[suggestion] low population test server

You didn't answer my second question however, what happens when people don't follow their Orders?

Your attempts to establish a Meritocracy may seem logical to you, but they're naive at best...
I joined the Second Life Military scene around the same time you joined the Original Planetside, and I've seen plenty what kind of **** goes down when you introduce Military Rank into an FPS MMO.
Forgetting for a second the massive amounts of Drama, your system has one major flaw right off the bat...

...Do you know which levels of leadership have the most turnover?
It's your low to mid-level ones...
You need a constant influx of new people willing to lead your squads, platoons, and "Companies" as you put it, because the people who originally sign up for those positions get sick and ******* tired of all the extra work they have to do.

And even then, your idea specifies Command Rank 3 as "Large Outfit Leaders"...
I don't know about your Outfit, but mines Leaders are barely EVER on, and honestly some of them have shown themselves to be better administrators then Strategic thinkers.

Plus this creates a rather easily exploited voting mechanic...

I play on Waterson, which is also home to the DVS...
They until recently had something like 2000 members, and even after an apparent culling still have over 1000.
What's to stop their members from forcibly voting in their leaders every single time, when they can easily take up the entirety of the NC's population?

Also, your given maximum Command Rank experience total of 40,000 should only take 40 hours to obtain, and there are some players who average 7 or 8 hours of playtime a day...

...Hell, it would take longer for a Free-to-Play player to gain the Passive Certification Points need to get into the Command Channel.

Let me answer it then, When people don't follow the commander's orders...you ready for it? then the game is EXACTLY how it is now. Everybody doing their own thing. Hmmm...like an entire faction sitting at the crown while their territories are being conquered by another zerg. Are you ok with this? sure the lattice system should "eliminate" this, but it still leaves the game lacking one thing, a unified strategy.

I think you misunderstood the point of my idea. Its not to designate any one player or group of players as the authority in the game. All my idea does is create the tools and structure to facilitate a chain of command for a given time period. The command rank system is not an authority system, but rather a credential system. In my idea, a CR5 can still be a squad leader if he/she wants to. Or they can not lead AT ALL and just run around and shoot stuff, that's FINE. All the CR5 means is that they have a TON of time being a squad/platoon leader, and the CR5 shows.This is the person you would want to choose over a CR3 who are both applying to be the commander for the entire faction. Why choose the guy with less time in a leadership role? Also, this game is a community. If a player SUCKS at leading, then eventually he/she won't be voted in anymore. Its not rocket science, and my system is designed to adjust itself. Have you ever played with a platoon where the guy in charge really kept everything together and had a great time playing?

One story of my experience, a platoon leader was logging off and offered leadership to anyone who wanted it...nobody spoke up, so I said sure I'll take it. I was the Alpha squad leader, and became platoon leader. This is when NC had the north indar WG and VS had the southeast WG. Delta leader wanted to attack attack attack, but we were losing MAO, i told everyone to setup a defense at Howling pass, at first they didn't want to, but we ended up rallying together and defending howling for well over an hour. Nothing they did could take the base. Everyone was going crazy how my judgement call really paid off and how much fun it was holding out like that.

The title of CR3 is irrelevant. I simply tried to structure it, obviously its not 100% perfect, and would need tweaking by the developers. And about the voting, if your outfit compromises half of your faction, then HALF YOUR FACTION IS ALREADY LISTENING TO THAT OUTFIT LEADER anyway. The only difference, is that in my system, that leader will have access to map objectives an icons to place on the map, THAT'S IT.

The 40,000 xp is just a reference. It was to paint the picture.

Your missing the point entirely. My system does not make one person the all knowing mighty powerful of the faction. All it does is add an upper chain of command STRUCTURE to facilitate LARGER THAN PLATOON sized battles. You know, when you look on the map and see multiple platoons in dark red? so you have a couple different platoon leaders working together, or at least attacking/defending the same base. Meanwhile, the other side of the map is being completely wiped out, because the bulk of the faction is in the same location. A commander, with an overall view of the map, would notice this and make a strategic call to either continue the offense, or pull a platoon/squad back to re-secure the flanks. Also, i threw in ideas of command level assets that can be used. The DEVs are talking about orbital strikes. Who should be allowed to use those???? anyone who certs into it? are you kidding! that means any player with enough time can call down the God cannon and waste entire platoons single handed.

Right now you have a 100cert command chat channel, and a 200 cert "request reinforcements". So for 300 certs one now has the power to direct the flow of battle. So for 200 certs i can place an attack icon on Zurvan, or a defend icon on Mao and all the non-affiliated players and anyone else who sees the icon may decide HMMM there's an attack icon, maybe i should go there. That could be a 12 year old kid who placed that for all you know, but you DON'T know because ANYONE can buy that ability. That is completely ridiculous!!! Are you content with this the way it is?

Based off of Battlefield 2, the commander would have a list of the squads "under him/her". The commander could then order squad A to attack flag E. Squad A leader could then either "accept order" or "deny order". Accepting the order placed the objective on the squads minimap/HUD. The squad members then received an objective bonus for executing actions WITHIN that objective. The commander also had access to UAV/Artillery/supply drop/vehicle drop/ and SAT scan to assist the squad in completing the objective. OR the squad leader can "deny order" and do whatever they wanted. Maybe they wanted to run around in jeeps and goof off, that's fine and they have every right to do so in a video game environment. But what did that mean for the commander/squad relationship??? well the squad would NOT receive the XP bonus, and the commander would probably not be very inclined to give them UAV/Artiller/supply support when they ask for it.

My system ENCOURAGES team play but does not REQUIRE it. Right now you have a ton of players under 3 factions fighting each other. There really is no sense of direction for the majority, unless you are under some structured outfit. That outfit may or may not be communicating with the rest of the faction, and executing their own agenda. All my idea does is promotes a unified factional strategy, and also creates a system were attack/defend icons are controlled by a designated commander that is voted in for a period of time. THAT'S IT. To say my idea is naive is rather silly, because the current command system is an absolute JOKE.

I think you are afraid that some other gamer is going to tell you to attack Zurvan, and you may want to go to Tarwich....then GO TO TARWICH and enjoy a +0% XP bonus vs a +XX% bonus for following the order....SIMPLE, REASONABLE, POSSIBLE!

Ok, so what are you going to do to keep people forming squads when they are going to be constantly spammed with Order Pop-ups?

The Leader Voice and Text Chats can be enough of a headache to deal with right now, but you want to layer a bunch of Request Boxes on top of them?

Furthermore, I always envisioned the Mission System having a much more streamlined process that does pretty much the same thing; Someone puts down a "Need X here" marker on the map, and anyone doing "X" gets bonus Experience.

Honestly man, before we go futzing around with an automated Election system, maybe we should try for higher levels of ad-havoc organization or simply even better utilities for the levels we have first?
Say the requirement to use Orbital Strike is that you need to be leading a Platoon, like how you need to be leading a Squad to use a Squad Beacon.
Hell, even just more options for directing a Platoon then a single additional Waypoint would increase their usefulness tremendously.

I have also thought that but then I rember counless time when leaders has not updated waypoints at all.

How about concentration and regrouping area and normal waypoint as objective marker? There are color-smokes yes but I have not seen many using them as tactically and minimap does not show them.

Is there any point marking platoon specific sunders and galaxies more obviously to minimap? When there is a lot of people you canot tell where each vechile are because minimap is overflowing markers.

Well to be fair, Waypoint management is one of the more tedious things about leading a Squad; one has to constantly be opening the map and I think their might be a slight cool-down on repositioning them.

It does make me wonder if Platoon Leaders couldn't just draw on their Platoon Member's maps, maybe even in separate colors that only show up for the corresponding Squad.

Smoke is honestly more of a Squad Leader tool; it only really ever shows up when your already in the Territory in question and, while visible to your entire Faction they don't actually convey any real information other then "Something Important is Here!"

They are however useful if you need to micromanage your Squad, since being able to split a twelve man unit into two or three man teams can be a real force-multiplier and you can't always rely on in-game voice comms.

Well the Mini-map zoom function now helps a little in this regard; zooming-in by pressing the "[" key will spread everything out and give you a better idea of where it is in relation to you.

But yeah, Vehicle Markers can get convoluted, especially when you get Squad members riding in non-Squad Driven Vehicles...