Getting Yelled at from both directions

 

Squad Leader

Ahh middle management, you have to love it, and by love I mean not love much at all and actually the total opposite of love, which many believe to be hate, but it’s not, its pure apathy.  Cos within hate lies a tiny rotting piece of love that eventually drives you insane alone at night screaming at the walls and having conversations with people who aren’t there.  But I Digress.

 

Squad leading is the middle management of Battlefield 2.  In short, it kinda has some power, but it mostly sucks.  You get orders constantly from command telling you what to do, and you hand those same orders over to your team who does… absolutely nothing with the information.  One would hope that an organized squad would listen & follow the orders laid out by the SL, but in the end, it’s still just a hope.

 

As I begin to write this third paragraph, I’m tuned in to Teamspeak listening to the commanders chat back n forth about their squads.  And what I’m listening to is the biggest problem you can have as a squad leader.  I list it on the commander page as keeping quiet on Teamspeak.  If the SL cannot get his orders out because of too much chatter than he can rely ONLY on map signals to guide the team.  While this is acceptable for a Pup squad, much more disciplined soldier is needed for a match team, which means, if it’s not important, you have to be quiet.

 

 

How the Game promotes its soldiers

 

The order in which a squad promotes its members has long been a mystery.  Is it based on rank like the commander position?  Is it time served inside the squad?  Does it actually keep track of that?  Is it the highest global score or current score in game?  Why can’t you just have a PRMOTE button instead of this mystic computer controlled action?  Here my friends after an afternoons research with the below WNx members is the way you promote in BF2.

 

Time Served

 

The list on the right shows the Alpha squad that was created by WNxMrage when the game started.  After he created the squad Bunny, Stint, KiddPark, then a non WNx’r MSUsloppy joined in that order

 

So the order they joined was like this

 

1. WNxMrage

2. WNxBunny

3. WNxStint

4. WNxKiddParK

5. MSUsloppy

 

The order on the left is not the order that they were hired.  Nor is it the rank of the soldiers as you can see that a Lance Corporal is higher than two Corporals below him.  What it IS though is the current scores of the players in the game (the green numbers).  That is what’s listed in the squad window.  But that’s NOT the order of promotion.

 

 

 

 

How it works.

 

We thought we had this worked out, but we were totally wrong.  The game promotes soldiers according to their server number.  When they joined the server they are assigned a number (0-31 for a 32 man server) and that is the number it uses to promote.  As simple as that

 

 

The OODA Loop

 

John Boyd was a fighter pilot in the mid 70s that came up with a different way to fight not only wars, but anything in which you are in competition with someone or something else.  Business use this method today along with nearly all the military forces for one simple reason.  It works.

 

But what is it.  Well here is a  basic image of what the OODA loop is, but irreally don’t help much to describe what it does.  That, unfortunately takes a whole book to do and I don’t have that time and space to work in. 

Basics of the OODA Loop & how it can help you

 

 

Observe:  take in all possible information about the situation at hand.  Every scrap that you can get a hold of.  Make sure you have information from every source you can get.

 

Orientation:  Where your personal view is coming from, and how it affects your actions/decisions.  Battles you’ve fought in before that were like this one.  As well as your history farther back than even you are capable of remembering.  All these things add up to your uniquie view of the battlefield that no one else possess.

 

Decision:  Make your decision based on the information you have, and the way you look at it.  It can be multiple decisions at once (multiple fronts or defense situations) but once done, is done and should not be second guessed.

 

Action:  Finally you act on your decisions and see how they change the situation for the next round of the OODA loop as it starts over again.  Over and over this plays out until the end of the match. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squad Leader as a large Cat

 

I will put this as basically and crudely as I possibly can.  The SL must be a Pussy.  He should never be the first one in the fight, rarely get flag caps, and engaging the enemy must be avoided whenever possible.  In short, its BOR-ING man to be an SL.  I hope that EA in its wisdom will soon patch it so that the SL gets a piece of each and every kill/heal/fix it that his squad does to offset his having to remain free and clear as a mobile spawn point.

 

The SL has authority to override the Commanders orders if he truly thinks they’re ludicrous, however, he will have to answer for this disobeying of orders in the follow-up meeting.  Most of the time, the commander calls the shots, and hands down basic instructions to the SL’s such as ‘take base 3.’ and leaves it up to the individual squad leaders to best complete their missions.

 

Commander

Squad Leader

Soldier