ok, im gonna use a much referred to game as an example to this... "Star Craft" (POWER TO T3H STAR CRAFT ) any ways..

In Star Craft you can assign orders (up to 8) the "unit" then carries out thoes orders in order.. (example: select a marine, press/hold shift, tell it to MOVE HERE, then GO THERE, then ATTACK THAT, then GO THERE.... etc)

i think there should be somthing like this... so instead of 1 at a time..

commander selects a marine or 2, Presses/holds shift, drops an RT.. This is then given a waypoint symbol, with a number 1 over the top of it, the comm continues to hold shift and gives them a "move to" waypoint.. this is then placed, in view, with a number 2 above it... -- i dont feel that NS needs a maximum as high as 8 as placing structures is risky, but 3 or 4 may be nice..

This has been suggested before, and unlike StarCraft where your players are AI controlled, live players/enemies tend not to play so cleanly.

I would like to see more chaining of orders, but I'm unsure how to display it?

Is it just a series of waypoints?

What about a button you can click in the commander's interface where it lets you type out a line of two of text where it'll show up on each marine's HUD or something that states as 'Current Objectives'.

Like Current Objectives:
- Kill Horseshoe
- Proceed to South Loop

Something to that manner, nothing long so it takes marines a while to read.
If the Comm is being a tard, marines can always toggle the Objectives HUD open and close with a button.

its an old idea brought up every few months... and its really good to, removes alot of stress from the com. I don't see why it hasn't been implimented yet.

I have a better idea. After selecting the marine, shift and start dropping waypoints. When he completes each waypoint, the next one will appear for him.

The system would store up to 6 objectives. It will also tell the marine how many objectives are in queue for him somewhere on the hud.

So to drop a RT.

Give him a waypoint to horseshoe.
Shift Click, use hold position at waypoint waypoint. Drop RT
Shift click, move to southloop waypoint.
Shift click, hold position. Drop RT


Something like that would work. Except it seems like a pain in the **** to do so many commands you could simply use voice (if you have it). Also getting to know how to use different types of waypoints is tricky.

been suggested but a good idea though,

how about the comm gives several way points to a squad, but they appear one after the other , the squad only sees the current way point and until the marines complete there objective and when they hit the "need orders" command then the next waypoint automatically pops up, so on and so on....

this way you could clearly give marines a path to a location, it could be the shortest path or the longest and safest path.

good idea

irrelevant suggestion: play a 'good job soldier' sound (client-side) when a marine reaches his waypoint. really, with the amount of order-ignoring marines in public matches a marine reaching his waypoint should get a reward for it

Here are the problems with having to go to way points..

I'm in horseshoe, my squad gets attacked by a fade who we chase all the way to maint and kill, now I have to go all the way back to horseshoe to get my next way point? That's a waste of time Even if there was a way to tell based on the closest way point what your way point is, your next way point might be Comp Core, and that's further from Maint then Horseshoe is, so you are still backtracking.

Plus again, this boils down to comm time management. In a typical 6 v 6 match in early game.. The game starts and 2 marines head to one side of the map 2 head to the other and 1 builds base.

Now the comm during this time has to:
Drop an IP/Arms lab/Armoury as needed,
Start A1 (if that's the strat they are using)
Drop Rt's
Plot way points for 2 different sets of players.

There's no way this is making the comms job easier.. Just way more difficult. But wait it gets worse because the first squad both die and the aliens are swarming that area, the comm now has to stop the existing orders, and replot out the next group of 4-5 commands.. Instead of medding his team on the other side of the field.

This is where these ideas for the comm interface break down.. they require a tremendous amount of time.

Zunni's example just shows why setting multiple waypoints isn't a very good implementation though the idea behind the concept is sound. Right now one waypoint works because it's one objective, with multiple waypoints, it assumes that the marines will go through each objective perfectly but NS is too fluid of a game for that to happen. A lot of things happen that need the field soldiers to adapt, perhaps be sidetracked for quite a bit so that sort of kills the multiple waypoint implementation. Hell, in some pubs even, when a Comm assigns a waypoint to the squad, only half the people end up there while the other half ends up doing something else, either important or not.

So I think a compromise between the two would work, keep the waypoint sysytem as it is but add the mini-mission objectives somehow. This way the marines have an idea what the Comm wants accomplished and they'll go about trying to accomplishing it their way since the comm can't get a feeling of what's going on in the field without seeing it first hand.

In order for the waypoint system to work. waypoints need to be fixed. First of all they need to work properly so they actually go away when you complete them, and the correct icons show up(there's already a plugin that does all that). Additionally, marines should have the ability to manually delete waypoints, since they can easily get in the way and you might not be able to finish them due to changing circumstances. In this case, there would just be one button that deletes the #1 waypoint, and the rest of them would shift down one number.

Because of some oddities in the waypoint behavior, this is a possible scenario:

Comm selects 4 marines, orders them to horseshoe, and then on to maintainance.

3 of the marines go to horseshoe. The other marine humps the armory, runs off toward eclipse hive, and gets killed by a gorge.

When the 3 useful marines get to horseshoe, they cannot mark the waypoint as reached. Any of them can walk through the blinking icon, but not trigger the next point. They get confused about what the comm wants them to do, get impatient, and then rambo.

Half an hour later, the first rambo, the one killed by the gorge earlier, wanders his way to horseshoe. Getting there triggers the waypoint, and now, all of a sudden, all four marines get a waypoint to maintainance. The chances of the comm noticing this are pretty slim, so the three useful marines drop what they're doing an make their way over to maintainance. Arg.