Is the Commanding Officer application worth it for me? (Question)

General Discussion
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This is not a commentary about the commanding officer whitelist as a whole, this is just a question on whether I should pursue the commanding officer whitelist

I should also clarify I do not plan to apply for CO anytime soon. I need more hours on SL and XO.

My hours so far are below.

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(yes, I really like crusher)

So I have CM13 brainrot. I have no idea how long it will keep lingering, the doctor is giving me mixed results.

But, I have been asking myself recently. Should I apply for a CO whitelist in the future? I’m not gonna keep on playing this game forever, I will move on, but still.

I recently started playing XO and I really liked it! Intel points, calling marines about OBs, giving announcements, and micromanaging a bunch of other stuff is fun! Though it is definitely more of a challenging role then staff officer. You’re the leading face of the operation. You have to ACT like a leader, and to be someone whom can be trusted and admired.

And well, I like helping marines. I’ve always liked helping people and guiding people, even if I’ve done it in some flawed ways. When you see me as SO, you can really feel my energy when I’m warming people of a queen flank.

I look up to people like Joe Dafoe, Tank Moore, and Greg Lauffer, who are highly inspirational COs. The former two will deploy groundside and act as squad leaders on steroids, motivating marines to rip and tear. Greg Lauffer doesn’t play CO anymore, but his speeches are always very fun to see, and I always appreciate the amount of effort he always puts into them.

Some Downsides

When I… played a lot of SO, I got stubborn. Overly stubborn, in fact. I have went against the backs of COs before and purchased intel points or did OBs, leading to my arrest. Disobeying your superiors is not a CO-like behavior, and I acknowledge what I did was wrong there.

I can be stubborn at times, to a fault. Learning to compromise with marines groundside or others in CIC is an important aspect that I have to come to terms with more when playing CIC.

And well, I CAN get frustrated as XO. If I see marines failing to push and the hive getting 10 new caps? That crushes me, and I’m always evac-happy after something like ARES going from 16 xenos to 31 or something like queen screeching and getting 10 caps, or wiping the front. It’s hard to build in the motivation after disasters like that, I’m not sure how Dafoe and Moore do it so well.

And well sometimes I type so fast, I make a lot of grammatical errors. Oopsies.

Part of me wants to apply to CO, I think it would be a fun CM13 goal to work towards and CO is a very cool role. But I have to be realistic with myself and acknowledge my flaws when I play CIC.

What are your thoughts? Should I bother with applying for CO, or stay out of it? How can I be better in CIC? You can be as honest as you want.

(if you don’t know who I am, I am Beatrice ‘Bomber’ Bootes. You may have seen me as BEA when I play xeno as well)

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Not until you learn that OB’s have an authorization procedure when playing SO.

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I mean, there’s not really any reason not to apply for CO. By posting this thread you’re already showing enough interest in the WL to consider it.

It doesn’t really matter if your application succeeds or fails. The fact remains that anyone who WANTS to become a CO, WILL become a CO. Whether it takes 2 apps, 3 apps, 4 or 5- regardless, you will eventually obtain it.

What matters is this: You take all the feedback and criticism in each application and apply it. Improve yourself in command roles for 3 months so everyone can see, then reapply. Rinse and repeat until you get the WL.

Imo you ought to improve yourself in CIC beforehand, as ahem, you have murdered me on more than one occasion with unique OBs. Until you clear up that reputation a bit… yeah.

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IMO, grind more XO hours, I know you as a somewhat OK SO, but leading an op requires a different set of skills and qualities.

I know some people don’t think grinding is useful, but I think experience is very important. I’m not even talking about winning missions, but about feeling your character in such a role. Being able to communicate under pressure, etc. If you are gonna get overwhelmed by the amount of responsibilities, you gonna make the round quite unfun for everyone.

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having your would be CO nickname “Bomber” for gibbing marines would be kinda crazy, I also think you leaning into that nickname is in poor taste.

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bro you nuked FOB as SO :sob:

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I think you’re a positive influence on the community, have never seen you salt, and you genuinely seem to give a shit about command and enjoy the CIC gameplay loop in a refreshing way. I think with time and effort you’d really fit into the CO role.

That being said. While I am obviously not a councilor and cannot speak for them, from my perspective from within the role I think that you are not currently likely to be accepted and it’s likely that you’ll be under scrutiny for the habits you’ve mentioned above. I think it’s pretty shitty to nitpick over the public forums. If you want to get my thoughts on how to focus on working toward that goal, you’re welcome to message me over the discord.

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I never OB’d the FOB before, but I DID OB supply drop coords.

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I’m gonna give you a serious answer on this one, and quote Windhealer in the process because I love quoting Windhealer.

  1. a lot of prospecting commander players give up entirely on trying to lead marines or come up with plans. You often see the reason of “marines dont listen anyway, so why bother”. This leads to a whole class of CO players who are basically glorified CMP’s that don’t really put a direct hand in trying to command the round, more just acting reactively at best and announcing when the next OB is. I think this is largely because these players never put in the time required to build up a reputation as an interesting and fun leader with their own personality.

I would also suggest to players not to expect the entire squad to follow you when your SL, they never will. Instead of getting mad at the marines running off rambo or in their metasquads, you just take the guys that do stay with you and focus on them. As you get more experienced and more known your loyal warband will grow in size

there is a whole meta progression to command that is based entirely on your social skills and personality

there is no way to cheat this and ignoring it will lead to you being an ignored, and at best, completely forgettable CO

Don’t think about CO right now. You’ve only just started playing XO after a long time spent looking to Plat staff officer. staff officer is a hell of a lot of fun but its a completely different ballpark from XO.

Play squad leader. Play a LOT of squad leader. A lot of it. Get good at it. Build up your ‘warband’, find reliable players and prove to those players you have their backs. Call it what you want, but CO or not, people won’t follow what you’ve got to say till you can prove what you have to say has a decent chance of success.

Play XO, play a LOT of XO. Test what works, what doesn’t and avoid what doesn’t. Become confident. stop second guessing yourself. Play rifleman, go frag and most importantly play for the vibes. Go RP shipside if you’d like. Play a variety of roles and get to know the game.

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Yeah… should I change my nickname? I mean I like it, but I understand people gave me that due to… OBing marines.

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The only thing we do forever is breathe. IMO you should consider applying before your CM addiction wears off

This tbh

“Should I apply for WL” is a weird question to ask here - we’re just some internet chuds, why should our opinion matter? You want CO - you apply for CO, and let the Galactic Council judge you

It’s that simple, and the sooner you apply - the sooner you’ll get feedback from, you know, those that are actually responsible for the WL and can give useful, valid criticism on your performance

EDIT: Even if you don’t want to apply right now - you can still ask the council on discord

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Make a new character, try to flesh out a unique personality.

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this was a reply to svato plinks reply to your thread :slight_smile: !

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Everyone makes mistakes. You’re a more new-ish player to the community, it’s expected you’ll make a few more mistakes as you learn things.

However, every time I’ve seen people try to work with you in a CIC environment, you just seem to ignore them and do something your own way instead. This has happened multiple times between multiple people.

After the fact, you go on to apologize in LRC and moreover keep repeating the apology until it annoys the person you are trying to get your point across to. What happens next? You go on and dot he same exact thing you literally just apologized for (i.e. wordlessly sending OBs, and just spending tech points in the heat of the moment instead of cross-referencing with the rest of your staff). I’m not entirely sure what the deal is with this, but it needs to be fixed before you even consider a whitelist period. Roleplay accumulates to more than just talking, as some past councilors would have you think. It is about how well you maintain your character and how that character reacts to the environment around them. Yours feels like a self-insert. We all have them, it’s fun to be ourselves in a character, and I’m not saying you cannot self-insert traits into characters to help you play them more realistically. In itself this is fine if you’re just looking to play the game, have fun, and stay out of trouble, but you want to consider a whitelist role, which is where the problems begins.

If you really, really, really want to pursue this whitelist, I suggest just making a new character and building up relationships more than the buzz you’re getting from being in the public eye of XO, SO, etc. Play background characters, man. Play bravo, chill out and talk with people you’ve never talked to. If they don’t want to talk to you? Don’t bother them, find someone else who’s just looking to chat and have a good time. Surprise people, show people you actually are apologetic of the mistakes you’ve made and learned from rather than “WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO X?” or “I’M SORRY FOR Y AND Z,” yet still continue to do these things. Play squad lead, build closer relationships with your squaddies, talk to people more openly and calmly outside of the retrospect of you being an officer and the lessers below you being your pawns.

You are a long way from it, if I’m honest, but if you show dedication and put the work into showing your improvements little by little, people will take notice.

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Honestly just you having to ask the question tells me that you are not yet CO material.

Putting all the in-game bullshit aside, what you need as CO is a whole lot of integrity and stability.

You are at the top, everything you do affects every faucet down the line. If you got frustrated it will pass down on the people under you. If you lose your shit you cannot make the people under you feel secure.

What’s more is that kind of frustration leads to mistakes a lot of the time.

Playing CO means you can handle the stress and derive some enjoyment in dealing with that kind of stress or challenge in those situations.

My recommendation is, learn how to keep the cool when everything is going wrong, build resilience to stress, learn how to compromise and handle others to get them to do what they need to preferably by using as little force as possible, and learn to discuss and compromise conflicting ideas for the best solution.

Until you figure this out, i recommend you stay out of the whitelist because chances are it will be a dumpster fire if you lose your shit in-round as CO

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Ermm also the most important thing is to bee yourself :honeybee: :smiley: and just have fun because we’re all just a bunch of losers on the internet. if you really want it you will get it

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Recognising your faults is a good first step to addressing them. Do so first before applying for the whitelist.

Remember: Marines are known for grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory, and doing incredibly stupid things that end up with an evacuation. “Its only game…” Shit happens, and so long as you do your job as XO, you shouldn’t feel too frustrated with it not going your way. It is what it is.

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I watched a round where you SL’d to get an idea of how you play, where to improve, etc. I also think being an SL is far more impact than a staff officer or XO because you are directly there with marines, they look up to you first and foremost rather than command staff (barring some COs and depending on the context of their involvement)

To start with the good:
You were quite great at actively communicating with your squad, you managed to relay a lot of information to them. Along with that you made solid call outs with a few hiccups here and there (mistakes like that are normal, fog of war and all that).
You made attempts at trying to keep your squad cohesive deep into the round I observed, which at times can be futile but it’s better to try and keep a united squad as best you can than give up and focus on frags.

The only thing bad thing I saw was just the lack of independence, which is something you get overtime after playing for a while. You need to be able to confidently make your own decisions during an operation that benefits it. This just comes with game experiences so you’ll probably get the idea of it more in the future.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do, get CO or don’t. The most important part is to have fun and make it fun for those around you!

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Hi, i’ve been watching you since you started to play CM, fresh out of RMC. First sight i knew you would have a taste for Commanding Officer, and so here we are.

First of all, need to calm down when playing command roles, this is just a game, OB’ing the frontline, supply drops, FOB and et cetera happens to everyone, we learn from the mistakes and that’s what matters.

Everything i would be saying on this discussion was already pointed out by others, get a new character, fresh out for your liking, roleplay with your CIC, be proactive and hang around with people you like, make friends along the way and have fun.

Everything will come in it’s due time, there is no need to rush :slight_smile:

If you believe the CO whitelist is worth for you, take a shot at it with zero regrets once you feel you are ready.

I will be here to help you if anything, many others will as well.
Trust the process.

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