I don’t know if individual movement orders would be a good thing. It could take some of the autonomy of SLs away from them and could end up with CIC micro managing squads, which is something I think should be avoided.
I do think that CIC should be able to give waypoints to SLs and then SLs should be able to set waypoints for fireteams.
I had an interesting round yesterday to chat about that makes me, mostly a CIC player, think this is an SL skill issue.
Basically, I was ordered to hold a point as Charlie SL in a defensive ploy. Literally sit there. I was communicating the whole round, had a good number of marines just… Follow orders. If you are a somewhat charismatic and competent Squad Leader, and your Marines think you are competent, they will sit around a point doing literally nothing for 5 or so minutes, and act as a cohesive force
Was this the Lopits XO round? I was Delta SL and oddly delta was following orders and my lead. I don’t know what caused this phenomenon. But I did notice after we got into deep contact with the Xenos the cohesion still fell apart.
I try to be a vocal SL and one of the main reasons I stepped into SL is mostly because of silent SLs. However even though I’m vocal 70% of marines still don’t follow me. Maybe I have skill issue, if I do please point it out, so I can fix it.
I spoke to Katskan about it who said you just have to pray to the ASRS pit on whether marines will follow you or not.
I think there’s several layers to the problem.
turn cm into an RTS and call it a day
Very feasible. TGMC tacmap from CIC overwatch ahs the ability for you to send waypoints to attack, defend, rally, or retreat.
Whoever’s on OW views a muhreen and can shift + click anywhere on their field of vision to place a waypoint all marines can see on their tacmap.
Mostly used for indicating precise locations for bodies or queens. May or may not be too on-the-nose for here.
Good point. Tbh the only reason I stayed on my SL (charlie) is because I don’t know the map and have zero ideas about the front location… And then said SL scammed me with his “Stand still under the rain for 1 hour challenge” 
It was just for like 7 minutes, the captain ordered it, and called us stupid for being south in a very similar looking spot on the map.
It felt like an eternity
To be fair, like in any round once you make contact that cohesion goes away.
Marines are good at following the SL until they start fighting. Once that happens all but like 2-3 of them will leave you. Just gotta do your best to keep them informed and talk to the CIC.
Anyway to the point I feel like commo limitations and the large size of the Marine force is part of it, the fact that the Xenos are more concentrated and have more accurate intel and comms is really, really fucking strong. That and SOs sleep on their squad messages. Those things are really handy if used properly. It’s a no cool down middle of the HUD message that’s hard to ignore.
That and lone squads being so easy for a xeno deathball to roll makes it so that Marines feel (and honestly are) safer just unga’ing up to the front. I think you’d need a pretty substantial buff to the combat capabilities of the lone Marine to warrant small-unit tactics.
unlike SLs and TLs and anybody above it is really hard to enforce such a measure, for starters cause most marines deploying are under the ranks of Sergeant. and when you have 100 marines on the ground it’s impossible and with little effect to enforce such a rule. I say reduce main squads to 3, 1 FOB 2 frontline and you get better results since you can refer to more marines from one squad
You know how xenos have orders to guard attack etc a location and they get a beacon to it? why not just steal that and let it be something SLs and SOs can do, on a per squad or entire platoon basis?
the problem is not that the marines struggle to comprehend orders. It’s that most of the time they would rather do their own thing rather than follow it. And by having 4 squads rather than 3 we make it so that every time we order a squad there are less marines in that squad that will follow the order rather than if those marines were distributed from the 4th squad to the other 3.
re-reading this thread again i believe that the problem is not that marines are intentionally avoiding orders its just that there’s nothing to do besides of: FOB, Intel gathering, frontlining
complex manouvers are not done because they are extremely risky and the payoff can be minimal
maybe its time to create a new game mode
new xeno meta, runners only hive, immediately cap SLs on first drop 
In my experience as a team leader, acting SL, and occasional SL, the only way to consistently get marines to follow orders in combat is via megaphone. Time and time again I’ve used it to pull a dozen marines with me off the front and towards a decisive flank on the xeno hive that finally allows the rest of the marines to get past a 3-tile-wide chokepoint. In my opinion, I think it should be standard issue for every SL. Maybe even every TL.
You already get larger text as SL, I’ve never seen an SL use a megaphone on the field in this day and age. Just point. Unironically, spam-pointing gets the job done really well since A) the green point means marines know it’s always an SL/aSL pointing and B) shift click spam is easy, fast and saves time.
I will clarify here. We disengaged from combat to plant our ass at a defensive point. It was like 40 minutes into the round.
Oh yeah. I was there, I know the round. We had some light engagement to the south but it didn’t get too hard. I’m talking about once full unga happens. Once the Marines get into the thick of a fight and the front scatters you basically have to call up the CIC to get the squad to move in any reasonable fashion.
That is actually a really good idea. even if the megaphone is not used all the time having it standard issue, will allow for better communication if needed.
Squad cohesion has always been bad, from best to worst it’s Charlie, Bravo, Alpha, Delta, and even at their best it’s up to 15 players that will listen to you with a standard deviation of 5 going up and down the squads, capping at about 30 players who will listen to you, half of which you won’t be able to divert enough attention to for more than a minute without getting burnt out 15 minutes into the round.
And that’s on high pop.
Giving SL’s pheromones is going to result in the same boobery as giving them an MK1 (which I dearly miss), you’ll get a static noise SL who just spawns to get the gamer buff and PFC+ into the frontline ignoring the SO on comms.
Not that it matters, there’s already a better version of pheremones called fireteams and roleplay.
See, if you give marines a fireteam and a personal complex mission, then they have something to pay attention to assuming they don’t just blow you off, because you can’t compete with a player’s attention span you can only coax what’s there.
For example, I usually have two fireteams:
Fireteam 1 is spear, my spear. They breach the frontline and clear out areas that we get ordered to. Simple. In there I put the specialist and all the PFCs that just want to play the game relaxing with very little stress of RP, sometimes they’ll get a medic if there’s enough of them to go around. Here I set the Specialist as fireteam leader because it helps them get the players to pay attention to them if they need more help from xeno targetting unless they’re scouts or snipers, then the FTL get’s leadership.
Fireteam 2 is called shield. I call them that because I bunch the medics up there, as well as the privates and engineers because they’re usually going to stay in the back and help keep the lifeline active while giving new players an area where they can observe how the other roles play while getting slowly introduced to xeno ambush gameplay before they get introduced to unga tactics. Here I set a medic as FTL so that fireteam 2 generally gravitates towards the medic, both creating a general safe blob for them and gravitating to an area that’s safer (where medics tend to hobbit to).
From there, I adjust fireteams, if I see a 2 in the frontline they get reassigned because otherwise people break formation if they see others out of formation.
Finally, fireteam 3. Here I experiment, usually with the players I know listen to orders and/or players I know won’t just meander off. Usually, if you’ve played with me, I do Queen tactic.
Queen tactic is where I assign an SG 3 squaddies that will follow him around and do the movie tactic from Aliens 2, where one PFC is standing alongside the SG and two other players are leading in front of him.
I send these guys to do small flanks or tag along alpha. When it works, it really works, and the players are happy.
Anyways, overall… This is essentially me directly ordering six players. Two fireteam leaders, and the entirety of fireteam 3. And, it usually works, that’s how I maintain cohesion, because most players do not pay attention to long winded plans without constant upcheck, so if you give them a simple “follow your number leader” then they’ll tune in when they tune in without tuning you out if you lord over them when there’s too much stimulation everywhere.
Both sides are happy.