Speculating about FOBs in 0.9 insurgency?

[combatwombat]

One thing I've noticed about insurgency games is that FOBs really only stand a chance of lasting more than ~10 minutes if they are placed in one of a few good locations (e.g., in VCP on Basrah or in the B6 warehouse or old US main on Karbala). Do you think the new deployables in 0.9 will make it possible to setup long-lasting FOBs in other locations, or do you think SL's will mostly be building in the same old "sweet spots" from 0.87?

[RememberTheAlamo]

You just have to know where to build them

New deployable though seem pretty cool and I hope that it'll help the FOBs a bit

[Thermis]

Make sure this doesn't turn into a feedback thread once .9 is released.

[badmojo420]

I believe there will be more of an incentive to defend the FOBs in 0.9 which will help them stay around longer. But, I can see the insurgents focusing more on destroying the FOBs. Currently insurgents like to camp the FOB since destroying it has little effect on the enemy. But without rallypoints everywhere, destroying a FOB will significantly hurt the coalition team.

In my head i'm picturing 6 FOBs spread around the map with a squad defending each. Once intelligence has been gained and a cache located, the majority of the team would rally around the closest FOB. Creating a team effort of pushing into that area and securing the cache. Hopefully the combat will be more centered around the FOBs rather then being fragmented all around the map.

But maybe i'm just blindly optimistic and have too high of expectations for inter-squad teamwork.

[Rissien]

Well you cant have squads defending every firebase. Especially with higher asset maps theres already not enough infantry squads actually cache hunting because you also have to account for the lone wolf/two man sniper squads off on their own not helping the team at all.

[badmojo420]

I disagree, I think squads should be defending every FOB. Cache hunting should be a secondary mission IMO. If more teams played with that in mind, i believe the coalition would win more rounds.

With a good commander and a couple decent recon squads, it shouldn't be very difficult to pinpoint a cache location prior to putting any boots on the ground there. And if artillery is not available, those heavy assets should be assisting one or two infantry squads when they make the assault.

It's one of my pet peevs about PR insurgency mode, coalition squads just wandering around in a hostile city, looking for caches. Without rallypoints, i believe there will be more incentive to stop this unrealistic behaviour.

9/10 times in .87, that squad wandering around alone, will end up being ambushed and all die. Which is just unacceptable in terms of realism. Coalition forces should move in force. Insurgents should be crazy to try and take them on head on, because it would mean facing FAR greater numbers with superior firepower.

[Wilkinson]

Time for the Base Defense Squads. If you build it, defend it. If you spawn and no ones around, defend it. If you have no known cache locos, defend it.

That simple.

[NyteMyre]

What does the beta say?
When i played in the beta's it was pretty common to place them on the old spots.

[combatwombat]

I think squads should be defending every FOB. Cache hunting should be a secondary mission IMO. If more teams played with that in mind, i believe the coalition would win more rounds.

I'm not so sure about this. Last night a played a round on Karbala where the US team set up one of the best firebases I have ever seen in the old US main. They had both entrances double- or tripple-wired, with SAWs, a HAT, and marksmen in the towers, and infantry patrolling the walls. They held that thing down tight - my insurgent squad tried about 5-6 times to get in and take it out, and got pwned every time. However, the US lost the game without getting more than 2-3 caches.

I think the point you bring up - the idea of having two priorities now (FOB defense AND cache hunting) instead of one - will be be the essence of insurgency in 0.9. I'm really excited to see how it plays out.

[badmojo420]

I'm not so sure about this. Last night a played a round on Karbala where the US team set up one of the best firebases I have ever seen in the old US main. They had both entrances double- or tripple-wired, with SAWs, a HAT, and marksmen in the towers, and infantry patrolling the walls. They held that thing down tight - my insurgent squad tried about 5-6 times to get in and take it out, and got pwned every time. However, the US lost the game without getting more than 2-3 caches.

This is one of the problems i see with the current system that will be fixed in 0.9 hopefully. Right now, it's normal and sometimes effective for the coalition team to focus all it's defensive efforts onto only 1 'super' FOB. VCP, Castle, Outpost, Hesco barriers on ramiel, etc, etc. They'll usually stay up for a very long time if they keep coming under attack, because the defenders won't get bored and leave. And it helps the team in a way, because it gives a squad a starting point to setup a rally and then attempt to leapfrog their rally to the destination.

But, with the 0.9 changes to the rallypoints, the single 'super FOB' strategy will be even worse. It will make more sense to maintain defenses on multiple FOBs around the map(especially on 4km insurgency maps) so that when a cache does spawn in that part of the map, your team is ready to assault it from a fortified position.

I don't expect we're always going to see 6 FOBs setup with a full squads defending each of them. But something like a 4 corners system would be nice. And to defend a FOB you really only need a squad of 4. A squad leader, two gunners, and a medic. Which would leave half the team to assault or drive vehicles.

[Shredhead99]

From my experience (playing D- Beta only on 10th) heavily defended FOBs in Insurgency never work. It's like a rotten corpse for the flies. Ins will swarm it again and again until it's down, a significant part of BLUFOR is bound by the defence, it's all BLUFORS loss.
Non- defended FOBs without any fortifications in hidden places all over the map work best. Insurgents don't get much tickets by destroying one, and BLUFOR can replace it or, in best case, don't even rely on it too much. Stealthy infantry squads moving through the city work damn well!

[00SoldierofFortune00]

I disagree, I think squads should be defending every FOB. Cache hunting should be a secondary mission IMO. If more teams played with that in mind, i believe the coalition would win more rounds.

With a good commander and a couple decent recon squads, it shouldn't be very difficult to pinpoint a cache location prior to putting any boots on the ground there. And if artillery is not available, those heavy assets should be assisting one or two infantry squads when they make the assault.

It's one of my pet peevs about PR insurgency mode, coalition squads just wandering around in a hostile city, looking for caches. Without rallypoints, i believe there will be more incentive to stop this unrealistic behaviour.

9/10 times in .87, that squad wandering around alone, will end up being ambushed and all die. Which is just unacceptable in terms of realism. Coalition forces should move in force. Insurgents should be crazy to try and take them on head on, because it would mean facing FAR greater numbers with superior firepower.

This isn't AAS. In Insurgency, its all about the caches. Even if you have every squad defend all 6 FOBs like you say, for every 1-5 people that die defending that FOB, the US/UK team gains nothing like the Insurgent team come closer to winning. And the caches are NOT easy to find. Korengal is a nightmare to find the caches unless they pop up in very obvious spots which are spottable from the UAV. I've seen a cache spawn in a cave that required a rope to get into the cave, then a trek to the end of the cave, then another rope to go down a 20-30 foot drop and across a pool of water just to get to the cache. Essentially, the US was never going to get that cache and their arty couldn't even penetrate to destroy it. Even if you have intel and know exactly where the cache is for instance, you still are going to take massive casulties on most of the insurgency maps, especially Ramiel, Korengal, and Archer because all of the approaches are really obvious.

All the while, the Insurgents and Taliban lose nothing from having a couple guys continously attack the FOB and get kills while the rest stay back and defend.


BTW, how do you call "wandering around the city" unrealistic behavior when we call that essentially a patrol which is realistic? The individual squads going around and searching different parts of the city, locating enemy movements, and then relaying that to the rest of the team to come help them is a lot more realistic than sitting at an FOB and killing an endless wave of attacking insurgents. And recon squads can't cover the ground that full 6 man squads can, nor can you even have recon squads when you need full 6 man squads to defend all the FOBs like you intend.

But, with the 0.9 changes to the rallypoints, the single 'super FOB' strategy will be even worse. It will make more sense to maintain defenses on multiple FOBs around the map(especially on 4km insurgency maps) so that when a cache does spawn in that part of the map, your team is ready to assault it from a fortified position.

I don't expect we're always going to see 6 FOBs setup with a full squads defending each of them. But something like a 4 corners system would be nice. And to defend a FOB you really only need a squad of 4. A squad leader, two gunners, and a medic. Which would leave half the team to assault or drive vehicles.

It still doesn't change the fact that taking out FOBs is relatively easy as an insurgent. It takes half the number of insurgents to take one out while it takes double the number of US troops to successfully defend it. Even ones placed in good spots are easy to take out with a technical and a little skill. Once the enemy gets close, they get overrun pretty easily too.

[maarit]

pr needs two different outposts.that regular with sandbags etc and the second one,just little what you can put inside buildings.
in one insurgency map there this area where is some big building,few guardtower.etc.
its just silly that you are forced put your outpost in frontyard,why not inside the building?.

[Calhoun]

A well established firebase, with at least one squad dedicated to its defense, should be able to exist as long as it is necessary. A single firebase, in a useful location, should be all that you need.

It can be dismantled when it has become useless and is no longer necessary, and you can establish a new firebase wherever it is useful, wherever a new point of reinforcement and resupply is needed.

I'll admit that this has the highest chance of success if the team is moving in together to assault one cache at a time and otherwise may not work. I witnessed the U.S. Army, on Karbala, utilize this tactic and win with very minimal ticket loss.

[Bellator]

I witnessed the U.S. Army, on Karbala, utilize this tactic and win with very minimal ticket loss.

I agree that the US tactic in Karbala as shown by some badasses here on this forum should be encouraged. For the blufor, convergence (especially on firebases) means victory, while divergence (especially without a protected firebase) means defeat.

But firebases in their current form are fine. My suggestion to encourage convergence may be unpopular, but I think it would be nice: restrict the amount of humvees, increase the use of APCs and transport helis, etc. Conversly reduce the amount of insurgent 50. cals, so that the helis are not constantly dropped, which seems to be the case now.

[wookimonsta]

i dunno, 6 firebases, each one defended by a full squad? that would be 36 players...
if you set up 2 fbs, you can defend those with a full squad, the problem is, on public servers I often only see 2-3 full inf squads on insurgency maps with assets.

guess we will see how it works

[Drav]

If the firebases are in wide open defendable locations with some dead space around them it is easy to keep them up against insurgents. If they are down a back alley on somewhere like Karbala they are going to get swamped. Same as rl....

[combatwombat]

It still doesn't change the fact that taking out FOBs is relatively easy as an insurgent. It takes half the number of insurgents to take one out while it takes double the number of US troops to successfully defend it. Even ones placed in good spots are easy to take out with a technical and a little skill. Once the enemy gets close, they get overrun pretty easily too.

Yeah I agree defending a FOB can be a major source of ticket bleed for BLUFOR. Even if the defenders are doing "awesome" and killing 5-6 insurgents for every soldier lost, it still comes out as a win for the insurgents. Seen a lot of teams go down this way...

i dunno, 6 firebases, each one defended by a full squad? that would be 36 players...
if you set up 2 fbs, you can defend those with a full squad, the problem is, on public servers I often only see 2-3 full inf squads on insurgency maps with assets.

Clearly, then, 0.9 was not designed with the idea in mind that every FOB would have to be fully defended...

I wonder if perhaps another less obvious ramification of the gameplay changes in 0.9 will be a new & greater emphasis on the use of armor for defending FOBs. Think about it... on Basrah, the only way a single squad of 2-3 BLUFOR players can control the entire desert west of the city is with a tank (or APC). Insurgents do not even pop their heads out when they know a tank is watching (well, the smart ones at least). One vehicle watching over 2-3 FOBs that are out in the open (and therefore defendable) could free up the rest of the team to go in and assault caches when intel pops up.

In this way, the tanks/APCs could sort of be the centerpiece of BLUFOR strategy. You need to get caches with infantry; to do this, you need FOBs; and to have FOBs you need armor overwatch. Losing the armor leads to losing the FOBs, which leads to losing the ability to find caches, which leads to GG BLUFOR. The whole game could depend on the skill & willingness to cooperate of the tank/apc crews

Addit: I just remembered that littlebirds are also relatively good at patrolling large open areas... perhaps they could have also have a new roll in defending the team's FOBs (i.e. on Karabla and Ramiel)

[Inca_Killa]

Addit: I just remembered that littlebirds are also relatively good at patrolling large open areas... perhaps they could have also have a new roll in defending the team's FOBs (i.e. on Karabla and Ramiel)

And get destroyed in seconds by any technical in the area that figures out that a LB is patrolling? I don't think so. Lb's are too easy to shoot down, the only viable option is to strafe and GTFO before any insurgent AK happens to knock out your rotor -_-.

[Herbiie]

A firebase with good defences, in a good location (there are more good locations then people think) can be defended by a single squad.

In the Beta there are two types of Fire Bases: Those that are to be defended, and those that are hidden.

FOr example on a round of Mestia, we had one firebase from which we were able to secure east, then we set another firebase on a crossroads with .50s, Fox Holes, wire, everything, and we managed to defend it (despite building it under fire) for a good 10 -20 minutes beore we were inevitably over run (When you build an FB to cut off the main road between their main and their objective, in sight of a field gun, you shouldn't hold it for long!)