sticky ftw

i love supporting roles most

I do like all of those jobs. It depends if people are with me or not. I tend to be a Seargeant/mechanic when people are around me. If I'm alone, or only with 1 other person, I tend to be a scout/freelancer/hunter. Just depends. Oh and when you can tell the game's nearly over, I like to be the demolition man

That which you call a Field Sargeant I call a Field Commander, or FC for short.

I have always tried playing the role of an FC. You hit it right on with the FC's pros and cons. Luckily I have the wisdom to know when I can't play FC and when I can. To really do this role you need to already be friends a few of the people on your team and clear sounding headset is a must.

READ ME!!!
(Note: In advance I had permission form the other authors to reprint and modify their work)

Here what I'll add to the stuff about an FC after all this time:

requirements:

• clear, not too loud/quiet or broken quality headset
• 3+ friends on your team, clan or scrim preferable to pub but I've had most stunning successes on pub
• friendly and fun yet firm and wise demeanor; a selfless attitude, preferablely a contagious one
• an understood hiearchy by your team (FC > CCC > SL > SS; 1,1,1-5,1)
• a willingness to listen to others
• a willingness to not give any orders that you wouldn't do yourself
• a willingness to put your team and objective above yourself
• a willingness to lead the assault (the FC is effective because he/she is there among the troops; something the CCC cannot do and history has proven is a valuable factor in battle: Julius Caesar for example)

preferances:

• your friend is in the Comm Chair
• your team will obey the hiearchy
• your team will actually follow your orders (ie: stop humping the armory)
• your orders will make sense
• you will make brilliant strategies and wise troop movements
• you will listen to your soldiers, and won't carry this holier-than-thou attitude (it should be the opposite)
• You are a regular on this server, or better yet you are an admin of this server, or even better still this is your server
• lots and lost of res, dead aliens, and toys for everyone on your team! (duh)

Now my second order of business is to critique your classes. Let's be honest here sure it may be nice to have unique classes but most of the time you want to have the flexibility.

Imagine:
"Oh commander I can't taek down that hive that's almost dead becuase it isn't my job."
WHAT THE HELL! No, just no. Structure is good but if it's too rigid then a smart enemy will hit your weaknesses and cripple you. Then you all die and loose.

So you need to include somewhere that common sense must dictate ability to cross over between classes

For example to use myself, when I'm an FC I usually carry a shotgun (my favorite weapon) which I use to kill fades and skulks who are trying to kill my comrades. But sometimes late in a game I am the FC but have HA in which case I pick up by second favorite weapon the GL and make a clever wall of explosions to clear the road while my shotgun & hmg troops advance. (usually LMG/LA troops lead the way or cover the squad's six) So according to your system I'm and FC who doubles as a mechanic, support, or demoman (btw, that name is a total rip-off from TFC, but an appropriate one).


Thirdly, Rambo... (or freelance as you call it, weak name m8. What is he a writer? Phear me Onos or I will type you to death! lol ) Rambo is not a class. Repeat after me children: RAMBO IS NOT A CLASS. Scout/ninja certainly is a valid class but Rambo is not.

Why you ask? Simple, Rambo's hurt your team much, much more than they help. Any adroit alien team today identifies rambos as those tasty free res snacks all it takes are one or two skilled skulks to destroy any ground based rambo, and if he's a JP using flier, the lerk's spore spam or a skilled fade can destroy him in little time at all. Or even better what can one rambo hope to do against alien structures? A few OCs can kill a rambo easily enough and not to mention the aliens will be alerted to your attack.

However the real damage rambos do to their team is not just the waste of resources, but also the waste of manpower and time which happen to be just as important as the resources you have. Seriously, any experience NS player who actually know strategy can tell you that. Think about it, you have an even 12vs12 game; marines loose one manpower for the guy who goes commander [12-1=11]; now two people decide they want to go off and rambo [11-2=9]; now lets take a hypothetical situation and say there are at least 2 people dead in the spawn queue or otherwise inactive for both teams and any given time on average which brings us to a 7vs10 game; and one more thing, on pubs much time is wasted on humping the armory and account for gestating aliens, the difference between the time for a marine travel a distance to an objective and an alien to travel to a destination, etc. so that ratio is a tad bit more unbalanced. Normally everything is balanced perfectly but when people stop working as a team... time, res, and manpower start getting wasted which is a detriment. Skill and the way the game plays out are still the determinate but if you plan to a little winning with your fun then you'll be wise to discredit the rambos.

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