Squad Leader Archive

Before we get started let me say, yes this is another post on a potential feature for squad leaders.

It was a busy weekend in the Naritus galaxy, and after the smoke cleared there was a glaringly obvious potential ability for the squad leader. Larger group command and control.

Now I don't mean just making the max group size larger than the existing cap of 20. I mean being able to coordinate more than one group. In essence, the squad leader becomes a platoon leader, or brigade/army/corps leader if you want to be ambitious about it. All of my experience to date has been with small unit operations, with the occasional appointment as figurehead leader of a large raid so everyone can get the benefit of my squad leader specials. Coordination between multiple groups seems to be done by /tell mostly, but in the heat of battle it's easy to forget who that last /reply is going to.

What I'm proposing is that squad leaders be given the ability to interact with other groups and coordinate between groups. This can be accomplished by two methods that I've come up with. The first is to simpley allow SL to be in more than one group. They would be able to communicatein group chat for both groups and keep everyone informed.

The second method is more complex. A more experienced SL can be designated the 'platoon' leader. This person then groups with several squad leaders and they in turn have groups with their squads. The platoon leader can communicate with his squad leaders and they in turn relay decisions to their individual squads. For the really ambitious, the concept could be multiplied by any number of levels so that a leader could conceivably coordinate attacks on multiple planets. This concept is also similar to my own impressions of the US militiary command and control structure in battle.

This ability has the most obvious applications in PvP and the GCW. I'm not familiar with the conduct of the GCW on other servers, but Naritus seems to have regular battles involving over 100 players. I think instituting a system along the lines outlined above would encourage larger battles and player enjoyment and participation in the GCW.

The most obvious drawback of this scheme would be xp for the higher level leaders. If the current system for SL experience stays in place the higher leaders either end up with very little or huge amounts of xp depending on how you interpret the number of members in a group.

Constructive comments are welcome, but please try to avoid flaming me. I think this would be a great way to make squad leaders an integral part of combat.

I'm all for that. I also think the damage sharing function of SL should work without having to target each player. SL should get a buff that makes everyone in their group share the damage of one person. Thought this was how it worked form the start but I was wrong.

Zamook - Naritus

Everyone in the game already has the ability to create public and private chat channels. These work great for coordinating between large and/or dispersed groups. I've used private channels in place of groupchat when that feature wasn't working reliably as well.

To create a new channel, right click on any of your chat tabs. This brings up a menu that gives you the option to add, delete, or modify the existing tab, as well as "join new channel." Selecting join new channel brings up a new window, where you can browse all of the channels on the server, and create your own. It's best to create the new channel under whichever planet you'll be operating on. If you make a channel private, you need to send invitations to people in order for them to be able to join. When you create or join a channel, a new tab for that channel will automatically be created. You can also modify existing tabs to add or remove any channels you belong to.

So, here's what I do...

Create a new channel; let's call it "Raid." For simplicity, we'll make it public. Modify my Spatial channel tab to include the Raid channel. /tell the other group leaders the name of the new channel. Once everyone has joined,I'm all set.I can talk on the new channel by typing /raid [message].I see those messages inmy spatial tab as [raid]Player: [message], and in whatever colorI have assigned to the channel (default is kind of a dark orange). Simple.

So, do we really need more functionality than that?