[Suggestion] Continental Supreme Commander needed.

You've probably heard the saying "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians", well Planetside suffers the reverse problem. I wonder if the game would be enhanced if there were a continental supreme commander to direct platoons and squads to specific areas of battle on a continent. A General MacArthur type of figure if you will. Someone to oversee and coordinate a continental win.

Your probably asking how this person would be selected. I have a rough idea but I'm sure it will need tweaking.

In order to be chosen as a supreme commander a player would have to be a battle rank 100. Of the 100's, command would be offered to the 100 with the most in-game time. Should they refuse to take command it would then fall to the next BR 100 player with the most in-game time and so on. Perhaps the amount of directives completed could be figured into this mix as well.

A supreme command screen would need to be created along with a supreme command voice channel along the lines of the command channel we already have. Specialized flags could be placed on the big map and waypoints that display your squad/platoon/outfits decals could also be utilized for the mini-map and on heads up displays. Perhaps over head battle cameras only the commander could access for viewing individual battles could be installed or a floating camera the commander could drive around would be helpful as well.

Now your wondering why anybody would want the job. Again some rough ideas.

Special XP rewards could go to those who follow orders and achieve their supreme commander directed goals. Those who do not follow orders would get regular XP amounts as they are now. The supreme commander would also receive a XP reward (based on the amount of territory captured), a supreme commander shoulder patch and loading screen recognition for a job well done. Only the supreme commanders who were in command for the entire alert would get the rewards and loading screen mentions.

Thoughts?

You realise that you are giving command to someone who doesn't like to communicate who will use the system only to generate a fight where they have a good HE tank farm deliberately losing most of their empires territory?

We do not need that. All we really need is giving players a persistent reward for using strategy and players will step up to the challenge.

I'd rather see a leader rank, similar to battle rank, based on things like base captures while leading a squad/platoon. This would be visible in orders chat, when joining a squad, etc., so you have some vague idea who knows what they're doing and who doesn't. If people actually had a reason to respect the guy giving the orders, they'd be more likely to obey, and they'd have a reason to listen to one guy over the other when they're contradicting each other.

If I were to implement something like this I would make some small changes. Instead of being only a Continental SC, I would make it the entire faction SC.

It is kinda like what _itg is saying but with some tweaks. BR 100 players would have to level up some sort of "leader rank" (this one could be a modified version of the Leadership Directive) and once said ranks were achieved they would need to candidate themselfs to the job (It is worth noting that maybe there should be a cert cost to this action. Perhaps 500c?).

Then once a week (Sundays?) the faction would vote in who would be said person (BR 65+ only? Gotta try to avoid alts voting). Also in the vote screen once we selected a person we would be able to see some stats from that person, especially the ones that relate to the leadership rank. And in order to avoid some problems when it comes to people staying too long in power, make it so that players can only be reelected for 2 weeks, after that there will be a CD of maybe 2, 3 weeks.

Once a SC is elected he should gain some special powers (and rewards). Aside from the usual PL stuff; access to a chat that broadcasts to all maps, the ability to see what PL's and SQ's are online and to give them orders, (this would require improvements to the resource system ofc) the ability to alocate a % bonus to the resource generation of a certain platoon/squad that is following orders or is about to do so, etc.

However this is all for nod if no one wants to listen to the guy, and since thinking that people will follow orders out of "respect" is silly at best, there should be special rewards. The one that comes to my mind now is a simple (but worth) XP % bonus for the group that acts inside the location designated by the SC.

This is just something I came up with now, no real thought behind the balance.

I think better name for this role would be Supreme Cat Herder.

Command Rank in PS1 was pretty good....... however it had the same problem most of these things eventually do, everyone got CR5 eventually (well not everyone, but literally 100's of people per server).

In all honesty the only way I see this working is like the original WoW R14 or ESO Emperor - that is you have to constantly stay at the top to retain "rank"..... but that system itself has loads of problems (and personally I wouldn't go near it having done WoW original R14 and having realised pretty much straight afterward it plain wasn't worth the effort - and then they changed it to make it very easy anyway).

Make it so you have to pay up SC to be Supreme Commander for a day.

Hold on, I'm struggling to keep a straight face...

The Continental Commander thing isn't a bad idea if there's some way to properly implement it. Reminds me back when playing Battlefield 2, there was always some one on my team standing still looking oblivious, shouting commands. I never did commanding in that game but I guess he was utilising the map screen to deploy equipment and coordinating.

Despite my apparent immaturity in my posts, I would have no problem following commands issued via the Map or Command chat, during Alerts especially, if it meant victory for the NC.

This is a good thread, even if it's not the first of its kind.

https://sites.google.com/site/planetsideupgradeproject/home/planetside-2/command

We have a player-organised system like this on Cobalt. There is plenty of stuff players can organize but they just expect DBG to do everything for them. To give you an idea, play Planetside 2 like a Lego game in which you have bricks, not like a doll's house in which everything is locked.

On Cobalt, there is 2 events like this :
- an alliance on the NC side which organizes a weekly operation with a force commander
- a roughly monthly server-wide operation organized by TRID with one force commander for each faction

Of course, all the outfits involved are benevolent and others just don't participate.

DBG should just promote and assist more these type of events organised by the players.

NC supreme commander


TR supreme commander


Vanu supreme commander

Ironically, in SupComm, NC and TR swapped colour schemes.

When I developed this idea it was my intention to also point out that the supreme commander would NOT be able to do battle, only command battles thus removing any chances for personal manipulations. I realized it would be a thankless job which is why I placed the rewards so high for accepting the responsibility.

Spending 100 certs for the command voice chat already made me turn off PS2 voice and use third party voice programs for my squad leading.

The people who are the most convinced they're qualified to lead are likely going to be the most insufferable, as it turns out.

I don't feel like those howlermonkeys infesting command voice chat on any given server need some kind of supreme commander position to fight over or argue with.

Time would be better spent to implement tools for platoon leaders. Good PL's already spent so much time looking at the map, make a PL-unique interface. Let them drop smoke, or ammo boxes, or launch rez grenades from satellites or *something*. You'd have to limit certain abilities to larger platoons to avoid too much spam in a fight, or some such mechanic.

Global leadership isn't thankless - it's something primadonas fight over.

Squad and platoon leading is more important, barely rewarded at all and deserves more dev attention. It would be cool to have something like BF2142's commander screen for leaders of large platoon. Nightmarish to balance regionally, sadly.

I absolutely refuse to follow a single command or order for anyone who calls himself "Continental Supreme Commander".

But you can make a new channel which costs 100k certs to unlock where you can scream commands. Anyone willing to invest that amount of certs should be free to spam a chat channel and earn his place on my ignore list.

Thank you very much.

Leader rank would be good. There are alot of different leading styles.
1. The Chess Master - Tries to move his platoon around the map forcing enemy counter attacks.

2. Zerg Herder - Rides the wave of force and when it gets destroyed starts another.

3.The Fire Chief - Hops around the map putting out fires.

Just a few there are more, but these are the easiest to spot.

As the Emperor of Markov I fully support this idea.

I wouldn't follow the orders of someone like you either. You obviously have anger issues. Not the quality of a good leader.

There are leaders and followers and people who think their leaders who no one will follow. Guess which one you are!

TR commander

NC commander


VS commander