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cTk_Instinct
09-19-2006, 03:24 PM
My promised squad control tutorial.



Allright most important thing is that you get rid off your playing as a lonely soldier.
The game plays not very well if you try start robbing around with one guy and let all others stand behind a wall for using them when your one man died.


Basics,

if you want to have the most control of your soldiers, do following:

Give them the order not to move free and set your squad commander. Squad Commander should be a soldier which isn't very useful, a smgunner for example. Never choose a Sniper, mgunner or bazooker.

If you selected not to move free, your soldiers will go on walking around and searching for cover if you don't place
them covered. Once they are in cover, most won't follow your commander, but it's not a good way to move him. If you want to regroup your squad, press on move free and let them get to good cover and press hold position again. You can click hold position already when every soldiers is leaving position, heading for new cover.

If you just want to make your squadcommander move, place everyone behind a cover, doubleclick on a soldier which should hold cover, click on your ex-commander and move him to new position, when he's there doubleclick him again.

If you just want to get control of just a single soldier, click once on him and everything is fine. All others will keep in cover.

Fast selection. If you are searching for your squad, doubleclick on the squad picture on your left. Singleclick if you want to select the squad, it makes it easier to get all soldiers when they are spread over the map.


Dismissing squad and controlling every soldier isn't a good idea, the game is not designed for that and it will make you fuzzy, so just use this feature if you want to create new squads or if your squad contains only 2 soldiers. Also they won't share ammo.



improved controls,

your squad is not always very well protected when sitting at one place. So click on squad members in not to move mode and get them to near cover, so they can backup the rest of the squad from other directions.

If your enemys are close use your mgunner in direct control or try throwing grenades. Often your men get hit when throwing grenades or even killed. So take a soldier which is next to the squad let him fire at the enemys position and get another soldier from another side and frag them out. AI doesn't like to get attacked from multiple sides.

Sometimes its not bad at all attacking just with one men, but keep your others in well position to back him up when he gets overrun by many enemys, which happens quite often http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

If you get attacked by armored cars let your men hold position and get your bazooka out of this position. The armored vehicle will just fire at your squad or your at-guy. If the armored car trys to kill your bazooker get him to cover and try to snipe the vehicle with the rest of your squad, or even get another guy and get him to a 3rd direction and blow it up with at grenades.

If you have to retreat, for example from an enemy tank, click on the free move button, click on a cover out of reach of the tank, click soon again on hold position and get hands over you bazooker which should run in another direction.


I hope I could help some guys, even with my english, as I'm not a native speaker.

Personally I don't have many problems with playing this way. When I have some, than because I made mistakes on my own http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif



Update#1:

Creating new Squads

You can create squads when click on dismand squad (dismand symbol on your right bottom) and select them via boxselect. Those soldiers you selected will form up a new squad, double click for setting squad commander.
If you forgot a man, don't dismand your squad again, but press shift and left mouse button on the soldier you want to add. Now he joined the squad, if you won't to leave him the squad press shift and left mouse button again.

Melting squads. On your left you can see images which display your squads. Select a squad you would like to assign to another by pressing the left mouse button, than hold shift and click on the other squad. Both squads will melt to one squad after this step.
You can easily assign a tank to a squad(visversa) this way.


Advantages of your squad.

Your squad will share stuff when you are taking enemys inventory. You can hear it when your soldier say something like "I need ammo" "I need a grenate"
So if you are in a squad, your men will share their ammo and grenades. Awares you from picking up everything with different soldiers.


Update#2:

If you want to have full control over your soldiers and want to play it in Soldiers way, (which is not recommended) you can set your men to not fire and not free move, so they will just do what you say them to do.



Squad on not to move, just let them get away from their position if a grenade hits or a tank is driving over it http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
This only works if they are in cover, otherwise they will search for one:
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/9629/1nn8.jpg


Squad Commander got to new cover without moving any other squad members. Doubleclick on a soldier which covers and move your squadleader, when hes in position double click him again.
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/2554/2nk3.jpg


Questions are welcome!

traemyn1
09-19-2006, 05:19 PM
Originally posted by cTk_Instinct:
If you selected not to move free, your soldiers will go on walking around and searching for cover if you don't place
them covered. Once they are in cover, they won't follow your squad commander anymore.


wrong, not sure how you are getting them to actually "Hold position", but I just tried exactly what you said and no matter what a couple of them run with the commander when you try move him. Even if they are all behind cover and even if I have clicked "Hold Position" button beforehand. This was in a MP 5-man rifle squad btw.



If you just want to make your squadcommander move, place everyone behind a cover, doubleclick on a soldier which should hold cover, click on your ex-commander and move him to new position, when he's there doubleclick him again.

I actually didnt know about this and it can be sorta handy. My question is tho, is this really needed? Do you really want to switch commanders that often just to move the ex-commander? Whats the point? Why dont they make it so you shouldn't have to change commanders just to move the commander? Not to turn this into a bash-the-squad-thread but I seriously thought you were making a funny anti-squad thread before I read the whole thing.

Otherwise good job, nice tutorial.

InfluentalLer6
09-19-2006, 05:27 PM
Nice post Instinct, I think the way to solve this whole squad thing is. That you can click the squad commander once and it will select only him, if you double click then it selects the whole squad. So now you can just move the commander but still use him to select the whole squad. Anyone else think this is a good idea?

traemyn1
09-19-2006, 05:52 PM
Originally posted by InfluentalLer6:
Nice post Instinct, I think the way to solve this whole squad thing is. That you can click the squad commander once and it will select only him, if you double click then it selects the whole squad. So now you can just move the commander but still use him to select the whole squad. Anyone else think this is a good idea?

YES
But then the "Hold Position" button really needs to work right or else squad will just follow.

B1gGuN
09-19-2006, 06:36 PM
Nice post. Should be made a sticky and you can update it every now and then. Good work!

cTk_Instinct
09-20-2006, 12:35 AM
Ok, i didn't wrote this clear, your squad at all won't follow your commander (It will happen that some run after him). If you just want use your commander, do it with changing your commander.

trojan_pony
09-20-2006, 03:52 AM
So really what you're saying is that the squad system is no better than drag selecting and actually worse at times.

Prattboy9394
09-20-2006, 04:59 AM
Its a great writeup but i think it clearly exposes the flaw of the squad select system: much too complicated than it needs to be and quite non-intuitive.

Sure after lots of practice it can become habit, but so would signing one's name lefthanded if you're a righty. why do it? I must agree, the old drag and select is just more natural.

pignouf2006
09-20-2006, 05:37 AM
Anyway this system is actually buggy. It happens to me several times that some of the soldiers selected don't move at all when I clik on the ground. I must "dismiss" the commander (to have only green triangle under their feet) to make them move.
Sometimes I can't even select some soldiers with a box-selection ! For exemple I box-select five soldiers and only three are selected. I can't select the two others in squad for the entire duration of the map. Pitiful squad-system...
Anyway, even when you are free of bug for a while, the AI of your soldiers is so stupid that the only reason your squad survive is because your soldiers have demi-god health...
Very disappointing compared with Soldiers : HotWW2, in my opinion.

Luckylewis
09-20-2006, 08:28 AM
i think thats a pretty nice tutorial, nice work. nice to see you doing something the community

akisdim
09-20-2006, 10:48 AM
Thanks for the effort but basically what its explained in this post is how to bypass this ******ed squad system and not actually how to use it. I am trying what you said though but doesnt work for me at least not until now.

dbircsak
09-20-2006, 01:51 PM
Originally posted by pignouf2006:
...
Sometimes I can't even select some soldiers with a box-selection ! For exemple I box-select five soldiers and only three are selected. I can't select the two others in squad for the entire duration of the map. Pitiful squad-system...
Anyway, even when you are free of bug for a while, the AI of your soldiers is so stupid that the only reason your squad survive is because your soldiers have demi-god health...
...

Try SHIFT DRAG/DROP... if you just DRAG/DROP then it will select the first squad it finds. With SHIFT you pick everyone in the box and make them a new squad.

Sounds like you are playing in Arcade mode where everyone has super health. You're right, they probably put that in to make up for AI standing in open & not seeking cover.

There's a wierd thing with the game where your squad won't follow the commander if they are in a "cover" position unless the commander gets really far away from them. It's confusing. Double-click in Soldiers was used to tell soldiers to run. They should use it now to tell your whole squad to move there, even if they are in cover.

Thanks for the tutorial, cTk_Instinct. You should mention that when a squad commander picks up stuff off of bodies that it will distribute automatically to other squad members. (I didn't know this for the longest time.)

Doolittle

cTk_Instinct
09-20-2006, 02:05 PM
I'll add those stuff you mentioned.

No I play in tactical and those mission I took pics from, was played in Tactical 2 times by me. And in 2nd time it didn't use any saving or loading and finished it up without problems.

cTk_Instinct
09-26-2006, 02:50 AM
update...

cTk_Instinct
10-29-2006, 04:33 AM
update once more...