CO Rebecca 'Whiskey' Lee wants your advise

[DankAnimemes]

So I was recently added to the CO whitelist. I have played several games as CO, I even got a few wins (mostly thanks to excellent command staff helping me), but I want advise on how to improve. Just so you know my character is Rebecca 'Whiskey' Lee so if you have played with me as CO, and have advise specific to me that would be excellent. I would however also like tips that are useful for COs in general. I look forward to serving as your commander more in the future, hopefully improved by any advise you give me.

[Frans_Feiffer]

I haven't directly played as XO for you yet, but I have been a marine under your command, and have had a few suggestions in mind. I believe you are not too shabby, however if I had to criticize, I'd say work on making Briefings more interesting, for one. Make a story up if ya need to, but just come up with something to add a little more personality to your Operations. It really helps give your marines a sense of what your character is like, as well let them know what they're getting into. I believe the same thing could be said for your Announcements. Could just be me being picky though, hah. But other then that, I'd say you show signs of good leadership, it could just use a little refinement, which luckily enough, playing the role will do that naturally. Good luck and looking forward to playing more rounds with ya!

[RunAwayScientist]

I really need to open a separate thread about this.


I was SO under you during one round, so I do have some things for you:


Tactical:

- Have an initial strategy for the map
- Increase Command Announcements frequency
- Increase Squad Radio presence
- Have a plan for where you want marines to group up on Alamayer when Alamo crashes into it
- Delegate SO orders via Command-Net (:h), who then delegate to squads
- Be clear and concise on simple orders. Commit to them. Changing orders often leads to Charlie squad mutinies. (real story)
* Use the Command Announcements to issue general orders after informing SOs.
- Get req to continually issue metal and claymores to FoB
- Stay on top of req or delegate to XO


RP:

- Give Lee a flavor. Heinz is hilariously German. Carson is a double-crossing coward. Tex is Texan.
- Have a random creative 'event' thought up. Annual basketball games between Charlie/Delta, pizza day at kitchen, Wey-Yu wants their research retrieved, or Heinz's idea where he had req charge space dollars for attachments (brilliant).


That's all I got for you.

[Lorem123]

So I was recently added to the CO whitelist. I have played several games as CO, I even got a few wins (mostly thanks to excellent command staff helping me), but I want advise on how to improve. Just so you know my character is Rebecca 'Whiskey' Lee so if you have played with me as CO, and have advise specific to me that would be excellent. I would however also like tips that are useful for COs in general. I look forward to serving as your commander more in the future, hopefully improved by any advise you give me.

I've played under you as an SO and a RO for two rounds. Biggest issue I see you have is that you don't communicate as often as you should as CO, which makes it difficult to give orders to the marines that I have to manage. I had to ask you for orders so many times as SO that I just gave up after a while and started telling Delta what to do on my own.
Communication is basically the only thing that command staff can actually do, so try to be more active with it and stay on top of things. Otherwise you're going to get the LTs upset which will make the marines upset and then you'll either lose the round and nobody has fun, or you're going to get a mutiny on your hands.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

Well, we did just get out of a round where you were commander, we lost pretty badly from alot of factors.There was everyones "favorite" german commander saying in dchat near the end of that round that unless your a commander, you have no idea or experience on what your talking about and shouldnt be listened to, even if its sound advice im assuming.Ill let that clown continue to think thats correct by any measure by not giving any advice, because im not a whitelisted circle jerked commander.

Even though SO/XO's basically do the exact same job with some slight differences and the experience is interchangeable also, so how and why a current command role player would even say something like that is complete non-sense.Listen to him anyways, apparently hes meant to be a good commander like that other clown carson...

[I_Solve_Practical_Problems]

Rebecca, I've spectated and played a few of your rounds. In general, I think you're doing good although I've got a couple of pointers. My first would be to stay in constant communication, and even more importantly, make your communication important. Of course, the inverse is true and micromanaging can be equally as bad so it's really a balance. On a second note, people were giving you shit for surrendering to the mutineers for that prior round. While I think that's mildly questionable, it's refreshing to see a CO that genuinely will negotiate with mutineers on a character level. Finally, and most importantly, you gotta ignore the dchat salt mine and its Monday morning quarterbacks. When you're in the CIC, you are fed a very limited scope of information from your unreliable SOs and SLs. You won't know where the xenos are, what they're doing, or how many they got unless that intel has been fed up the chain of command, assuming it even gets to you intact and factually correct. Meanwhile, dchat has a perfect view of the battlefield, so you'll have people criticizing you or calling for dewhitelisting at every turn because you don't have the data they do. Yeah you'll fuck up, we all fuck up, but we just have to take it in stride and learn from it. People expect every new CO to be as good as the guys who have been playing for years, but Carson didn't come out of the metaphorical womb running to escape pods or blowing out the brains of his hapless lieutenants.

Well, we did just get out of a round where you were commander, we lost pretty badly from alot of factors.There was everyones "favorite" german commander saying in dchat near the end of that round that unless your a commander, you have no idea or experience on what your talking about and shouldnt be listened to, even if its sound advice im assuming.Ill let that clown continue to think thats correct by any measure by not giving any advice, because im not a whitelisted circle jerked commander.

Even though SO/XO's basically do the exact same job with some slight differences and the experience is interchangeable also, so how and why a current command role player would even say something like that is complete non-sense.Listen to him anyways, apparently hes meant to be a good commander like that other clown carson...

Generally, what was being said was that it's unfair to armchair command from dchat. There are some things that aCOs do that are objectively bad, such as OB FF, being quiet, or unwarranted BEs but a lot of things people criticize COs for are either petty minor issues, intel blocked by the fog of war, or intentional actions that fit into the character's RP. Being the CO is a very high stress role because it's the keystone for the marines and you won't know the path a man walks until you hike a mile in his shoes. A good CO has to roleplay a character, strategize, adapt to the developing situation, stay mindful of the OOC rules on metarushing, and most importantly make the round fun for marines. That's a lot of responsibility which is why it's a whitelisted role. But at the same time, people need to be mindful of the stress that they're operating under. I'm not saying you can't criticize them but I am saying you have to put that criticism into context.

[Royal Griffon]

ah good job on getting it I got denied but hey I have a lot of tactics and unlike some peeps I actually have read some of Sun Tzu's The Art of War :P
and I know how to do good tactics and have pulled off wins as a SO for marines some rounds so

good tactics aren't to suicide charge unless you know it's right
and don't do stupid meme shit like Balto who doesn't even command during the match and is only concerned with fucking around and shitting and if he makes a single command it's a suicide charge that usually ends with a marine loss, so don't do a Balto and only meme or focus on trying to urge a mutiny (which should be banned for CO's to do I mean he ALWAYS does it and doesn't want anything else to happen that round besides a mutiny which a CO should NEVER do EVER)
Next try to conserve your numbers I mean that's just how I do things, I don't do suicide charges and I'm very VERY conservative, and I rely heavily on overwhelming firepower and setting up crossfires for example to hit the bugs hard

[Vispain]

Flank when stuck
Commit to it or don't even try.
Fallback the men before you are at the point where it is just a couple medics and a dozen wounded.
Monitor the situation with sit reps and manually checking OWs occasionally.

Be proactively engaged. Just because marines are at a chokepoint doesn't mean you should just let them brute force through. Look for alternative ways. If you think the casualties will pay off with enemy deaths and ground taken, go for it. If you think it'll go nowhere there is no reason at all to continue dying over a position you don't believe you can take. Instead, try flanking or softening up the enemy with things like : the tank, mortar, OB, CAS.

If you are going to lead you need to be decisive. No wishy washy shit. It will just confuse people.
If you don't pay attention to sitreps and/or manually check what's happening calls will be wrong and people die. For example, ordering an assault on the enemy when only a couple marines are still up and able to assault a superior force.

[DriedMilk]

Man up.

You're the Commander, not the XO.

Don't let yourself get shit on by someone and if it does happen, dispose of them either via MPs or the swift application of .454 Casull.

If the MPs attempt to shit on you, they need approval via fax.

[Rohesie]

Play XO. Learn from the COs you serve under.

Play SO. Play SL. Play engineer. Play medic. That way you'll have a general notion of what your fellow CIC staff and the groundside troops need. Specially SL and engineer here.

[Bancrose]

Well for one lets just point in the obvious.

CO is a HRP Role and sometimes you get caught up in the small shit.

But never forget that the sole responsibility is to the Op. You have a duty to the men you lead.

Like everyone else, Stay on Comms, Delegate, Make sure you checking in with squads. You gotta be willing to adapt as the round progresses.