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[Zaptruder]

A big part of the developers design intention is to have coordinated group action and tactics play a large and important role in the outcome of the fight.

Previously, in practice, it was limited to a person taking commander and setting an icon on the map. This icon didn't appear until you were close enough, and is also quite cryptic for most players. Suffice to say, at best it serves as a rally point for some players... which is to say, it was utterly useless.

In subsequent patches, information warfare has been updated to help provide players with a better understanding of their team/lance condition, providing % break down of their health, and for lances to issue orders to each other.

The lance condition information is a small but useful step forward. But having another commander doesn't really do much when the problem exists in communicating those orders to other players - which is still far more effective with voice.

The latest patch introduced a helpful little beep to help bring awareness to the fact that an order has been issued - much needed improvement to the UI.

But the game can go much further in improving the immediacy and readability of that kind of stuff - in turn enhancing information warfare as a whole.


Essentially, a big part of the solution should come in the way of having orders appear on the HUD. Just like mechs target boxes appear on the HUD right now, the target waypoint should also appear on the HUD. Obviously it needs to have its own shape or icon to differentiate it; a triangle that scales with distance (and an order icon/name that doesn't) would be a pretty neat solution - helping all players to see the order on screen immediately and clearly, allowing them in turn to act upon the order if good enough.


Additionally, another important part of team gameplay is focus firing. Probably the most useful command that a commander can issue is to designate a target. The solution would be to allow the commander/lance commander to press a button on a targeted mech to designate them as 'primary', 'secondary', 'tertiary' targets. This would appear as a small 1st, 2nd, 3rd on the targeting box alongside existing information.

Finally, to further enhance focus firing (or even firing distribution; i.e. don't over invest in one target), the target hit box could show how many friendly players have that mech currently targeted. These could appear as small square dots next to the targeting box.

These small changes could help to enhance the existing information warfare system, while better promoting the role of commander on the battlefield, as well as helping to bring non-team speak able players up to communication and information parity (or at least reduce the gulf) with team speak able players.