Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Battlefield2 Command Points Advanced Theory ( a SimonSays Guide )

Battlefield2 Command Points Advanced Theory ( a SimonSays Guide )
By |CBW|Simon
http://www.canadianblackwatch.com

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Version 1.0
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E-mail: simonhawke@earthlink.net
Website: http://www.CanadianBlackWatch.com
Copyright 2006 |CBW| The Canadian Black Watch Clan

My forum guide reading research has shown common threads of thought and in practical testing of 18,000 command points I find it to either be completely true or at least to a 99% and the last 1% doesn't matter enough to affect the outcome of a commanders score.

As commander, you get a mathematical percentage of points that your team gets. The math is 1 Command Point = (1 any point / number of people on your team at the time the point was made). For example, at the start of a round you are commanding. if there are 10 people on your side and each of them get 2 points, you get 2 command points (command points = 20 points total / 10 players) Now if the last half of the same round the number of players goes to 25 and they each get 1 point, you get 1 for that time. Your total score so far is 3. (Command points = {20 points total / 10 players} + {25 points total/25 players})

Completely separate from this is the x2 modifier to your command score as a reward if your side wins the battle.

Do you get points for answering calls for UAV, Supply Drops or Vehicle Drops? No.

Do you get points for artillery or cartillery kills, spotting the enemy or any personal kills you make in any fashion? No.

Do you get points for ordering your men to defend a position and they listen to you? No.

Here are some advanced command concepts for command points and winning the round for you to ponder:

If your side completely butchers the other side, your reward is only the x2 win. So if you win with a final score of 245 to 0 or 2 to 0, you still get the same reward BUT IN MOST CASES you get many more points on the 2 to 0 score. Why? Because that means more tickets were used. Each of those tickets can be thought of as either a life, or your side getting a kill. The longer the game goes on, the more killing there will be and as will follow, more points awarded to your guys and therefore to you as commander.

Supply Crates can cost you points. If you have a supply crate and no one asks for it, think x2 about dropping it. Each time a person uses a supply crate as opposed to a Medic, Engineer or Support person that means that those people are not getting the 1 point for Heal/Repair/Supply and if they don't get their point, you don't get yours. Why would you ever drop a supply crate then? To win the damn game and to support your troops. You want to support them but you do NOT want to keep them from supporting each other.

Artillery can cost you points. For every enemy you kill, that is a ticket the other guys lose off of the big score board. That means you are one kill closer to the end of the game and YOU DON'T GET POINTS FOR THEM. If your guys kill those people/tickets, you do. So why would you ever use artillery? Again, to win the damn game and support your troops. Protect flags, soften the enemy up and allow your boys a fighting chance to make a beachhead somewhere. What you do NOT do is start butchering the enemy at their last spawn with artillery as this will only server to totally shorten the game and also you are just being a bully and stealing points from your own guys. Again, use the artillery to protect and support. Do not use it if it is not necessary as it will only serve to shorten the game that you know for a fact you are already going to win. Let the ground pounders slug it out and give them UAV. Stop general supply drops unless you see a blatant need for them or someone asks.

Finally, what perks does command then have? A couple of loopholes in the EA award system that I don't understand but think they could have easily blocked them and chose not to. A few people consider this the cheap way out, and others don't care. Some will call it stat padding but I will explain at the end why I disagree. We've been talking about command points above. A Commander gets no Team Points or Combat Points (the other two kinds of points from command that show up on the Global Points system and allow you to go up in rank) but you still get statistical award points that allow you to earn Badges, Ribbons and Awards. What this means is although you get no Combat Points for the knife kill you made, you still get a statistical knife kill. If you got seven of them in a round, you would be awarded your Basic Knife Badge (if you didn't already have it). If you kill an enemy trooper near a flag? You get attributed a defense point for your Valorous Service Award. If you repair your damaged assets? You do get repair points to your Meritorious Service Award. If you need your Basic Sniper Combat Badge and you kill ten enemy with artillery (eleven for the SF Badge), you will be awarded your Basic Sniper Badge. If you sit at a Machine Gun or TOW emplacement and kill ten enemies with artillery (and you already have your Basic Ground Defense Badge) you will be awarded your Veteran Ground Defense Badge. As to why I don't feel EA considers this stat padding is as follows. Certain badges and Ribbons cannot be so easily achieved as commander. The Armor Ribbons and the Knife Badges and so forth all state something like "X amount of kills WITH a ____" so you don't get your armor ribbon if you are sitting in a tank and doing all your killing with artillery. You also don't get your knife badge by holding the knife while you are killing with artillery. So EA has blocked certain awards from being achievable by the Command Perk method. In the end, it is your decision to make as to whether or not you will do this. Some servers have very strict rules in place for Command personnel to follow so be sure to read the rules and abide by whatever the server you are on states, or find another server to play on.

I would like to point out a few things I did not easily find out, but think them important so will share them here.

The commander has the ability to right click spot an enemy. Even if the commander doesn't know exactly where the enemy is, a couple of right click spots in an area will either reveal the enemy OR question marks. The question marks mean that there is no one within a small area around it. When a commander spots an enemy, the spot comes up on everyone’s radar and large map UNLESS the dot is a hazy dot. That means that after a commander does a single pass scan of an entire area (satellite scan) he sees troop movements and every enemy position but all of his men don't. EA possibly wanted it that way so that the commander had to direct or take an active communications stance with his troops. Most commanders immediately start right click spotting all these enemy agents BUT on the commanders own scope, these hazy dots DO NOT go solid. If they do not go solid, then the troops WILL NOT see it on their radars. They will hear you calling out spots, but will not see this. As commander, you have to wait for the haze to go away before you can use the spot method. Also as a side note, sooner or later you will right click spot on someone and it will be a WHITE dot. This will be the enemy commander. Always make sure you let your boys know this. Harassment and death will take the enemy commanders mind off supporting his troops.

I hope you all find this guide enlightening. I am open to debate on any subject in here and corrections as well. My desire is not to put out any misinformation, but nothing is 100% when you do most of the proof research alone.

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Common Questions -
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None as of yet. Simon@CanadianBlackWatch.com Subject: Command Theory Question

|CBW|Simon
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Copyright/Distribution/Reproduction Guidelines -
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This FAQ/Strategy Guide/Walkthrough is my own published work, and copyrighted by |CBW|Simon. Whatever you do, DO NOT edit this FAQ in any way. DO NOT steal anything from this FAQ. If you want to use some information in your own guide, simply ask me. If you want to place this guide on your website download the file and place it on your own web server. Basically, you can post this on your website as long as it's in ORIGINAL form. Aside from that, all proper credit is due when necessary.

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Thank You -
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I'd like to thank the following people and clans for their help in making this paper
possible:

|CBW|The Clan - My brothers in arms.
|CBW|SnkEys990 – The best BF2 commander I have ever served under.
|CBW|Slydog1 – Always a great security backup. What I miss, Sly puts a spot on immediately.

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