Faction wide communication is what is needed....

Faction wide communication system is needed for in game tactics and grand stratagy. Most of us in a fight dont know we are cut off till someone dies and bothers to zoom out and look at the map. And then it doesnt help to only have 4 or 5 people pull out of the fight while the rest of the "PUGs" continue to fight uninformed.

We have no leadership in game, no communications in the faction, no ability to communication faction wide sucks.

How could the game have launched without this ONE thing.

This.

Okay, so.. it's just not me then? I don't have time or energy to be in an outfit, but I do play a good bit and I'm getting better. I can contribute, but I have no idea what the heck is going on? I'd love for a faction-only chat in a given zone/area/however you want it determined. Right now It appears I can /yell and /say .. both of which I believe the enemy can see? How far of a range does /yell /say have anyhow? Text chat really is dead.. and yes, I do very much know the virtues of TS/Vent .. but for a game this size, why not have a faction-only chat for larger areas? I cannot possibly hurt anything?

no sir,it is fine,join a outfit.

good idea.

Cert Command Chat.

Put back in the continent chat that CR leveled characters had from PS1.

If it's not in the game then who are the people with the yellow text giving stuff marked as Orders in the text chat? And they also seem to be able to put down Defense, and Attack symbols on the map. Not that the zerg pays attention most of the time lol. The Orders text should flash on the screen IMO not just in the text box. And people that abuse it to say stupid stuff should get banned fast so it doesn't turn into the crappy CR5 chat from PS1.

Can people even see those orders if they aren't in the organization/platoon/squad? Either way, I almost never see this used to any real effect. Besides, what's needed isn't for one person to be able to talk to their platoon. It's for anyone to be able to provide information to everyone.

It's not just 'zerg' players. It's far from obvious what those 'beacons' really mean, much less how people should react to them. They are a quick way for a platoon leader to give more detailed waypoints, but good luck using it to actually call for help properly. Unless you're watching the map, you won't even be aware that a beacon has been placed. You also won't know how you can help until you've dropped in the middle of it. It might be better to bring an AMS Sunderer or a gunship, but you won't know until you are in the same mess that the people who are calling for help are stuck with.

All you need is a /mute (player name) command. Someone spams garbage? Nobody will listen to them again. 'Boy who cried wolf' and all that. All it takes is for someone else to broadcast "Just type /mute leetDUDE69 to shut this guy up", and everyone can effectively ban the person locally. It wouldn't hurt to put a cooldown on using that kind of broadcast either, so that a player can only use it once every 5 or 10 minutes.

[ORDERS] chat I've seen has been spam mostly, glad it has a cooldown.

The Attack and Defend command icons on the map are a good idea, maybe there's a way to make them more noticable, a little unobstructive prompt to suggest movement to X location.

I don't specifically remember CR5 chat being ridiculous when the game was at its hayday! I do think it degraded later on when all the @55hats showed up

I'm frankly surprised there isn't a faction wide communication channel. I'm equally surprised there isn't a continent wide channel. This needs to be in the game like a week ago. Right now the only way to talk to everybody on our side is by yelling, and the enemies hear yells. And even region chat isn't working anymore.

I don't think /yell reaches everyone on a continent. It certainly doesn't seem like it. If anything, /yell looks more like a public /region.

IT exists.

It's an option in the leadership cert.

It allows squad leaders to talk too all faction squad leadres, to post orders for the whole empire on that continent.

It's not particularly busy as yet, but it will be soon.

That might work, IF there was a squad leader in every territory, AND everyone on the continent was in a squad. It would still be far slower than what we need, however, because passing information up the chain of command and waiting for orders to come back down takes time that people may not have.

Besides, it strikes me as fundamentally foolish to require people to spend cert points in an obscure skill set in order for them to be able to communicate with the other players on their team. I can see how a dedicated command channel would be very useful for COMMANDERS, so that regular messages aren't scrolling important things off the screen, but regular people still need to be able to quickly alert the faction to their situation.

This isn't BF3.

500 people on the same chat channel is not a recepie for good communication.

I wouldn't know, I've never played BF3.

What I do know is that it's most important to have that kind of communication where there IS no one person taking charge of the situation. If there's only 4 squads on the continent and not even a platoon leader, the only way a faction has any chance of competing with anything more than one squad of hostiles is to communicate, from one person to another.

Besides, I've already given a way to make it less spamable, have a 5-10 minute cooldown between shouts on the continent channel, and a /mute function for idiots.

What we have now is grossly insufficient, and apocalyptic predictions of channel flooding won't change that fact.

Communications are really lacking.
For example just now I found out that a base is getting stealth capped by a squad (ergo too much for me to take on alone). How can I tell my team that reinforcements are needed? Going back to the warpgate and yelling there?

And 500 people running around like headless chicken not knowing what to do is recipe for something good? People already use /yell, the problem with yell is that other factions can hear you. All we need is a yell that is faction only, it's not that hard, and people should not be opposing this. There really is no communication and when we want to talk to our own faction about something, right now we have to tell everybody else. Like at Tech Plant I had to yell for everybody to hop into my sunderer for a shield buster, yeah great plan now that everybody knows what we're gonna be doing in the next few minutes.

There's no excuse to not have a faction wide channel. I'll compromise by having a continent faction channel so people on one continent wouldn't have to hear people on the other continent.

Realistically, there needs to be a method of creating additional chat channels, and having default ones that are available for all. For example:

(below is faction specific)
AmerishGlobalCommand: (you can only talk if you are a higher level CR - all others can listen)
AmerishArmor:
AmerishInfantry:
AmerishMedics:
etc...

You could join or unjoin them whenever or if you wanted.

Something needs to be configureable... Just a thought!