Don't wait to be invited into a squad. Press Caps Lock to bring up the squad screen and click on 'Join'. You will almost always be welcome because, as has been mentioned, your presence in the squad increases the assets they and you can use.

Ideally, join a squad before you spawn in and use the VOIP to ask the squad leader what class he needs you to be. If you or the SL don't have a mic, have a look at what classes the squad are playing as. The icon to the left of the name in the squad list is the class. Is there anything missing?

The squad leader has just fallen foul of Punkbuster and been disconnected from the server – and you suddenly find yourself squad leader for the first time! What do you do? Well, if you really don't want to do it, bring up the squad screen then leave and rejoin the squad. That should pass the leadership onto another member. If you fancy giving it a go, you need to know how to give orders, otherwise all you'll hear for the rest of the round is "Your orders, sir?" and "I need orders!"

You can pass on or reject the commander's orders (if there is one) by simply pressing Pg Up for yes or Pg Dn for no, the same as voting. You can also bring up the squad screen and right click on the map to bring up a menu of orders that you can issue yourself. However, by far the easiest and least intrusive way of issuing your own orders is to make use of the Tactical Comms Rose (T by default) and the 3D map.

Use Left Alt (by default) to toggle the 3D map on and off; you'll need it on so you can see the icons over the CP positions. Centre your crosshair on the icon above a CP then press T and left click the mouse (i.e. fire) to issue the order. It's context sensitive, so it will automatically put down an orange attack marker on an enemy or neutral CP, and a purple defence marker on a friendly CP. Using T and fire on anything other than a 3D map icon will give you a yellow 'Move to this position' marker. With a little practise, you'll find it easy to give orders while on the move, while flying a starfighter or driving a vehicle. Also using T and fire is the only way to put down an order that will track a moving target in space.

Here's a little trick I discovered the other day for putting down a tracking defence order on a Capital ship or transport that you are occupying yourself: press F12 to get into fly-by view then use T and fire on the little 3D map icon above the ship to issue the order before pressing F9 to get back into normal view.

As a squad member, you can also use T and fire to ask for new orders.

Mmm... vanilla!