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Hey, I was wondering if one of the players will be charged of command upong the rest of the squad, and if so, how can be recognized (a banner on the back of his armor?).
Also, I'd like to know if we're gonna have simple in-game tactical messages (like "defend this position" and so on) for the marines beside the normal chat.

Q1: no

Q2: probably

a more detailed answer to 1 would be im not taking orders from any newbie, and neither wil any of the dev team who will play rs2. No one really likes to have someone in charge and its actually kinda hard to co-ordonate without voice for all so its not worth the effort and the ensuing complaints.

Also SMs dont get squads, only nids get broods.

Also no banners, EVER. one of the most stupid thing GW ever did was give SMs (or anyone) personal banners, they get in the way and in game would clip just about anything higher than the marine, have to be taken down if goign indoors and generally act as a fire magnet like saluting a commanding officer did in vietman (snipers in the treeline).

There will be vets, which you will earn the privalige of using and this gettign some slighlty more l33t kit, but there not squad leaders.

If I was to take any orders, I'd take then from someone who has either had LOADS of experience or actually knows what they're doing.

the only orders i see that may be given or taken would be during a clan match or clans playing together in general and voer teamspeak or ventrilo talking to each other, also wot typh said, no punk is telling me to retreat of a hill

Wolf the games rotates around strategy. If you don't follow strategy, you're entire team will loose. That's what I mean, of course there could be noobs around, but I think that some coordination must be obtained. It's not a deathmatch.

I believe it's pointless to try to order Wulf retreat from anywhere especially if there's a nice hill, he's going to be alone and a huge number of 'nids is charging at him...

And some kind of voiced commands would be very good IMO. Also some stuff like "enemy spotted" "need covering fire/heavy weapon" or "help needed at <some place>" would be useful.

If everyone is able to use the commands the team will soon find a leader for itself or act incohorently and be massacred.

that's what I mean, more or less. The vocal commands should be recorded "at home" in order to avoid GW's watchful eye I think...

Oh they will be, all sounds in EX will either be from HL2 (thats allowed when you make a mod for it) or made by one of the team.

personally i have found that when you get a mod and play with the right people co-ordination is not needed as people know what to do.

Play a round or two with the OX and some of the other vets int he IRC at RS, mainly the thing that happens is warning about whats incoming and thats it. There all good enough to hold their own.

well, there wud be probaly be more communication, but the fact is, typing is so slow, and by the time u type stuff, its allready happened ^^, its why i like mics, there so much cooler and fun, and spam comes that much easier  8)

Yeah, typing is pretty slow and useless in middle of a combat. Everyone doesn't have a mike though so it would be useful to have some voice commands ingame.

Like Typh said veterans usually know what to do but when some n00b joins in it's damn annoying to start to type a huge message about what to do (especially when it's some dumb kid that doesn't want to learn or can't read)

we will still probably have to do that, given that most people dont bother to read any manuals or even to check their controls before jumping right into the game.

Since most people don't bother to read manuals, there should be a hot-key to a basic instructions to the game.
So when someone asks: "Is that big, green thing our ally?"
you can answer: "Press h".
Faster than answering each and every noob question.

And make sure to have anti-spam measures.
NS has a "block speech" system, so you can block out the voice of those players you don't want to listen to.
I've used it a lot when people got crappy audio codex, and you can't tell what they are saying anyway.
And I missed it a lot in Dystopia, where people spam the voice-message "I don't think so, sister" repeatedly.

all of HL and HL 2 have block speach thing, you just mute people and get rid of the whimer, god i wish X-Box live had it on every game...

there will probably be generic commands:

Yes
No
Follow
Help

that kind of thing.

*learns how to make voice commands just so he can implement his own "Retreat Brothers, ill make my stand here!"*
MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

mh Typh, something like Counter Strike? (hold this position, etc)

yeh, default stuff that can be used quickly to cover general situations, and not complex battle tatics.

ahahaha, space marines with the voices of terrorists and cops  :D

i think we will record our own.

LTHOUGH TERRORISTS AND COPS, kinda what marines are, kinda

mh... voice cast search maybe?

the dev team has enough just now.

no 14 year old squeekies.

u cud have squeeky space marines, just say during their enahancements etc. they lost their balls, now have the voice of little girls

Pwned

perfect!

Except that the SM artificial organs only works with suficcient testosterone - which is why there are no female marines.

Or maybe the SM that looses their balls get testosterone injections, and the excuse ar just used to keep the women out of the ranks?

you wouldnt want your brothers getting distracted would you?  8)

Or then all marines actually are women who got a little more manly features with all that testosterone treatment and call each other brothers just for fun...

omg, if thats the case the future sounds unbearable, whole chapters of butch lesbians *shudders* i fear there power, and their hobbies

this is going off topic a bit, so try to keep it to the origional post instead of verging on spam.

back to the original post, specifically the squad leader question:

I don't think its a bad idea, to be honest. Anyone who has played Battlefield 2 / 2142 knows that their squad system actually works reasonably well, but of course the game design heavily supports the idea. I think you'd need a good justification for coming up with an entire squad system for RS2. as long as that isn't incorporated well into the entire game concept, then a llittle bit of visual fluff shouldn't be a justification for creating it :)

well, squads work well for BF because well, with 64 players max (32 one each team) it could get hectic, so small teams in apc etc work. but for a source game, where max player is usually smaller, maps are alot smaller, and overall things are bigger visually, its less hectic, manouverable and strategic. alot of things in BF would not be possible without them huge maps they got, source games tend to field closed in spaces, not nearly enough room for 2 squads to work together, but spread far apart

Wolf try to play Counter Strike without a relatively organized squad...
you lose every round.

bah CS, u can win that game on ur own, teams get in ur way

Wolf's right. I managed to kill 5 CTs in one round with just an AK47.