Are most Platoon leaders MORONS?

What is comically ironic is that bad platoon leads will try and avoid fights in order to capture territory and over extend their empires reach.

Good ones realize that fighting at contested territory and winning said hex not only gains territory but ties up enemy manpower in the process.

Great ones realize that the key to winning isn't about taking hexes, it is about tying up the most enemy resources using as few of your troops as possible. As an extension to that notion, also being able to find and create situations where something like that is possible even if in the end you end up pushed out / back.

For more casual play, especially in non alerts, the Platoon lead should be there to find interesting and challenging fights that give his or her members something to shoot at while providing them with experience to make them a better player. E.g. Not sitting at an empty base with nothing to do. Not sitting in zerged out fights where you have 3-4X hex population.

Strategy and fun, is not the same.

If i was going to be a realm/faction hero, i would go and ghost cap base after base, since thats what is the "best" strategy, resource strave the enemy, force him to either relocate continent or fight without tanks/air and C4//MAX's.
Fun factor: very little.

Be a pro-farmer 2000, attacking the enemy zerg, defending towers/biolaps, "wasting" resources pulling tanks/MAX's/Lib to kill endless hordes of BR 1-20.
Strategy value: zero.
Fun factor: high to very high.

An amazing one can do all that while keeping up the moral of the troops under his command.

Tying up enemy resources is all well and good, but if you're throwing your forces at a wall of bullets, the people under your command will begin to resent you. If you've ever had a Platoon leader throw your whole platoon at, say, Subterranean Nanites or Scarred Mesa against a heavily dug in defensive force (Turrets, mines, MAXs and Engineers and Medics that actually do their job) then you'll understand what I mean. After a while it gets to the point of "To hell with this we're going somewhere else".

WHO are you to question the squad leader? do as you're told soldier!
In real life, would you question your commander, or do as you're told to do?
If you don't agree with your leader, then defect

I'm actually wondering why this guy was complaining about his platoon leader rather than being a platoon leader.

If you got good ideas, then make a platoon. If people like your leadership, they will remember you and join you again. It's grass roots how to make an outfit.

I can't stand back seat platoon leaders. If you don't have time or it's not fun for you to lead properly, then shut up or go play solo.

I don't mind the occasional sitrep, but a guy telling me that I need to change my objective because something just now happened is for the birds.

To the OPs original question... infantry resources are rather moot in terms of strategic gameplay. You'd have to hold the supply lines for over an hour to make a real impact. Hopefully that changes in the future, but at the moment, that is the last concern for any PL.

I find that most public squads are just meatgrinders.
If you want strategy, an outfit sounds like the place for you.

Yes.

I was gonna say something but LibertyVSNCTR here already did the job.
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There's just one more thing I would like to add. I'm not gonna say you should never ever offer advice to the PL, however someone that is constantly questioning his/her decisions - saying that this is bad, that is terrible, we should do this - is a "cancer" to the Platoon. If you really don't like the way things are being handled it is best to just leave.

In real life, if a commander was this bad he'd be shot by his soldiers and quietly buried somewhere.

If you think what most PLs are doing is stupid, run a platoon yourself. Most servers don't have enough people running good public platoons so I'm sure it will be appreciated. You'll probably get some people calling you a moron though.

PLing is about balancing factional objectives with the fun of the players in the platoon. It's not a real war, it's a game, and fun needs to be considered. Ghostcapping is boring for most people, and if you do it with more than a squad per base at most it's also a waste of manpower. Also, cutting off territory currently has very little effect; this is a game design issue that hopefully gets addressed at some point, but right now there's little point in cutting an enemy faction off.

From a factional strategy POV, the primary objective is to make the most effective use of your manpower (e.g. defending bases like biolabs where you can hold with 45% pop, or holding A in a tower for 20 minutes with 1 squad against 3), and to leave the other two factions enough of a front that they will get dragged into a big fight. That gives you some free population that can be deployed to 'zerg' (3 squads v 2 isn't really zerging but it feels like it when it's deployed against you) a useful lane, or ghostcap bases away from the other front.

Liberty said: ↑

“What is comically ironic is that bad platoon leads will try and avoid fights in order to capture territory and over extend their empires reach.

Good ones realize that fighting at contested territory and winning said hex not only gains territory but ties up enemy manpower in the process.

Great ones realize that the key to winning isn't about taking hexes, it is about tying up the most enemy resources using as few of your troops as possible. As an extension to that notion, also being able to find and create situations where something like that is possible even if in the end you end up pushed out / back.

For more casual play, especially in non alerts, the Platoon lead should be there to find interesting and challenging fights that give his or her members something to shoot at while providing them with experience to make them a better player. E.g. Not sitting at an empty base with nothing to do. Not sitting in zerged out fights where you have 3-4X hex population.”

Valok said:
I was gonna say something but LibertyVSNCTR here already did the job.
--------
There's just one more thing I would like to add. I'm not gonna say you should never ever offer advice to the PL, however someone that is constantly questioning his/her decisions - saying that this is bad, that is terrible, we should do this - is a "cancer" to the Platoon. If you really don't like the way things are being handled it is best to just leave.

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Agree with this.........
You have to think about the players you are leading and off Alert a PL should be like an entertainer offering advice to lesser experienced players and creating fun fights for those that are.
During alerts its just as important to know where Not to attack as it is to attack.
Also the time passed in an Alert also matters as having a large run on the other two factions early on will bring both down upon you, usually taking away any chance of the win.
Keep your public platoon tidy, put players from the same small outfits together. And eject players that are not using their Comms or reading the platoon chat (if they are low BR explain to them the redeployment process and give them extra time).

In real life, if a commander was really bad, his soldiers would gripe to his commander's commanding officer and that bad commander would be quietly reassigned.

To the OP:

Your attitude is the reason why my outfit so rarely runs open squads. The people in an outfit know who is leading them and have spent enough time with him to know his plans and his intentions when he gives an order. They don't need an explanation like you do. If they're following his every order without question, it's because their past experiences with that leader has shown he has a record of good tactical decision-making.

Of course we're going into a fight where the enemy outnumbers us 4 to 1. It's our specialty. By entrenching ourselves at the point on a base, we make a 4 minute base cap take 8 minutes or 15 minutes. It makes them waste valuable time during an alert and also buys time for larger units like platoons to get organized and bring in reinforcements.

We galaxy drop behind enemy zergs all the time, knowing that they'll all re-deploy back and attack our 1-12 with 48+. It buys time for friendlies to get out of their spawn room and regroup their defenses. When we're successful in holding them off, we just captured a base for our faction and now the enemy has to deal with our friendly zerg showing up to reinforce the base.

Here's a more specific story for you. During a territory control alert on Indar the VS were going for the win by zerging a very underpopped TR faction. If the VS captured Howling Pass Checkpoint, they'd steamroll all the way to Mao Tech Plant and have the territory needed for the alert.

As the NC, there was a pubbie in our squad, just like you, who didn't understand why we were dropping on a point at a base that we don't have a link to and therefore can't cap. He kept whining that we should go help the NC in their fight and stop wasting our time here.

He still didn't understand when we were communicating in /yell with the TR, telling them to hold A point while we held the two-story with the C point.

He stopped using squad voice and started using platoon chat. His incessant complaining eventually became so disruptive to communications that finally a squad member yelled at him and wasted valuable comms time explaining to him why we were there followed by lots of grumbling and name-calling from the rest of the outfit directed at this one guy.

The whole time this guy was crouching in a corner of the room looking at his map instead of taking up a defensive position like everyone else.

Morale of the story: Don't be a backseat commander. If you aren't in command, you should be aiming down your gun sights, not looking at your map.

Back seat platoon leaders, start your own platoon rather then joining someone else's and expecting them to run it for you. Oh I'm sure that you have the best strategy and tactics ever, but 'can't be bothered to lead', 'there is no reward', 'I don't want to be stuck looking at the map', 'no one listens to me' etc. etc.

In my experience most back seat PL are pretty low level and new to the game. They will freak out an call for the entire pltn. to go AA if one ESF shows up, or devise the most complicated attack plan ever and expect the platoon leader of a pub pltn to organise and execute it perfectly within seconds. The best way to shut them up is find the biggest fight you can, if they have any brains they realise how green they are and start learning to play. These people make good squad leaders in a few weeks time.

If its a high level back seat leader you can reasonably assume they have failed totally trying to lead on their own.

The whole point of this game is large battles, zerg vs zerg. If you don't like it leave no one is making you stay. I can't believe people still don't get this. I suppose to many years of CS COD and BF has brainwashed you. Get with the times, you're living in the past. I am a professional zerg herder, "This is Stalingrad" is my moto and I waste thousands of bodies a day.

If you don't like how you are being led, don't disrupt the platoon you are in but make your own.

If it's going to be as awesome and effective as you are implying you will soon have no trouble building it up.

There are only 3 moronic PL's

1. People who ghostcap with more than 12-16 people
2. People who take an enemy base that is a key link between the other factions fighting each other
3. People who finish capping a continent during an alert instead of waiting until after the alert is finished.

Yes. People who have control of more than 6-10 people for long periods of time tend to get extremely complacent, and thereby incompetent.

Force them to deal with a smaller group for months on end, and they'll adapt.

No, that's bad. You're not being strategic, you're ghost capping. As a larger group, you'll want to directly engage the zerg to keep them occupied while the smaller, more squad-oriented groups do the heavy lifting. If you can beat the zergs yourself though, all the better.

As a smaller group, you want to be watching the enemy zerg closely. As soon as they stop looking, hit them where it hurts.

When it comes to Platoon Leaders, I rather follow a guy that's got boots on the ground and is slogging along with the rest of the platoon, not sitting somewhere in a Sunderer or Galaxy with his nose in the map 90% of the time. At least that way the leader has an appreciation for what his soldiers are going through and how the enemy force is arranged.

I would much rather be in the fight. I don't consider a platoon leader dumb for wanting to have fun.

Instead of judging others, why not lead your own platoons? You can't call other platoon leaders names if you've never done it before and especially when you haven't proved to be better.

As for being a sound strategy. It depends. If the enemy zerg is pushing towards something important, you could screw over your team. If you have a full 48 man platoon then you're taking almost 50 people away from other locations. Capping locations that aren't defended can work well especially if you do 3-4 of them at once. Once all locations start getting resistance, redeploy to galaxies already enroute to the real objective.