I think that requests to commanders should be coloured differently to stand out from all the other text in chat. This could be done by players typing /request and then their message. The message would then appear a different (noticable) colour so that the commander knows what he/she should be looking out for in chat. Example: What I type: newguy (A1): /request place ref here please What is then shown in chat: newguy (A1): place ref here please Edit: This may not have been clear, but everyone on the same team would be able to see the requests. Thoughts?
/request I need ammo. /request How are you doing? /request your mom This is not needed. Commanders should be reading the text anyways. This just leads to abuse.
meh, imo there should be an option for an engy to reqest a ref by poiniting at res node and press a key, and that could be highlighted.
say /request you to join my squad. Isn't commander text coloured lighter anyways? Anyways, a good, quick response commander should ALWAYS have a mic. I got called "illeterate" because I used my mic, but 1. I'm not illiterate 2. It makes communicating to your team at least 2 times faster.
The /request feature would be for players to request something from the commander, for example, "Place barracks here"; not for the commander to request things from the players.
That doesn't differ from: bind x say "u suck" They would both be spam, just the /request would be in a different colour.
Can we just please get a voicechat command to ask the comm to drop a ref? It's very badly needed. Even better, just make it a generic 'need a building here' voice-chat. The comm should usually be able to figure out what you mean (or you can tell them in text once you have their attention.) And have it make a marker flash on the minimap, to get the comm's attention to your location (useful for newbie comms.) Yeah, yeah, comms ought to read every line of text, and everyone should have voice, and comms should be able to read coordinates. But it doesn't always work like that, especially when there's a lot going on at once distracting people... and it is real annoying when communcations break down. I don't think the colored text would help. But the voicechat for 'need a building here' or whatever is really badly needed. If we can't get the voice actors back, just have it make a 'ping' noise, or whatever. I am sooo sick of dealing with comms who don't read text, or who get distracted. A small change like this to make things run smoother when it comes up would be so very, very welcome. Seriously. Half the voice chats are stupid and never get used. Meanwhile, requesting a ref or rax is something that comes up multiple times in every game, is fairly time-sensitive, and requires fast clean communication with the comm, especially when things are getting hectic and they're most likely to be distracted. If I could trade every other voice chat in the game for nothing but a 'need a ref here!' voice-chat, I would do it in a heartbeat; it would be far, far more useful than all of the existing ones combined.
Get HLSS, record Microsoft Sam saying "Com-annd-ar I needaref heeere"¿ Arnold Schwarzanegger says, STOP WHINING.
Or just add a layer of coding to ref points that when at least 1 team member is near the ref point and no enemies are, it automaticly sends a mesage and icon to the comm.
Too much comm-specific stuff... Request ammo, health, and building. That's pretty much all you need. "I'm near a steaming nipple you want in?"
It'd be good if it pinged the minimap where the request came from, and it can be disabled by muting players, possibly make it only visible to commanders as well.
I don't understand how spam can be argued against this. People can spam text now but people don't request the chat box to be removed. It is also possible for the devs to code this so that someone can only make a request once every X seconds/minutes.
I think that's not the right approach for a problem which definitely exists. We need a sort of a separate communication channel between the commander an the players in both directions. There's very much spam in chat and it's too time-consuming for the commander to always read everything there. One additional problem are the attack orders and messages like "23 of 29 targets remaining..." which spam everything. A good example is crossroads where a commander should regularly give attack orders. If he does this it is nearly impossible for him to read every message in chat. Another problem exists when the commanders has a very Important message to the team (like CV in danger) or if he tries to coordinate an attack. At the moment this is only possible with a mic or a very very good team. I know, a mic doesn't cost much, but Empires should provide better and integrated ways for communication. Aquillions suggestion (a voicecommand for requesting refs and maybe other buildings) would be a good start. This would remove most of the "ref, REF refinery"-spams from the chat. Another idea would be something like a beacon that can be placed on the map by the commander and would be presented in a way everyone notices it. These are just some examples. My basic message is: "remove as much communication as possible from chat and mic and provide good alternatives".
