Cadet II/Situational awareness

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What is situational awareness?

“Situational awareness” (SA) is a term used a lot in Allegiance. It summarises the combination of knowledge and instinct that form a vital skill that all good pilots possess. Situational awareness amounts to making the right decisions at the right time. Ever wondered how vets predict bomb runs? Find enemy miners? Anticipate the next enemy move? Demand probes in a certain sector? SA plays a big role in all of that. There are two main kinds of situational awareness; Tactical and Strategic. I will discuss both here, but first, some pseudo maths!

Situational Awareness = (Pilot Skill + Pilot Intelligence + Pilot Knowledge) * Time

What I am saying is that it is impossible to “teach” situational awareness. It is an attribute that develops and improves over time. As a pilot gains knowledge and skill their situational awareness will improve. Crucially though, experience is a key factor. So neither I, nor any other vet can specifically teach you how to have or develop SA, but you can get plenty of pointers to help grow your knowledge and skill.

Why do I need this situational awareness anyway?

Sometimes in games you will see players referred to as “circle fliers”. This is a pejorative term for players who don’t know where they should be, or what they should be doing – so instead of undertaking targeted activity, they fly from sector to sector looking for the action. These guys are always a day late and a dollar short. They are dead weight on a team, and you don’t want this to be you.

In summary, even if you have god-like aiming and amazing twitch reflexes you are still useless to the team if you are always in the wrong place. Commanders will prefer average players defending the right base, rather than aces screwing about in the wrong sector.

OK, but the game is so confusing... How can I speed up development of situational awareness?

‘yy. Read the chat. No, seriously. Read the chat. If you are not constantly scanning the chat you are already borderline useless while learning the game. Let’s review step one again; Read the chat... Got that? Good! Then we can move on.

Let’s talk about Strategic SA for a moment. Strategy is understanding the flow of the whole game – predicting your commander’s next move, and that of the enemy. In a nutshell, Strategic SA is seeing the “big picture” of sector control, techpath, offensive and defensive operations and timing. There are several simple steps to take that will help you improve Strategic SA:

Say What?

Before the game even launches, make sure that you have selected the command wing on your team screen. The command wing allows you to see all orders given to drones (miners, constructors, carriers etc.) in the chat display. There are other wings that give you this information, but for now stick to the command wing. Seeing your commander’s orders (and any orders given to drones by other players) will help you understand where your commander is sending constructors and miners, allowing you to defend them easier, and check adjacent sectors for threats. This is particularly great if you have a quiet commander who doesn’t announce this info on the chat. If you forget to change wings before the game launches, you can do it in game by hitting F6 and selecting from the drop-down menu available.

Dude, Where’s My Base?

The single greatest aid to situational awareness is the minimap. Fly with it open always. Get into the habit of mousing over sectors in the minimap while you fly between sectors. Why?

• Do this to become familiar with the sector names, often orders will be given by the commander or other pilots like “Attack their miners in Fejfar...” using the minimap will help you determine where Fejfar is, and the best way to get there.
• Another good habit to learn is to mouse over the minimap while moving between alephs to check what is eyed in the sector you are about to enter – does it seem empty? Or are there 6 enemy ints waiting for your scout and constructor?
• An even more basic use for the minimap is to understand the current strategic position; ie where does your team have bases? Where are your critical bases – Garrison and Tech Base(s). Where are the enemy’s bases? Where are the choke points on the map and who controls them?

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together!

So the minimap is useful when you are out and about. But to really develop your Strategic SA you need to use the F3 map view in base. When you are docked at a station, the F3 view allows you to see what is currently eyed by your team in all known sectors.

While you learn the game, I strongly advise that EVERY time you dock in base you spend 30 seconds looking at the F3 map. Taking the time to plan what you are going to do before you launch will make your flight time much more effective and is the best counter to so-called circle flying. Here are just a few of the uses:

• How can my team best hurt the enemy?
  • Do we know where their miners are – what is the quickest way to them?
  • Is an enemy base really close to an aleph that we control – making it an easy bomb.
  • Do you need to get into a sector uneyed to probe, or any other reason? Check out a route that steers clear of the enemy and an aleph a long way from any bases...
• How can I best protect my team from the enemy? – Put yourself in his mind:
  • Is there an enemy outpost or teleport in the sector next to our tech base? Oh, look there are no probes in there and it is only 2k from the base to the aleph... I guess somebody ought to get some probes in there huh?
  • Are there sectors that the enemy might take control of / put miners in / pass an offensive threat through? Do those sectors have any probes in?
  • Where might his miners be?
  • Is there an aleph through which enemies will come to rush our miners? Prox’ll fix that!
  • The enemy bomber is where now? Coming to bomb what? Which base do I need to launch from? Which aleph do I camp...

So, Strategic SA is about understanding the environment at any given time across the game-space (the whole map). Tactical SA on the other hand is about knowing what is going on around your ship right now... Commanders will get mighty pissed if you fly obliviously past a guy killing your miners, and your team won’t thank you if you ignore the 6 pods flying for a pick up... So!

“I” See You

You may or may not know, but your ship comes with various radar modes that display different levels of information about what is in the sector on your HUD. Cycle through the radar modes using the i key. Typically you should be flying with the maximum level of detail. This detail will allow you to quickly navigate towards dropped tech items, fuel and ammo in addition to the usual ship and probe icons, you will also get asteroid information indicators on your HUD. The only time that I personally dial down the radar detail is in very large dogfights in very large games during which it can become difficult to identify targets on F3 because of the all of the debris. That brings me to...

F3 is the magic number

This might sound obvious, but many new players do not use the F3 map screen to its full advantage whilst actually flying. Unless I am shooting something or being shot at, I fly in F3 mode at least 75% of the time. Doing so gives me a clear picture of the sector, the disposition of friendly forces, and enemies. I can see rocks and alephs (which might be potential escape routes or threats). I can judge the distance of a base from an aleph, or a bomber from a base. I can see pods going to a rescue probe. I can judge the strength of miner offence or how close miner d nans are to the miner and one of a hundred other useful pieces of info. In short, in a few seconds I have the information I need to make (hopefully!) better tactical decisions.

F5 and F6 are useful as well

Regarding the global situation F5 can give you a lot of useful information. It shows you, if there is a constructor or miner preparing and how long it takes until it will launch. In other words: How long you have to be there and defend it. It also gives you information on what your team is researching and how long it takes until the research finishes. So check it from time to time. You are about to launch a stealthfighter for miner offense? Wait the 5 seconds in base until cloak 2 is finished, etc. F6 also provides a lot of useful information. It shows where the enemy ships are seen or have been last spotted, that can especially help you to make an educated guess on where the enemy miners are and how many miners the enemy has left. It also shows you how much money your commander has and what teammembers are in which sector. Based on this you can decide, where you are needed most. Is that interceptor in your miningsector a vet, who will defend the miners, or is it a circleflying newb? etc.

Please stop spamming!

Got your hands full flying? Need to alert your team mates to something important but don’t have time to stop and type? Want to cater for all the idiots on your team who won’t / don’t read the chat? What you need is the appropriate voice chat. The series of keystrokes required to initiate voice chats differs depending on the chat pack that you have installed. But I recommend that you memorise at least the following commands:

Responses: Affirmative, Negative, I’m On It

Commands: Attack my target, Need repairs, I gotcha hold still, Follow Me

Information: Found enemy miners, Found enemy constructor, Is the aleph mined, Aleph is mined, They don’t see me, Oh they see me

There are many more that are useful, but these will help your game out immediately. Remember also, that if a vet issues an order it can help to hit the insert key which will accept the order. This is particularly the case if you are miner hunting or defending against a bomb run.