Insurgent Missdirection

[Psyko]

finally a dev suggestion, its like drawing blood from a stone.
but...
doesnt that seperate the blufor team? doesnt that mean that all the ins have to do to win is sit on the flag? the game would probibly just be Ins sitting on the cap radius waiting for a JDAM, right?

[Rudd]

doesnt that seperate the blufor team? doesnt that mean that all the ins have to do to win is sit on the flag? the game would probibly just be Ins sitting on the cap radius waiting for a JDAM, right?

either I didn't express myself well or ya didn't get it

the flags give bonuses, not victory, you still need to destroy the caches, you just gain a reward such as intel points or assets from that flag, e.g. the Ins get some extra kits at the flag or at their main, or maybe a new bombcar

anyway psyko, you know that team members generally post their suggestions/ideas behind closed doors

[Arc_Shielder]

I like your idea Rudd. Are you talking about one flag for the entire round though?

The problem I see is that it would focus too much attention on the flag and not enough on the caches. If BLUFOR is holding the flag, they would build a firebase and camp there with 2 squads just to gain intel. INS on the other hand will takes this opportunity to bleed the opponents tickets as much as they can and even gain assets as a bonus (or being driven to). Much of the action will be channeled to the flag area.

I believe some things would be needed for this to work. Only one cache should be spawnable as this would focus the attention on 2 seperate locations rather than 3. The second is that we need the 120/128p limit so that there's plenty of human resources for the flag dispute.

Personally, and if it was possible, I would make the flag disappear after being conquered by one of the two factions and make a random one appear 5 minutes later. Also, a 2nd cache will still be a bugger so I would take it out regardless of the player limit.

[Psyko]

anyway psyko, you know that team members generally post their suggestions/ideas behind closed doors

yea but then the pubbies dont get a chance to tell them that they're wrong D:

[Wakain]

rudd, I actually like this idea very much. blufor will need to defend a certain spot instead of just raiding the countryside in their landy's to gain intel (but can still raid villages if they please). perhaps more important is that the insurgents also have something to do untill they have to defend a cache. that flag will probably will be a central point around which most of the fighting will be focused. this could result in quicker rounds though as this way intelpoints might be accumulated and vice versa tickets decreased more quickly.

@AS if I'm not mistaken, rudd doesn't want the flag to have anything to do with tickets but instead give a reward to the team that controls it. e.g: intelpoints for the blufor and some special kits or vehicles for the ins.

[Arc_Shielder]

@AS if I'm not mistaken, rudd doesn't want the flag to have anything to do with tickets but instead give a reward to the team that controls it. e.g: intelpoints for the blufor and some special kits or vehicles for the ins.

I understood what Rudd meant.

What i'm saying is that it's an evident place in the map - a static flag for the entire round - that both factions will confront each other. This means that BLUFOR will want the intel of the flag and whatever they can shoot. And INS will want the special or added assets and take out as many BLUFOR tickets as possible. Both will camp there if possible.
To avoid a very mini AAS confrontation here, some tweakings would be advisable like the ones I posted previously.

I'll quote them:

I believe some things would be needed for this to work. Only one cache should be spawnable as this would focus the attention on 2 seperate locations rather than 3. The second is that we need the 120/128p limit so that there's plenty of human resources for the flag dispute.

Personally, and if it was possible, I would make the flag disappear after being conquered by one of the two factions and make a random one appear 5 minutes later. Also, a 2nd cache will still be a bugger so I would take it out regardless of the player limit.

EDIT: To make things a bit clear for my side, I'm saying that it's a good idea. However those mini AAS disputes for one static flag would make it the highlight of the gamemode. Caches in return would be more neglected for both sides. That defeats the purpose of the INS gamemode, hence the 2 slightly different suggestions I gave.

[Stoickk]

Pickup kits would not solve unknown cache spawning necessarily, but it would definitely slow it down, especially if a hybrid approach were adopted. If the only kits available for request at an unknown cache were Cell Leader, Warrior, and Civilian, there is much less incentive. RPG kits especially, and PKM and RPK kits are the biggest draws to spawn on unknown caches. As a possible alternative, would it be possible to have those three kits not spawn on cache locations until they change to known caches? This way, Insurgent teams would still have that firepower at known caches, but the incentive to spawn on unknowns would be reduced greatly.

I love your flag/counterobjective idea. I think that the most obvious incarnation of this idea would be to add Vehicle Checkpoints to insurgency maps that do not have them. Most maps have a VCP, so this should not be overly difficult, however, as I am not a mapmaker, I may be speaking out of turn on that. Start the point under Blufor control, give them an option to spawn there for a limited time at the beginning of the round, (and as an adjustment start both weapons caches unknown) and give Blufor a steady flow of intel points as long as they hold it, at a rate to be determined. This would be to simulate the steady flow of intelligence from Blufor stopping and questioning civilians in the combat zone. Yes I know they are not really there, but this is Project Reality, and I do try to ground my ideas in some semblance of reality. I do not know the current values needed to expose cache locations, but I would recommend a rate that would expose one cache per hour, so that if Blufor decides to just camp in VCP, they can not get enough intel to locate all caches within the round time limit. They would be required to at least patrol and engage to some extent. However, if Blufor is actively fighting and engaging, not to mention actively defending against the Insurgents rushing VCP, this should result in a fairly smooth and consistent flow of gameplay. Obviously, testing and tweaks would be in order.

If the Insurgent team is able to take the VCP from Blufor, I suggest a one time intel point penalty (rather than a bleed of tickets or intel) each time the Insurgents take full control, rather than at loss of control, to simulate loss of the intelligence material that would have been inside the checkpoint when it was overrun. Additionally, for the duration that the VCP area is held by the Insurgent team, I suggest that the Insurgent team have access to some spawnable pickup kits inside VCP. One one hand, I kind of like the idea of there being a couple of Blufor kits being in there, simulating taking the arms room, but on the other hand, I don't want to unbalance a map. I am thinking probably one additional arty IED kit, simulating rewiring the munitions left behind, and perhaps some Blufor optics rifleman kits, no more than two or three. Maybe throw in a single Blufor Rifleman AT kit, but I am undecided on that. It would depend on the map, Blufor assets/layer, and overall balance. Again, I do not want to unbalance a map, and that is an extremely powerful kit to put at the Insurgent team's disposal. Yes I know they can get one if a Blufor soldier loses it in the field, but that is a different ballgame than having it spawn under the Insurgents' control.

I think this would definitely up the fun factor all the way around. The Insurgents would have something to "base rape" while keeping main as a safe haven as it is on most reputable servers. Those that like that kind of game play could throw themselves at VCP mercilessly, as well as the Blufor guys getting to play starship troopers on the Insurgents zerging the walls. Additionally, it would give an option to break up stagnant gameplay on maps that take forever, or stall on caches that are well defended or in bad locations. Ticket loss for Blufor defending VCP's would be an issue, as Insurgent teams would theoretically be able to just bleed Blufor dry by hammering the VCP, so perhaps a ticket increase on the Blufor side would be in order as well.

On a separate note, can you guys take a look at caches in destructible buildings? Often the buildings are destroyed and the caches are buried in the rubble and rendered invincible or invisible. Also, on the map Karbala There are frequently two caches that spawn in the southern section of the map. The cache that spawns in the western most section of that village, just east of the river, sometimes spawns inside a building. Not inside a room, but physically inside a building, to the point that it is completely invulnerable, and can not be located to be destroyed, short of perhaps carpet bombing with C4, which would be a lot of fun to watch, but ultimately, is not very practical. This is not a common bug, but I have seen it happen more than once.

Additionally, I think there is a separate thread running discussing civilians, and their role in the insurgency game mode. Do we want to bring that discussion here since we are tackling the game mode as a whole? That system needs a lot of love too.

To revisit the ammo techie issue, I can see the original intent, but I don't think that the execution has the round playing out quite with that same feel. Maybe have a second ammo techie spawn in at the 20 minute mark and increase spawn time to ten minutes or something along those lines if the dev's aren't willing to let the poor backwards Insurgents learn how to throw a box in the back of a technical. Those trucks are the lifeblood of the Insurgent team. Blufor can drop an ammo crate with hummv's, and supply crates with logi trucks. Insurgents don't get supply crates at all, and to have half of their mobile supply source unspawnable is rough.

I thought of one more thing that is desperately needed on the insurgent side. The Insurgent team obviously has demolitions work down to a science. Can the dev's pretty please with pink sugar on top give the arty ied kit a wrench? We need some way of removing mines placed by inexperienced sappers or blatant asshats that do things like mining exits to insurgent main, or put mines under key assets like Gary's inside main bases. As it stands, our only option is to lose the asset and wait 20 minutes for the respawn, or in the case of a mined exit, sacrifice a vehicle to clear it. With the Insurgent team's obvious demolitions expertise, it shouldn't be too much of a reality stretch to implement this.

All in all, I am loving the fact that Insurgency is getting some love, or at least some attention. Keep up the good work.

[Bob of Mage]

My idea, when I said to add requestable kits, was to have a mixed system. Most of the pickup kits would stay as they wouldn't be the requestable types. It would be hard to set a limit per map on things like RPG-7s if they were requestable only. The Insurgent request tree should have most kit type, but much more limited. Say give them a combat medic, but only 3 per team, and 1 per squad (like a normal faction's LAT kit). Same thing with LMGs, and RPGs. Also it might be best to only let them request at mains just to show how limited they are as a group. I'm guessing the time between kit requests is set for all teams, otherwise they should also have a longer time as well.


@Flag idea: I remember back when I first started playing in late 0.8 (the last per 0.9 patch), there was such a thing to some degree. It was K-something (forget the name but it's still in) Valley, and the firebase that is now the main was cappable (it also wasn't the main). One of my first PR rounds was spent there killing a random sniper shooting at the flag from the hill behind it. It served as a focus point for the whole round, but didn't stop me from hunting for the caches. It really made things different from how they are played today. I think it should be readded and upgraded.

[Stealthgato]

For impossible caches to defend, there's two in Al Basrah:

[Pronck]

Maybe this is what we want in order to balance Insurgency, or making it able to use jets. I've also seen some pictures of a technical with a SAM-Turret/Stinger System on the back.

Giving a bigger viarity of assets to the Insurgents will make it more fun for both sites. As you can make bigger maps with jets for example. If you add things to Insurgency like flags, 120p, unknown caches not spawnable, barriers for Insurgents, transport technicals you will get more interesting rounds. As they don't have enough weapons to take out certain assets, while the enemy do have the counter-parts.

[Deer]

The problems we see today in teamwork has old roots...

Think of it like this : If squad's spawnpoint (Squadleader-spawn or rallypoint) would be the only spawnpoint there is, EVERYBODY would listen to squad leader and do as he says. Current rallypoint is just so crappy that noone wants to follow orders to get such a crappy reward.

[Silly_Savage]

Are you suggesting we revert back to squad leader spawning?

...

[Deer]

I told this before we removed all squad's spawnpoints, if players are not rewarded for following squadleader's orders, many players wont follow the orders. And reward must be something what these kind of players appreciates, that something is a spawnpoint. Spawnpoint also makes squadleader's job easier, and therefore more players can be arsed to be squadleaders when its not so stressfull role.

There is many possibilities what this "squad's own spawnpoint" could be. It should be powerfull enough to motivate ppl doing teamwork, but it shouldnt be too spammy. Current rallypoint is just too weak to motivate players to follow orders so it would need to be alot more usefull than current one.

[Web_cole]

What insugency needs to be more fun is a counter objective for insurgents.
Blufor want the cache, but insurgents could have an objective of their own as well as defending. E.G. holding a mapper placed flag.
I really enjoyed the lanyial flag and VCP flags in the past, I don't agree with putting huge amounts of bleed on, as that turns the game in to a king of the hill rather than a liquid game, but gaining assets as the result of aflag hold (i.e. propaganda victory or something) might be nice. at the same time, that flag could benefit blufor with intel points. When there are no suspected caches, blufor need something to do to get the game moving - a flag would provide this. When insurgents need to open a new front, gain some equipment, or otherwise just need an objective other than 'wait for blufor to arrive' a flag would provide this. Each map has some good locations for a randomised selection where only 1 flag may be chosen per round.

Imho something along the lines of this would just exacerbate the current problems with Insurgency. Ins players have enough trouble trying to defend caches, which is the only objective the Ins team have. It seems to me adding a secondary (but less important) objective could only make those problems worse.

[Psyko]

I told this before we removed all squad's spawnpoints, if players are not rewarded for following squadleader's orders, many players wont follow the orders. And reward must be something what these kind of players appreciates, that something is a spawnpoint. Spawnpoint also makes squadleader's job easier, and therefore more players can be arsed to be squadleaders when its not so stressfull role.

There is many possibilities what this "squad's own spawnpoint" could be. It should be powerfull enough to motivate ppl doing teamwork, but it shouldnt be too spammy. Current rallypoint is just too weak to motivate players to follow orders so it would need to be alot more usefull than current one.

Well in this case, it might work that way for INS, but i like the current system for BLUFOR.

[Kain888]

I told this before we removed all squad's spawnpoints, if players are not rewarded for following squadleader's orders, many players wont follow the orders. And reward must be something what these kind of players appreciates, that something is a spawnpoint. Spawnpoint also makes squadleader's job easier, and therefore more players can be arsed to be squadleaders when its not so stressfull role.

There is many possibilities what this "squad's own spawnpoint" could be. It should be powerfull enough to motivate ppl doing teamwork, but it shouldnt be too spammy. Current rallypoint is just too weak to motivate players to follow orders so it would need to be alot more usefull than current one.

Rally Points have nothing to do with this issue, except maybe artificial feeling that you are acting like a squad when people spawn near you. If someone don't care about TW it doesn't matter if he is 300 or 30 m from SL - he will not act as unit anyway. If anything I see more people trying to stick to squad nowadays than in old days and reward is simple - higher chances to survive and accomplish something. They have to act as unit instead of spawning recklessly in some hidden pile o bags.

I agree with Web - anything more than current two caches is going to only cause more troubles than we have now. Like in old Korengal when most players were fighting outpost rather than go for caches, because it meant instant action rather than building up defenses/hunting caches.

Insurgent maps need for sure good positions of cache spawning. New mechanic of cache spawn made it that most caches spawn on outskirts of maps - it's usually desert/hangar/field (!), etc. on many ins maps (Basrah, Fallujah, Karbala) and most of times they are taken by tank/kiowa/etc. even if you deploy proper defenses - ins are just hopeless against these assets without even tiny cover or means to counter it. This often creates frustration in players, as even the highest teamwork in ins team can't match even poor blufor team. For me it's more about balance than lack of teamwork.

[Teh0]

One of the insurgent warrior kits could be replased by limited RPK kit and no more RPK on cache.

[Stoickk]

Maybe this is what we want in order to balance Insurgency, or making it able to use jets. I've also seen some pictures of a technical with a SAM-Turret/Stinger System on the back.

Giving a bigger viarity of assets to the Insurgents will make it more fun for both sites. As you can make bigger maps with jets for example. If you add things to Insurgency like flags, 120p, unknown caches not spawnable, barriers for Insurgents, transport technicals you will get more interesting rounds. As they don't have enough weapons to take out certain assets, while the enemy do have the counter-parts.

I believe that I detect the slightest note of sarcasm in your message there ghost, but I'm not entirely certain...

The point of the whole discussion is to find ways to improve the insurgency game mode as a whole for the entire community. This is a brainstorming process. Most of the ideas presented have been logically thought out with an eye on addressing a specific problem with the insurgency game mode as it currently stands. Most of these ideas have also been presented with a basis in reality and projected impact on gameplay. If you don't agree with the ideas, that's perfectly fine, this is a public forum after all. Point out the potential problems you see with specific ideas, and present your own ideas as well. That is what makes the brainstorming process work. The cool thing about this discussion is that the more people that jump in, the better the end result is going to be. Criticizing the members of the community for discussing potential improvements to the game mode however...

[Psyko]

@ Teh0:

If your going to make a suggestion, then explain clearly why and how that would work and espsecially mention why that would be better than the current system, or else moderators will see this as one big suggestion thread and close it. I like where this discussion is going.

@kain:
Insurgent squad members need a reason to stay with their squad leader, right now they dont. my emmediate thoughts are, an Area of Effect buff for squad members next to SL, a bit retro arcade but it might do the trick, or Insurgent SLs being able to place bags that have a limited pop count. or in other words, only 40 people could spawn on it then its gone. each sl gets one for the whole game, and it benifits the whole team. there might be exploits, but i cant think of any tbh.

[Stoickk]

Cache spawns, particularly on unknown caches, encourage lone wolf play rather than team play. That is one of the core issues here. Why should an insurgent stay with a squad leader when the best they can spawn with is an AK and grenades or an SKS and IED's, when they can spawn lone wolf at an unknown cache and have an almost guaranteed shot at an RPG, PKM, or RPK? Insurgent teams try hard to discourage spawning on unknown caches, but there are always people that will do it, for exactly that reason. Often, these people aren't even in a squad, or worse, are squad leaders of a squad and spawn there to grab the limited kits, give away the cache location when they run out of there, and don't bother to stay and defend the location they gave away. Improving Squad/Cell Leader spawns is not going to address this issue in any meaningful way in my opinion.

This is why it has been suggested to either remove these kits from unknown caches, and have them spawn on caches once the caches become known, or go to a full or partial kit request system for the insurgent team. To be honest, a full kit request system might be just as much of a problem with people going to the unknown for kits, so a partial request system, such as only allowing Cell leader, Collaborator, and Warrior (AK-47/74 and Ammo Bag) to be requestable at the cache might be the way to go. I elaborated on the logic and projected impact of this idea a couple of pages back, but can link to the post if necessary.