Not a solid outline, but eh, I'm not paid to make one.

My suggestion is that for the squad ui elements you have a system that uses symbol communication.

Players have symbols they have access to that light up on the squad leaders screen and appear in the game world as floating signs, and he can directly reply using a drag system where he clicks the symbol and drags a direction for yes/no...for each member of the squad (toggling between players would create a color change or symbol change) the replies from the squad leader would be visible to everyone. The communication to the squad leader through symbols wouldn't be.

There would be very simple squad member-squad member communication like follow me, or I'm following you. Move up. etc.

If a player gets too far away from the squad leader a directional arrow points towards the squad leader, and or then to the objective. (maybe a mini map element or some other thing)

An objective is basically another zone or area where the player is directed to similar to that of the area around the squad leader, that the squad leader can place. The idea being that as long as they're in either zone they get a bonus, and if they're in the smaller zone of the squad leader, and the larger zone of the objective, they get both bonuses.

Symbols like attack, or defend are one click sort of punch and go, but for things like "move" or "gather up" dragging timers allow for the squad leader to set an expected time for this action to be completed.

Rewards like short term buffs or simple xp bonus modifiers apply when people make it to the squad leader or the objective in the aloted time.

If these actions are completed on time, other orders appear things like focus fire, or bunker down, or increased radius's for new objective zones, where you gain an xp bonus, or some other buff, sort of like a consumable ability for the squad leader.

I think having a follow-up bonus to creating and achieving orders is important for the role of squad leader to feel important, and for players to take orders seriously.

I think the main problems I had for orders in things like Planetside or battle field is that they were nebulous, they weren't anchored by a timeline for completion or really any sort of reward outside of physically altering the gamestate, which is a very subtle result that only really skilled players understand.


I think to allow for casual people to embrace squad mechanics instead of running around adhoc then you need this sort of blatant reward system.