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Welcome to Hellfish's FC-Academy.
Table of Contents:
2. Map Control and Key Locations
3. Organized Games vs. Random Battles
5. The Cardinal Rules of Field Commanding
6. Setups Part 1 - Skirmish Tier 8
8. 7/54 - Team Battles for Beginners
9. 7/54 - Ranked Team Battles & ESL
For a long time I was thinking about writing a guide on one of the more complex subjects of advanced play: Field Commanding. I have touched the subject in a couple of threads and gave advice to several rising clans and FC's. But I have never found a way to get everything there is to say about Field Commanding into one guide. Instead I will write a series of shorter articles, each one about a certain component of Field Commanding, various angles to look at the subject. In the end I hope to create a sort of compendium on the topic, which I'd like to call Hellfish's FC-Academy. I cannot promise to post articles regularly, but I will do my best.
If you have questions, comments, suggestions for future articles or anything else you want to say, please leave a post. You can also PM me with any questions you might have, however I can't promise an instant response, especially if you want me to look at your replays. Please note, English is not my native language. Cut me some slack, there will be mistakes. Now have fun reading.
The first problem I encountered when thinking about how to approach this subject is the question “Where to begin?” The subject of Field Commanding is very complex, because competitive games, where you play with an organized team are so very different from random battles, where everyone plays for himself. Thus there are many sub-topics that need to be covered, but in the end they are all connected. My plan is to talk about a variety of matters, such as map control, coordinating a push, aggression vs. defense, how to use scouts properly, setups for specific game modes, how to get into Clan Wars, and many more.
Therefore it is even more important to find the right place to start, to create a solid fundament for the following articles.
So this is exactly where I will begin. The first article will cover the First Steps to Field Commanding. I will not go into deep and complex strategies, but look at the most essential things that you need to understand to lead a team to victory. Later, there will be articles about more complex subjects, going deeper into detail.
Before we can go into matters of actual commanding, we have to look into how to become a Field Commander in the first place. There is no place so sign up, and the rank in a clan doesn't make you one either. You just have to start doing it. Gather a couple of players around you and start playing some team mode. Doesn't matter what exactly, but skirmish is probably the way to go these days. Just go into a battle and start calling the shots. At the start this will be simple things. You don't need to start with crazy complex strategies and micromanaging 15 tanks. Say which way the main force of yours will attack. Tell your scouts which flanks you want spotted. Order your team when to push and when to fall back. Maybe you can call out the target for focus fire. This is not hard to do, as most of that is something you have to do anyway if you are playing the game. Now you just say it out loud and make the decisions for everyone, not just yourself.
This sort of very basic commanding will already change everything over a random team. Because now you are pulling on one string. Of course that string will not always be the right one. Be prepared to lose. A lot. World of Tanks is learning by dying. But you can't give up. Every time you lose, you should learn something. Even if you get roflstomped in the most brutal way, try to take something away from the experience and apply it the next time you find yourself in a similar situation.
And that is how you become a Field Commander. Just start somewhere. The rest will take time, a lot of frustration, learning the hard way but the most important thing is, you need to keep going and improving.
So now that you are a Field Commander (probably not a very good one, but everyone has to start at the bottom. I did), let's look into the basic elements of Field Commanding. I will split the process of Field Commanding into 4 parts. The parts I will be talking about are:
Preparation is what happens before the actual game and before the briefing. The most important part of this is picking the right setup. I am going to write an article about this in more detail, for now let's keep it basic. What setup you should pick depends entirely on what you pick it for. In Clan Wars you know the map, even the spawn. So you can prepare a strategy and pick a setup for this specific map. In other modes such as skirmish you can't do that. That means you have to pick a universal setup. Of course there are many different approaches to achieve this, but for now we will just cover the most important things. We will skip the part where you prepare for a specific map or enemy at this point, and just look at the basics for a setup that works on any map.
The first thing your setup needs is a basic amount of mobility and scouting capability. You can't go with only heavy tanks. Especially in lower tier skirmishes I see many teams doing that regularly. This is a terrible idea. Yes, in a fight face to face heavy tanks are the most powerful machines on the battlefield, but this won't help you if you can't get into the fight, because you have no idea what the enemy is doing.
So no matter what you are playing, you should not leave the garage without at least two scouts. Two, because you will need one to spot ahead and the other one to cover your empty flank, so you won't get surprised. Personally I prefer to play with 3-4 scouts, because that allows me to use them more aggressively. Also losing one doesn't hurt as much if you got 3. If you just started with Field Commanding, your players probably don't have a big selection of tanks to chose from. So I won't go into specific tanks. Of course a T37 is probably the best tier 6 light, but any other T6 light or even a Cromwell will do if you have nothing else.
Now that you have the scouts, we need to fill up the rest of the team. I could go through the tank classes and tell how many tanks of each class you should pick, but I think this is the wrong approach, because what is important is not the class of the tank, but the role is should play in your setup and strategy. The roles I like to categorize my tanks in are Scout, Battle Tank and Support Tank. We already covered the scouts, so let's go the Battle Tanks. These are what forms the heart of your setup. They are you main strike force, dishing out the damage, but also taking the punches. Traditionally the main force consists of lots of heavy tanks. This is not a necessity though. Especially on tier 6 light and mediums tanks can very well serve as battle tanks, composing your main force. For tier 8 you probably want to look more into heavies though.
Battle Tanks should be the largest number of tanks in your setup. I would aim at 50% of your total setup. These tanks will fight in the first line. Pick tanks that can hold their ground. You want a good mix of firepower, armor and health points. Mobility is nice to have, but not your first priority. Try not to mix too many different speeds though, because the slowest tanks will dictate the overall speed of your main force. That is why 1 E 100 and 3 IS-7 are a bad idea, but 2 IS-7 and 2 T110E5 or just 4 E 100 work quite well. The same applies on tier 6. 7 T37 actually make a decent setup, 6 T37 and 1 ARL 44 not so much, because he will just slow you down.
Now that we have coverd the Battle Tanks only what I call Support Tanks is left. As opposed to the Battle Tanks, Support Tanks can't stand their ground. They usually lack the armor and hp to fight in the first line and rely either on scouts to spot targets for them or the battle tanks to distract the enemy and soak up the damage while they deliver the pain. Support Tanks may belong to various classes, they can be artillery or tank destroyers, but also medium or even heavy tanks. I would call the 50 100 a support tank, because it has neither the armor nor the hp of a real heavy tank. It depends on other tanks to make it work. Support Tanks are force multipliers. Alone they are usually weak, in the right combination with other tanks they are devastating. Support Tanks should make for a small part of your setup, no more than a third, but that depends strongly on the kind of support tank. You don't want to use more than one artillery, but 3 AMX 50 100 are perfectly fine.
Generally speaking, Support Tanks are the least important for your consideration when building a setup, but they are rather difficult to use for the Field Commander. You can experiment with different Support Tanks and setups as you get more experienced. Keep their numbers low at the start. 3-4 light tanks and 6-7 heavy tanks make a fine setup for tier 8 skirmishes.
To sum up this part: Get at least 2 scouts, fill at least 50% of your force with Battle Tanks to fight in the first line, and finally up to one third Support Vehicles, but they are not that important for now.
The exact shape of the Briefing depends on the sort of battle you play. For Clan Wars or Tournaments you can prepare using Training Rooms and tools such as Map Tactics (look, another topic for a future article). But for most battles you only have the first 30 seconds before the battle. In a skirmish you need to analyze the enemy setup, come up with a strategy and give orders to all your players, all in 30 seconds. This may seem difficult at the start, but it gets easier the more you do it. At the start, keep it simple. Focus on the most important things. What is the central goal of your strategy? What part of the map do you want to control? Where do your scouts need to spot to achieve this?
For many maps you have to look at the enemy setup to determine if you can go for a certain location or not. The prime example would be the hill on mines. If you setup is faster, you can take it. If not, you might want to try something else.
But what if you have absolutely no idea where to go? Well, try something. Just rush a position that seemed important to you from your experience in random battles. Push down one lane with all your tanks and just spot the rest. What's the worst thing that can happen? If you lose, you at least learn what not to do for the next time.
But please, for the love of god, do not camp. You will learn nothing, waste your and the enemy's time and you are probably going to lose. In the best case you draw, which is basically losing. Camping means giving away all initiative, all control over the flow of the battle. Even if xvm gives you a really bad chance, just try something. Have the balls to charge into a bunch of Unicums. Maybe you catch them on the wrong foot and actually win. If not, you at least learn something and go into the next battle faster.
A strategy doesn't have to be super sophisticated to work. Identify a position that will give you map control (another article) and go for it. You don't need to order every single one of your players around the map. 3, maybe 4 orders will do. That is your scouts, tell them which part of the map you want spotted and your main force. Just keep them in one big bulk and attack. By working together in this basic form you will already beat many teams, because you are working together, fighting for one goal. Do you want to know how I play Windstorm? I pretty much throw all tanks straight into the center and fight it out. Just by keeping your forces tight and pushing forwards together you are already in the driving seat and make the enemy sweat.
At this point the 30 seconds are probably over and the battle begins.
Many Field Commanders stop commanding at this point and just let the battle play out, but that's not what you want. This part is probably the hardest to write a manual for. To make it easier, I will split this into two parts that roughly describe a Field Commanders duty during the match. That is the Macromanagement and the Micromanagement. It's probably a slight misuse of the term, but I think Macromanagement is a good way to describe the first duty of a field commander: Looking at the big picture. You always want to have one eye on the minimap to see the overall situation. You always need to know where the enemies main force is located. You should see a base capture coming before the alarm goes off and move your tanks back in time. When attacking the enemy, make sure, all your forces are in position to do so and start their attack at the same time. Macromanagement, the big picture, is the most important part of your job. You give the goal for your team, and your team executes. One of the biggest mistakes you can do is tunnelvisioning on something. You need to be on the lookout, constantly aware what is going on in all parts of the map.
But the most vital duty you have is making the big decisions. This is where most inexperienced clans and teams struggle. They don't make decisions quickly enough and with full force or they don't make decisions at all and just let the battle play out. I know, this is also the most scary part of the whole thing. Because a wrong decision probably means defeat. But try to look at it the other way: No decision is always a wrong one. If you decide to go for something, you at least have the chance to do the right thing. If you think you see an opening, a chance to strike at the enemy, don't hesitate, take it and attack! If you see an immediate threat, tanks going for your cap or an incoming enemy push, don't just sit there and let it play out. Make a choice, throw everything you got in the fight and counter what you perceive as the biggest threat. Be active, because that it the only way you can disrupt the enemy's plan.
The other half of your job is the Micromanagement. The term refers to controlling individual units. At the start you have probably all your hands full with driving your own tank and looking at the big picture, how can you possibly play part of the game for 6/9/14 other tanks? Well, it gets easier. Don't try to micromanage too much at the start. All your team mates have a functional brain and should be able to drive their own tanks. Trust them to do their job and only micromanage when you see something really important. Two rather simple things will go a long way to winning fights. Call out targets to focus at. Don't stay zoomed in between your shots, but look around you. Look for the enemy tank with the lowest hp and shout at your guys to shoot him. Make it easy to identify the target, something like “IS-3 with half hp” is a good way to go. That is easy for your mates to pick up. Keep doing that until one of the teams is dead. Shooting the same target is so important in this game, it can't be said too many times. And you are in the position to do that. Focus fire!
The second rather simple form of micromanaging is making sure all your tanks join the fight. Are you fighting every single enemy tank and one of your scouts is just sitting in a bush on the other map, doing nothing? Order him to attack. You need all the tanks in a shootout. Throw everything you got at the enemy. See a heavy tank with full hp peek-a-boo'ing a corner, while the rest of you is in a brawl? Shout at the guy to move is butt into the fight. Conserving hp is good, but not once the shootout starts. Then it is all about sharing hp. If one tank doesn't take damage, that means the other tanks get shot even more and will die earlier. You want all your tanks to take damage to keep your guns in play. Everyone who is not low on hp needs to be in the front line, taking some hits for the team. Doesn't matter if it's a reloading autoloader with no armor to speak of, if he can keep his mates alive and win the fight by taking some hits, that's what you need to do. Get in the fight!
With those two basic commands, you can already decide many battles for your team. You don't have to tell every single tank what to do and shoot. Keep it simple.
At this point, the battle is probably over and you could think your duty is done, but I mentioned a fourth part of commanding, the Aftermath. Technically not commanding itself, it is important if you want to improve as a team and as an FC. Like I said many times, no matter what happened in the battle, the most important thing is that you learn something from it. If your strategy failed on a major level, try to find out what went wrong and why. It will be a valuable lesson the next time you play that map.
Try to resist the temptation of finding excuses and shifting blame. It is human to do those things, I do it myself more often than I like to admit. But it is not going to help you at all. Don't scapegoat. You won't improve by blaming someone for a defeat, the only thing you will achieve is crushing your teams fighting spirit. With the morale down you will spiral into defeat after defeat. It recently happened to me in a couple of Stronghold attacks. If you see that you are on a tilt, you need to find a way to reboot. Take a break, try to lighten the mood and enjoy what you are doing. Internet tanks is serious business, but don't make it too serious. Your life doesn't depend on it.
Also try to resist your own ego. The better you get, the more you will be tempted to see yourself as the master, and your players as servants. It is the other way round. A Field Commander serves his team. Never forget that. You are providing leadership and a direction, but it's the players who fight the fight. Treat them properly and you will grow to become a strong team.
For all its complexity, Field Commanding is not rocket science. You can start today.
I hope you liked the first part of this series. If you were bored because you read nothing new, don't worry. There will be more advanced and complex topics in the near future. I figured this would be a good place to start off and I hope this will help some new and rising Field Commanders. Please comment and discuss, post ideas for future subjects and feel free to ask any questions.
Edited by H311fi5h, 03 October 2015 - 03:58 PM.
and I am good. So for example tactic in CS, or Bf... if worst player is trying to lead my actions I disobey and do as I think. I know ofc, that personal score in team game is not something that should be looked to so that way I ask.... How you deal with superstars of your team, better players than your self?
But sometimes someone doesnt listen, but not because they think they are better and know better, but just because they are being [edited]at that moment and they think someone else will do what is being said if hellfish doesnt say specifically whom should do said thing.
