In Squad, matches are played by a hundred players, who divide into two teams and then contend over control points. Capturing a control point is accomplished by having more of one’s team members near it than the opposing team. When a control point is captured, it gives a bonus to the capturing team’s ticket count. These tickets are continuously drained, as many of the actions performed in the game have a ticket cost.1¹ Strictly speaking, many actions don’t have a cost to perform, but if the associated thing is destroyed by the opponents, the ticket cost is applied. E.g. spawning in is free, but respawning costs a ticket. Taking a vehicle is free, but if the vehicle is destroyed it costs some tickets. Building a base is free, but if the base is destroyed it costs twenty tickets. The game is lost by the team that runs out of tickets first.

A team is further subdivided into squads, which consist of up to nine players. These squads have one player called the squad leader, who has no formal power over the other squad members, but can help (1) coordinate their actions and (2) manage their spawn points.2² Squad leaders also manage access to vehicles, but this seems like more of a formality to reduce abuse than an actual separate function. This is how:

1. A squad member hears only the voice communication of their own squad. In contrast, the squad leader hears the voices of their squad members in their left ear, and the voices of other squad leaders in their right ear.3³ All players also hear other nearby players with directional sound. This is just as chaotic as it sounds, but it also means squad leaders are in the position of having more information than any other player. It is a large part of their job to relay relevant information between their communication frequencies, and ask other squad leaders for support.
2. Players can spawn either on team-wide forward bases, or on their squad’s rally point. Both of these are placed by the squad leader, with support from other players. Placing these spawn points strategically is important, because it determines how much of a team can be brought to bear on an active objective.

The last point deserves an elaboration: the main way for an individual player to contribute to their team’s chances of winning the game is to be in the right place at the right time.4⁴ Given that a team consists of 50 players, it is hard for a team to be significantly better mechanically than any other – the law of large numbers in effect. The way a team becomes better in a public game is by its squad leaders making sure as many as possible of their squad members are in the right place at the right time to shift the odds of an engagement in their favour. The spawn point is normally some ways away from the right place5⁵ Both because “the right place” shifts over time, and because a spawn point too close to “the right place” is more easily disabled by the opposing team., and the distance between the spawn point and the right place all but guarantees that some fraction of the team will, on average, be in transit between the two. While in transit, a player is not contributing to winning.

The average infantry loss rate near current objectives is something like three per minute6⁶ The infantry ticket loss rate is 3.4 per minute for most teams on public games, but for this calculation it is appropriate to overestimate slightly, because even when a player is rescued by a medic, they are out of the action for a while. On the other hand, it seems reasonable from experience to assume that a quarter of the team is off somewhere else doing nothing particularly useful, bringing the estimation back down to around three.. Each minute of travel from the spawn point to the nearest objective means, then, that there are on average three players in transit, i.e. not being helpful even though they try their hardest to. And that’s just one minute – it’s not surprising to see spawn points placed such that the transit time disadvantage is two or three minutes. This gives the opposing team a numeric advantage nearly equal to a full squad! This is why managing spawn points is such an important part of the job of the squad leader.

Existing squad leading guides cover all of this, albeit not in terms of the queueing theory I think of. They also go through more specific mechanics of the game, which a squad leader definitely needs to have at least a hazy understanding of.7⁷ Such as when someone asks for a “range” it means they don’t know how to estimate distances given their in-game tools, and want the squad leader to place an order mark on the map which puts up an ui element in the game that indicates the distance to that location. But I think they still miss what makes for good squad leading.

Formally speaking, there is no mechanic in the game that forces the squad leader to actually lead their squad. However, they often end up doing so anyway for three reasons:

• They have more information on the state of the game, thanks to also being able to tap into the voice communication of other squad leaders.
• They are culturally expected to. Many players look to the squad leader for direction. (Although on the other hand many players do not.)
• They usually have more experience thinking about how their nine-player squad can contribute positively to their team.

I think this leading aspect is actually one of the clearest indications of a good squad leader.8⁸ Strictly speaking, the squad leader in the sense I use the term does not have to be the player with the Squad Leader role in the game, but it usually is. I have come to realise that a good squad leader is one that gives their squad a fun experience. For the reasons mentioned earlier, I don’t think people play Squad for the shooting or the driving or the strategy. I think, for a lot of players, a fun experience comes from the little stories that unfold under good leadership.

A good squad leader constructs situations where their squad members later can say things like, “Remember when we went to destroy their forward base, but then they had built that observation post making it hard to approach, but we persevered, used the terrain to get closer, and managed to distract them enough for our team to capture the control point? We almost lost it when they took out our rally point, but you hid in that bush and then crept forward and revived everyone. The new rally point really allowed us to capitalise on their blind spots.”

The squad leader cannot craft all components of this story, but they emerge form a good set up. Maybe there are many kinds of these set ups, but the one I know comes in the shape of an objective that is

1. Important to the outcome of the game, and
2. Achievable if and only if the squad works together.

This leads to flow-like states for the players, as they intensely collaborate on a puzzle to reach a common goal that matters to them in the moment. And that is fun.

There are two objectives that are obviously important:

• Capture opponent’s control point.
• Defend own control point.

I’m not sure these are the first priority for the good squad leader, though, because (a) much of the rest of the team will be busy with these things anyway, and (b) they may not be achievable. Continuing to throw one’s squad into the jaws of the opponents is a great way to make a losing game no fun. There are things one can do instead, such as

• Destroy opponent’s forward base.
• Defend own forward base.

These are often more achievable because they are less heavily contested. Even in a losing game, a successful mission to destroy an opponent’s forward base can be a lot of fun. With some luck, it can even shift the balance of the game back into one’s own favour.

Two other types of objectives also relate to managing spawn points. These types of missions aren’t always relevant, but when they are, they ought to be the top priority:

• Create a forward base.
• Place down a rally point.

These are almost always achievable with teamwork, and very important due to how spawn distance affects numerical advantage in engagements.

A more difficult type of objective is

• Engage opponents to temporarily fix them in a location.

This is another mission type that relates to how the opponent reacts to being engaged. Squad games are won by taking control points and destroying forward bases, not by winning firefights. It is often much wiser to avoid a firefight to get to a more important objective faster. But, alas! Players tend to want to stay in an engagement once they encounter opponents. This tendency can be used against them. If it would be beneficial for the team to fix an enemy in a specific location (e.g. to delay an attack, or prevent a vehicle from joining the battle elsewhere) we can draw them into an engagement and gradually pull them away from where they intended to go. They will follow. This is a low-priority objective compared to the others, but when no other option exists, it is still valuable. If the squad understands this objective, it is very achievable. The difficulty is in getting the squad to understand that the purpose is to draw the enemy away, not to win the engagement.

Finally, a last type of objective which is useful and achievable, but hard to capitalise on, because it requires more coordination with the rest of the team:

• Clear out a flank to allow more movement.

This can serve the purpose of opening up a route for supply runs, or enveloping an attacking force, or whatnot. But it requires that the rest of the team understand that a way is being cleared and that they start to plan around it. This rarely happens. The more effective way to move the rest of the team is to construct a forward base where they need to go.

To summarise, we have seven objectives that are realistic in a public game, in rough order of priority. The first four or five are somewhat conditional, the last two or three are almost always available.

• If no relevant forward base exists, create one.
• If no relevant rally point exists, place one.
• If we think we can defend our control point, and nobody else is, defend it.
• If we think we can capture the opponent’s control point, and nobody else is attacking it, attack it.
• If our forward base is under attack, defend it.
• Otherwise, seek out and destroy opponent’s forward base.
• If nothing else seems achievable, engage opponents to fix them.

With a squad leader that encourages teamwork, these ought to lead to good stories, and thus fun gameplay. They prioritise having fun over winning, but hopefully players that have fun play more and thus get better and then win!