The Current State of CIC & CO

General Discussion
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Opinions on CIC and the way Command in general functions have been very mixed for a very long while. Some think it’s in an alright spot. Some would rather it be entirely removed from the game. Some are content to have nothing to do with it. Regardless, I don’t think the CIC is going anywhere anytime, but that doesn’t mean it’s not seeing some changes.

With the advent of A.S.S. & Announcement Garble (with other changes on the horizon), we’ve seen a lot of changes over the past little while. I’d like to think this is prompting some people to re-imagine the role CIC, and by extension Commanding Officers, should be playing in the game.

So, I am genuinely curious. What do you all think about the current state of CIC and what it entails?
Why does SL feel like an ineffectual role a lot of the time?
Why does SO feel like watching paint dry?
What’s the proper use of announcements?

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To begin, I think there is a great misunderstanding between players about what CIC is - and what it actually does. CIC does not win games, but rather controls the ebb and flow of Marines, allowing them the momentum and breathing room to win operations. The goal of CIC is to develop a plan of action that can easily be adapted. It is the SL’s and espically SO’s job, to give oversight and to make sure steps are being taken to follow through with the plan - not perfectly, but no one is going to complain about how a chair looks, only how sturdy it is.

Practically, though? - It’s a different story. SLs are simply markers to be followed. CIC is a callout bot, and could be replaced by ChatGPT half the time.
QUEEN HERE< QUEEN THERE < FALLBACK TO FOB. Repeat this till marines either win or lose. This is because currently, XOs and SLs are trying to be things they are not. and CO’s have to functionally babysit.

Because a Medic, and a riflemen with a radiopack has the same line to command through comms. So, there is no real difference between a SL existing or not; there is functionally no difference between having a SL and a aSL. A HM with a radiopack has the same power as a FTL, there is no real earness given to the SL as a 1. a role, and 2. as a rank. That makes them actually have power.

The only real way of fixing this? - SOs should only have access to one comms channel of squads they are OW’ing for, multiple, max of three. XO and CO? nothing. They should only have command comms. aSL’s should not get granted command comms. There needs to be a line of Rifleman - FTL - SL - Command, and vice versa, the opposite direction, that allows for communication, grey area’s the game of telephone, and so on.

Radiopacks need to be more limited in capacity, remove them from req. and remove marines ability fullstop to buy them. This includes the SL. The only role that it should have it is the RTO, this is giving it more importance, and the SL should have a clean way to contact command through comms, without a radiopack, and then if comms are down, he must rely on his squad, or john random, to communicate. Thus making both roles have importance.

Because they functionally are, the line is broken - why talk to an SO when you have a direct line to the XO? - making SO’s just callout bots worse than command announcements are currently. Make SOs important, and make not having one feel awful. SOs should be repeating what the XO has planned and calling out where the queen is, but they should also have more autonomy - refer back to the XO is the plan maker, SOs and SLs make sure the plan is done.

To give a plan of action, not to callout. But with our current systems even with squad announcements, squad orders and so on. NO one is going to fucking use them, because your communication line is broken, you have a direct 1:1 line with mairnes regardless of role, if you have comms up or someone knows how to decrypt. It’s stupid.

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I think CIC is in an okay spot, but their effectiveness has plummeted on lowpop especially due to total communication blackouts. No one ever fucking decrypts, so I can’t tell what CIC players are trying to tell me. At this point I don’t care, I’m doing my own thing. If people won’t decrypt, I’m not bending over backwards to figure out what they said; I’m ignoring them.
COs have been somewhat neutered but at least I can feel their presence. Personally, a deploying CO makes the round significantly more enjoyable as an enlisted marine, whereas a CO who stays shipside may as well not exist.

SLs only feel like an ineffectual role if the player is bald. SLs are the most important groundside role, and the ability to lead, rally and act autonomously is massive. A deployed CO is effectively a guaranteed competent SL. Just one guy who knows how to do their job, frag and lead is enough to avoid wipes and lead pushes to victory.
If you boil it down, the SL as a role simply transmits the gamesense and experience of a veteran player to their bald subordinates. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know they’re about to be wiped, or flanked, or that if they push now they win. It only matters that the SL knows, because they’re the ones who can get the baldies off their ass and act on said experience.
This obviously means that bald SLs end up contributing absolutely nothing besides a free cap.

SO suffers from a distinct lack of tools and QoL in CIC. You’re forced to multitask a lot of tabs, cameras and radio channels, and you’re going to be staring at the tacmap a lot. It sucks, and it’s 10 times worse than using xeno overwatch.

Announcements should be used to broadcast things you want EVERYONE to see, which mostly extends to platoon-wide orders like pushes and fallbacks, information on the Queen, objectives like sensors or comms, or general information like the availability of stims. Squad messages and squad comms are easier to miss. In reality, people end up using announcements for everything because frankly, there’s no reason not to. Why would you use something you need to spam to multiple squads when you can use one button?

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I think a big portion of the problem is 1) lack of structure, and 2) command’s tools and reaction time. Both of these problems are easy to point out, but hard to actually fix.

For structure: marines often go on their own, and do their own thing. They loosely follow the SL, who loosely follows command’s follow the red line. Who is covering the flanks/medics? Who is managing the frontline ammo supplies? Who is saying where and when to put up a cadeline? Who is helping to get injured back to base? Is intel screwed and who is to help em? Who is spearheading, and who is covering the spearhead? Who has a nade ready to stun the warrior on the spearhead? All of these little decisions in the round are often internally made, and it works good enough. Some random CT will have metal and do the front cade. Cargo asks for front coords and someone replies. Some marines see no ones watching south flank and so he looks that way. It is a peasant army that has a hard enough time just following SL. As SO I had to spam messages at a guy non stop to get them to stop shopping for groceries at weymart in hybrisa and help out the team. It is hard enough getting the blatent offenders to fall in line, let alone those who wander off just a bit too far.

For tools: command’s reaction time is terrible. CO finds through a pvt’s cam that queen is south, flanking, and has to take the time to get out the tablet, start a message, type it out “QUEEN IS SOUTH OF THE MAIN PUSH FLANKING, EVERYONE GO THERE!”. That’s not good in a game where the tide can turn any second. Compare it to a game like natural selection. Commander in that game sees a big xeno (he has top down view like a ghost would), he can instantly select all marines and right click on the xeno so every marine knows it is there and to attack it. 30 sec reaction time vs half a sec. Combined with the fact that command is disorienting: you want a clear vision of something? jump between all the cameras of players. Oh the one you want is some private? jump between all privates to find the correct camera. You want to see where xenos are attacking the frontline? Cams are you only option so keep shuffing through them. Hell, half the time I didnt even know if a dead marine was behind enemy lines or just in no man’s land. And even if I did know, trying to get attention to one marine like the scout and say “go east. Yea keep going til the building. Now go south, he should be around 10 meters from you” Why is there no easy way to point the way?

For the first problem I got nothing. It is not easy building proper structure amongst marines in an hour long match. It is easier to point out problems than to fix em. For the commander’s problem, I would just try different tools. Why not be able to have a ghost like vision within proximity of the marines, and the ability to select and make waypoints to those you have selected?

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SO is useless, its the nurse of CIC, exists solely to learn stuff. XO and CO are redundant.

SL is… well, its complicated. Its like herding cats. And ontop of that, if you herd cats without directly consulting the XO, theres a 50% chance you will be arrested for insubordination. SL basically needs to give their own brief to their squad if they want them to auctually do something that isnt ungaball.

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I wrote a long ramble but realized it made no sense but in short my idea is:

Move CiC to FOB and see what happens.

When comms go down, they do not go fully down(like pve radio scramble) to ground forces but to shipside it goes fully down.

And you cannot call with radiopack straight to ship so if you wanna OB while comms are down you call the command guys at the FOB and they relay the coords to the ship with some fancy radiostuff that is in their command tent

Good for lowpop? no
Soul? maybe
Something different? yes

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alot of…interesting opinions here, i dont think making communication harder, worse and more limited (RTO Bags) will at all do anything but make people give less of a shit about what CIC is saying, this whole attempt to revive RTO’s is so asinine, it’s a repeat of CM’s history and fails to appreciate the fact that people DO NOT stick together and the SL shouldnt be crippled for vein appeals to ‘wouldnt it be cool if’, ‘ this would make them important ‘ when in reality youre now making the lynchpin of the operation a role that sometimes never gets filled.

when I need to call an OB the last fucking thing I want is to go around BEGGING people to find the 1 guy who has a bag and to beg him to call the CIC (the situation changing rapidly in the background and the urgency of the situation failing to be met) IF the guy isnt captured or dead or wandering off doing some thing on his own; if I didnt have an RTO bag I would not play SL because being able to instantly call CIC while on the move and tell them something EXTREMELY important or ask them for clarification instantly is CRITICAL to the round, i think this RTO thing is an appeal to magical, non practical larp that has no realistic understanding or appreciation for the actual gameplay loop.

as said, the biggest issue is it is herding cats; xenos have a lot of great tools that work as stop gaps for what is the rather clunky visual environment to let them coordinate and cooperate; they have resin markers and trackers for them and can observe each other at any time and know when any of them die or their traps go off; alot is working for them to allow them to be that ‘hivemind’‘ aswell as the STRICT ability of the queen to BANISH and make HOSTILE anyone who doesnt listen.

for as long as things have been running, the general philosophy has always been along the lines of ‘ marines success is based on their ability to overcome the deficiencies of their team ‘ be that the failings of those incharge or the shitty situation on the ground/ship and many conversations have been had about giving marines more tools to coordinate but many times its been shut down as not wanting to parallel xenos.

SO’s are sometimes more useful then the XO/CO, Ive had a few rounds as SO where the XO/CO are so engaged in RP or are failing to engage as leaders and instead are being petty, condescending or insulting when failure is happening that Ive had to overtake their inability,…xo announces “ youre all being stupid and going the wrong way….sigh…. “ and im screaming “ MARINES, MOVE EAST; YOU NEED TO GO EAST NOW! DO NOT LET MARINES DIE FOR NOTHING “ im calling every idiot with an RTO bag, Im spamming squad orders im USING MY TOOLS to make myself heard in SPITE of the struggle…because thats what leadership is .. persistence.

when I have an SO who PAYS ATTENTION to wounded and dead or helping me get somewhere important I feel SO MUCH more CONFIDENT in the operation, knowing that someone is up there looking out not just for me but also my specs, sgs and even riflemen…I see “ MARINES DOWN NE FROM SL, 40 OUT “ I fucking lock in and DIAL in on that shit, it is POWERFUL and when I need something sorted its great having someone uptop pushing with interest for your and your squads agency…quick frontline resupplies or help getting directions,…I have a list of SO’s who make an OP for me and a list of those who break it.

ive been doing organized group engagements online for almost 19 years, I used to run and manage a…community, of 20,000 people, I have my own private community, done private ops on arma for the nearly 2 decades and do my own exclusive shenanigan’s on a billion games from Foxhole, BF2:PR, Bannerlord PE etc etc

the most revealing contrast is INTENT…many people who play 85% of roles, their intent is to do something they enjoy and to focus on it; that is what makes the game fun on some level is you can spawn in as a rifleman take two revolvers and go be a goofy tryhard with your silly loadout, die and move on; it’s the difference between a PUBLIC vs PRIVATE community; everyone here isnt exclusively motivated by military simulation or the intent to be the best role ever;

I ALWAYS,…ALWAYS listen to CIC unless it’s an illegal order or BLATANTLY and DOWNRIGHT suicidal with no chances what so ever…even then I still attempt to get the spirit of their orders followed, I have died many times following orders to a T; and thats what it comes down to, many people dont want to listen and you cannot code in or out anything to change that; the closest we’ve gotten to solving this issue is the aux squads because there is stricter enforcement regarding the use of those roles; if anyone remembers they put out a warning a year or so ago saying that FTL’s, SGs, Specs etc are now MANDATED to follow SL’s or face trouble…that faded quick.

i’ve said to thwomper, if aux kits come through then I think that alpha/delta SL’s should be given mini-command tablets exclusively for their squad, Ive also jokingly suggested that if a marine is marked as insubordinate their guns should stop working lmfao; because youre not going to just gain magical compliance, cohesion and coordination out of 200 random people on a whim without having ‘horse blinders’ or a means to pinhole people into that mutual cooperation, I do not like when people talk about mechanical aspects like “ BUFF WHEN CLOSE DEBUFF WHEN FAR “ or “ REMOVE THIS AND ONLY GIVE IT TO X “ it fails to account for the real reasons these issues happen.

a completely random volunteer force of untrained people will preform exactly as they sound; Ive wanted to also make a post suggesting a ‘ thunderdome ‘ for SEAs called ‘ the academy ‘ and it allows them to let people spawn in ghosts and then work on principles together with the people who show up; giving impromptu lessons on many different things

” fighting a ravager with a group “
” dealing with a mass cass while being harassed by lurkers/runners “
” rehearsing a fallback “

this would be something that would incline people towards a collective ‘ standard operating procedure ‘ while not needing it to be meticulously written out; it gives people a chance to do EXCERSIZES together; which is what is important in the military for gaining the ability to INSTANTLY kick into your training without fail.

at the end of the day, you’ll always have the divide of a handful of faces who seek to be cohesive and the mass of people who are here to fuck around for a good time. and if you want to bridge that gap youll need to give marines more tools to enable them to be leaders… not removing radio channels or removing radio back packs or giving buffs or debuffs but strategic/informative tools.

additionally, ive also thought that itd be cool if the new dropship had a “ CIC “ area next to the cockpit that, when the alamo is doing flyby’s allows them to have clear communication with the planet, an AWACS setup would be very cool too.

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For me answer is pretty simple. Because there is not fucking enough real gameplay encourage to follow up on SLs and follow cic orders and actualy listening to their orders

Why do you thinks every xeno follow up with qeen and bother to listen her? Because she typped so in hive announcemt? Because she have a Napoleon level of harisma? FUCK NO! Its because even when qeen is off ovi she can heal you, she can give you plasma, she can build walls for exaple, to save you or to block your enеmys.

When qeen is off ovi you get even more gameplay encourage to follow her because of her screch and neuro spit which you easy follow up with skills of your caste

Same goes for most of the specs. Why do people follow sadar or pyro?

All that while SLs got… uhh… fucking orders? Seriously? You expect people to follow up on dude who can make you fell a bit less pain or make your 105% acurate gun even more accurate one in a 30 seconds? Or you expect people to follow up on dude who have some ''unique eqipment" which not even unique and its just some cargo stuff but he gets is from his roundstart vendor?

Maybe give SL some actualy interesting and unique support eqipment? For exaple a rifle what shoots special holotarget bullets what makes other marines do more damage to xeno? More powerfull than HPR hollotarget. Or just simply make orders more powerfull and impactful but make so only 1 order buff can be aplied to marine to prevent SLs from stacking them,while also making them escalate their effect with how much marines got your order (to prevent selfisshnnes) so SLs need to time them and not spam? Alongside with giving marins affected by it a LITLE debuff. For example HOLD order now hardly decrease delimb and frac chance alongside with its old effect but makes you move a litle slower.Give MOVE order a chance to dodge slashes and pounces but makes your gun a bit less acutrate. Make marines affected by FOCUS order to to deal more damage to T3s and T4s but dercasings their guns fire rate in exchange so it can be a visualised order to focus(heh) on most valuable targets of the hive.

Will it turn a SL into a PFC++? Yea (Because SL is already a PFC+ and dont even make me talk about specs). Will it turn SL into a beacon for all fragers and simple marines who wants to follow orders? FUCK YES!

Keep in mind what most of the marine mains are fraggers so… Lets use their urge to frag in a good way shall we? (:

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I’ve already spoken on the matter of garbled announcements in another thread, so I’ll focus on everything else.

I got relatively many hours as a SO in the past like 7 years, I remember overwatching delta on Ice Colony. I understand the limits of SO, I understand the feeling of futility of what you are doing (although I think it’s a bit overstated). I played a bit of XO as well as SO put in position of aCO. Generally I think it’s an interesting and fresh experience, even if at times it feels inconsequential. It’s not an RTS, you can’t micro-control every marine, you can’t even every time be sure an individual marine hears you, let alone listens to you. But generally you can control the flow of battle, just not to a full degree. If you say “RETREAT” enough times chances are marines WILL retreat, unless your order is really out of touch and marines have great success. There is a lot of psychology and sociology involved as well.

Overall, I think the core of experience stayed the same during the years. Most differences were caused by mechanical changes, not by something else (see new rules that make some roles obliged to follow orders, did it really change anything?) Abovehead chat (for all its upsides made people read regular chat less often) and the return of static comms made you rely a bit more on announcements as a tool, because well it usually draws attention and it (used to) work without comms, so at least once per 60 seconds you can be confident you are at least heard. New tacmap UI and overwatch UI improved experience significantly and gave (un?)reasonably more information to commanding roles. Also now that you can see speech over cameras, also made it all better.

Looking at A.S.S. I can’t help but notice one thing. You can have up to NINE squads in a round, yet there are only four consoles in CiC (plus XO’s console). I feel like that alone is a huge oversight that makes commanding more difficult. I guess you can put a SO on overwatch of several support squads, but current UI is not very convenient for this task. I can only A.S.S.ume no one really thought about CiC when making the change. I think just adding more consoles would make it better.

So in conclusion, I think CiC is cool. I’d rather say it’s in alright spot and I DEFINITELY don’t want it removed. What I personally want is more features that help utilize it, instead of hindering you (yeah you know what I am talking about), because it’s already a thankless job. I think when they added ribbons, it made more people roll XO. Some fluff changes would be nice too: Ports PvE Portrait Command Announcements by The32bitguy · Pull Request #10674 · cmss13-devs/cmss13 · GitHub

On the topic of announcements, I think it has many purposes really. You can use them to give general orders, you can them to just add more personality to your character, you can use them to make call-outs. I think the discussion about announcement is a bit poisoned. Yeah, there are notoriously bad announcements/callouts like “SCREECH”; Bitch, I am in here, I heard her screeching, I don’t need a reminder, why the hell do I need this info. But a short and simple callout like “QUEEN WEST” may be crucial. I think people really dislike ,abcd CHARGE!!! but on the other hand it works surprisingly often. I think people use short announcements because it’s more likely to be read and understood. “PUSH EAST” is simply more effective than “I want alpha delta and kilo to form three columns and enter hospital simultaneously, alpha should take the northern entrance, while delta and kilo assaults south. Suppress the enemy with fire, cover each others backs”. Sad but true, but most marines will not read the later. The attention span is real. Ultimately, you have to work with the reality you are in.

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I dont like SOs in general when i was doing XO. Sometimes these mfers give conflicting orders or add stuff in my orders instead of making things straightforward.

,abcd got a cooldown cause of the sweatlord XOs who shotcall enemy locations every single second. (inb4 it was annoying!!! ← this was the most bullshit reason on why it was merged) and thats why SOs are “needed” now

If the queen can give orders and info alone then whats stopping a sole person in the CIC with full overwatch to not give all the information you need.

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Im aware im the “bad“ xo. But i reserve the right to have an opinion.

Because unless you’re in a smaller squad rarely do people actually listen to their SL. ASS helped alot. I can go in as a random name as a kilo lead and still get listened to without the cult of personality that builds around known names. That lets fun like flanks happen. But outside of small squads or your cult of personality, front line marines front line, rarely care about their SL, and your real job is to scream repeats of orders, guide people to the front, and try and get them not to push that hell choke till you can get an OB sorted. A frontline SLs only real function is occasionally we get OBs called in on our authority. Besides that we serve the same purpose as a rifleman trying to save his stupid buddy with occasionally more chance of being listened to.

Same reason being a xo with a co can feel that way. End of the day your entire job at that point is to try and keep people on orders and handle minor things so the XO or CO can actually make the important choices. You notice a lack of SOs because the XO gets too busy and misses things/ can’t do everything at once but you rarely notice a presence of them because anything big you just tell the XO directly and they handle it for you. So as someone playing SO your entire purpose is handling jobs deemed too dull for the XO to worry about and try herding sheep, which takes something from SL when it does work. All these things do not feel good.

Tell marines information. And what you want them to do with it.

Occasionally RP.

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Foreword

Not a CO, obviously, my main experience with COs is having them spawn and deploy within 10 minutes or so when I’m XO. As SL I see them either go RP or take over from XO and are usually a better XO.

I think with ASS, Garble and FOB Rework coming soon the era of “sit in bubble and spam announcements” is closing. All roads seem to lead away from being able to mass Marines in one large ungaball. You can no longer abcd to reach all Marines, and a % of Marines are signing up to NOT be another unga squad. I’m largely indifferent, but for CIC I think the writing is on the wall that the main purpose of CIC will be OB and being a link to make sure Marines are supplied, fed and not flanked moreso than herding Marines in one tight ball to keep firepower maximised.

I think, in an optimal world, ASO is left to handle Supply Drops and OBs and XO/CO deploy along with all the SOs and overwatch manually with their own two eyes.

As XO, now, I deploy my SOs. There’s too many people to watch and Comms going down is such a huge loss that it’s better to dedicate an SO to do it.

SO 1: takes the tablet to HQ tent at FOB and watches over Bravo + Comms and watches Support from the tent on LZ.
SO 2: Follows Alpha & Delta on the front and lazes for CAS and OB and takes a Corpsman kit
SO 3: Follows Alpha & Delta and watches for flank, lazes for CAS + Corpsman kit.
SO 4: Follows COK to relay ongoings to CIC and let the SLs lead.

TLDR: I really think the role from CIC is drifting to actually supporting Marines, and I think purely theoretically (if you have an ASO you can trust), all roads lead to XO and all SOs deploying to lead in the field. Otherwise, CO + all SOs. No Comms is such an issue, it’s hard to overwatch 7 squads, and SO have SL+ skills.

10% of the time, some Marines just want to shoot bugs and will unga away and do silly things.

80% of the time, Marines are overwhelmed and lost, and it’s hard to read chat when Corpsmen are spamming kits and opening-lighting-closing your zippo lighter takes up 3 whole lines in the chat box. Marine chat is spammed all the time, people stop looking or just miss messages and so you feel like you’re speaking into the void.

10% of the time, things just aren’t meant to be. There’s an Oppressor marines struggle to avoid, CAS strafes the front, things just don’t go your way.

And worth mentioning how @Jerba has, there’s no real incentive to follow the SL beyond thinking it’s a good idea. If you want to shoot Xenos then you can walk to front away from your SL and you’ll get your gameplay there. Xenos, if they walk away, will get ganked and killed so have to rally on their hive by nature of being outnumbered.

XO has 0 incentive and sometimes 0 reason to delegate anything to you. You watch Marines, you call out dead bodies and maybe relay orders to Req, that’s it really. Once you lose your SLs and plat RFN, maybe the SG too, you’re ultimately talking into the void. A little less than SL (which is why SL should have top-of-the-screen announcements like TGMC) but there’s only so much you can do for Marines.

Comms goes down, your usefulness is relegated to the phone and relaying to the XO something they can probably see already.

You’re not a good eyes-in-the-sky and on the other end XO has no incentive or mechanical reason to delegate things to you as it adds artificial delay on his orders.

And now ASS lets XO fire OB from his own bubble.

In my opinion: Announcements really should be a super simple, one line of ultra critical info that can be read with a quick glance. Several lines can be useful to bypass Comms Garble, but otherwise one line is all someone can quickly glance at before Corpsmen spamming kits (10 limbs = 10 lines) wipes away your announcement. I, as SL, scroll back up to read announcements and I always make sure to read but I know I’m a small % of the population and so I think it really should be critical info only.

thanks for taking the time to read this :smiley:

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I have a lot of semi-related thoughts that I’ve shared on the discord and forums before, but here it is in one place.

Generally, I’ve seen that marines are moving closer and closer towards the xeno playstyle, wherein leadership is placed entirely in one individual, with the expectation that everyone should be attempting to carry out the will of that individual and/or fuck around and do their own thing. This bypasses the XO (if there is a CO), the SOs, the SLs, and I can’t even imagine an FTL trying to give a fireteam orders lol.

The question then becomes, “how do we fix this?” I think there’s a lot of small changes that ought to be made, and with time, we can shift the culture back towards the direction it ought to be.

First and foremost, radio channels need to be changed. The XO/CO being able to hop into squad comms and yell at an individual person to fulfill a task is AWFUL for command structure. You are already limited by your own response time, there is absolutely NO reason that a CO would choose to pass that order down the chain of command when that adds additional delay. CIC will choose the path of least resistance, so we need to make it more difficult to bypass hivemind mentality.

With that in mind, squad channels and JTAC need to be removed from XO and CO headsets. Absolutely no reason for them to be involved in any of that, it’s a tool for bypassing SLs and SOs, and is entirely unnecessary. Announcements need to return to being XO/CO only, and we should consider extending the cooldown to 60 seconds. This forces the aCO to be mindful of when they are announcing, and encourages marines to actually check announcements.

My most radical suggestion would be to remove announcements from the command tablet entirely. This cuts down on the number of announcements being given, since there would only be one source, and more importantly, punishes deploying as the CO/XO. Right now, we have OOC restrictions on deploying because of how ridiculously advantageous it is for marines to have a groundside CO, despite the fact that it makes the XO, SOs, and most importantly, the SLs, ENTIRELY USELESS. The CO is a beacon that everyone can follow, and they can give as many orders as they like using the tablet with the most up-to-date information because they’re literally seeing it unfold in front of them. It also makes no sense RP-wise. The CO (or XO) should be forced to call into CIC or use command comms to get the XO (or SO) to announce his plan. This would encourage thoughtful deployments only.

As for garble, it should either be removed or toned down. I’ll summarize what I’ve said in the other thread, which is that reducing the effectiveness of command’s communication in that method just makes marines believe that command is useless, and leads to the degradation of leadership. If we want to punish marines for not holding comms, you could throw announcements on a much longer cooldown, have the garble effect announcements and not squad messages, and/or have a mild garble that is temporarily resolved by decrypting instead of a major garble that is only mitigated by decryption. And please, for the love of God, make it so that CIC can see what gets through. It’s hard not knowing what got lost in translation.

Lastly, I’d say that we should increase the OOC consequences for not using your slot as a leadership role. I’m aware that this is in mind for support squad SLs, but I really think that anyone in a leadership should be making an honest effort to communicate and lead, and there really is a large number of players who make zero attempt to do that. I’ve played with SOs who will not say a single word, and will not send a single squad message the entire round. I’ve seen SLs charge straight into egg morphers on first contact without saying a word, and I honestly think even FTLs should be held somewhat responsible for being a leader if they’re set as aSL. The role implies some basic willingness to lead a squad, and “oh well I didn’t roll SL” shouldn’t absolve you entirely. It doesn’t have to come with a note, I think an admin ping saying “hey please try to be vocal and give your squad orders” would go a long way.

Tiny sidenotes I forgot:
SLs should spawn with radiopacks. Duh.
All marines should have a coloured indicator for their squad, even if they’re not set in a fireteam. Lots of SLs forget to set fireteams.

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SL is useful for communication - a good SL, to me, is not someone who can unga rush the hardest - but talk. Most of the time I am SL, I am all over command comms. Where I am. How many MD pings I see. The Xenos I see. getting frontline supply coords. Yelling at flamer to stop flaming the push. Asking CO what he wants and needs and acting on it. SLs who /talk/ can make or break a round. Too many SLs are mindless mutes who choose to act as a beacon. Choose to act as a leader instead.

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I think it would be interesting to have SO’s use drones on the overwatch console, sorta like how predators have their drones to observe. Make it open to traverse all but cavern roofs and only marines can see the drone on the battlefield. The SO is able to communicate via text that marines can also see the text blurb, maybe even point spam so you can better herd marines. I think that would make overwatch more engaging and effective.

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Because your job is to herd cats. The size and skill of the cat herd may vary, and sometimes you may find all your cats do not know what they’re doing, all your cats are dead, or you die first and all your cats run off because there’s nobody left to herd them.

I’ve thought for a while about why CIC tends to end up superseding the role of SL in leading the squad, and what I ultimately think the issue is is that CIC has better tools to herd cats with. CIC can make a cat herd wide announcement telling everyone where to go and what to do, or make a squad wide targeted announcement telling the squad what to do- the SL cannot do either of those things. In terms of chain of command right now, the SL solely exists to be a beacon for the squad to rally around, if they even bother doing it in the first place. And when you’re trying to get marines who might not even care about what the plan is from point A to point B, you’re herding cats.

If you want to make steps towards making SL more important in terms of groundside leadership, they absolutely need to be given the tools to grab the squad’s attention and explain what they need to do outside of screaming into the radio. If you make it easier for squad leads to do their job, then that should lead to better squad leads playing the role (You can already see this with support squads!)

As an incredibly biased SO player I think SO is the exact opposite, honestly.

Unlike XO and CO, who have to focus on the big picture in CIC, SOs have the power to choose a squad and then exclusively work on supporting it, which means you end up working much more closely with that squad if you’re constantly talking with them over the radio. The XO or CO is not going to have the time or attention span to notice a dead marine somewhat next to a squad, but as a SO you are in a low-level enough position and have the necessary attention to be able to tell that squad where the dead marine is and to go get them. This, to be fair, is a pretty acquired playstyle, but I’d say that a SO that’s doing this is the most functional link in the chain of command we have now. You have a clearly laid out idea of what to do (support and manage a squad) and the tools to do it (squad announcements, helmet cameras, live tacmap).

Announcements are for something that EVERY marine needs to know RIGHT NOW. What I see a lot of CIC players missing is if the marines already know what you’re announcing, or if it isn’t actually useful, it’s just going to get ignored by everyone. Every marine in every squad doesn’t need to know what the Alpha SL is supposed to do next, but they do need to know that the queen is flanking north and the front should fall back right now.

My hot take here is that the announcement cooldown should be increased. CIC being able to fire off a paragraph of red text every 15 seconds means it’s very possible for something actually important to get missed, and can bog a groundside marine who’s actually trying to listen down with information that’s useless to them. If the cooldown gets increased to something like 2 or 3 minutes, it leaves it as an emergency option to let every marine know immediately about something while reducing clutter.

The problem I’ve got with CIC right now is that ultimately it’s really hard to get marines to listen, and that’s a problem of our own design.

As CIC, you have a view of what’s going on in the round that’s unmatched by anyone else playing, which is a good thing, since outside of things like the CO deploying you cannot cause marines to immediately act on the information you have. You need to relay it to someone on the ground, and let them know what to do. What ends up getting most people hung up on CIC is that last part. I think CIC has ended up like it is now because most CIC mains end up getting caught in a feedback loop where when trying to talk to a specific person fails, they keep casting their net wider and wider with orders every round, until their chosen method of relaying information is announcing everything all the time. This ultimately led to CIC being as top heavy as it is today, which led to it catching a nerf in the form of garbling because what does comms matter when you can keep spamming announcements? If any callout of the queen’s location by a rifleman can instantly be relayed to CIC and announced ten seconds later, then there is no chain of command.

I don’t think this problem should be solved by limiting what information CIC can intake like limiting comms channels, because this would just make the problem worse for no real gain. It only extends the game of telephone for CIC to learn where the queen is and then tell every single marine groundside. Instead, CIC should have its methods of relaying the information it has limited. Nerf announcements, make squad announcements have a cooldown (maybe no cooldown if you’re a SO? idk), encourage SLs to bring phones and give them the power to announce things to the squad. If you stop the XO from being able to constantly inform the marines of what’s happening, they’ll have to rely on the other people in CIC to help get the message out. Then the chain of command is clear- XO and CO see the big picture and relay orders on what to do to the SOs, SLs see what’s happening on the ground and tell the SO, and the SO is the middleman for the two.

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I thinj a good way to view cic… is by what it can probs do for marines

Cic has very few duties mechanically.

  1. Sane division of labor (ie bravo fob, 1 or 2 comtechs comms, seperation or coalescense of marine groups via requests)
  2. Relaying information
  3. Monitoring and utilizing helmet cams and tacmap (to track deceased, direction of front, etc)
  4. Directions for marines, so that everyones on the same page.

Further duties depend on situation but can include covering for the front or backline. These are usually the SLs extra responsibilities, but an SO or XO or CO that does these competently will massively contribute to marines.

  1. Call lurker, runner, etc!!!
  2. Make sure supplies are secure and marines can get to them
  3. Find out problems on the frontline and identify possible solutions. These solutions involve you. You have a gun.
  4. Supporting allies, and covering for their noobyness. Create an environment where people feel safe to fight and work together - confusion, fear, anxiety, inaction, apathy, etc. Are your nemesis.
  5. encourage teamwork by YAP and Leadership :trade_mark:

The SLs advantage is that its a marine with a big voice (and a gun, which is also a big voice). This speaks to the ground marines more, a fellow marine right next to them can solve problems quicker and more effectively then a guy in the sky who probably doesn’t know your name or what’s going on. Often, shipside cic is just not as useful as groundside cic. Largely, it’s because a gun speaks louder than words, and i mean that literally.

These are all substantial responsibilities which tangibly aid marines.
Cic is flawed because orders arent orders. They are requests or directions, and this is more or less culturally encouraged - saying they are “orders” is like taking a dogs toy away because they pooped somewhere. The dog is too stupid to realize why you did it. The only way you will make a request tangible is if you find a way to convince everyone (which can be easy or difficult depending on the situation). It’s only good rp to call them orders at this point.

Idk about how it is with the support squids tho im just a yapper.

Another note. Yapping is a skill. So anyone can become effective at inspiring teamwork - its pointless to be pessimistic because CM13 is a social game, and quite honestly it just lacks any regular social framework that encourages bowing to leadership. So it is a do your best to make the framework work in a way that advances marine interests in the Colony. Leadership is a skill too, just as much as understanding the resources given to you and how to utilize and support them. The only reason noone listens is because XO and SL is not a whitelisted role.

Although dreamland exists where every CIC is super pro, its unreasonable to whitelist those roles. JUST BUFF CIC… PLEASE… I BEG U…

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Been playing a lil bit of command these past few days. Without going into specifics (there a lot), I think CIC’s got its ass between two chairs, namely a realistic command structure that when functional can be incredibly fulfilling and fun, and a linear hive mind where information flows freely and instantly (peak efficiency).
Each have pros and cons and you’re not gonna get either without making some stuff less enjoyable. Like right now, FTLs/SLs and SOs have it rough because you’ve got a direct line between the CO/XO and riflemen. The opposite would be revitalizing these “useless” roles and putting some stress on riflemen who suddenly are dependant on their superiors. Yeah sure, that’s a bummer but isn’t that what Marines are all about? Having a more decentralized structure (entailing more failure points but also redundancies)?
The crux of the issue is that your average player doesn’t wanna be inconvenienced by the chain of command breaking down during high stress situations which I think is an integral part of Marine gameplay. And devs don’t want the Marines to be a hivemind so we’re stuck in a status quo of compromises with no real direction as to what CIC is supposed to be. Somebody should man up, pick a coherent direction to stick to and bear the brunt of it but that’s easy to say.

Side note, ASS (and more notably the bubble console update, being able to fire OBs and supplies and set aSLs) didn’t really change anything for SOs in my opinion. They never had anything unique, you always had to decide what level of responsibility you wanted (and make XOs/COs give it to you) and find your own fun not unlike the CL. XOs always could ignore you and beeline for an OW console and do your job themselves.
That said, I don’t think XOs being able to become the Mary Sues of CIC by firing OBs and picking aSLs themselves from the bubble is good on any level. Command is supposed to be a collaborative experience involving both SLs and CIC staff with all the roleplay that entails. It genuinely boggles the mind when an XO does everything himself when he’s got 2/3 SOs, sure it’s less efficient to rely on others but what is he even playing for at this point? And the current bubble console software only encourages that. There are better RTS games than CM Command where the only variable is you. And winning doesn’t equal fun. I don’t think you should be mechanically encouraged to do everything yourself and overwatch all squads simultaneously, that’s not and never was what CIC should be about.

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I think the issue speaks for it’s self, if you need more proof look at how people who play SO don’t touch it with the ASS CIC functions merged. Ass is fine but the OW consoles for ass is an overcomplication and feels like a quick fix. The simple proof is there’s been a serious decline in SO players willing to get hit with the new overwhelming OW consoles. Even for me it’s confusing and overwhelming, a normal SO console now feels like the groundside operation console (because the system from the XO console was literally ripped off and slapped into every OW console).

The announcement scramble is an actual headache to play with. It’s not fun or immersion adding, for both groundside and CIC. The decryption console is also another quick band aid fix that’s overly complicated. Not a bad idea just rushed in with no evolution planned. Sometimes it feels like a bad meme “xeno dev change”

People don’t realize this but the physical lay out changes a lot how the culture of CIC works. In the old layout it was impossible for XOs to manage every squad, with ASS perhaps it’s time to look at a new layout that goes the direction wanted (and a return to one squad overwatches, please)

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(example of 2018 CIC I think, but SOs were way more crucial in this era)

The solution is simple. Go back to what worked, stop being so fancy, focus on the fun. Sometimes you don’t have to make a change just to make a change. Sometimes you have to remember this game is based off the ss13 engine, some ideas work great on paper, then aren’t that fun in game (Like split drop plans). Give a clear direction where you want CIC to go with a development cycle and road map instead of quick knee jerks and band-aid fixes to one of the most major parts of the marine gameplay loop.

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If you’re playing as the AI on a classic SS13 server, your vision is similar to that of the queen’s eye, but it only extends to places with functioning cameras. Something similar to that but for CIC would be a huge boon to command and would be so much easier to use. Maybe with that addition you could also have the option to send a message to not just a specific squad leader or a squad, but also to anybody within view of what you’re watching across different squads.

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