So, lately, I've been commanding a lot. It gets to about 30 seconds to show time and no one's taken the big chair, so I click it just in case someone else won't. Almost all day today, I was COing (the one game I didn't, I ended up SLing after my Squad Leader got kicked. >>;; .)

So, I'm going to share what I seemed to have learned and you guys (either as the unfortunate victoms of my commanding and/or much more awesome and experienced COs) tell me if I'm developing bad habits or am actually doing good.

First thing I figured was that best thing I can do is tell squads who have just attacked/defended flags whether or not there's any one else around. As a SM I remember wondering whether or not the flag I just thought I cleared actually was cleared and as a CO was routinely telling my squad leaders "Playgrounds is clear, Comm Tower is hot, Statue has a few on the north side" or "All hostiles are south of south town and church, mostly headed up the west side." I didn't get any SLs complaining about my jabberin' so I hope that it was helpful. SAT Track is your friend.

Second thing was drop supply crates near vehicles. And you should probably zoom in to do it. I remember accidentally dropping a supply crate on top of a building where no one could get to instead of next to the walker on Camp G. Supply crates mean that your vehicles don't need to have dedicated engineers floating around to repair.

Third thing is that EMPing/Bombarding vehicles is hard. Tricksy little devils keep scooting around and I miss with the EMP a lot. I guess this is more of a factor on this server with the higher level of pilots but I only seem to be able to get it reliably when a vehicle gets stuck or on big armor maps when vehicles aren't expecting to be singled out.

Fourth, bombarding infantry is surprisingly easy and don't be afraid to do it when you have friendlies nearby. A good example I had was a squad holding ruins with several near the rorch and a big push coming up the breach. I dropped an orbital on the breach and got an instant combat efficiency and got a thank you out of the squad lead (which I thought was sarcastic to start with. ) Now nearby and mixed in are different. Dropping an arty on top of a furball isn't a good idea.


I'm still learning the ropes, like telling specific squads where to go but just feeding good intel and dropping orbitals seemed to help my team out. We won almost every round while I was COing and I hope part of that was the SL's assurance that they could be more agile without having to worry about hostiles they missed.

Any feedback, suggestions, criticisms, flames, pies and fiery poo bags are welcome and encouraged.