Yeah, I'm starting to get it.

Will I be praised or will I be insulted today? Hmm...

I remember this one time I was praised by this guy, and got insulted by him the next day. Haha guess some people just go with the flow.

But I think I fear this more: Will I be commanding newbies or good marines today?

Love it when 6 marines die from 2 aliens. Actually I hate it, but yeah...

commandophobia?

Well I think that it's not the marines fault, but the commander is to be blame. A good comm doesn't trust that he will have topguns marines in his unit, but he can take even newbies 2 victory - how?
buy telling them exatcly what to do - even if it means to tell them how to fight and where to stand.

yeah but a comm is really only as good as his troops a good commander has to make sure they stick together and don't run off by them selfs aleast teams of 4 or so cuz it is very easy for one skull to take down a marine

nut then on the other hand some dumb commander will think it's funny to play good then recycle everything and leave i have had a commander do this a few time when i have played

how about half way into a match, the commander gets kicked for building 4 phase gates in marine spawn...

I stood in front of the CC shuddering, thinking of the loss that is sure to come. I hop in, only to find every hive and resource has been taken, i have 4 resources, and our spawn Resource point just got taken out...

Lets just say i am never taking command in the middle of a match ever again, i hate getting yelled at because the first command F--ked up and bailed, then all the marines turn and say WTF TREV??? YOU MADE US LOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!


i hate people

Then again, should you manage to pull a victory out of the hat or at least make a valient last stand...you MIGHT get some...ok very small amounts of praise


Taking over midgame is hard and can be very risky....especially if some idiot whacked 6 CCs next to the kharaa then left, wasting 180 res AND being unable to recover any of it since they'll get munched before you can build and recycle it...


Commanderphobia? Yeah I have it sometimes as well....My style isn't what you would call perfect....it relies heavily on the marines themselves to be rather competent, and I can manage things well short term (hah that's a laugh sometimes! A skulk taking out 4 marines in a squad is NOT what I call a good sign) so while I may win some times, I also lose some fo the matches...
I'm just a backup commander really, nothing more...My preferred role is on the ground, with a LMG and pistol in hand, popping skulks OR...being that skulk from hell tearing away at a squad of marines

In Trevelyan's situation, I think you are best off recycling everything, and telling your marines that we are all going to get eaten like good little children, and get the next game going.

Starting over is the only fun option when a newbie or a grief player screws your team over by building 4 command chairs with the starting resources (It was funny the first time I saw it happen.)

nothing beats winning the game with incompetent marines under your command, seeing them learn as the game is progressing and becoming alien-slaying machine that rolls over the map.

why, just tonight i decided to pull off the marine rush on eclipse (marines kept losing i wanted to make them feel good for once, usually i don't rush as it is not fun at all for the commander). the hive was in maint - very straightforward trip. there were about 7-8 people playing on my team. i explained that we are going to load up on ammo and destroy the hive. everybody was given a waypoint and told to stick with the group.

2-3 people ran off immediatly in the opposite direction
1 jumped around at base in confusion over the fact that there are no turrets.
1 person stayed in the horseshue begging for res tower.
another one or two were killed by skulks, not noticing the medpacks on the ground.
so i got 3 marines at the maint hive staring at the hive, not knowing what to do.

-shoot the hive, shoot it!
-everyone, rush to maintenance, kill the hive!"

one of them falls down and starts knifing res tower. the other two finally figure out what's going on and open fire on the hive.
ok good, i spam health/ammo and try to find all stragglers and give them wp to maint. yeah right.

"need res in south loop, com!" "im at eclipse it's clear!"
-GO TO MAINT, SHOOT HIVE
"when are we going to build turrets at base, com?!"
"gimme a shottie pls?" <my favourite, makes me want to turn off my computer>

the guys in the hive get killed in spite of piles of ammo and health at their feet.
just as it happens, couple of ppl make their way into maint, finally.

-shoot the hive!

one guy promptly proceeds to unload into the res. tower, the other one opens fire on the hive.
no other marines in the vicinity. skulk spawns and kills one. another one runs from the direction of south loops and finishes another.

"command chair is under attack"

i look at map and see that most people who went to triad, eclipse, whatever got killed. excellent. i do the distress beacon just in time to save the inf. portals (good thing skulks didn't go for observatory). i band select the survivors and scream at them to load up on ammo (my res at 0) and wait in base, then give them a wp's step-by-step into maint, ignoring shottie/turret/welder requests. wow they are moving out and only 2 run off to res nodes. progress! so i drop them health as they kill oncoming skulks, loose only one or two and lo and behold - 5 marines at maint and only one jumps down and knifes the **obscenity** resource chamber. we get some fire going and FINALLY at this point people figure out what's going one and start telling each other "wow we are killing the hive in maint. weeee!".

OMG people who respawned/went ramboing run to the hive without WP!

we win and marines go "kick@ss commander" LOL. i wanted to say "dumb@ss marines!" but i didn't want to spoil it - hey they did learn something (i hope)

- great job guys (yeah right)

Just a big lol...

Stick to waypoints... do what comm oders. If you do else, at least tell him what you want to achieve... Never run round alone if you can go in a group. If you dont get orders, stick to the next 3 marines running past ya and give em some backup.
Just imagine your in a RL Squad... cover each other, crouch, secure corners, annd you´ll see go your teams score up, and the aliens hives down.

But the HELL LISTEN TO THE COMMS ORDERS!!!

- comm i love you
- comm ur a noob

i've seen those sentences when i was in the cc. you never know.... and you never know if marines are noobs or not...

Hah Firestorm... Along those same lines, a few nights ago my pal Stoned Mofo played 3 straight rounds as the commander. The first round we won, and naturally all the other marine players praised him and asked him to command the next round. Since I felt the aliens had it a little unfair on the skill side of things, I decided to join them the next round. Well, Mofo managed to pull off another victory, and the marines were even more juiced this time, and immidiatly started begging for his return to the chair. Again, I decided to going alien...

Now, this third round, the marines had a pretty good start. We were holding them back, but eventually they made it to our spawn hive, and Mofo decided to attack. He managed to kill our only hive, but just before it went down, the two gorges on our team simultaniously put up the remaining 2 hives. After a long wait with no living players except the gorges and a single skulk, the hives went up, and there were pleanty of resources stockpiled by this point, so a few skulks and I went fade as soon as we spawned back in.

Now, I imagine Mofo assumed that we were at another hive, but didn't think we could have gotten two hives, so their progress after taking that first hive did not have a great sense of urgency. In the end, we managed to clear out our original hive, get our Ohnos on, and slaughter the marine team. Now, by no means did Mofo play a bad game, but those same marines that were praising him for the last two rounds started spewing comments such as, "The commander is a newbie, he doesn't know what he is doing, he doesn't know how to command." Honestly! The SAME players that thought he was oh so great!

I couldn't believe they turned on him like that, it just goes to show you that as a commander, you shouldn't take insults to heart, because some of those players will blame you for the loss, no matter what the circumstances are.

you must realise that the average attention span of.... HEY OVER HERE... YEA KEEP READING!!! the average person is around 5 seconds...

after that fun fact... i must point out unfortunetly that people (humans) are stupid... we are all aliens from another planet... wtf are you doing here?

Yeah, sometimes i wonder if being one of those freaks with a large attention span has really helped me out at all...

All it ever means is that I write the longest most boring posts, and the ingame I get stuck with all the crappy jobs (such as sitting in feedwater for 45 mins with a gren launcher trying to stop the 2 fades at the bottom of the water and the other at the bottom of the ladder from climbing up and finishing off our only hive...

naw, you're just a good marine, Revenge. extra k-rations a some shore leave for YOU!

I flat turn down the CC when asked/offered/ordered to command. Won't do it anymore. Tired of people being stupid, then being abusive.

Makes me want to drop a spawn portal on em.

Or /retry and bite their ankles.

omg, sillY, you had me in tears with that post.. jesus that is hilarious.

Homestar Runner is my hero.

Everyone loves the Homestar Runner! He is a terrific athlete.

Most commanders can barely withstand more than a couple of games per day, even fewer if if they're on a really bad losing trend. Its psychology, basically. The test of being a good commander, I think, is how well you handle under pressure consistantly. Granted, at some point, even machines wear down, and marines that constantly demand for "such and such" a player to get back into the chair the nth time should realize that commanders aren't machines, they're human. The only difference between the common marine and the commander besides the obvious equipment deployment /equipment building female dog relationship is the fact that the commander has the best information available to any one player in the game. Because of all the information available to him, commanders can sometimes feel like they've done a terrible job sometimes (oh, I knew that was coming, but I never prepared for it). So, next time you want to kill/push that commander back into the chair, just remember, we have limits. Commanders grow in experience at their own rate, not at the rate at which some random marines they command become more experienced.

<rant>
While it sucks to join a marine team where either
a) you're the commander of an uncooperative team, or
b) a marine with a commander who's not sure of what he's doing,
I think it sucks much more when everyone starts hurling abuse all around. "Get out of the f*ing chair, noob comm!" "Get your noob a*ses to the waypoint!" "Don't you d*mned noobs know how to play?" "Shut up you f*ing noob!"

I wish more players would have a better attitude when playing. Don't take the mistakes of someone else personally, and don't condemn newbies because they're inexperienced and relatively stupid. But we were all newbies once, weren't we? Polite suggestions and words of encouragement work so much better than hurling a "D*mn noob, stop being a f*ing gorge!", unless that player's not reading at all.

I mean, for crying out loud, it's a game. It's a game you won't enjoy if your team's in shambles, but it's a game you'll enjoy even less if you do little more than hurl and receive insults and abuse. What the heck, man? I'd be more p*ssed off with a self-righteous **obscenity** who keeps saying "STFU noob!" "Go to hell, noob!" than with that newbie player himself.

Which is why commanding sucks. Because no matter how hard you try if your team's taking a pummeling, even if you do eventually win in the end, you'd be at the receiving end of so much abuse the fun's all taken out of the game.
</rant>

QUOTE (Ardesco @ Dec 12 2002, 11:41 PM)

Most commanders can barely withstand more than a couple of games per day, even fewer if if they're on a really bad losing trend. Its psychology, basically. The test of being a good commander, I think, is how well you handle under pressure consistantly. Granted, at some point, even machines wear down, and marines that constantly demand for "such and such" a player to get back into the chair the nth time should realize that commanders aren't machines, they're human. The only difference between the common marine and the commander besides the obvious equipment deployment /equipment building female dog relationship is the fact that the commander has the best information available to any one player in the game. Because of all the information available to him, commanders can sometimes feel like they've done a terrible job sometimes (oh, I knew that was coming, but I never prepared for it). So, next time you want to kill/push that commander back into the chair, just remember, we have limits. Commanders grow in experience at their own rate, not at the rate at which some random marines they command become more experienced.

This is exactly why i take it easy on the commander. While everyone is shouting for hmgs and ha at base im just sitting in the corner not saying anything, then once the feeding has ended i just ask for a welder and im on my way. I rarely ever go anything but welder/lmg/light armor, when i do its usually becuase the comm gave them to me directly with out my asking.

Prove that comms get a lot of stress :

*Fades bombarding main base,due to entire team REFUSING to build seige at 2nd hive.They just sat there,stared at the seiges and kept shooting each other. *

"our comm sucks,they have fades."

"god you suck so much!"

"your comm skills are **obscenity**"

"we should have ejected him when he refused to give out hmgs at start"

"what kind of excuse do you have now?"

"comm,you suck"

"you are the worst comm ive ever seen"

The retard population in NS is growing at an alarming rate.They whine and **obscenity** about how i want them to be slaves,zombies,etc(aka follow orders),then they whine and **obscenity** about how much the comm sucks when fades start bombarding the main base.

God i need to be able to mute chat!

I played 3 games tonight and all everybody did was abuse the comm.

First game and second games, all everyone did was whine to the comm and I get blamed for the loss in the second game after taking comm for the last battle after the other leaves.

Third game, I start as commander. Worst game ever! No one followed orders even after giving WPs to everyone. They go to their WP, but don't stay. I was attempting a seige on their first hive, but with no one sticking around and whining for health and ammo I ended selecting every wandering marine and repeatedly gave them the WP. What's worse is they can't live for 2 minutes! They'd die at every turn! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! I'd have half my team ended up sitting around in some far off vent. I would've mind if they were off to scout, but jesus... they just sat there not even mentioning any RTs or Hives.

Being comm blows. If you are a marine, don't question the comms orders and request health and ammo via menu. Only if the comm is a complete newbie then go ahead and eject (i.e. builds 3 comm chairs, 3 phase gates, etc.)

http://my.commander.youaremyfriend.com/

EDIT: Btw you can change the "my.commander" part to whatever name, but its max 2 words. Auto capitalization also.

Hahaha, Align that is the funniest thing I saw all day. I should give that URL to any comm abuser hahahah

Commanders seroiusly need the ability to kill their marines, its the future afterall you're bound to have every marine given some kind of suiside device

It would be especially usefull at start 'com i need ammo' *bomph* there you go , two clips!

BlueGhost

Last week I've been playing ns quite some times as a marine. And you know what? About 6/7 games NO ONE wanted to be comm! NO ONE! I wouldn't mind being one, but my poot can't really handle being comm (how come??) but since no one else wanted to (on a team with 8 ppl!) I just HAD to (and we lost.... duh). As marines you loose very quickly if you don't have a comm the first few minutes/ part of the game (comm quitting when he's build 2 spawnportals..).
To make up with my lagging poot while being comm, I'm making sure that I know what I'm doing (which means: reading whole forum)

QUOTE

God i need to be able to mute chat!

There is a way, i learned it from the FA boards i forget though.

Kakorrhaphiophobia- Fear of failure or defeat.

A prize to the man (or woman) that can pronounce it.

QUOTE (Drex @ Dec 17 2002, 03:59 AM)

Kakorrhaphiophobia- Fear of failure or defeat. A prize to the man (or woman) that can pronounce it.

I'm afraid I'd get it wrong.

QUOTE (|SemperFi| @ Dec 15 2002, 11:58 PM)

QUOTE God i need to be able to mute chat! There is a way, i learned it from the FA boards i forget though.

There's a sticky post on the main forum on how to mute individual people.

Worst thing is when you get the foreign buggers who speak no English other than "hmg now" or "comm you is **obscenity**"

I wish they would **obscenity** off to servers in their own country or learn English.

For the longest time I hated "The Chair." That's what my friends and I called it. I always felt like I was fighting the interface, and my players. I had too many things to do, and too many people wanting me to do things, and "The Chair" wouldn't let me do them the way I wanted to.

Now its not so bad, I've learned the interface. I have strategies for maps. I know how to respond to certain situations. And most of all, I play on a server with my friends. When I am in the chair (note the lack of quotes and capitalization), I am promised at least one person that will listen to me. Players are drawn to order. The same team that was just led to victory will completely forget how to win without a commander and his lieutenant.

I guess the solution is to find a regular server, and stick to it. Eventually, you will get to know some of the regulars and like them. These will be the people you come to rely on. If you have a friend that plays, like I do, then you have a real edge.

Comm is only as good as his troops he deploys.

Commfobia or chairfobia!

ok this was another usslees post for me sorry...

"I wish they would **obscenity** off to servers in their own country or learn English."

from "community rules":

- Swearing, and use of slurs about race or sexual-orientation are prohibited. Words that try to sneak around the swear filter are prohibited.

- Slanderous, defamatory, false, obscene, indecent, lewd, pornographic, abusive, insulting, threatening, harassing or obnoxious comments are not appropriate in the NS community.

i am from russia and i have a strong accent. i tend to play as a commander and i talk a lot. sometimes people have problems understanding me, but unless they take on racist attitude similar to what you displayed here, we win just fine.

Once when playing on eclipse there was this commander called matthew, they had fades and were attacking the eclipse which we had amnd then this commander starts recycling everything. everyone tells him to stop cuz a rambo just took don maintenance and i killed 2 fades in a row well he started building again and after awhile that rambo had taken down the cc hive too!!!
talk bout loser aliens.
well im usually not comm since i tend to stress and screw up easily though im very g00d at it.

I play commander in about a third of the games I'm in. Generally I will only command eclipse, Nancy and nothing, cause I don't feel I know the other maps well enough and haven't learned the strategy of those maps, etc... As for marines not listening and the like. I'll start, ask them to do what I want (usually taking a critical hive), and if enough of them don't listen. I say something to the affect "OK, you guys don't want to listen to me, so someone else command", and then I get out of the chair and play as a marine.

But I have started using some tricks. I can usually identify the RAMBO in the group in about 5 minutes, so I send him against the third hive (cause he ain't gonna listen to me anyway) and I use him getting killed to see what's going on in that area. So while my good marines are taking the first hive, this guy (or 2 in larger game) are going after the other empty hive and annoying the aliens. And when I send my guys on that first critical 'hive capture' mission, I stick with them and drop health. They appreciate that and your get almost instant respect out of them.

But what I'm finding is that the more competent I'm getting at cmdering, the more people are listening to me. I don't know, maybe people can sense fear through the mic.

I'm also not getting abused that much anymore. I give the marines a quick overview of what we're gonna do and there's usually one or two who get it and keep the others in line. The key is identifying those people and treating them right, and answering their (usually intelligenct) questions. They are the sheep dogs that herd my sheep and keep them in line.

I think about the first week I tried to be commander, and here's my advice for newbs:

1) Don't take that chair until you know the map. I play on my own machine with bots to check out the maps. Nothing is gonna anger your
marines worse than when you say "I don't know this map and have never commanded before, but ...". You're toast.

2) Yes, phase gates will make you very popular. I did the old resource/turret slow build up at first, lost alot of games. Watch how the good
cmdrs set up at the beginning. The first 10 minutes are absolutely critical.

3) When you're a marine, watch the good commanders. They all seem to employ the same basic tricks. If you get in the chair before
you've learned the proper build orders, the experienced people are gonna know it immediately and they will start ignoring you or pressing
the 'eject commander' button. Whenever I'm in eclipse and the cmdr says, OK, first we're gonna take horseshoe I just groan.

Finally, don't be afraid to command. Just make sure you know how to build, wps, etc.. before you step into the chair in a public
game. You'll probably suck for a bit, but keep with it. I think when I started I was winning 1 out of 5. Now I'm up around 50% for
the last week.

Oh, btw, it's not always the commander's fault. I've seen 2 skulks take out 6 marines and when that happens somebody needs
marksmanship lessons and it ain't the guy in the chair.