Platoon leadership

Why would we need PL guide lines? Different PLs lead different ways, making them follow guide lines could potentionally make them change their entire style.

 

Personally I think we need to stop with the mindless zerg platoon mindset and break up into individual squads with the squad leaders making their own tactical decisions.
In quite a few situations bringing the entire platoon to cap 1 place is needless and we would be better served capping 4 different places @ the same time but that just my humble opinion

 

for the same time we would want guidelines for people to follow to make sure they're leading the platoon in accordance with no nonsense gamers and add in that jaam mentality. I'll drop them myself and have them available this weekend along with what expected for squad leader

 

I'm definitely interested disco

 

Well hopefully we get some consistent platoon leads by the end of the month and I hope that I can be a more consistent PL myself because I am enjoying it more each time. If you can tolerate my poor grammar and sexy voice ( so I have been told ), than I will try and improve with each session that I am PL because I know there are still a few things i forget to do or mention while leading. Like anything in life, the more you platoon lead the better you will get at it and understand that it is just another way to play the game.
As for the platoon lead guide lines, it would be nice to have some guide lines to follow but at the same time i do agree with Kowlefe some. Different people bring different leader styles unless maybe we want to all try and lead the exact same way like some kind of repeating process. I am sure the guidelines will not be difficult or over demanding anyways so more or less I can not wait for them.

 

Playdough did a hell of a job last night, up until my internet took a crap on me.
I logged on later when it was back up (and quite a few beers later) and ended up leading for a while, I was very happy overall with the platoon and how it followed orders, even the pugs did a great job. I did notice a few leaders form other oufits in our platoon as well, Negator and Warhalo.
Sorry guys if I was a little off though, I was buzzing hard and was struggling trying to see my screen straight, I think we did well overall until I got us into that TI Alloys/Ceres farms disaster.
From what I can remember though I want to thank you all for restoring my faith in Platoon leading and doing a great job, it was pretty nice rolling the NC all the way up to Mao, and now that I think back, we should have probably tried to warpgate them.... O well maybe next time

 

I think the hardest part of leading a platoon with 3+ full squads effectively is tactical agility. Things change very quickly in battle, and moving that many people around (especially over long distances) is a very cumbersome and painfully slow process.

Platoon leaders need to find a balance between finding a good fight that will generate lots of certs (which usually makes the platoon happy), and going after bases that have significant tactical importance to the VS as a whole (which can often be ghost caps, which usually doesn't make the platoon happy).

Informing the platoon of the long term goals, setting expectations for squad leaders, picking fights that require less coordinated movement make the experience better for everyone.

"Hop in the sundy, grab a tank or a flash, we are headed to the base directly north of here" is easy and fast, "Everyone back to the warpgate, get in MAX suits, get in this gal, no thats the wrong one, cmon alpha 6 get in the gal, we are waiting, come on where are you, i said recall like five minutes ago, someone flipped the gal, can anyone else spawn a gal, this is taking too long, why arent you in MAX suits?, I need more MAX suits, looks like we can't save that base, alright lets go, ah crap we don't have adjacency there anymore, hold on let me look at the map, ok lets go here instead, ah dang it was a ghost cap, everyone back in the gals, we have to go to the other side of the map now, etc" is one of the most frustrating things to deal with, and is no fun for anyone.

Leadership style is also huge. Micromanagement as a platoon lead can be incredibly effective, but I don't think it is a requirement. At the squad lead level, I think it is absolutely required to some extent. Squad leads #1 priority needs to be making sure everyone in their squad is in the right place, doing the right thing at the right time. If the squad leads do that, the platoon lead is able to focus on watching the map, planning the next move, or reacting to the changes on the battlefield.

Personally I avoid leading platoons. I prefer leading squads (especially squads of people i play with often.), and I am very vocal to platoon leads about tactics and where/what we should be doing. Some platoon leads know and expect this from me (Jaamaw, [when he isnt killing me more than anyone else in the game] usually expects to hear my input), but some of you might feel like i am "backseat leading". This is where communication of the long term goals comes into play. Knowing the overall goal of what we want to achieve, even if it is something as general as "reclaim and defend our major facilities" or "Break the TR's lock on Amerish", keeps me on the same page as the platoon lead tactically, and will generally minimize disagreement.


TL;DR: Platoon leads need to set expectations, tell the platoon the long term goals, Squad leads need to make sure their squads are where they need to be, all of us need to follow orders with a sense of urgency.

 

I love this thread. I would love to see EVERYONE's opinion on platoon lead in game and in TS on this thread, whether you lead platoons or not. I love seeing everyone perspective from recruit to officer, "grunt" to "seasoned commander". The more you guys post the more I learn and the more I think we all learn, about what it takes to be platoon lead.

This is huge, I do have specific officers whose role are "Outfit Tacticians". Their job is to aid the platoon leader in making the right tactical call. Shadoom does this in a manor in which others should aspire

 

I wish something people did more in this outfit is to simply to step up to the plate and do more platoon leading. Yesterday (Feb 23), within five minutes of logging in, there was a moment of confusion when the platoon leader had logged off or went AFK. Everyone on TS was saying something along the lines of "What are we doing?" just about every five seconds. No one was giving directions, no one was making any suggestions as to the next target. There were literally almost 48 guys just cluelessly standing around a recently captured base with absolutely nothing to do. At that point, I simply started throwing orders out on what to do next and people started moving again. I figured, someone *has* to do this and if no one else is going to, then I will. I can't just watch the platoon run around aimlessly on Indar not knowing what to do.

Here are a few tips:

You're defending a base and there's a lot of aircraft coming in? Call people in your platoon to get bursters and GET A CONFIRMATION FROM THEM. I always ask right after I've given an order for confirmation from either the guys who have the capability of taking care of what's asked (Bursters, in this example) or the squad leaders who have been tasked with a specific objective. It's as simple as this:

Done. That's it. The same can be done with armor, heavies, aircraft, whatever.

Another tip: if a squad leader drops out or needs to take off, don't ask the platoon something like

Most of the time, the room will go silent. Instead say something like this:

If they can't, they'll usually throw an excuse. Then just pick someone else.

I've found that most of the guys who play well in this game have no problem squad leading. You guys are all skilled and talented enough to be effective in pretty much any combat situation. Being a squad leader is just placing beacons and waypoints, repeating orders to your squad, making sure you do what the platoon leader asks you to do, and making sure you keep them up to date.

Another tip for working with PLs for you SLs: If the PL tasks you to defend a tower and you need more reinforcements to hold that objective, just ask the platoon leader for another squad to help out. PL asks the SLs that are available to assist and they'll respond. Said squad moves to assist the other squad. Easy peasy.

One last thing: Something I ABSOLUTELY HATE when it comes to platoon leading is when people start bitching and whining about getting their asses kicked, or just generally talking about irrelevant shit on TS when there are multiple full squads in a platoon. There's a time and place for that shit, like when we've secured a base and there's a bit of downtime, but absolutely NOT when we're in the middle of attacking/defending a facility. Focus on your objective. If you don't have anything helpful to say, keep your mouth shut, or at least keep it within squad chat.

Shit I hate hearing​

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I think everyone can tell

^ I really don't care about what your thoughts are on [weapon] when I have to worry about 48 people making sure they get a good fight and accomplish their objectives. Especially when our odds aren't in our favor.​

Are you PL? Probably not. Are you an SL? Duly noted. Are you neither? I don't want to hear it.​

YOU ARE NOT HELPING! None of that shit is tactical in any way, shape, or form. It HURTS morale and STRESSES everyone in your platoon, including the SLs and PL. Everytime this happens I WILL call you out on it. In fact, if you keep doing it, I might even take it a step further and make an example out of you on how irrelevant the shit that's coming out of your mouth is so that you and anyone else will NEVER DO IT AGAIN.

Other irrelevant shit:

^ As a platoon leader, do you really think I give a shit? How is this helping anyone at all? Why are you even announcing it? I'll usually respond with something like:​

"Cool story"​

^ When this happens, I will always say something along the lines of:​

"I don't give a fuck about the crown. Focus on your objective."​

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I'll save the rest of my thoughts for meeting later tonight.

 

I am glad to see other people step up. We've always had issues with PL leaders since beta. Hence why I came up with the idea of casual ops and serious ops back in beta.

OUr thing was we had these serious ops that required thought out planning and tactics. For example: my mobile infantry we would breach different areas of the towers. When we did galaxy raids we would use Gunships, one AA and one AI, they would circle and provide cover for mobile infanty. We had cloakers who would spawn ams or drop at a nearby out-post and bring us one, we had a few maxes at all time along with balanced squads of medics,heavies and engies.

Stuff like that we did in our serious ops at least from a mobile infantry standard.

Many people thought it was like that 24/7. Hence came casual ops idea. The idea that everything is relaxed, leading is easier and we jsut have plain fun. This also gave the opportunity for new leaders or people who were interested a shot.

We have some great followers and great followers have the potential to be great leaders. Like when Jaamaw isnt leading hes a great follower, like me. Same goes for majority of the other officers.

I love the fact of new leaders and welcome it. Fresh and different ideas are always welcome as well a constructive criticism.

One thing that draws me to this outfit is how Drama in minimized. I really like the Nononsense Ideology 99% of us play games as a form of entertainment and fun. To escape reality, not be drawn right back into the meat grinder.

I've been in this outfit since we had 40 or so members when we were infants. I can say throwout the evolution of this community, I am impressed with all the great people who share the same ideas.

I think also we have great chance to spread "The WOrd" into other games and grow our community even further.

We are truly great gamers and you don't realize this but most communities strive for this level of cooperation and No nonsense.