Squadding in Pubs

Are you implying that teamplay is OP?

This is essentially the same as clan stacking or playing with people you know. Coordination is a significant factor in squad success. The only means of defeating a coordinated squad with voice comms is to be equally coordinated. Mumble clan has been doing this for months, albiet without using the commshare feature and having multiple top players coordinating in the same team.

There are significant downsides to squads that voice comms alleviate:
- Players can have overlapping perceived responsibility scopes ("move the dante out of the way to avoid incoming fire", "we should move the dante to kill x", "I want to fire dgun at this")
- Competing resource allocation goals ("let's make singu", "we need more dantes", "we need more screening units")

ADVENT uses commshare with designated responsibilities, flat-like command structure, a designated top level goal, and strong communication. Information is rapidly distributed and responses are typically swift. This is extremely coordinated over voice comms. All commshare (or squadding) does is enhance the coordination. The same can be achieved without it (and we've done it in the past).

Simply put: it isn't the squad that makes the person op. It is the coordination that makes it op.

I have also been in cases of silent teamwork. You don't need words when people have an intuitive understanding of what they need to be doing to make the team succeed.

But that's how it is with randoms. When I played League of Legends for a bit sometimes I had teams that just flowed like we were communicating telepathically, and sometimes the team spent the entire game shouting angrily at each other on chat and got crushed.

In Zero-K each player tends to have their own zone of responsibility so that kind of organic cooperation is less common. I think that isn't such a bad thing, in a strategy game a division of fronts probably works better than everyone trying to pay attention to everywhere.

nerf the power of friendship!

My Little Lobster: Friendship Is Overpowered

op is confused is all.. he thinks you gain extra eco likley.. but you dont.. im going to upvote the poor sod so he doesnt feel as bad for his mistake

Just gonna step in here and say that usually, when squadding with my two brothers, we get split in lobsterpots to balance elo. Rarely are we on the same team, even if we're in a party in-game. We're usually fine with it, since splitting us helps keep the game more fair for everyone... but it does appear that squads do get frequently separated.

quote: so the net gain of alpha team is zero? and OP stating that alpha will "gain multiple times the eco" is false. correct?

You have certainly described the intended behavior.

IMO the only issue with players grouping is that they can put more metal behind one strategy in teams. that can easily crush many weaker players just through sheer force of numbers.

but this is also a risk if not managed correctly, like for example the many games where _Shaman ended up vs me in teams and i just sat there hoovering up the reclaim as his units marched into a meat-grinder.

at the end of the day this isn't an issue unless someone nefarious makes some smurfs, groups with them, and then uses the double metal income to do silly cheese.

quote: I feel like this should be what happens when someone gets two coms due to uneven teams.

Shouldn't the elo of the two commander player be weighted times two as well, in that case?