If you find this to be at all TL;DR, just read the red text, it should get across the basic ideas. I apologize in advance for the length, I just really love this game and want to see it become as awesome as possible.

As it stands, Running With Rifles is an extremely solid little game - it's mechanics and fundamentals are spot-on. It does a fantastic job at creating large, dynamic pitched infantry battles on a huge map, which is the point.

I don't want to mess with that. All I want to do is see these battles grow and expand with the possibilities and variety introduced by a greater amount of content. If nothing was changed, it would still be a more or less perfect game. All I want to do is make it's battles better than they already are.

So, how do we accomplish this without taking away from the current, absolute simplicity of the game?

More Commander Options
Once a player reaches a high enough rank, he/she is able to command a rather large (10, or so?) number of AI subordinates - the current system is pretty smart about picking who does and doesn't follow player, but wouldn't it be great if by tapping the "C" key (or something) your cursor turned into a hand and allowed you to, by clicking on soldiers on the screen, add them to your squad (up to the prescribed limit, of course)? By allowing players to choose their squadmates and by combining this with the "classes" concept I've outlined below, we inject a big layer of strategy into the game: when defending an enemy onslaught, you'll probably want more M240's than MP5's, and conversely when forming a strike team to assault an enemy compound all by yourselves you'll probably want those MP5's and a pair of Medics to keep your squad alive.

Let's build off this idea of the magic "C" button (i imagine C stands for commander); let's say that besides a hand, along the top of the screen (or bottom, whatever) it brings up a little overlay of various commands that you can give to your chosen squadmates. These can be activated either by clicking on them or by using hotkeys (what, I play a lot of Starcraft), but the basic idea is that a squad leader is able to quickly and easily communicate orders to the subordinates. Military sims like ARMA II (it's interesting, because this game is basically just a much more distilled rendition of the exact same joy I get out of that game) have these very complex but effective ways of translating your orders into a language the AI can understand, and while it is possible to go for a very complex but detailed system in which it's possible to articulate "2 of you lay down covering fire while the rest of you break into 4 color-coded groups and target the enemy machine guns while making a staggered advance in a Delta formation without using your grenade launchers", it would endlessly complicate things. So instead, we can take inspiration from other isometric war games and do things the RTS way. We'd have a handful of clickable/hotkeyed buttons that probably read something like this:

In order to avoid too much micromanagement, for which RwR is not really built, keep in mind that issuing a command issues it to the entire squad, rather than selected individuals, unless you want to put that in too

Retreat: tells the AI to abandon their positions and (while still retaining a formation around the player) retreat a short distance away from the enemy.
Suppressing Fire: Shoot at a spot of ground to make the AI take cover and keep their heads down.
Advance: Sprint forward either a dozen paces ahead of the player (while still moving as the player moves, which is brilliant by the way).
Grenades: Toss 'nades at a specific spot of ground, indicated by the player.
Focus Fire: Shoot to kill at a specific target, indicated by the player.
Change stance: toggle between standing/crouch/prone.
Hold position/Dig In: tells the AI to take cover and do their best to stop enemies from overrunning their current position. AI will not follow the player if they run away.
Disband squad: gives up the AI squadmates to the AI overmind, allowing them to be reassigned wherever needed, freeing up the player's "subordinate slots" for new AI.

Amongst a few others, I'm sure.

AI Classes
Currently, there are 4 classes of AI (5, really, counting commanders) - they are defined solely by weapon. There is a certain uniformity about all the AI, and I actually feel that's to the benefit of the game, part of the simplicity - I think that by splitting the AI too drastically between lots of specific classes we'd change the atmosphere of the battles, which is something we certainly don't want. But at the same time, we can splice in a handful of AI that fulfill specialized roles to add some variety and strategy to the conflict.

While players would always spawn as they normally do, as a generic soldier with a random weapon, they could approach "class stations" situated in each base next to the spawn (similar to the grenade ammo boxes, perhaps a tent of some sort, to keep things in character?) where pressing the "use" key (by default, F) would bring up a little overlay allowing them to pick between the classes. By opening up the ability to change class after spawning rather than during it, this adds yet another layer of strategy: the player can already pick his squad's roles, but now he can pick his own. Maybe the team needs a medic in the trenches, or a sniper to pick off enemy MG's and Officers.

To keep things balanced, a player would have to trade a certain value of points to upgrade to a class beyond the generic grunt they spawn as, and would lose the class after dying.

Also keep in mind that amongst the AI these classes will be very rare, they are just there to add variety. 1 in every 15 sounds about right.

Medics: function the same as in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - armed with a defibrillator this AI can run up to the bodies of the fallen and jolt them into the world of the living once more. Players can always respawn normally if they choose, or if there is a medic nearby simply wait to be revived.

Sniper: a long-range rifleman that has to reload after every shot. By pressing a particular key the cursor could transform into a picture of a scope, which would magnify whatever it was poised above and make shots easier. The Sniper would be able to see much farther than the average grunt with the aid of this scope.

Officer: The most expensive, the easiest to kill, and the least powerful, they are armed only with a pistol, but give an accuracy/morale buff to all soldiers within a certain radius.

SpecOps: Basically just a more powerful version of the grunts - they'd carry silenced G3's rather than AK's or G36's (more accurate, longer range, less ammo, semi-auto). This would allow them to perform stealth attacks/ambushes/etc, making the "go-it-alone" style of play more viable. Must be careful not to unbalance things, however. They would probably not (not never, but sometimes) be seen in big battles but rather in small roving patrols of 3 or 4 that would delve into enemy territory due to their very specific nature.

Furthermore, it's worth noting that the point in opening up classes to the player is to make different styles of play more viable more than anything else. It's possible to play stealthy, sneaking up behind enemy positions and cutting off reinforcements behind enemy lines and such, but this style of play is hardly rewarding in the current build.

User-generated maps
The default map is really cool; it's huge and has a lot of variety.
But why not open up the map-making to the community as well? As with games like Starcraft II, Company of Heroes, Crysis, and many others we've seen amazing multiplayer and singleplayer maps evolve and change the way that the game is played.

What if I want to play in one huge, ruined city?
What if I want to play a map dominated by two massive castles and a bunch of hamlets inbetween?
What if I want to play on the Moon?
What if I want to play a map covered in bridges?
What if I want to play on Normandy Beach?

The possibilities will be endless.

Fast Travel between bases
Self-explanatory. The maps are well-designed to make traversing them simple enough, but it kinda sucks spending 10 minutes hauling it all the way from one end of the map to the other only to die from the first enemy shot. Allowing players (and players only) to fast-travel between their side's bases keeps things balanced and removes a pointless gripe.

Perhaps the "fast-travel station" could exist in the form of a helipad, with a little animation of the player climbing into the back of the helicopter with his subordinates, taking off, and landing/unloading at the destination to keep things in character (and look awesome ).

More Weapons
Also a little self-explanatory.

I imagine that this is probably already on the agenda, but it's worth mentioning. You guys do a great job of making only 4 weapons feel radically different and more importantly play very different, expanding that to 6 or 7, 10 or 12 guns would do well to improve the experience. It's not so important that I list some ideas but I'll take the liberty:

M16A2: Burst-fire rifle with low ammo/long range.
M14: semi-auto, long-ranged, high-powered rifle.
SCAR: can switch between auto/semi-auto.

And so on. Just copy the guns from Call of Duty or Battlefield for all I care, more is simply better.

I also think that letting players choose their weapon would actually be counter-intuitive - making every spawn a dice-roll is fun, to be honest. Letting them choose their class is more than enough choice.

Heavy Weapons
The hot topic surrounding RwR seems to be air strikes and artillery, and no doubt "vehicles" has a place in that conversation too. I'm not going to go into too much detail here because this is the most delicate balance the developers are going to have to strike if they choose to include these elements in the game: this is one of the few options available to the player that, if included, they cannot ignore because the enemy will be using them too, and they would likely turn the tide of a battle.

However, if included with extreme rarity as rewards for reaching a certain number of points (the same points used to determine rank, and which would in this case be allowed to go over 10,000, the default limit) or perhaps as a defensive tool received after losing a sector, so that the losing team has a fighting chance of winning that sector back if the "Heavy Weapon" is used skillfully, and this cannot be stressed enough, it cannot simply be a Win-Sector button.

So, I don't really know where they go with this, if they go with it at all, and you'll notice I haven't highlighted anything in this section with red because I don't know if it's even worth putting into the game - this is mostly just speculation on my part into where the game could go and a kickstarter for discussion on whether or not that's the right choice.

How do we stop this from ruining the simplicity of the game?
Simple: allow players to ignore these features.
Each time a player spawns, they will be randomly assigned a weapon/class, like in the current build.
The Commander Overlay/picking squadmates doesn't ever have to be utilized - the AI already do a fine job managing themselves.
The ability to change classes is just that: an optional ability: just like the ammo crates at the bases, they can easily be ignored.

By making these additions we expand upon an unfathomably cool concept while preserving both the feel and mechanics of the base game underneath.

In closing, I just want to say thanks to modulaatio for existing and making this game! Know this, and never forget it: you are awesome.

Definitely some cool ideas here, though I do disagree with the 'fast travel'; the map isn't overly massive and fast travel almost seems like an unfair advantage. Apart from that, vehicles are coming, so travelling will soon be much faster over longer distances.

I was unaware that they had been confirmed, but that's great. Got a source for that?

And yeah, the fast travel is relatively minor compared to the other suggestions I think. It was more of a slight inconvenience than anything.

The about page http://www.modulaatio.com/runningwithrifles/?page_id=14

Scroll down to "in the long run".

Ah, so it would seem that many of my suggestions are already going to be addressed. Thanks

Probably should've read up a bit more on it before writing this.

I'd say, nah, you're fine, except you wrote a LOT...

But to cover some of your points (all from memory, I'm too lazy to look back and link things):
Commander options: I know we've touched up on more tangible orders, I think the idea was more of your squad following your example though.
Classes: I think it was decided that the farthest we'd go for classes was different weapons with different intentions, and something about medics, whether it be everyone has the medic capability, or something you pick up, or are randomly assigned I don't think has been decided.
Maps: There is one well done user created map in use already in the Mods section, it's called Oasis, and I highly recommend it. There is also a tutorial there for how to make your own maps, but I don't know about making a simplified map-maker inside the game.
Fast-Travel: Already touched on this topic, vehicles are coming eventually
More Weapons: The way it's set up, having too many weapons could get problematic, and with little enough variation as it is, I don't see a need for too many more, but I agree, 2 or 3 extra would be nice, and I think they are on the way.
Heavy Weapons: What you wrote is right about where we stand.
Keep it simple: Bravo my friend, 5 star point.

Over all: Good job, welcome to the community pl4to

Thank you

I'm pleasantly surprised to hear that this many of points have either already been addressed or are planned for the future. The end result might be a bit toned down from the points I made, but that's fine too, if what you say is true and that's how they plan to change the game in future then I'm very excited to see where this game ends up, because I think it'll end up someplace really cool. Other than that, I'll trust modulaatio to know what to do with their game.
Over all: Good job, welcome to the community pl4to

Oh dear, for some reason my browser just went back a page all by itself after I had nearly typed a fairly extensive commentary on the command suggestions.

The gist of it was, however, that aren't the command suggestions a bit short sighted? To me it seems like they are either already in the game, conflicting by nature or would enable very little if any actual new gameplay (and even if they did, the gains would be tiny compared to the fairly substantial interaction demands directed at the player by issuing the commands).

The Change stance -command suggestion does, however, raise a point I've meant to mention for a long while. I think it might be somewhat cool if the AI (and why not the player character too) would drop down to a knee every single time they stop (and automatically stand up once movement resumes). That's how most (all?) infantry tactics dictate anyway, or, rather, no person in their right mind and certainly not a trained soldier ever just stands around in combat zone. I think the gameplay implications of this would be quite slight, so it would probably be mostly a visual effect (although there could be a perceivable increase in missed shots, and I think it would probably be a good thing)

If you lead a squad and you crouch, the squad members try to find cover from the direction you are looking at and they crouch when they've reached their covers, that's already implemented. Also AI leaders who stop somewhere to wait for reinforcements or to guard, they crouch, and because they crouch, their squad members find the covers and crouch too. Also, when any AI soldier takes cover from grenades or bullets in a battle, he crouches when he has reached the cover. I fail to see the issue here, unless there's a bug somewhere.

You have to crouch yourself though, it doesn't happen automatically, and I wouldn't go changing that straight ahead. There's a possibility that a transition animation will be added between standing up and crouching, which might induce a small gap in taking inputs for steering. That happening automatically every time the soldier stops would be pretty annoying. If the transition animation can be added without such gap or it will be left out completely in the future too, the auto-crouch-on-stop could be added as an option.

There's a bug with crouch moving however, and trying to make your squad move while crouching: only those who already had crouched, do the crouch move and the rest of them move standing up.

I haven't had the time to play for a while, so I didn't remember the behaviour exactly. I remembered that the AI is good at finding plausible cover and there's certainly not a lot of situations where you get to shoot guys just standing around. I mentioned this here only because there was a command suggestion about doing something that already happens automatically or at least should (and as such is definitely something that in my mind wouldn't be good use of a command system).

It also occured to me that maybe the AI could be given an extra incentive to throw a grenade to a target the player attempts to throw one when the player has no grenades left? There could even be a quick "Throwing grenade!" comment to let the player know that the AI got the hint. This would achieve a lot of what a "Throw grenade" command would, while also remaining relatively weak from gameplay perspective and it'd also sort of make sense (a clever soldier identified a good target for a grenade, but as he isn't carrying any, he signals his buddies. come to think of it, maybe there could be a little "Get a grenade in there!" bubble on the player as well).

To be clear, this should probably be a feature where the player asks or suggests to his peers, and they make the decision to accept or dismiss the hint based on their situation. Of course, bots in player's squad should probably pretty much do as they're ordered. Anyway, this feature shouldn't allow the player to use all grenades all characters in the screen have, nor get the AI killed by sending them to charge at enemy to get into grenade range.