert up.

Full version with reasoning:

As has been stated, the main problem with me being a pilot as well as the Flying Squad leader was the difficulty with which to update waypoints on the map quickly whilst flying. Add to that having to distinguish which channel I was getting communicated to from, and having people speak over each other constantly from both of the comms channels. Not really sure how to deal with the first one, guess it'll definitely change once I know the map layouts better and base placement.

The comm chatter can probably be fixed by having less people speak in the squad channel, not exactly fun though. There may be a way to mute the channel whilst directions are being broadcast to me via command comms, but I'm not exactly sure how this would work either with my squad not realising and talking to me whilst I'm getting directions and me not hearing them.

Once people get their certs up then the flying squad will become ALOT more viable, I have mine down to 8 minutes now and rarely have to wait for repop, bareing in mind though that it costs around 510 certs to get that cool down, and 700 for maxed frame (hover frame 3) I think it will take a while for the casual gamer to get to that point.

I like the idea of having the PL set large objectives, and squads deciding themselves how they would like to get to the place. It'd also help if the PL wrote in /o chat the newest objective too. (due to the fact that we had two platoons)

As flying squad leader, for the time being atleast - I will be spending the next few weeks between thursdays trying to increase my skill with flying and placing waypoints, as well as learning the continents and base names and placement so that I can relay them to my squad even if I don't hear the PL correctly (which is why I was saying the base names incorrectly sometimes, because there was talk in squad chat going on at the same time as I was being given directives).

In general though, I did have a good time playing - the XP was very poor though, I'm not sure if that is to be expected (I was getting about 7000/hr xp compared to the 13000-18000/hr I usually get. I know there are different types of fun and this is a trade off, but one thing it might be fair to note is that because we were performing forward base recon most of the time, we never were there at the base to collect the XP for it flipping.

Add to that, the fact that the AA patch had just come in and alot of people were rocking AA burster max's and shooting with small arms etc to try things out, it wasnt the easiest of things to try and orchestrate! WILL TRY HARDER

[Nubbx]

I just wrote a massive reply but the forums somehow misplaced it. Brilliant. Will try again later!

[Cooper]

Generally the feedback echoes what I thought.

The game's just too big to have individual squads be enough, at least not to meet the enemy head-on.

I was kinda hoping that it would be something a bit like Jesus_Phish wrote. If I asked a squad to head to an outpost, I expected that half would go for the shield, the other half for the outpost capture point at SL discretion. But I realised soon that that only works if you have minimal resistance.

CMaster: I tried to be on the front lines, but survival times when you have the map open are minimal. Also; I found that I don't make good decisions when being shot at. I was often no more than a hex away from where the main forces were at, largely so I could get a read on the map as to enemy & frindly positions.

I'm wary about specialisation. If a whole squad is gonna be armour or air, then the one thing that stuck out last night was the importance of cooldowns. They ruin any attempt to get a combined arms force mobile without a great deal of flexibility as to who takes what role at what time.

I think the 24 / 24 split on Wednesday is probably the better format. In which case, have one set of the 24 be dedicated infantry who pull armour when necessary, and the other 24 being a rolling group of armour / air depending on who has what on cooldown.

It means we don't neatly have everyone in one squad being in the same type of vehicle, but it does mean we keep as much gear mobile as much as possible.

[RIDEBIRD]

Could work with 24 being inf/air and 24 being inf/armor. Tanks should rarely die though if you do it well enough, or at least not be CD locked.

If the UI was less shit it would be easier to lead as well. I can't even imagine how it would be if I was colour blind. I can very barely make out the difference between squad color and platoon color in game as it is now, and seeing the difference between bravo and delta (I think it is) is extremely difficult. With so many colors, why the fuck would the make one orange-brown and the other brown? So stupid.

[RIDEBIRD]

Also designated sundy drivers etc works out very well. The reason Bravo was so mobile and able to respond so quickly yesterday was because we had tdazVS (I think?) and his sundy up almost all night. We knew where we deployed and just ran back there and moved out in a matter of a minute. So nice that it worked so hassle free, does so much for the fluidity of the game.

Also I'm going to utilize markers more. I just wish you could set like four waypoints instead of one.

[Jesus_Phish]

Although no use for lightnings and scythes, people could buddy up for magriders and libs.

I get a mag and Cooper jumps in it. We die in 2 minutes. So now Cooper gets one and I just in it. We manage to live long enough that when we do die, I have mine available again. We also both play engineers or one engineer and one heavy for the purpose of keeping our mag alive.

[Heliocentric]

that left me a good 7 minutes 30 before I could get into a new one, even with 4 certs in reducing the respawn.
Come up against enough enemy flyers and the entire "air" squad will be pedestrians for 5 minutes.

FUN, so, long cool downs you can pay or grind to reduce?

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with cool downs as power control, project reality mod for bf2 gets praise off me for being willing to deny a team assets they lose for quite some time, but allowing this to be a victim of p2w/grind is particularly sucky.

[Nubbx]

Main problems for me last night:

Having two people talk in separate channels and over talking each other, this could be fixed by having people talk less on in the squad chat - though there may be a way to silence the chat as you receive a whisper. This would of course stop you from being able to hear your squad talk to you whilst your getting commands. This was the reason why I was either talking with a stutter (have to get used to talking whilst people are talking in my ear) or why I was getting the names of bases wrong when relaying information (as I couldn't hear what the PL was saying because of squad chatter). There is also something called priority speaker which would alleviate this problem.

Second thing was the difficulty of setting squad waypoints whilst flying, this will definitely improve significantly once I learn the map and the base names, as well as their correlation/connection to other bases.

Cooldowns will improve significantly over time, my cooldown is down to 8 minutes now and I rarely had any down time in my scythe - but seeming as this costs 510certs to cert into, I think it'll be a long time for most people to get this (as well as 700 certs for Dogfighting/hoverframe 3).

Once viewing distances improve next week, it will be easier for scythes to act as recon without being shot down by SA/g2a so this should be somewhat of a diminished issue.

I like the idea of the PL setting a general "big base" platoon waypoint, and having the squads decide how they want to get there (communicating where they are going to go via). With more than one platoon though, the platoon leader would need to post in /o the main objective.

I know there are different types of fun, and I did have a good time last night - but the XP was very poor for me atleast (how was it for you guys?) I found that due to the fact I was flying recon most of the time, and fighting incoming tanks between bases when possible - I was never getting any xp from any of the base caps. My exp last night was about 7000/hr instead of the 13000-18000/hr I get usually. I appreciate it doesn't have to be to the same level, but a bit of XP from capping bases would be awesome.

I don't think the 24x2 squads is a good idea, I think it'd be better to have 3 squads doing seperate objectives, and then a float squad that gets called in for backup as and when needed (12xGalaxy cooldowns should be enough to keep mobile).

Engineers need to repair turrets/shields etc as they go, because bases are so easy for enemies to flip back without any g2g/g2a silos working.

I think thats pretty much my experience of last night anyhow, will add another post if I can think of anything else.

The website that I have set up will allow things to be organised alot better in the future and get some of the preparation work out of the way before we even get on mumble. http://rockplanetshotgun.enjin.com

Anyhow, GOOD SHOW guys. Don't get disheartened, things can only get better

[Nubbx]

oh, apparently my messages have been too long so require a moderator to review them before they are posted...sorry to the moderators for having to sift through my various posts! (please only post the latest one)

[CMaster]

Although no use for lightnings and scythes, people could buddy up for magriders and libs.

I get a mag and Cooper jumps in it. We die in 2 minutes. So now Cooper gets one and I just in it. We manage to live long enough that when we do die, I have mine available again. We also both play engineers or one engineer and one heavy for the purpose of keeping our mag alive.

Yeah, for the tank division especially, I thought pairs swapping with the backup of a lightning if desperate cycle would be enough to keep people in it. Air I can definitley see CD being more of a problem.
The problem is, it's no good everyone being in a Scythe/Mag, while if everybody is inf we just get bogged down (plus, I just plain enjoy being in a mag more than on foot). And to be able to operate effectively, the different unit types do need to be grouped together.

Perhaps the two wings solution is the best. Wing 1 is dedicated inf, wing 2 is primary support - provides air/armour cover when possible. Problems I can foresee are twofold - one is that good drivers and good pilots don't necessarily overlap, nor do people's cert upgraded guns (and most of the vehicles, save maybe the lightning seem to need upgrades to be good). The other is that multi-crew vehicles need a lot of chatter between driver/pilot and gunner to be maximally effective, potentially making 24-person-chat unweildy.

Anybody know how more "serious" outfits manage it?

[Cooper]

A dedicated Sundy driver can work wonders. Long lasting, decent sundy drivers are ace people.

One trick I often use as an SL is to move the waypoint right over the sundy(s) just before the cap completes & get people loading up before the cap completes.

The quicker people are in-the-bus and moving, the better.

Buddying-up for mags is good too. But I've tried that in the past and it fell apart (people not fiding each other, forgetting they were buddied, just jumping in whatever anyway...). But worth trying again, in a more organised and cooperative atmosphere, for sure.

@RIDEBIRD In beta there was a period where the SL could set up to 4 different coloured waypoints. Gone now. Don't know why.

[laldy]

You need to buy the smoke now Coops....

[Cooper]

Anybody know how more "serious" outfits manage it?

Much larger outfits (alhtough RPS is absurdly large now) I have seen / spoken with / remember from PS1 tend to run adjacent platoons. Each platoon has a dedicated role (e.g: front line infantry, air, armour, and "spec ops") with PLs communicating with one another.

Were the platoon system & UI not astoundingly annoying, this would be the best solution. As it stands, without a PL constantly keeping alpha clear and moving people about, then swapping in and out of platoons is not the best way to do things...



That being said, when a decent armour platoon is out and about, then they should be able to support some of the squads (those on cooldown) being on foot.

Have an ammo sundy and a repair sundy, fill them up with those on cooldown as engineers and HA (and maybe MAXs if AA is needed), have the drivers know where to pull back to for ammo / repairs. and so on.

In PS1 people got very used to using tanks as shields for infantry movement. You could get a whole squad of rockets up front to lay down fire on an enemy column fairly safely this way. An armour column was almost always accompanied by infantry because of this.

This only comes with practice now, and with team roadkills being a not insignificant percentage of the number of times I've died (and occasionally killed), having infantry working that close to armour needs to be done with care.

[Cooper]

You need to buy the smoke now Coops....

I know. I've got it. It's near useless. Save for maybe lighting up enemy sunderers.

Same with the "squad objectives": I can only select A, B or C. Not, say, the gate shields or the SCU. Absurd.