Takeing a page from PS2, I belive that groups of players should be able to cover more then just "squads". Each faction would have a different name for their large group, with "squad" being the only similarity consisting of 10 players each with about 4 or 5 squads in the large group. IT being 10 people is more from the table top then anything else, as most squads are 10 individuals, characters and special things not included. Orks would have "Mob", Space Marines "Company", Eldar would have theirs (I can't remember what their large groups are called) and so would Chaos Marines, perhaps Warbands for them. Example: 5, 10 man squads in a Space Marine Company under the command of 1 "company commander" (or captain or whatever the title will be) with 5 squad leaders in each squad. totaling about 50 people in 1 (hopefully) cohesive group. Perhaps the F2P orks could have a tiny buff for being together in a group that would encourage the F2P players to stick together (as Orks do) and attack enmass. The squad leaders would probably be paying Ork players (Nobs), F2P players could be leader but not have the Nob abilities. the tiny buff would be the "WAAAGH!" field and grant a tiny increase in shooting and melee damage. like 5% and increasing to a max of 20% at a full mob of 50 orks. the buff would not affect the paying orks as much (due to already having far better firepower/armor/weapons at their disposal relative to their F2P underlings) at maximum giving them 10% with a full 50 ork mob. That and/or a slight XP gain increase (again slight like 5%). In terms of IN-game comms, from PS2 it has proximity, squad, command channel, platoon and guild/outfit. These will work for EC but I suggest with multi person vehicles, 1 additional channel. "Vehicle" or "Tank" chat. This would let you communicate with the people in the same tank as you so no one outside your tank hears you giving orders in proxy to your driver/gunner/sponsons gunners etc. be it in text or voice. While yes it is possible to use 3rd party comms for such a thing, not everyone has them.
SM Organization Infantry: Chapter Command Squad Faction Commander Faction Veterans (4-6) Faction Champion Possible Standard Bearer Forward Company Command Squad Company Commander Company Champion Company Veterans (4-6) Specialists (Apothecary's/Tech Marines) Possible Standard Bearer Company Tactical Squads (5-6) Squad Sergeant Battle-Brothers (Upwards of 9) Kill Team made of 2 Astartes Company Support Squad (2-3) Squad Sergeant Devastator Brothers (Upwards of 5) Kill Team made of 2 Astartes Company Assault Squad (2-3) Squad Sergeant Assault Marines (Upwards of 7) Company Scout Squad (2-4) Scout Sergeant Scouts (Upwards of 5) Kill Team made of 2 Scouts SM Organization Vehicles: Chapter Command Vehicle Single Land Raider with extensive communications array Three escort vehicles Forward Company Command Vehicle Heavily modified Rhino with extensive communications array 2-3 escort vehicles Company Armored Squadron (1-3) Three Predator Battle Tanks or Three Razorbacks or Three Tactical Squads Three Vindicators Forward Observers using Scout Bikes Company Rapid Response Squadron (1-3) One Predator or One Vindicator Two APCs (Razorbacks or Rhinos) Two Tactical Squads Company Forward Recon (2) Three Scout Bikes One Rhino with extensive communications array Just an idea for battle group formations.
That is waaaay to complicated for EC. The squad/platoon system as seen in PS2 is enough. I'd personally like 'squads' of 10 people -> 'platoon' of 5 squads (50 players) -> 'company' of 2/3/4 'platoons'. It allows players to form truly large organised forces while not enforcing strange structures across factions that don't operate similarly to the SM's. Sidenote, I'm liking the new dp Gaunt.
It was an idea and it only looks complicated, this is actually how most military forces would lay out but squad sizes would change depending on the military. Yeah, the portrait name is Stiches, Scars, and 'staches
This isn't the real military though, it's a bunch of gamers playing a game. If EC was aiming for ArmA or Red Orchestra levels of realism, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but since it is roughly aiming to be SpaceMarineSide, I think it is more complicated than it needs to be.
However, it's a military MMO. You do realize a lot of those players who played ArmA, RO, PS, and other hyper-military games are going to waltz on in and possibly take over. Though the squad sizes are tricky since the game is still in Alpha. I can only imagine how large an Ork "squad" will be...probably 100 bodies is my guess. Red Orchestra wasn't very realistic especially when it came to vehicles. I don't know how many times I would watch a person walk through a tank shell explosion and still have more than 80% hp left when they should of either been gibed or bleeding out from extensive internal trauma.
So so so very unlikely because the simple fact of the matter is that the mil-sim genre is a small niche, they are vastly outnumbered by CoD/BF/PS players. It also simply won't work within a 40k based game, the melee focused classes will be absolutely slaughtered by ranged fire and the devs want all forms of combat to be relevant. As for the orks, I could see the 'group' sizes increased by 50% (or there abouts) to accommodate the waaagh horde tactics of the orks.
Orks could have 15 per squad perhaps. That or extra 10 man squads for their platoon. like 7 or 8 (or the squads can constantly add on, being no limit to how many squads there are) Remember all... this is 40k... its as far from Arma and all that then you can get.
Yet in Space Marine you still were able to run around with melee only and take on multiple Devastators because of stupid auto tracking preventing you from targeting an airborne enemy. I don't know how many times in games I've been able to kill people while falling in the air because auto-aim will screw with you so hard.
You play that on console? I don't remember the pc version having any form of auto-aim (unless you count someone using a aimbot) and I highly doubt that EC will have it. SpaceMarine also isn't anywhere near realistic at all, it was slower than the likes of BF/CoD/CS but it was by no means realistic. It is pretty common knowledge that due to the peer2peer style hosting (rather than a dedicated server run by 3rd parties) that lag made it easy for the assault/raptor to get in close and deliver rapid death.
