Commander / Observer thoughts.

Personally I like the system as it is. It works in DoI because DoI is a better game. If Sandstorm gets unfucked and becomes a high lethality tactical shooter, people will stick together and work together naturally as it will become the way to win instead of the current zergy zoomfest.

However.

Why not split the responsibility for fire support? Give the commander the choice of what to call and give the observer the choice of the location? Then extend the proximity range they need to be from eachother to roughly shouting distance (or just make it infinite and have the request over the local radio) and reduce the number of observers to one.

Commander uses a radial menu: "Call in a gunship!"

Commander's menu goes into a 10 second cooldown. Observer has 10 seconds in which to call that specific support.

Observer gets out the binoculars and mouse1's the location. No need to be exposed while fiddling with their own radial menu, then the voiceover plays to confirm.

All fire support cooldowns should be easily visible to both parties ideally too as it'll enable randoms to coordinate.

Not something I feel overly strong about, but the main complaint which gets reiterated a lot is the observer being the commander's pet. This splits the decisionmaking encouraging communication and justifiably extends the operational range of the two players increasing convenience.

last edited by Whitby

Also, the commander needs to be able to put markers on locations everyone can see. Ideally by using the map.

"Assault this position." - Red rectangle on location for 120 seconds. Give everyone who passes through that red rectangle within the time some score points. Would be a great way to facilitate getting everyone to push a particular direction.
"Deploy smoke here." - Blue circle on location for 120 seconds." First two smoke grenades which go off within X distance of the blue circle net the thrower some score points.
"Call support on this location." - Yellow circle only visible to observer for 30 seconds.

etc

What I'm saying is, why not give the commander the ability to command, and the observer the role of coordinating and observing for fire missions.

last edited by Whitby

I'd rather see something like this:

Rifleman sees targets
Rifleman requests fire support over squad comms
Commander approves or denies fire
Radio operator calls in support if approved

This lets the benefit of fire support be a shared responsibility, and avoids the whole "commander needing to stand up into enemy fire to call indirect missions" thing.

It might not work well in PVP, but it'd sure as heck improve the coop modes.

I think that'd work very well from a gameplay standpoint.

I don't know if it'd be reflective of chain of command type warfare though. It'd definitely need some serious consideration when creating the voiceovers build immersion.

How about if the Observer were required to actively radio-in the co-ordinates of the strike as passed from the Commander?

i.e. make him an active participant in the process, instead of being just a radio with legs.

@Congas

That's exactly what I suggested. Observer has to handle the "where", commander handles the "what". Everybody gets an active role.