The Sad State of Fire Support

[[=TC=]nuetron]

With respect to EVERYONE(you are entitled to your opinions and I mean no offense).

ALL of this is stupid, minus the parts where more people get GLTDs. As a long time PR pilot, nothing since 0.6 has given me greater joy, or greater anger- than LAS.DEG.s.

Before 0.6 it was cool with all enemy vehicles being mapped. Now it is cool with anything you fire a laser at being mapped. But in scrims and Betas, what the makers of PR don't see is that in regular games, most CAS pilots are in the air for large amounts of time with little to nothing done. More times I either die attempteing to land(Silent Eagle), get camped on landing(Kashan/S.E.) or just quit the server/Game ends more often than I die from Dogfighting, legitimate AA deaths, and lagg combined.

What is needed is simple. More people need the GLTD, or focus need to shift to the planes for most to ALL air support. Helicopters are cool and I respect my fellow Helo pilots- but they have much more to do, while they fly vertically and in 3 dimensions- Plane pilots fly horizontally in 3 dimension...with not much to do. I swear my now i've made more turns in Silent Eagle than I have in all PR maps of past combined(0.5 Al Basrah A-10s included). My suggestion(not to Thread-jack)

-Either make more vehicles have the GLTD or
-equip planes with JDAMs like that one guy suggested

Or both! All I know is:
(A lot)-Planes are scarcely used like they should be
In 0.6 Beta I held off and entire USMC armored column with my 1 frogfoot and 0 spotters. Now I have to wait on the ground/ fly around aimlessly until someone decides I'm worthy enough to blowup a single target
-Though this type of CAS where the planes are soley for CAS and cannot bomb/strafe on their own works for the Marine Corps...
It doesn't work for PR
-I love to fly IRL, and this game just makes it so...boring and long. Hours and hours without more than a handfull of strafes and even less kills...not fun.

-Project Reality is the greatest BF2 mod ever concieved, AND made...yet one of its major flaws is the supreme lack of CAS or even Air Support which acts on its own.

I know many imagine a game with people firing lasers ALL over the combat zone and messing up the game. But even IF somehow some group of new "SpermCube"s decided to do that, it would cause minimal effect on the overall game. And trust me, what little impact it would have on every other game would be nothing compared to the many people using CAS who need it.

[Hunt3r]

I know this is a very bad suggestion, but why not just use CA's system? Once you know where enemy armor is, you set a marker, dive at it, lock it up with your targeting pod and fire your AGM-65. Or you can always just drop bombs on it.

Your best bet for being able to take out tanks and the like is to try and get lucky by firing at the tank without lock. If you fire close in enough, you can actually take it out.

Also, it makes me feel like one of those Su-25A pilots, firing AGMs without a Shkval. Or a HUD.

[joethepro36]

Once you know where enemy armor is, you set a marker, dive at it, lock it up with your targeting pod and fire your AGM-65. Or you can always just drop bombs on it.

Because the DEVs stated a while back the focus was on teamwork, not the absolute reliance on realism in every way. I agree with them due to low view distance and small maps, (air) assets need to be scaled down for the maps. With combined arms, a single pilot can knock out the entire enemy team single-handed (bar some well used AA). And I for one do not want pilots to have the ability to take out targets single-handed. The present system where we call in targets feels like a more teamwork oriented and balanced game overall.

In 0.6 Beta I held off and entire USMC armored column with my 1 frogfoot and 0 spotters.

This is because in .6 the AA was absolutely terrible and virtually never hit. I once witnessed an a 10 strafe the main while 2 tunguskas and 2 stationary AA's unloaded their missiles into one across it's entire pass without a single hit. Aircraft then were overpowered as their was not much to counter them, bar over aircraft.


I find as with all gameplay facets, the quality of the game is solely based on one thing, the squadleaders. Most of the time in a pub game you will have maybe 1-2 "good" squadleaders who know what to do. CAS is reliant on them at all times, it's just most of the time they never call it in.

[Solid Knight]

Remove jets. They can be simulated with fire support options like the JDAM. Use attack helicopters for CAS.

I also like the original poster's idea. It sucks not being able to pre-bombard enemy hold outs.

[Hunt3r]

Because the DEVs stated a while back the focus was on teamwork, not the absolute reliance on realism in every way. I agree with them due to low view distance and small maps, (air) assets need to be scaled down for the maps. With combined arms, a single pilot can knock out the entire enemy team single-handed (bar some well used AA). And I for one do not want pilots to have the ability to take out targets single-handed. The present system where we call in targets feels like a more teamwork oriented and balanced game overall.

The problem here is that it's teamwork for the sake of teamwork. Realistically, an A-10 won't be able to spot infantry or something of the sort. It just doesn't happen, and in PR, unless you fly dangerously low to terrain, it's very hard to spot someone on the ground. Hiding well is everything.

The current CAS system makes taking out armor dangerously hard, since it requires a person who is very vulnerable to all of the armor's armament, to mark the target for you to take out. I understand the sentiment behind limiting the power of close air support, but the simple truth is that currently attack aircraft are very limited when it comes to precision guided weapons.

I don't think it would really be a bad thing to not require a lase for ground attack aircraft to destroy armor. In general though, I believe that PR is making for a battle that is very balanced, but it is a battle of static defense. We need mobile weapons to be more powerful to make maneuver warfare as important as it is in reality. In reality, there is very close coordination between infantry and the pilots in CAS, and in PR, this doesn't exist because the majority of squad leaders are simply too overloaded to be able to constantly lase and re-lase for the pilot. If you make it easier for squad leaders to get air support, they will be more willing to cooperate with the pilots.

[killonsight95]

i recon just increase the time the lase lasts to about 1 mins or 1 min 30 secs, unless object is hit by guided missile then it will dissapear

[Nitneuc]

I also think area attack should be way more common, loading time divided by 2 (30min JDAM/20min artillery/15 min mortars). PR 0.9 sometimes turns into trench war with static positions because defense has become a lot more easy than assault. Bringing in more area attacks would make the rounds much more dynamic and force people to avoid cheap-team-grouping-tactics-around-Zerg-Firebase IMO .

[iAstralPr0jekt]

As a dedicated heli pilot. We need more emphasis on getting our LAZES! Both Jets and Helis.

IDK how to fix all this, and yes it does need fixing, but I can tell you, flying around doing nothing sucks, is a huge waste and is far far too common.
There's gotta be something in place that emphasizes the use of them much more.


It boggles my mind, I mean I don't understand why or how a SL passes up the chance to help himself and his team out by using this very very much needed asset. It eases so much pressure and gets things done so much faster, better and cooler. I have had my squads butts saved many times by our friends in the sky, just by taking a small amount of time to send them a target.
I think that most people want to kill with their rifle first and call in CAS on their dead bodies after they've failed.

If I'm an SL you better believe that if CAS is up, I am sending them fresh targets, whether they're in my squad or not.
They will get a grid, type of target and a fresh laze once they're near target and as always, if AA is near, they will get that target first. Soon after final impact, my squad will be oscar mike to the target area, if needed.

Also, calling arty/mortars/jdam from a hidden location is kind of unreasonable considering how dynamic the battlefield gets. Vehicles move and infantry move quite often. But it could have it's benefits at times, such as FOB's and such.

The improvements to the fire support are great with 0.9. I'm enjoying them thoroughly.
But we wont stop there will we?

How about giving the CO the ability at a set timer to use his UAV as either a AC-130 or Predator Drone, meaning it is armed, at the set timer, say between 45-60 minutes and lasting for about 1.5 minutes. Giving the CO the ability to send it with his own eyes, pretty much directly on target. This would definately kill the boredom bug with the CO's such as myself.


Yes this is project "reality" but it must be team play oriented as well, and remember irl there is no re-spawn and armies are far larger than 32 players.

[Nehil]

Here is my point of view when lazing targets for CAS;

Lazing for choppers is really quite simple. I usually laze FOB, vehicles of all sorts and heavy infantery (AA, sniper, HAT). The tricky thing is that I can't really rely on the chopper to do its thing. They might get a AA lock, reload or whatever. When I laze about 40% of the time there is good effect on target. Other times the attack heli is interrupted (not the pilots fault) for one reason or another or misses it's target. However, I laze on maps like Muttrah.

Now, lazing targets for jets; I'm very cautious about this. I have no idea what the jet is doing right now. Is he engaged in a dogfight? Is he getting shot at? Does he have ammo? Is he at the right altitude? Did he hear/read my message about CAS? So rather than bothering a jetpilot (who can't really hover or multitask well) who might in the middle of something, I don't bother lazing. However, if the pilot had a quick way to tell me that he is 100% ready to engage a target at my command, I'd probably not feel like an ******* calling for jet CAS.

[Hunt3r]

The simple solution here is to make it able to take out vehicles, AA emplacements, and ATGM emplacements have a "built in" lase. It would disappear once the driver gets out though.

Probably hasn't been suggested before, but it would allow attack helos to perform CAS far more effectively, and it would support teamwork because the attack helos can fly in, hovering just inside the VD, fire their AGM, and run away.

Then again, I think that it wouldn't be very balanced to most people, even though I would, as an SL, greatly appreciate the fact that I don't have to constantly lase in order to have a precision strike.

[tehb2]

This suggestion would be useful if one was on a team truly working together. I play PR all the time, and you find games where the team works together, and you find games where squads are on there own, or individual players are on their own. The later is the reason why all the players have binos. The engine doesn't allow for much in the way of vision, even if your kit includes a scoped weapon, so to see anything over a maybe 200yds - accurately - you need to zoom in. In real life, without vision problems, we can see enemies and obstacles very far away, but the engine limits this and doesn't have the resolution to begin with.


I saw some comments making remarks about the original BF2 arty. I liked the Arty and Commander system Of course, when it worked against you, like when facing a good commander, it sucked. A good commander could control a game. But when it worked for your team it was great. Arty strikes happen in real life. Air Support, mortar sections, etc. I don't see a lot of that in PR. Maybe its hard to code. Maybe people think it will be abused. I think including these things can be done well, and balanced as good as possible, but the fact is that the team that has the best ability to use these weapons is going to do well, and it'll suck to play a team like that, but that just means your team has to do better.

Maybe it can be balanced like it was in BF2 - have the fire support assets as physical objects in game that can be destroyed and repaired. Ever hear of counter battery fire? Players will need to have eyes on target to call in indirect fire, and the assets can be spread out if not entirely randomly placed at the start of each round (to force the other team to recon).

I just more teamwork (which is up to the players), vehicle use (more helos!), and more support features.

[Hunt3r]

But then we'd have to have mobile arty...

[l|Bubba|l]

What about a faster reload time but have the artillery cost some tickets?
The artillery already does self destruct after each engagement to accomplish a longer reload time.
So it should™ be easy to implement this.