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Make. This. Happen. Radio is a tool to communicate with others and organize who does what. Period. For everything else, you have the local voice chat. But a lot of people think the radio is just a ingame voice chat instead of using Discord, TeamSpeak or whatever. And even worse than that is Squad Leaders who use the G (general SL frequency) instead of directly talking to another SL (using numpad 1 to 9) about specific things or to chitchat. The main ideia here is not to impose a way about how people play the game, but to offer the option to hardcore players not to have to endure this kind of disruptive behaviour. Countless times I have died while doing an incursion because I couldn't here the enemy over the noise pollution, resorting to muting the command or squad leader channel for the entire match - 'cause I won't be openning the menu every time to turn it on and off again. Like in real life, the soldier would have the option to just remove the earphones. After the incursion is complete, plug the earphones again, since people talk more than my grandmom and her friends at the bingo.

What up forum!? I have been playing Squad more and more recently. Still fairly new, and definitely new to the forum, so excuse me if this has been brought up a million times before. When I play, I usually do so as squad leader. It's good fun, even though it is stressful as hell. Something I think all squad leaders can relate to is the deafening chattering over comms, between squad leaders and the squad, all at the same time. I do understand that it is my responsibility as SL to instruct the squad to keep communication via radio to an absolute minimum, as direct communication works fine over a good distance. However, when shit hits the fan, and squad leaders try to communicate, it is often near impossible to hear what anyone is saying. My suggestion (oh, maybe I should have put this in suggestions) is this: Give us the option to pan the separate radios right and left, so that if you want to you can have all SL comms in your right ear, and squad comms in your left ear. It is not a perfect solution, but if I hear SLs communicating I can just lift the headset off my left ear and will not be bothered by my frantic shell-shocked squad members. Also, I believe that comm operators would have some form of active ear protection, so when trying to communicate over radio, there would be an option to "muffle" DC, gunfire, and vehicle noises, e.g similar to earplugs in Arma 3. Thoughts?

There are often times when the COMS can become cluttered, even when making attempts to adjust volume in channel sliders. This occurs when communications flood *ALL* channels at the same time. This is additionally challenging for those attempting to SL for the 1st time. Below is an attempt to allow options in settings for assigned channels by ear. The default will remain *BOTH EARS, unless changed by user. Additionally, it suggest volume program changes to channels based on Priority Override. The volume sliders will retain option for user adjustments. WORKING EXAMPLE Channel Sound Level % Ear Assignment (default = both) Priority (HARD-CODED) for SL Commander keep adjustable slider volume 150 Left Right Both* P1 Auto mute/reduce P2, P3 when active Squad keep adjustable slider volume 100 Left Right Both* P2 Auto mute/reduce P3 when active Local keep adjustable slider volume 60 N/A N/A Both* P3 N/A

Advanced Delegation of Responsibility: Simply put I'd love the ability to take my nine man squad and organize it into two fire teams. This would allow for a whole new array of strategies and tactics to be executed more effectively. While we can make it happen without UI and dedicated mechanics having these elements designed around this concept would make executing it much easier. I'd also like to suggest that the Squad Leader be able to hand off the base building controls to any one designee within the Squad. The idea being that as an SL I may need to focus my attention on more immediate concerns but I also need to get a FOB built. While I'm focused on communication, coordination and directing the Squad I can have whomever I've designated work on constructing the FOB. One of the key functions of a leader is being able to delegate responsibility in a responsible and effective manner, currently I feel as SL my focus is being pulled in too many directions. Advanced Radio Options: In Arma 3 there is a Radio/Comms mod called Task Force Radio, one of the extremely convenient features it offers is the ability to have your radio, or radios play in the right ear, left ear, or both (Stereo). This is very useful for when you are leading a squad and have a command channel and a squad channel. It's easier to parse what people are saying and decide which channel to focus on when you have, say, the command channel in your right ear, and the squad channel in your left. If my squad is relaying information among themselves during a fire fight and I need to coordinate with another squad, as any SL can tell you, it becomes a spaghetti salad of voices making effective communication very difficult. It has been my experience that being able to choose which ears my various radios are playing in is extremely helpful. Thanks!

Hi guys, a friend of mine suggested that instead of enemies not being able to hear local or radio voice, we should be able to hear enemies on local and radio voice but in a jibberish sense, or maybe even have the enemy say real basic phrases (ie. for insurgent-allah akbar, americans-hoorah, etc.. ) I'm not sure if anyone has suggested this before, just thought i would mention it! sounds like a cool idea and adds another element to the battle making voice chat a weapon or a hinderance.

Idea: A role a squad member fills where the idea is that your squad cannot use squad coms and your squad leader cannot use coms to talk to other leaders if the radio operator isn’t alive/ in the game. Local chat would still work. The radio bearer would have the standard rifleman loadout with the only difference being that he has a large radio strapped to his back. Why: Communication is a vital part of conducting warfare and anyone who has played Squad knows how important it is to be able to tell your team that there is an enemy at Grid___ with a bunch of his friends or that you have found an enemy HAB. When in direct combat with the enemy, it is extremely useful to be able to point out enemy firing positions, request medical assistance, call in reinforcements etc.. but radios have their limits. The inspiration for this comes from the book The Trident: The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader by Jason Redman. In it he describes a mission he was on where he was tasked with sitting on top of a mountain with a large radio which provided a link between a small unit on one side of the mountain and a command element on the other side. The small unit comes under fire and Redman wants to go help them. He takes the radio and heads down towards the unit in contact. This creates all types of problems as now the command element has no idea what is going on with the small unit because they have lost radio communication, the small unit cannot call in an air mission, and the entire Seal team misses their extraction and is required to spend the night out in the mountains all because communications had been lost. I think that the scenario of being a squad leader, coming under fire from the enemy, having your radio bearer die, losing coms while he/ she re-spawns, and having to manage a defense or retreat though local coms would prove a fun and challenging leadership hurdle among other opportunities and drawbacks that come with being able to effect communication on the battlefield. Thanks for taking the time to read though this Masters thesis and please let me know what you thing.

Would it be possibly to add a feature that allowed a player that sits in the driver or passenger seat of a vehicle, to get access to the all SL radio channel? Ex 1: You are running a supply/trans squad, and have 2 additional members in your squad who drives their own vehicles. If this feature was in place, they could receive and respond to requests, without you, the SL, having to do all the communicating. Ex 2: An apc squad is covering a group of infantry advancing on an objective. SL's of the different inf squads could then communicate directly with the apc closest to them, to get that fire support quickest. What do you think?

GER: Hey alle da draußen, ich habe mir mal den Spaß gemacht und mir eine neue Maus geleistet mit dem Hintergrund, Markos in Spielen nutzen zu können. Gekauft habe ich mir die Logitech G502 Gaming Maus. Eine entsprechende Einrichtungs-Software gibts bei Logitech zum download Ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass es auch mit jeder vergleichbarer Hardware geht, die Makros unterstützt. Hier aber am Beispiel der G502. Zum Ziel habe ich mir gesetzt, dass ich die Radio-Channels feststellen kann. Evtl kommt das auch mal als Feature mit im Game, aber derzeit ist es womöglich nicht geplant. Wieso ich das so will?, weil ich größtenteils Local-Voice nutze um direkt mit den Leuten aus dem Team Kontakt zu halten und es sofort einen Effekt hat wenn ich direkt Meldung machen kann, ohne erst auf den Knopf zu drücken. Muss aber jeder für sich entscheiden. In hitzigen Situationen, vermeidet es ebenso ein Fignerwirrwarr auf der Tastatur. Schaut euch das Video an, um die Einstellungen zu sehen. ENG: Hey there all!, I've bought me a new gaming mouse with macro features, to use them ingame, as such as in squad to toggle the voice channels. Therefore my G502 from Logitech get's in action. You can download the dedicated software from the Devs-Homepage. I'am pretty sure that any other, macro compatible hardware, will be able to do the same settings like I do in the following video. Why do I do this?: because of tactical superiority, it's much easier to communicate with the surrounding Team-Members by simply start talking, instead of.. press key to talk... Even thoug in some firefights it's causing fingertrouble on the keyboard. Have fun watching the video there I'll explain everything you need to know (but no general settings). Video: English at: 2:28 // Gameplay at the End 5:38 PS: GER: Wenn ihr Fragen habt, fragt! ENG: If you got any questions left, please ask! YT: My YT Channel See you! -Fynn

I'll argue that the best place for a radio is in the open, against a wall. Being a player from the Free Weekend, my naivety affords me something else -- some fresh perspective. I think that the thinking regarding radio placement hasn't evolved from the times when the radio was still a spawn point. Because of this, we see radios in places that don't make sense. Before, there was a reason to put the radio in a defensible spot and a place that wasn't easily accessible. But now, after the radio is placed the next things to interact with it will be an enemy shovel. SLs put them in rooms out of habit, and it's time to change that. Hopefully you can start to see what I'm getting at: if you're building a FOB you actually want to make the radio as attackable as possible, because if the enemy has shovels on the radio then you will be the one attacking it. Having the radio placed in a location without cover ensures that you don't have to be the one entering chokepoints to get to the radio. The reason that you want to put a radio against a wall is twofold. Firstly, a lone digger could potentially hide behind the radio, meaning that you have to move positions to find the shot. If the radio is against the wall, a digger must expose themselves. Secondly, grenades. To ensure that an RPG/underbarrel/good ole easter egg lands right where it should, having the radio against a wall is the perfect solution. If you overthrow then the grenade will hit the wall and drop onto the radio, or it will roll into the wall. These are the two key parts of my thinking regarding radio placement: Put the radio in a place with minimal cover/maximum viewing angle Put the radio against a wall Let me use an example: Police Station on Sumari. It's common to set up a FOB there with a HAB on the roof and the radio in one of the rooms in that building. But consider the two situations in which a radio can be dug up. There's the "hot dig", where you've having to fight your way out of the HAB and to the radio to try and stop the enemy from digging. There's the "cold dig", where you realise the enemy's digging the radio but no one else is there, so you have to send the next spawning/nearby person there. In the hot dig, it's pretty much game over if you're stuck on the roof. Going downstairs can be walking into a firing range. In the cold dig, even reaching the radio in time can be difficult enough. If there's even a few enemies keeping watch, then you can forget about saving the radio. But if we place the radio in the north side of the southern part of Police Station aka the south side of those closed double doors that separate the two parts of Police Station, then we can resolve these issues. In the hot dig, you can underhand throw a grenade onto the radio, or you can shoot at it from the roof. For a cold dig, you can do the same thing. What's more interesting about the cold dig is this scenario: imagine that you learn the radio is being dug but you're already near Police Station. You can throw a grenade from outside of Police Station onto the radio. Considering the radio is against a wall, your chances of landing the perfect grenade is pretty high. If the radio is in a room, then you simply can't pull off a cheese nade. This is what we should be thinking about when placing a radio: how do we make it as easily attackable as possible for ourselves? I think a similar type of thinking can be applied to sneaky FOBs. You want to prevent the enemy from seeing it from a long distance, but hiding it in a room will actually be detrimental. If the enemy going through the compound then they're going to hear it anyway, so hiding it in a room won't stop them. Instead, courtyards are the right places. TL;DR: Place radios in places that are easiest to throw a grenade onto, because the only people who touch radios are enemies.

Feature Suggestion: When finding an enemy FOB radio, the SL gets the option to retrieve/translate Intel from it. This will give the SL a short amount of time to check his map for the approximate location of another enemy FOB (if it exists) as accurate as 4 keypads. Conditions: - SL needs min 2 other Squad members (to help "translate" or "decrypt" the intel if you will) on him to retrieve Intel from the Radio - Optionally, the FOB radio could then be blocked from being destroyed for 1 minute (this will make the decision for the SL tougher: destroy or gather intel, which brings more value?) I believe this will add not only much more realism (enemy radio chatter would naturally give away strategic information) but also makes finding an enemy FOB radio all the more valuable/interesting, while not altering the gameplay too drastically. Thoughts?

I know this has been talked about before, but the threads are pretty old and I've heard making active an old thread is frowned upon. Plus a mass of threads on a similar issue might help the problem in getting addressed rather that just one. The problem I speak of is Comms audio in game being limited to the channel that it is being broadcast on. When a person talks down a radio, It is reasonable to expect that the guy standing next you (friendly or enemy) heard it, since the words did come from your mouth and travel through the air (simulated air of course.) Aside from the already mentioned benefits to squad knowledge such as making sure that things don't have to be repeated, or worse, go unsaid because of how reasonable it is to assume that the guy next to you heard what you just said down the radio, It would also add a fair amount of tactical consideration on the part of the speaker in the case of a person trying not to be detected. Speaking in a firefight, if close enough to a friendly or an enemy, and being heard by either would give away your position, meaning that responding to a radio message that you just heard come through might occasion you to be a little more cautious to avoid being spotted. Obviously when the proverbial "s**t" is hitting the equally proverbial "fan", you can afford to should your ass off as you probably won't be heard by the enemy who is firing their weapon at you but your team mates will get the message okay and act accordingly. Also with the extra consideration for being heard when you speak: If friendly, you don't have to repeat yourself... meaning less overall chatter and more shooting and, if enemy, you might think twice about how much you say and how important it is in a tense situation... meaning less overall chatter and more shooting again. + combat atmosphere + immersion - unnecessary chatter when inappropriate Win, win... right? I also like the idea of radio usage meaning that you are unable to fire as well (due to the engagement of a hand or something). This would make local chat the most intuitive form of shouting whilst firing. This would need to be paired with a animation for radio of some kind to communicate this to the player and the animation would have other benefits to game play also i.e. at a glance context of a communication you overhear nearby. I'm interested to hear any feedback on the idea and I have read a number of responses on the topic already which I found interesting. Some with an attitude towards this kind of idea saying that "Squad is not Arma" and alike. If the concern would be accessibility, while I don't see that this would negatively impact that in any great way, if at all... perhaps a possibility of a separate play mode... perhaps like a hardcore mode? This would allow those who wish to keep the laid back chat and no consequence chatter in combat while allowing others to opt into a more immersive combat environment. Not ideal to split game modes like that and I personally don't think it would need to happen but like any choice i guess, there are up sides and down sides. Thanks for taking the time. zorilya

(Image Source: DoD photo by Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway, U.S. Air Force, photo from article here) Summary: I have the following suggestion concerning the radio and local voice chat. Add the new function "focus-listening" which allows to focus-listen on one particular channel while automatically tuning down the volume of the other channels. Let me explain in more details what I mean and how it could work. How does this feature work: When listing on radio or local chat to conversations, you hold Left-Shift and the corresponding key of the channel you want to listen to. While you do this, the volumes of the other channels are lowered while the full volume of the "focused-listened channel" remains, allowing you to clearly understand what's being said there. I consider this feature not only extremely useful but also realistic. In the real world when using your mobile phone, you often cover your other ear with your hand to cancel out environmenal noices and other people's chatter. A radio can be used exactly in the same way. This also works the other way around. If you hold your radio away from your ear, the radio voices are muted while you can focus on the person speaking next to you. My rationale for focus-listening to one particular radio channel and ignoring other radio channel is this: with a walkie-talkie you would listen only to one particular channel at any given time, not ALL available channel. On a music radio you also listen to only one station, not all stations at the same time. I admit that I don't know how military radios work, but I assume they also listen only to one channel at a time, right? Focus-listening would work just the same once we get radio channels for each squad (numpad 1 to 9). Just hold the Left-Shift and the corresponding number on the numbpad. While you hold down the focus-listen key, you see onscreen an coloured indicator (lets call it "focus-listen indicator") that tells you A: you are currently focus-listening and B: on which channel you are doing this (the indicator is using the colour of the channel, i.e. blue, green or red). It could look like the following icon - it's similar to the speaker icon we see when we actively speak on a channel. The icon below intents to look like an ear shape - please excuse my lack of designer skills - but you get the idea. This icon could appear exactly at the same spot where the speaker icon appears, as both icons cannot appear at the same time (you cannot focus-listen and speak at the same time - to speak, you have to let go of the Left-Shift key). I think the "focus-listen indicator" alone is probably not enough visualization. When focus-listing is active we should also highlight or mark incoming channels in some way to show which of them you are focusing on and which you are ignoring - this will help you even more to home in to the channel you are really interested in and make clear which person you are currently listening to. Here some ideas how this could be visulized on the HUD. Of course, this is optional and just an additional way of aiding the player. Suggestion 1: Use a lighter font colour for un-focused incoming channels and the normal dark font colour on focused channels. Downside: depending on the background, this could be hard to read. I don't like this idea much. Suggestion 2: Cross out channels you are not focusing on. I like this idea. The cross-out is a simple and intuitive visual hint to the player. Suggestion 3: We could also highlight the channel you listen to with an additional icon or marking of some kind. I have no specific idea, but we sure could come up with some design. All these HUD ideas are just my first thoughts/concepts how we can visually indicate focus-listing to the player. I am sure if we set AJAX or the devs to the task they will come up with something much better and workable. Game settings could look like this: We also need the ability to rebind the "Shift" key, as the focus-listener modifier, to another key. Not everybody has long enough fingers to easily reach B when holding Shift. Example: As a Squad Leader you want to focus-listen to an important conversation on the Squad Leader radio channel and ignore loud chatter on the squad radio. You hold Left-Shift and G on your keyboard for as long as you want to focus-listen to the Squad Leader radio channel. While you do this, you will hear the Squad Leader channel on full volume while any chatter on the Squad radio and local voice chat is tuned down and hardly audible. This allows you to fully follow the converation on the Squad Leader channel. Additional sub-features/variations: 1. Optional feature "mute environmental sounds" (highly recommended): We could even go further and reduce the surrounding environmental sounds while we focus-listen on any channel. This is still realistic, as this would also happen in the real world if you covered your ears with your hands and the radio. The benefit of this would be to reduce surrounding noices like machine gun fire and therefore being able to hear what is being said on the radio even in noisy situations. A really useful feature. If we want to be hyper realistic, reducing environmental noises only works when focus-listening to radio channels and not local voice chat as you can hold shut one ear to cancel out the environmental sounds while you press the radio close to your other ear, but you can't do that in any form when listening to local voices next to you with your open ears. 2. Optional feature "close both ears/gun&hand-free vision" (nice-to-have): And for the fun (and realism of it), we can also assign a new button that represents holding shut both your ears with both your hands, i.e. all sounds are slightly muted. If we want to go even further, add animations that have the gun and your hands disappear from view when we do this. Additional benefit: this feature would help taking scenic screenshots without a gun and hands in the way - NICE! I admit, it's a silly idea as muting all sounds in general does not really serve a useful purpose (if you want that, you just turn down your computer/headset speakers) but having a gun/hand-free vision would be really useful to take screenshots. Therefore, completely independent of my suggestion here, we could assign a new key to select no equipment/weapon (for example key 0 (zero) or any other key; it could also just be a console command). This will just remove the hands and weapons/equipment entirely from the screen. Just an idea. I may bring this up in a new suggestions thread some time in the future. 3. Optional feature "use both hands" (not recommended): For hard-core realism, when using focus-listening, force players to let go of the mouse and use both hands on the keyboard to simulate that they would not have a free hand to fire a gun while focus-listening to the radio as both hands are needed to do this. Possible keyboard shortcuts to achieve this: hold down three keys far across from each other on the keyboard, for example Left-Shift + Right-Shift + channel key. This is just taking the original idea further, but in my opinion too far. This would make using the focus-listen feature too annoying and would compromise its practical use ingame. I thought I just mention the idea here to show that taking an idea too far turns it into something counterproductive. Why do we need this feature: We all know that it's hard to follow ANY conversation when you are overwhelmed by simulatenous conversation on multiple channels. This is particularly difficult for Squad Leaders who have to speak on three channels. Yes, as Squad Leader you can tell your guys on the Squad radio to shut up and ask the other Squad Leader to repeat his statement, but often it's annoying and often people won't listen. Yes, the real world is also messy and noisy and you have to deal with it. But in the real world you also have your hands which you can use to cover your ears and you don't listen to multiple channels at the same time. Adding focus-listening to the game would make listening much easier while still being realistic. The control scheme I propose is simple and intuitive. It will not make things more complicated. It will add another level of realism to the game and is just plain practical. I consider this feature as important because it will help communication in Squad - and communication is THE key feature of Squad. Lets make communciation as good and effective as possible. Focus-listening is a small but powerful and useful feature to help with this. Give my post a "Like" if you want to see this feature implemented. The guy in picture below says loud and clearly: "We NEED this feature, ASAP!" What speaks against this feature: Nothing I can think of. I just don't know if it can be easily implemented with Mumble or not. (Image Source: Copyright Steve R., direct link, more amazing picture by Steve here)

Hello, because i got no help i try to start a new topic with exact description of my problem. If i Join a Server and a Squad, my Sound cut of at this moment someone talk on Radio(Squad) but not if someone talk on local voice. Bug start after update to V8, before the game work without any problems. the answer from support was maybe my soundcard dosnt support the 128bit i just say pfff... Speaker: game runs fine without issues. My device(Asus HS-W1 / Wireless USB 2,4Ghz Headset) is as defeault (only one activated device) i also configured the device and changed settings. Change Audio Quality from Epic to Low also not work. Problem start at 0:34 right after someone talk. Sorry for watermarks recorded with trial version. Lags only on recording My device list after bug start i get a constant signal : I have sound again if i leave the server also the constant signal goes away. I have 70 Games in my Steam list and a few non Steam games and never had Audio problems.... i saw many player with exactly same problem and because of that i hope devs fix that as soon as possible. System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (Clean installation 31.12.2016) Game Uninstalled and Installed All driver up to date even BIOS is up to date (F7) My Components: GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3P / Audio chip ( Realtek ALC889 ) codec Intel® Core™ i5-2500 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.70 GHz) 8Gigs of DDR-3 RAM Nvidia GTX 570 i know its not much but the game runs on low settings without problems.

The game runs great, the audio is great, but I can't hear anyone over radio, I can see who's talking, but can't hear them. Audio is default by windows also. Realtek High Definition Audio soundcard and the headset its only for usb and the headset its Razer Tiamat 7.1

I thought of something that could enhance the realism to radio communications, I don't know if it's workable and whether it is, I know it will not be the priority, but let me explain. If during radio communication with another squadleader/commander you could hear gunfire background... voices of other members of the squad in the background inside your radio. What would you think?

Hi all! I got the games months back and just now got back into it this week when I saw the vehicle update had been made! I really believe in this game, in Alpha and already f-ing amazing! I have one suggestion to make about the radios. Army radios usually pick up at least a small bit of ambiant noise, so when a soldier/squad leader is in a firefight, it would be amazing for the other soldiers/squad members who are not part of the TIC, far from the gunfire to be able to hear the gunshots and explosions over the radio. I don't know how complex that would be, since you would have to make it different for the direct VOIP, but I think it would really add up to the realism this game already has! Thanks for this amazing game! GaberTheSniper

Is it just me or doesn't seem that there is a lot more miscommunication after v.8? Seams people not receiving all broadcast over the squad radio. A order can be repeated 2-3 times by different players and there is still some players that didn't her it. I know that sometimes you don't hear the radio because your in a gunfight or there a noob players but what I'm talking about is not that.

The game runs great, the audio is great, but I can't hear anyone over radio, I can see who's talking, but can't hear them. Audio is default by windows also.

Hi, since 8.1 voip is broken. I can see the "people talking" sign, but I can't hear them. The beep is there, too. After turnung off the "radio filter" at least I can hear them even somtimes on local. But local is broken too, since I cannot hear it in vehics and neither once in a while. I never had any probs be4. May there is a work-around (...yep I did a steam-filecheck AND and deleted the app-files)

Hello guys, i got suggestion about local tallk, could you let the enemy hear our local talkings? if you think that before why you didnt do this?

Idea that was well received during a match yesterday. While the ambient sounds from FOB radios are nice, it would be cool to have the teams actual communications play through FOB radios. Perhaps the ambient sounds would play when there are no active player comms Could also add an interesting dynamic where enemy players can get some intel when within a certain range (very close) of the radio Unfortunately, just like any chance for proximity based hearing of voip (regardless of the team you are on), is probably too easy to circumvent long term with players just avoiding the ingame voip (via mumble, teamspeak etc)

Hey, I don't know if DEVs still read these, I have been sidetracked to RL too long. Here it is anyway. This idea did pop to my head while reading this really nice "How to be an effective medic" it pinpoints most of the good stuff. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=597327421 Anyway... Maybe it would be highly beneficial to make a system where medics have access to "Commander channel", this would open communication directly between squads two medics. This would improve the teamwork of two medics. This same feature could be used in the way that there would be radiocircle between all riflemans and one circle between granadier, engineer and gunner. Something to consider?

I love teamwork. I love using the radio. But, I hate it when people start using the radio for chit-chat when you are IN COMBAT, you can't hear s**t and it's plain annoying. Also, when your squad is separated into two groups, people keep calling out enemies that you won't even need to engage or care about in squad radio. Direct voice is more suitable for calling out contacts and in an emergency, since if someone can't hear you in this situation he most probably can't help you either. Please, do something to limit its use and encourage more direct voice. I suggest you include an animation such as pushing the PTT or taking out the radio before you can talk on the radio. Pushing the PTT won't make things too complicated, but it can make people realize that they are actually taking through the radio and make them use it only when necessary since you are only controlling your weapon with one hand, and it adds realism to the game. I think the reason that causes people spamming the radio is not because they want to, is because they don't realize the difference. If something is done to complicate the process or using the radio by a little, I believe the amount of unnecessary traffic will drop drastically.

Does the radio messages on the FOB actual have any relevance. Nice effect but does play affect the message its playing?

As mentioned in this thread below, will the feature will be implemented any time soon, because right now, communication over SL channel is mess.