Roger, Out! TeamSpeak Rules of the Road Page 3

By SimHQ on August 6, 2007 in _land2, hide

Brevity Codes

One doesn’t need to know every brevity code approved by the military; however, there are a few basics everyone should be aware of:

“You,” this is “Me”: If you’re addressing the group, just say who you are. If you’re addressing a specific person, use their name and say who you are. Lots of people sound very much alike. A lot of confusion can be eliminated if one lets everyone know who’s talking to whom.

Break-Break-Break: Everybody shut up; I have something super important to say. This is the “hush” word, and it means stop talking. Now. Mid sentence. Every. Dang. Body. It’s for when one is being engaged, sees something critically important, or otherwise trumps whatever else is being said.

Contact (location): Somebody has seen the enemy.

Engaging: Somebody is shooting at/being shot up by the enemy.

Wait: “I’m too busy to answer you right now.” Sometimes replaced with “working.”

The HUSH Rule

It’s not an acronym. Just hush up during a mission. If you’re the only one talking, chances are you’re talking too much.

I’m one of the worst at violating this rule! A TeamSpeak channel is a captive audience, and there is no voice I like hearing more than my own, to be honest. Hey, I’m a charming, witty guy — y’all want to hear my dulcet tones and pleasing Southern accent, right?

It’s a real temptation to treat a TeamSpeak channel as a tryout for talk radio, where there isn’t any “dead air” and somebody plays host trying to entertain while soliciting views from a listening audience.

And, finally,

The Ten Cent Rule

If every word you spoke cost a penny, could you make your point in less than a dime? If you started a mission with a dollar, would you have change left at the end? This is the technique I used with my RTO’s when I was a Forward Observer, and it really helped train them to be concise and to the point.

Again, I am an offender, as I know there’s not a group of the enemy trying to triangulate my position based on radio transmissions in TeamSpeak. Instead of saying “Oh my goodness, there’s a big fat BRDM ‘round the back side of the tower down the sun side of the hill idling, just waitin’ to git us,” I should simply state, “Contact — stationary BRDM twenty meters east of tower.”

Conclusion

It’s a lot fun to use VOIP programs when playing online. In some games/simulations, it’s actually necessary in order to be able to play effectively as a team (the official SimHQ ArmA server missions have TeamSpeak connectivity as a requirement to play).

Knowing when one can chew the fat and goof off and when one should just hush up and “get serious” is one of common sense learned through adversity. Hopefully this article can help avoid some of the more common pitfalls of TeamSpeak abuse.

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