From: btd@iastate.edu (Benjamin T Dehner)
Subject: Re: Elements of teamwork (long)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 08:37:56 GMT

In <1i2qekINN754@agate.berkeley.edu> tom@soda.berkeley.edu (Tom Holub) writes:

>In article <C05EqG.LuF.1@cs.cmu.edu> hde+@cs.cmu.edu (Herbert Enderton) writes:
>)Roles
>)
>)Tell your team that you'll be playing a certain role, such as
>)scout-bomber, ogger, or escort, and then stick to it for a long time.
>)That way they know what to expect from you, and thus can coordinate
>)better with you.  Roles provide an easy way to manage the division of
>)labor, helping to ensure that everything gets done, and helping to
>)avoid redundancy. 

>There are two schools of thought here; most INL teams seem to assign
>roles, but I've never found it to be as effective as having everyone
>do everything.  This worked for the Golden Bears this fall because
>we had 8 dynamic players who could do it all, and we happened to 
>have a good balance of people who liked to ogg, people who liked to
>bomb, and people who liked to scum.  It won't work for everyone, but
>I think the quintessential INL team wouldn't have assigned roles.

	The important part here is that you know what everyone else on the
team is doing.  If you want to escort, you have to know who is taking.  If
you want to bomb, you have to see where the heavy action is so you can avoid
it, and so on.  This means that each team member has to be aware of what the
other team members are doing.  Assigned roles are one way to try and accom-
plish this.

	For example, I typically take a scout and go bombing.  If there are
good oggers in the game, I'll just do passive bombing or kill scum a hurt
carrier; otherwise I'll do aggressive bombing and try to sc ogg carriers.
If there are planet takers on my team I won't worry about sc dropping or
trying to get planets.  If I am in a convenient spot when somebody on my
team is trying to take, I become an escort, and so on.

	I'm not trying to impress people with my clue here (people who have
met me on bronco, doorstop, etc know better :) but get the idea across that
I try to be flexible in my position on a team, depending on what other team
members are doing at the moment.

>I would even disagree that an assigned role is the only way to go in a 
>pickup game.  It is nice to have someone who you know is scout bombing,
>or ogging, or whatever, but I find myself wanting to do everything, so I
>do.  The important thing is to keep your team informed.

	Agreed -- I try and do whatever seems to need doing at the moment.

>Other than that, it's a good overview of a role-defined system.

	It was a very good overview on the various roles that a team needs
to fill.  (Required reading at the netrek acadamy :)  The debate is now on 
whether or not a team should go into a game with those roles pre-assigned.  
It probably is a good idea to start a game that way -- everyone has a job and 
knows it.  Once things get going, it may be an idea to evaluate the situation
as to whether or not you should keep those roles.

> -Mojo

Cthulhu

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benjamin T. Dehner    Dept. of Physics and Astronomy 
btd@iastate.edu       Iowa State University 
                      Ames, IA 50011