I was playing a game earlier where my squad leader was giving a lot of orders via the squad-leader interface (with the 'move to this location!' diamonds and all that.) This isn't something you see very often, for a variety of reasons. I thought it seemed like a good thing -- it helped keep the squad together, certainly. But there were some issues, too. Someone in the squad eventually asked the squad leader to stop, because the squad leader orders were 'overwriting' comm orders and, most importantly, comm attack orders. This is a serious issue -- yes, squad leader orders or move to xyz orders can be nice from a broad gameplay perspective, but players are always, always going to prefer having wide-area comm attack orders, because those help you in a much more direct fashion. Assuming comm attack orders aren't going to be changed or nerfed (which is a serious possibility), perhaps squad leader orders should be changed so they don't erase any existing comm orders, but instead are added in addition to them? They could even be a different color or something, so players can distinguish between them, and decide on their own whether they want to listen to their comm or their squad leader (I don't think it's automatically obvious -- for one thing, the comm orders might be dated, or the squad leader might see something the comm doesn't because they're there on the ground -- so I don't think comm orders should automatically 'win'. It would really suck if your squad leader couldn't give you orders because you have an ancient comm order to guard a building they wanted you to construct way back at the beginning of the game.) The other thing is this: Almost nobody uses squad-leader orders, because it's a huge bother to do so via the communication menu (and many people probably don't even know they're there.) Yes, yes, you can rebind them yourself... but most people don't, and the "default" is largely what sets how the game is played. (I don't just want to be able to set things up so I can be a good squad leader, I want the people who end up leading me to be good squad leaders.) So perhaps there should be default one-key bindings for the squad leader commands? At least 'move to this location' would be good. Anyway, I know there have been many suggestions for bigger changes to the way squads and squad leaders and so forth work, but these seem like relatively minor changes that would let us use existing features much more effectively. Squad leader orders are very underused at the moment, and I think that's a shame -- the big visible diamond makes it much more likely that a squad will work together. People listen to those diamonds, even when they don't listen to other things.
Maybe it is better to have 2 different types of orders with different colours. When a com orders an attack, it will be a yellow line with a red icon, a squad leader attack order is a green line with a red icon. The colored line helps you choose which is preferred order to follow.
Also, one other thing I forgot: It'd be nice if there was a single one-hit button that simply gave the 'default' squad leader order for whatever you're aiming at (move, guard building, escort target, or attack target, depending on if it's ground/friendly building/friendly unit/enemy.) As far as I know, this isn't something you can do with binds. Oh, and this seems obvious, but I can't figure out how to do it: A 'follow me!' squad leader order, which gives everyone else in the squad an escort order targeted on you. There is a way to do that, isn't there? But I couldn't figure it out unless you use a vehicle.
This is actually very needed, would make it so people without mic's could also be effective squad leaders. Although make commander and SL targets look different
