World War 3 – Guide to Squads

This guide focuses on the mechanics and principles of squad-play and how to utilize them to your advantage on the battlefield.

Guide to Squads

Note: Credit goes to Citrus

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my Ted Talk, but seriously, thank you for taking some time to check out this guide, I hope you find it informative, weather you are a beginner learning the ropes, or a veteran looking for a few new tricks.

Let me begin by saying that all information presented in this guide is based off of my own time in game and is therefore not an exhaustive, tell all guide that will work without fail, but instead a guide based off of opinion and what has worked for me. Squads are an extremely unpredictable part of World War 3 because above all else, they rely on cooperation between the members of the squad and only when this cooperation is achieved can this guide begin to truly be of help. That being said a good squad can make the difference between a crushing defeat and a blowout victory.

Cooperation

As I mentioned above, cooperation is the key to a squad’s success. Keep in mind when being paired with squad-mates at random, as is the norm, you will not always achieve this. Some players simply want to do their own thing and there is little you can do to stop them, but both squad mates and squad leaders can aid in increasing the squad’s chance for cooperation.

If you are a squad leader it is your job to make sure the objectives you are setting for your squad are reasonable and changing them as needed. If you continue to order your squad towards the same heavily defended control point, or give them orders to attack a control point that is across the map, there is a high likelihood that they will loose interest in your orders because they are more likely to achieve individual success attacking different control points. If you allow this to happen it is less likely your squad will rally around you when you do in fact change the objective as they have now lost themselves in their own individual work.

If you are a squad member then it is your responsibility to follow your squad leaders orders. Despite what I said above, if your squad leader does in fact give orders that you consider illogical or strategically lacking, still do your best to attack the given point. The chance of success when attacking a designated point as a squad is far higher than that of scattering because the given orders were not the best ones.

One more thing to take into account is the use of a microphone and the squad text chat. While these tools come into more play later on they can be great instruments when it comes to getting a squad to cooperate. By this I do not mean you should yell at your squad mates or squad leader respectively, but it can help to kindly chime in and remind or ask squad members and leaders of their tasks.

Squad Leader Strategy

As a squad leader you are responsible for your squad’s overarching strategy which greatly plays into how your team as a whole will preform. Why is the strategy your responsibility you ask? Well to put it simply you are the one who provides incentive among your squad, if your orders are followed then those among your squad who followed said orders are provided with a large number of bonus points for doing so. As a result this gives you the most sway over your squad’s decision making.

As I said, as a squad leader you need to diversify your strategy from other squad leaders in your team. If two or three squads are all focusing on one control point it leaves many other points vulnerable to attack. Mistakes like this can easily change the tide of a match as a smart enemy team will recognize this blunder and capture two or more control points while your’s continues to focus on the one. This mistake is an easy one to avoid though. If you want to know how many of your team’s squads are attacking a given control point simply hover your crosshair over the control points icon and above the icon in parenthesis it will read “(X squads attacking/defending)” If another squad is attacking or defending a control point already then I advise you select another point to attack or defend. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule where it acceptable for multiple squads to work on a single point with each other, but the this rule is a good general guideline to keep in mind when commanding a squad.

Now, in the event that the unthinkable happens and the enemy team has taken hold of all the control points do not fret, it is not lost yet, we are just in need of some smart application of strategy. When in these sorts of situations it is crucial that you do not pile up on one control point as many do when put in this situation. When you pile up it allows the enemy easy pickings to contain you in one area. Instead, look for a way around the enemy. If you and a few squad members manage to work your way behind the enemy and capture a control point away from the bulk of the spawncamping and fighting, then you may have just given your team another chance to salvage the match.

Lastly, on a slightly more minor detail, if you and your squad are attacking a control point, make sure you leave room around you to allow squad-mates to respawn on you. One of your most powerful traits as a squad leader is acting as a portable respawn base, and by pressing yourself into a corner, tempting as it is, there is a high chance that squad members can no longer spawn on you, which is a crippling blow to you and your team when capturing or defending a point in which the fresh flow of friendly players would be greatly appreciated. This applies to squad members as well. Leave room for your squad leader to respawn on you in the event you get killed. You’ll appreciate it when you get killed and end up respawning on him in return.

Squad Strategy

Broadening our scope to general squad strategy we get to look briefly into loadouts. While this section is rather short in comparison to others it is helpful nonetheless. While weapons and battle point strikes are not as important to squad play, the equipment each squad member carries is. Try your best to diversify the equipment you carry from those that your squad-mates do. If someone in your squad is carrying ammo then switch to another piece of equipment and so on until ideally each squad member has a different piece of equipment. This way, so long as you are working as a team and are staying closer to each other, supplies can be readily provided by your squad instead of having to run and find a supply station or another teammate with the supplies you are looking for. This goes a long way in increasing the efficiency of your squad.

Communication

I have saved the best for last. Communication, above all else, is the most powerful weapon you have in your arsenal as a squad. A well coordinated and communicative team of just two or three can easily climb their way to the top of the leaderboards, both individually and as a squad, when matched up with squads and teams less willing to communicate. Even if you don’t have a microphone simply marking the enemy by pressing X while aiming at them, or typing the location of an enemy or enemy vehicle to your squad can vastly improve your squads combat effectiveness. If you do have a microphone, then I implore you to make use of it. World War 3 is a game that yields to whichever team has the most information and communicates that information the fastest and most efficiently and there is no better way to do that than through a microphone.

Conclusion

As I stated in the beginning, this is in no way an exhaustive list of what to do and what not to do when playing World War 3, it is simply a guide I wrote up providing basic insight and general guidelines on how to get more out of squad-play in-game, a mechanic that I think is vastly underutilized and underappreciated in the games current climate. My hope in writing this is to slowly change this, and hopefully inform even more in the far flung future when this game goes FTP. I hope those that took the time to read this did learn something and well even if you didn’t thank you for taking the time anyways.