Hello, This was originally a script for a video I was going to make in 2018 as a comprehensive guide to platoon leading. The video never came to fruition because I quit Planetside 2. The script was never deleted and since I ran across it again, I decided to edit it into text format and present it here so that someone (hopefully) can glean some helpful information out of it. I'll check up here now and then to clarify anything anyone has a question about. Good luck, commander. Proactive Platoon Leading. Planetside 2 is a unique game of its own. Its fast-pace, large-scale, teamwork-oriented gameplay is something that virtually other games fall short. I have played this Planetside 2 from its launch in 2012 up until 2018, and I can say that I’ve enjoyed the game far more in a team than I did lone-wolfing. I originally joined my outfit Phoenix Battalion in December of 2012 because of one big reason. Their platoons were engaging, proactive, and fun, much more fun than I had in any typical Battlefield game. Since then I had entered countless hours of leading squads, platoons, and even companies (of two to three platoons) in Planetside 2. Throughout the years I’ve discovered that the key to success as a leader in this game is to be proactive and engaging. This is a guide to commanders new and old of what it means to be a proactive platoon leader. The first thing to note before going any farther is the importance of how you treat the leadership role. I look at platoon or squad leading much like a real-time strategy player. Each player is an individual unit who’ll most likely idle about or roam randomly until something comes along and they react to it. There’s two catches. The first is that you’re also on the ground fighting with your units. The second is that your units are real people with their own unique set of skills and goals. They’re not mindless AI and this turns the battle into a dynamic clash where two fights are rarely the same. The platoon leader who can navigate through this mess can turn even the most unorganized herd of cats into a dangerous pack of wolves. That being said, let’s get started with the basic elements of platoon leading, which are Leading by Example, Communications, and Morale. Leadership by Example, Communications, & Morale The motto of Phoenix Battalion is “Leadership by Example”. What you do will speak volumes more than what you say. It’s a very simple concept that can get in the way of personal goals; that new auraxium weapon, the last few certs for that shiny new gun, or other things you want to do that don’t really benefit the platoon. You have to remember that if you keep telling your platoon and your squads to go somewhere or do something and you don’t go do it yourself as a member of that squad or platoon, folks will pick up on that and they’ll start thinking ‘he’s not doing it so it mustn’t be important’. So as the leader, lead by example and show the rest of the deadbeats how it’s really done! Communications is the lifeblood of any team. A team who fails to communicate will always lose to the team that does. I’ve seen this again and again and again in OPFOR training after OPFOR training where the team with the least communication ends up losing round after round in spite of skill levels. Information is the key to success for both commanders and the troopers. Often the CO will be the only one doing the talking, and as frustrating as that can be at times, it’s still important for the platoon to hear that voice directing them, and motivating the platoon to victory. If you’re not the PL, remember that your platoon leader is not God. He can’t see everything going on so please call out that tank nearing your sunderer instead of expecting the PL (who’s on the other side of the base fighting in a building) to notice it. Continuing communications’ importance, a platoon leader must learn how to talk in a ‘command voice’. A command voice is a voice of authority, one that says “I am here. I’m in charge. Follow my orders and you will win.” This is not something that comes out naturally and the only surefire way to develop it is to practice it. It took me countless hours of flailing about as a platoon leader to develop a command voice. If your job is a police officer or an army NCO, you probably already understand what a command voice should be. If your real world job doesn’t involve barking out orders, here are two helpful hints. First, remember the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Keep orders simple and to-the-point. It’ll result in less confusion for your men and yourself. Next, avoid ‘filler sounds’ such as the infamous “uh” and “um”. Keep your orders clean, simple and clear. It’ll help you in making yourself sound confident of your orders. Morale is so important when motivating players to engage in any pvp game yet it’s the one thing that commanders fail to comprehend more than everything else combined. Players won’t play in your platoon if you can’t give them the motivation to fight on even against impossible odds. The first part of keeping up moral is making sure the platoon has a steady supply of orders to keep them focused in the fight. The other part is delivery, a little psychological warfare if you will. Up to my ‘retirement’ I still saw experienced commanders who knew what they’re doing use defeatists terminology in the orders they hand out. This causes as much damage to a unit’s morale as giving no orders at all! Consider the following two examples of the same order: “This fight’s lost. Everyone fall back to Chimney Rock Depot!” “Good job with the fight here; it’s time to redeploy back to Chimney Rock Depot!” Both orders give the same objective, but one uses negative words like ‘lost’ and ‘fall back’ and the other uses neutral or positive words like ‘good job’ and ‘redeploy’. There’s actually a psychological reason for this which was demonstrated in a famous experiment. The experiment (of which I cannot recall the name of it) involved two groups of people. One group was exposed to a test filled with words associated with old age, and another group exposed to a test filled with words associated with youth. The group who took the first test left the test building moving slow and elderly while the other group left the building in a youthful manner. This research demonstrated how such a subtle change can affect how a person thinks, talks, and act without their knowing. By purposefully avoiding defeatist language, even in the face of defeat, it’s easier to keep a platoon from fracturing under pressure and it helps build up the confidence of the unit as a whole when the commander displays that same confidence. Remember the players under your command are not being forced to stay in your platoon so if they’re not having fun, they’ll go somewhere else. The Stages of Battle Now that we’ve looked at the three important elements of platoon leading, let’s now include the tactical part of leading. This is split into stages of the battle. Select the battlefield. Deploy the troops. Enact a battle plan. Adapt to the fight. Move to the next phase. Selecting the battlefield falls to the platoon leader or in the event of multiple platoons, the ops leader. There are too many variables to cover so we’ll discuss the core elements. No matter the fight, the commander should have a set goal in mind. It could be as specific as the capture or defense of a base or as generic as hold a continent. The commander must plan two to three moves ahead. The commander should have a plan B, C, and maybe even a plan D already thought out. Plans should consider the enemy response or what I like to call the “What if?” game. By planning ahead, the commander stays proactive and avoids playing “catch-up” with the enemy. After the strategy has been selected, the commander must now Deploy the Troops. Many commanders fail to recognize the importance in this step. The CO needs to decide if it’s best to go by foot, treads, or air. Regardless of how the platoon gets there, the platoon should be rallied at a relatively safe spot to gather their numbers and get a breather before the next fight. Forces trickling into an enemy army waiting for them very often spells disaster. In some cases though, such as a redeploy to a base nearing capture, there’s no time to regroup properly and action has to be taken immediately. When possible, platoons benefit from grouping up before moving out to the next battlefield. Many commanders fail to enact an actual battle plan once on the field. Whether out of laziness or inexperience, many platoon leaders fail to give their platoons directions beyond “Go attack X Base” or “Go defend Y Base” this results in what I call “mindless zerging” where the platoon essentially rushes the most direct perceived threat. This can be an enemy spawn point, the nearest control point, or even something as silly as a lighting tank shooting at the sunderer and running away (I’ve genuinely seen 30 players chase a single tank away from a base before, ignoring the remaining 30+ enemies that were still in the area). A good commander can easily exploit this and lure the enemy away from a target or set up a perfect killing zone. Giving each squad an individual objective encourages squad cohesion, especially when the squad is in the hands of a competent sergeant. If lacking that, even giving the platoon just a single objective to hold at the base will tell the troopers you do have an idea of what you’re doing. When the enemy throws everything including the kitchen sink, it is time to Adapt to the fight. This is something that I’ve only seen a small handful of commanders comprehend. When the fight kicks off, the entire dynamics of the fight can change in a heartbeat and that carefully thought out plan starts fall apart. A good commander will be able to spot enemy actions or predict enemy movements and adapt to the new threat. This could be as complex as enacting a tiered defense to slow the enemy, or as simple as redirecting the entire platoon to a single spot in a base to stop an enemy zerg from overrunning allies in the area. The ability to adapt and move your forces to stop the enemy or exploit a weakness is something that is difficult to teach, and more often than not it’s learned the hard way. Any time a commander loses a fight, they should consider what they did, what the enemy did, and what they could do to potentially stop the enemy the next time they fight. Once a fight is over, the commander must Enact the Next Phase. If the fight is going according to plan, the next orders should be given without hesitation in order to keep the pace flowing. In the event a commander doesn’t have orders, they should tell their platoon to wait for new orders (“Platoon, stand by for new orders!”) If a commander is losing a fight and they know it, they should already have contingency plans in motion. Those backup sunderers should be rolling, the galaxies ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Maybe the platoon should be moving back to a new defensive line while the enemy’s busy waiting for the cap to finish. Whatever that plan is, the commander should already have an idea of where to go next. You’d be amazed how much a well-drilled platoon can slow down a force twice their size if they’re given time to set up several battle lines between bases. A PL who can follow these guidelines and adapt them to their own unique style will find himself able to motivate even the most disorganized group of players. I can safely say it takes about 20-30 minutes for me to get a disorganized platoon to start working coherently so it’s doable but can take time. In Planetside 2, I do not fear the zerg. I fear the zerg when the Queen of Blades is leading the swarm.
good write up, most important thing is voice chat. Just 2 days ago I joined cobn's open platoon, because I wanted to pull my colossus. I anounced it in text chat. Then they redeployed to another fight somewhere else and I was almost completely alone in that oversized tank. Then yesterday I joined up again (sometimes I join random squads to see where the squad redeploy takes me, then leaving the squad again). Chatted a bit about implants with them on /p, turns out they only use voice for commanding and strategies, some even read that I pulled a colossus a day prior and got confused why I didn't answer on voice. Also tried to "lead" random squads/platoons in the past, but got frustrated since almost nobody reads the chat and most only blindly follows the way points. At some moments it felt like you play with bots. Usually I would simply spam rightlick on friendlies from the map or minimap (you can enable mouse and click on the minimap) and invite them, or hold spot on them to open the quickmenu, where you can inv them too. I even have the gold directive for the leading directive done, once wanted the NS commander helmet, but those platoon leader ribbons are somewaht hard to come by with this method. Also, I could have sworn that you were able to set a certain channel command, like you stay in the default channel where you can read all messages, but you don't write in /y upon hitting enter, you could set it to /s and /p. It's somewhat annyoing IMO. Example, enter, delete /y, write /p then write your message meant for the platoon, you've to do that on every tell, or shift+ctrl (I think) to cycle trough chat windows, so you're in the platoon chat only then go back to the default window since don't want to miss spicy meme yells. Thinking about it, maybe I try it again a bit and try out the steel rain thing
There are multiple chat channels beyond those that are tabbed. The fireteam channel for example, /ft, is for the subunit of a squad - clubs, hearts, diamonds, or spades - that you are in. This channel is ideal for a vehicle team such as a liberator gunner informing the pilot of what goes on below, and has an own color code in the chat window. As in other forums and social arenas it is important in a platoon to select the channel according to the message such as to not cause an undue burden on the attention of others. If there are 5 vehicle crews in a platoon all using /pl none of them will be able to know what messages comes from their gunner without putting in the extra effort for this. In extreme circumstances people misusing the chat channel can cause important messages to go unseen, such as if the platoon is being backcapped or if someone needs others to spawn in a valkyrie. Questions about implants, game mechanics, "best guns" etc are best directed at the /new /mentor channel.
