are there any rules that commanders in a competitive environment must especially care for?

any tips that speficially aim for comp. commanding?

and how many comp commanders are in this forum?

Comp comm'ing is much different than pub comm'ing. I could write a book on it.

For starters, memorize your hot keys. It helps to realize that the layout of the hot keys on the keyboard coincide with the layout of the buttons on the hud. You should never click any of those buttons on the right with your mouse, you should be able to quickly hotkey everything off all 4 menus.

Know the flow of the competitive game. Understand what marines need to be doing at each point in the game and why. Understand what they need to do all these things so that you can provide them. The best way to get a grasp of this is to watch demo's off of amped news, or ask a comm for thier demo's or thier tips in a vent conversation.

Watch for meds and ammo calls. When a marine calls for something he means right at that instant not whenever you get around to it. You need to see the requests on the left side of the screen and respond to them quickly, and drop whatever they want, or have a damn good reason for not dropping it.

You need a mic. If you have a mic you need to be using it constantly. After laying out the strategy and the game starts, you need to tell people where the hive is, where the rt's are, and about a minute and a half into the game you need to be directing every movement of your five marines for the rest of the game. You can't do this by typing.

If you can get all those things down cold, you're ready to start commanding an omega team.

Anticipate the needs of your marines. If you are sending them into a choke point where skulks like to ambush be prepare to med them at the first sign of trouble.

I'm not a commander myself, but what I've noticed from others - is constantly knowing where the enemy is and what they're doing. Meaning they'll tell you if there's a gorge building a res node in west access and he needs to be taken down by the marine about to turn into double, or if a fade just hatched on top of the hive in fusion, or if there's a hidden sensory being placed in a vent near MS.
Comms use sound, sometimes scanning, and they need to relay all the info they get to their marines.

the experience i got up until now was that most of my work was getting my team to do what i wanted...

i remember beaconing 3 times in a row because my marines ran away in differenet directions instead of shottyrushing together how i told them...

that was so far my hardest task, just getting them to do what i wanted them to do...

no time for intelligence...

Surprise, that's probably the major difference between pubs and commanding. The fact that your marines will listen to you, because frankly, they have to do it in order to win. And when your marines are doing what they're told, you have a break in which to gather information on what the kharaa are doing. Even then though, you'll have to realize when they can't force their way into a situation and have to sneak by instead. So a great deal of commanding is finding out how your opponents play the game, albeit, that's after you get the steps that router listed down. Speaking of which, you want to find out what they're doing at the start, determine exactly which hive they're at and find out where the gorges are egging for res nodes. You don't want your marines to be without orders, tell them what to do specifically, where and when. But, provided you get a team that listens, providing them with what they need to do to get the job done, calling the shots, and following them through to completion is one of the biggest thrills that I've had in competition..

Routerbox has it down, and you'll want to get ahold of him in the future, as he's the commander of Slot1 and one of the best that I've seen. Darwin from TMM is also a pretty good choice. (You can find their irc channels at #slot1 and #tmm-clan on the gamesurge irc network should you want to actually get ahold of them for some one on one.)

The biggest problem I see with commanders either just getting into competetive or a commander who is a bit conservative is they don't med much in the first few minutes. I think you should med often simply because you'll get the money back from RFK most of the time, AND the first 2-3 minutes are exceedingly important, sometimes deciding the game. (Sometimes not, as its usually decided when that second hive is growing

Its worth twenty res in meds to get an rt down in the first 2 minutes of the game. There is a difference between medding accurately for a purpose and throwing res down the drain with spam.

n1 saltzfag

If you want some specifics, a mojority of competitive commanding I've seen use a basic idea of 2 men building base and 3 pressure men going one way immedietly. 1 IP, 1 armory, 1 arms lab, start upgrading armor1, maybe a pack of mines for the IP. Use the 3 man pressure team to first cap a node, and move out to kill an alien node or whatever else you need them to do. The other 2 men should be sent off in the other direction capping as many nodes as they can.

This is just a basic strat and obviously can be changed around by however the commander feels the need. Routerbox's list is also very vital so make sure you get that down. The rest comes with practice and experience.

Or a "normal" (read b5) 2-1-2 split.

[Edit] It depends on the map played and the opponants style of play. Either you go for a quick push for their rts (2 build base, 3 pressure) perhaps with an early sg (3 building base get 1 sg and pressure, 2 start capping right away), or you take a "safer" route with 2 marines capping on each side of MS and one building base for a better early economy. Those are the three "basic" start of game deployment of forces, with the early sg perhaps being less common and more map dependant.

Always keep a good focus on the larger game. You dont play just one corner in a chess game, you dont push all your power into one hive in a NS game.

i'm going to have to say res.

lerks hate medspam when they try to bite

AND GET KNIFED

Walker lerk bite up.

It's a phycologial factor as well, if that skulk or lerk or fade is constantly met by a rain of medpacks as soon as he goes in for a swipe... hell who would go in for that swipe again!? I hate it during pub rounds when buggeh conciously meds the marines I target like hell, makes me want to quit after a while.

i dunno who is "s in action" but he might remember me medding him in mid-air when he was jumping around chemical transport dodging a fade and 3 skulks ;D saved my day

Huge medding can also be a waste. I've seen players intentionally as fade swipe a single LMG marine a few times (keep in mind, this was back in the day with regen fades) let him get medded, and slowly swipe him, purposely to waste the commander's res. When the marine stops being medded, then the fade would finish him off. Some commanders caught on faster than others.

Most fades know how many swipes it needs to kill the marine at that current point in the game, and how many they landed. Knowing that it takes only 1 swipe more to finish them off, they might come back with very little HP to kill the Marine - only to find out that he has received several medpacks, and is in condition to deal the fatal damage to the fade.
Yep.

I concure with 2_8. I have seen fades get a little too greedy because they should have killed a rine already with a sg or an lmg, only to die because of GOOD meds. Not med spam, but on target meds. They are critical. It is also worth it to keep a 10 res sg or 15 res hmg alive with 4-6 res of meds as these guns will get you much more RFK as well as their initial cost.

Medding early game in b5 was so good, now it is a risk

Before no matter how good the skulk was if you med and the marine was DECENT he would win. At least if you can aim meds.

Now it is a bit different

how is it any different..?

About medspam in the first few minutes. A comm should keep in mind when a lvl0 marine is attacked by skulk(s) 1 medpack wont make a difference, he will always die at the third bite, you need at least 2 meds on the marine for him to take another bite. This took me a while to figure out. Of course the med would make a difference if the skulk tries a parakill after 2 bites. But this is rare and to instant to anticipate.
Another mistake I often see is marines getting meds too early when spored. If there is no immidiate thread you should only drop meds when the marine goes below 50% to save your res.

Yeah, free upgrades give the skulk the edge over marines to where meds can help, but don't gaurantee as they used to.

when i comm i do pretty much whatever i can to keep a marine alive early game... if you dont kill at least 1 rt in the first minute you are going to have early fades, if your first rush fails it take a really long time to get 2/3 marines backtogether at their rts. spending 20 res on meds early game is worth it to kill rts imo