I always make a point to crank through assignments in Battlefield as quickly as I can, especially those with a weapon unlock as a reward. Getting them out of the way early saves me the trouble of slogging through old assignments to get to the new assignments to unlock new weapons. Sure, at some point they might offer paid unlocks for all weapons in Battlefield 4 but who likes to wait? Or pay?

Anyway, these awful Commander Mode Assignments in Battlefield 4. Here's my take on getting through each one with your sanity intact.

By My Command (Bronze)

The tricky part with this one is earning the 10 Commander Leadership Ribbons. To earn a single Commander Leadership Ribbon you'll need to have someone accept your order ten times within a round.

You, sir, are going to need a friend. Have your friend start a new squad so they're the squad leader. Then have them spawn in and get comfortable. Start issuing orders to your buddy's squad and make sure they accept them each time. It's really the only sane way to get these lousy Commander Leadership Ribbons.

Without a friend, you'll find yourself issuing orders to the random squad leaders on your team in the match. Instead of doing you a solid and accepting your orders, they'll go through the trouble of calling up the Comms Rose to decline your order, which blows my mind.

On the flipside, if you find yourself in the squad leader's seat and your commander issues you an order, go ahead and do the poor bastard a favor and accept it. You don't have to carry out the order but keep in mind that if you do, you'll get bonus points. And loads of good Battlefield karma.

Tin Foil Hat (Silver)

This is probably the easiest of the commander assignments to pull off. 

Simply drop into any map and make sure you've always got drones in the air and you're running vehicle or infantry scans whenever they become available.

The ten Commander Surveillance Ribbons are a little tricky as you need to earn ten scan bonuses as commander in a round. The easy way is to drop into Operation Locker as commander and simply keep a drone up around the flag at C. Anyone you've spotted that your team kills counts gives you a scan bonus.

We'll Meet Again (Sliver)

Seems easy on the surface as all you gotta do is launch 100 cruise missiles. The hard part is you gotta launch 100 cruise missiles, which means your team has to hold on to whatever flag gives you cruise missiles.

The trick to this one is to play commander on Flood Zone. It's a relatively small map and the flag that gives you access to cruise missiles is C on the Xbox One, right in the middle of the action. It's likely that your team will capture this flag because it's the focus of the map.

If your team loses the flag, you're welcome to issue orders to take it but remember that whenever you're issuing orders to folks that you don't know, your mileage will certainly vary.

The easy part of this assignment are the early warnings. Simply find a quiet place on the map and spam out 50 quick early warnings.

Offensive Commander (Gold)

You're going to want to head back to Flood Zone for those cruise missile kills, and here's why. Flood Zone is a relatively small map, which means the flight time for those cruise missiles will be shortest here. 

Next, you're gonna want to keep an eye on those rooftops for snipers.

Just after you launch your cruise missile at a pile of rooftop snipers, send in a supply drop on the exact spot where your cruise missile will land. While those snipers are reloading off your ammo drop, they won't notice the incoming cruise missile and you'll likely score a multi-kill. You'll be giggling like a jackass the first time you pull this move off... actually you'll giggle every time you pull this move off.

Designating 10 HVT's is a piece of cake, you just need to keep an eye out for them.

As for deploying 50 gunships? I had the best success on Lancang Dam. It's a little bit tricky because ideally you'll want your team to hold the island control point (C on Xbox One). You'll also need someone to shoot down the gunship soon after you launch it so that you can get a bunch of gunship deploys in a single match. The track of the gunship on Lancang takes it directly over the enemy spawn where there's always some jackass camping in the AA LAV spamming active radar missiles at aircraft.

One Other Insanely Helpful Commander Mode Tip

You probably already know that you can knock down the opposing commander's inbound cruise missiles by taking the opposing commander offline. You can also knock down an incoming cruise missile by popping an EMP drone over the target. When the cruise missile hits your EMP, it's toast.

Most commanders have no idea about this one and it may take them a few zapped cruise missiles to catch on.

One Bonus Commander Mode Tip

If you're going after your cruise missile launches or gunship deploys and your team isn't following your orders to take the relevant control points... just bail on the lazy bastards. Find yourself a different server. Honestly, life is short and playing in Commander Mode isn't the best Battlefield experience so throw your quit stat caution to the wind and head for greener pastures.