Hi all,

yesterday, I jumped into the commchair only for the second time, mainly because everyone else just rushed out of base. So I dropped an armory, IP and an armslab and built them myself. When I reentered the chair, I had ammo/med requests en masse.

Question 1: I always thought hitting space would take you to the last request, but it didn't... what does?

So I had to search the map for injured soldiers and one of them went like "damn, you're slow!" I tried to figure out whether they also needed ammo or not, so question 2 is: can you see this somewhere?

I also know that pressing duck+(1-5) will assign a soldier to a squad. But how do you select that squad afterwards, by simply pressing (1-5)?

How do you bind hotkeys to stuctures, for example: Can you bind ONE button to the bacon machine? Or at least to the obs in general?

When comming for the first time, suddenly someone went "OMG!111!!!! He sold the armory!!!!!!" How did this happen, can't remember doing it...

The commanding guides are really nice and stuff, but strategy is not what I am worrying about, it's craftsmanship, so if anyone could help me with these problems...
Please be very detailled in your answer, pics help a lot m.o.t.t.

Thx,

Barb

Hey. I'm not an experienced com, but I'll try to answer.

1. It's not always space. It's your jump key. Did you change it recently? If so, that's your new key. If not, then I dunno.

2. Dunno. I never assign marines to individual squads, since I want my marines to stay together. If I want a couple to go for a ninja pg or something, I tell them over voicecomm. Boss them all around simultaniously by clicking the marine icon in the top center of the screen, and clicking on a destination or objective.

3. Pretty sure all structures are already bound to keys. Select the stucture type, hover your mouse over it and the hotkey is displayed. Try to memorize them before you com again. They're really quite convinient.

4. Don't worry about it. Sometimes, when a jerk rine doesn't like you (meaning you didn't give the whining idiot a HMG/JP) he'll spam messages like that over text and voice so the rines away from base doing their jobs will eject. Don't worry about it.


BTW, when a soldier asks for meds/ammo, it appears on the left side of the screen for the com. Click on the icon and it'll take you to the said rine.

Hope that helps. If not, then okay. Someone else try.

I believe Adj has written a superb commanding article that can be found at nslearn.org.

there also a fair few older threads linked in this thread

He's wanting Newbie Commanding 101, not Advanced Theory 401.

There's a button near the top center of the screen that selects all marines. You can see the health rings of *all* marines by clicking this. This can also be bound to a key from within the commander's menuLearn the armor values and how much damage they absorb versus certain lifeforms. For examplea skulk that bites a marine that just spawned with lvl0 armor will drop him from 100/25 to 75/0 with 1 bite. 1 medpack returns the marine to 100/0, which means it now takes another 2 bites to kill him. A single bite drops him to 25/0, which means it takes 2 medpacks in order to make him take 2 more bites. If soldier's don't call for meds, click the minimap to the white dots moving in odd patterns. These are most likely marines under attack. Red dots near white dots is also an indication that they're under attack.

I'd suggest clicking the small icons on the left-center of the screen to go to orders/meds/ammo. You can also bind keys to do so in the Controls menu within steam (There's a section for the Commander's commands). Those are far more reliable than hitting spacebar.

There is no way to see a soldier's ammo beyond what they tell you and what you think they are carrying. Early game marines need 1 clip per skulk, once the 2 minute mark is up they usually carry enough ammo to last 5-6 skulks, then you'll need to ammo them. Keep up with each one and how much they fire, and ammo accordingly. Remember certain weapons need more ammo than others, and vary on situation. GLs need constant ammo, HMGs need ammo after they've emptied the first clip, and shotguns need ammo only after long engagements or when hitting the hive. LMGs generally need ammo after long engagements or extended time in the field.

Yes you can bind structures (good lord it took 5 minutes to spell that word right) to hotkeys, do it just like you do marines. Select them and ctrl+number. If you're not doing so already dragging a box around items to select it is a good idea, it's very helpful if you don't want to all-select marines.

The bottom right hotkey (v if its default hotkeys) will recycle a structure that's selected. If you had the armory selected and pressed v, you recycled it. Whoops.

Just agreeing.
-Use Squads to ur advantage.
-Ignore constant whining from prebucents enjoying the summer holidays far too much
-Defonatly have a micraphone
-Use hotkey shortcuts
-Dont worry about losing games its not entirely your fault a lot of it has to do with the team ur playing with.
-Good Luck

Forget the space jumping, it's horrible and will most likely take you a random rt under attack. Just use the ammo/med buttons, should they appear.

Thanx for your help, muchos appreciatos!

Especially having the obs in Squad 4 is pretty convenient.

And I promise (trying) to never recycle the armory again...

My hotkey list usually goes like this:


1) Arms Lab - so you know when its under attack and can tech eithout hovering over MS

2) Obs - So you know when its under attack and can scan w/out having to hover over MS

3) Armory - So you know when its under attack (V. important) and can upgrade it without hovering over MS.

4) Proto(rarely) or an important PG - so you know when it's under attack if you're elsewhere

5) Marine Squad - usually the better players in a pub, or the hive pressure team in a match.



Note I don't assign a hotkey to selecting the entire team because tehres a dedicated button for it. Stop being lazy coms who do this.