C4 vs caches

[Mikemonster]

PRT C8B4 Archer I believe. L4gi's CATA team decided that they were losing too many caches and decided to keep all INS in main base. NATO was forced to do random sweeps and ultimately started to find and destroy enough caches that they felt it necessary to come back out and fight us. NATO lost by 2 caches, though they were both targeted and likely to come down after a bit more pressure.

Subsequently the rules were changed to ban this tactic.

Also, this battle was host to the coolest combined assault on Castle at the round start by BLUFOR that I was ever a part of. I believe the single squad defending castle must've shat themselves wondering where that blitzkrieg came from. Oh the memories.

The above points to two points. Number 1 - that it can and has been done and is somewhat effective. Number 2 - a good sweep will always turn up the cache but then it was Archer so it was pretty easy to sweep the isolated areas, much like it would be on a map like Kokan.

However, PRT is not the norm so yes its not likely to happen.

As for my comments about Kiowa, its about how little I care about the semantics of whats a fair tactic or not. Fact is Kiowas destroy caches that insurgents are handily defending. A good pilot won't get shot down. A good stealth team can get through, but a good perimeter should stop them.

Should we punish skill for the sake of handicapping the useless players who can't defend a sector or sit on an objective? Honestly how many AAS rounds are lost cause nobody would defend a flag? Should we nerf the attacking cap rate so that it requires even fewer defenders because "you just can't expect that kind of thing out of pubbers" as was said about adequately defending a cache perimeter from C4 teams?

Do to the C4 what was done to the Kiowa, then its hunky dory. Don't like how your INS team sucks at defending? Become a PR leadership god or something. Modding the game to suit incompetent teamwork levels is not good for the mod. Promoting team work but telling them its only like a cute social gathering, have fun, don't worry about being good or anything, is the most pathetic kind of teamwork imaginable. This would become the T-ball of realism mods. <- this paragraph not directed at Mikemonster specifically

Above not sarcasm for those interested.

I see your point Funk, really do. The trouble is a lot of people play as Ins side because it's fun - As a result (in my opinion) you tend to get a lot of fragmented gameplay (people zipping off in techies, unreported and unmarked APC's, no reports on enemy squads that run into lonewolves).

The only time the Ins team tends to play cohesively is when the Cache is under attack and the attackers are close (i.e. it's convenient and fun to spawn in and shoot stuff).. Inevitably the loyal few team players have stuck around the Known in squads of 6, have build FOB's, and are the first to see and shoot at Blufor.

Trouble is, whilst these guys are twiddling their thumbs, all the bored and asset/l33t players are stretched accross the map having fun (sorry.. 'r3con').

C4 ninjas tend to get the known when the guys waiting about the cache get bored and complacent.. It's a shame because it encourages a 'oh ffs' attitude even amongst the team players, as they see their three FOB's go unused and feel silly for telling their squad members to be patient.

Blufor is overwhelming when they work together, using C4 tactics seems a bit un-necessary.

At the end of the day, most of us play PR for a good firefight, and I think it's too much to ask of pubbers to stay alert for 40mins of inaction. All too often this is what precedes a C4 ninja attack.

[PFunk]

I see your point Funk, really do. The trouble is a lot of people play as Ins side because it's fun - As a result (in my opinion) you tend to get a lot of fragmented gameplay (people zipping off in techies, unreported and unmarked APC's, no reports on enemy squads that run into lonewolves).

The only time the Ins team tends to play cohesively is when the Cache is under attack and the attackers are close (i.e. it's convenient and fun to spawn in and shoot stuff).. Inevitably the loyal few team players have stuck around the Known in squads of 6, have build FOB's, and are the first to see and shoot at Blufor.

Trouble is, whilst these guys are twiddling their thumbs, all the bored and asset/l33t players are stretched accross the map having fun (sorry.. 'r3con').

C4 ninjas tend to get the known when the guys waiting about the cache get bored and complacent.. It's a shame because it encourages a 'oh ffs' attitude even amongst the team players, as they see their three FOB's go unused and feel silly for telling their squad members to be patient.

Blufor is overwhelming when they work together, using C4 tactics seems a bit un-necessary.

At the end of the day, most of us play PR for a good firefight, and I think it's too much to ask of pubbers to stay alert for 40mins of inaction. All too often this is what precedes a C4 ninja attack.

You make another good point. This is why I believe that servers ought to take the role of the CO more seriously and promote it beyond saying they'll support him through admin action if people don't listen to him. A CO can bring together the disparate desires and activities of the various groups of players looking for that 'great firefight'. However my impression is that major influences over the server culture of PR are not interested nor consider the CO to be a significant element in PR, instead preferring to rely on imagined spontaneous coordination without any discriminating directive which could otherwise force the coalescence of a more sensible strategy.

This is our loss but I'm not the one calling the shots. Fact is that most people will say the CO is useless or that SLs can do just as good a job. I would disagree, and that would be a different conversation, however I've learned that with much in life people don't know whats good for them.

As for people not liking being stuck in inactivity for 40 mins or something, well #1 everyone likes winning and thats what it takes to win, any argument against that is just in my opinion little kids being whiny. Honestly, if you'll die 20 times as INS trying to get one good IED off then sitting still for 40 mins to pull off the perfect ambush ought to be just as satisfying, except without all the frustrating dying and the fact that every death gives away intel.

See here's where the CO comes in. As a CO you can cycle guys in and out of the front and rear jobs. You can direct more complex strategies and overall I've found that working under a real system with a real plan is fun enough to make up for being more patient and stalled.

An example of how being stationary can be far more exciting than just running around:

A few days ago me and Snipd and Casualty were talking TART shop and decided to go into PR and play some. We ended up on Kokan running a squad for US. We deployed at round start by boat and landed deep into indian country. We got into a building and sat there until we got intel. The guys in the squad wanted to move on, but Snipd was in charge and said "we're waiting for intel". Intel came in and we saw that the cache was on the other side of the map. We started to move out but the Kiowa blew that sucker up in no time (damn...). We got back in our building and waiting for more intel or for some enemy activity to cross our path.

We started getting some contacts. A couple techies come in after they find us, we kill a ton of them, we finally gather enough intel by holding our alamo and it turns out that the next cache is literally next door across the street. Damn... so being patient and doing nothing for about 20 to 30 minutes actually lead to a very exciting firefight, whereas running around getting ambushed for no reason would have lead to just death and frustration.

I believe that the way most people want to play PR is counterproductive to their own fun. People try to rules-lawyer the way things should work. As much as the 'cheap tactic' cynics can be frustrating they at least take a more natural approach to the game and they have fun more often. They are teamplayers too, they love teamwork and they are often the ones that promote teamwork better on a given server.

I think that attacking a bug like C4 is like addressing the wrong problem. I think the biggest change to PR could come from promoting a culture change at the server level (which has already been done nicely through PRTA and mumble), but I'm not expecting that to pick up cause often the smartest idea is the one that never gets picked. Mumble is enough for now. Expecting much more is naive.

In the mean time I'll enjoy the TART. See anybody else there who wants to play real PR.

[Mikemonster]

Good point Funk, quite possibly a CO could be the making of a fun insurgency round (dealt with in the right way).. I'll give it a go next time i'm on.

Agreed that people often don't know what's good for them as well.

As for you guys waiting in a house and making it your fortress, that's great (actually it's what I do usually for lack of other options). But how would you have felt if the techies stayed away, lightly pestering you occasionally, and someone rushed you on a motorbike (edit: or sneaked in like a ninja - it is possible even against a good squad, we've all done it), placed an Arty IED and then blew it?

[saXoni]

But how would you have felt if the techies stayed away, lightly pestering you occasionally, and someone rushed you on a motorbike (edit: or sneaked in like a ninja - it is possible even against a good squad, we've all done it), placed an Arty IED and then blew it?

I probably would've laughed really hard, realizing how awesome that was. Getting killed by arty-IEDs is something I kind of enjoy. Not as much as getting killed by the BMP's frag or 30mm/Hellfires from helicopters, though.

[badmojo420]

C4'ing the cache accomplishes 1/8th of the teams mission, and rewards them with 25 additional tickets. It's not exactly the same as getting 6 tickets from killing a single squad. You'd have to kill their whole team to even come close to the same amount of devastation.

But anyway, I don't know why you guys are in favor of keeping a bug and countering it with better teamwork. That just seems silly, you know it's not the way the devs meant it to happen, why not just find a fix for it and then work on the teamwork issues? They're two different things that need addressing.

In short, bugs should be fixed, not worked around.

[angellfall]

C4'ing the cache accomplishes 1/8th of the teams mission, and rewards them with 25 additional tickets. It's not exactly the same as getting 6 tickets from killing a single squad. You'd have to kill their whole team to even come close to the same amount of devastation.

But anyway, I don't know why you guys are in favor of keeping a bug and countering it with better teamwork. That just seems silly, you know it's not the way the devs meant it to happen, why not just find a fix for it and then work on the teamwork issues? They're two different things that need addressing.

In short, bugs should be fixed, not worked around.

Because i think there is more pressuring issues in pr than c4. It is really rare someone gets to the c4 radius of the cache with the CE kit. Even more rare is man destroys a cache with the c4.
What comes to c4 bombing from helo im agaist when the target is inside of house, however when the target is outside in field or at rooftop helo bombing IMO is a valid tactic.
Since insurgents cant chopse where caches spawn you should just put it to the "bad luck" factor
Different servers have diffent styles of gameplay and i think its admins matter to keep on watching what is happening.

[lagopus]

Because i think there is more pressuring issues in pr than c4. It is really rare someone gets to the c4 radius of the cache with the CE kit. Even more rare is man destroys a cache with the c4.
What comes to c4 bombing from helo im agaist when the target is inside of house, however when the target is outside in field or at rooftop helo bombing IMO is a valid tactic.
Since insurgents cant chopse where caches spawn you should just put it to the "bad luck" factor
Different servers have diffent styles of gameplay and i think its admins matter to keep on watching what is happening.

Dont kow where you are playing, but this is something that happens on daily basis. F. ex: Yesterday I played two full rounds, as insurgent and blufor, and C4 where used to take almost half of the caches. Its a glitch and nothing else.

[angellfall]

Dont kow where you are playing, but this is something that happens on daily basis. F. ex: Yesterday I played two full rounds, as insurgent and blufor, and C4 where used to take almost half of the caches. Its a glitch and nothing else.

Im playing at sisu and only there. And when insurgency is runned i have had no problems.

[Brainlaag]

Im playing at sisu and only there. And when insurgency is runned i have had no problems.

Angell, it's completely different on the 128, as there you have enough people to effectively defend both caches simultaneously.

C4 ninjas are mainly a 64 problem due to the lack of defenders.

[badmojo420]

Because i think there is more pressuring issues in pr than c4. It is really rare someone gets to the c4 radius of the cache with the CE kit. Even more rare is man destroys a cache with the c4.
What comes to c4 bombing from helo im agaist when the target is inside of house, however when the target is outside in field or at rooftop helo bombing IMO is a valid tactic.
Since insurgents cant chopse where caches spawn you should just put it to the "bad luck" factor
Different servers have diffent styles of gameplay and i think its admins matter to keep on watching what is happening.

More pressing issues? Sure, but it's a simple code change to reduce the c4s blast radius in the next update. The waste of time is this whole debate about weather or not it should be done. I'm sure a developer could make the change in under a minute.

Whenever I've seen C4 being used in war documentaries they're always placing it directly next to the thing they're destroying, so giving it a small blast radius might result in more realistic placement, as well as put a stop to c4'ing through unrealistic amounts of static objects. I can't think of any situations where a reduced blast radius would hurt the proper usage of the C4, if anyone else can think of one, please mention it.

[Rudd]

Badmojo just made a good post.

[Sierra72]

As much as that actually somewhat is a good point, it isn't at the same time. Look at the size of that C4 block that you're carrying around in-game. In most of those videos you've seen, I assume they've used sticks probably a fourth of the size of the massive chunk we carry around.

Not that you're wrong, but if you're going to change the blast radius, you bloody well change the model along with it. The size of the C4 we use in-game would easily be able to blow a hole in a wall, a shipping crate, sand bags. You name it. And the blast would proceed through that... a weapons cache is a hot spot... hell... you ever see an ammunition dump blow? It really doesn't take all that much to set it off, I'd say a blast that size... through a tiny cement wall, when the cache is actually close to the wall? Yeah, it'd blow through it.

I personally thing it's foolish to be arguing about this... there's a simple fix... give the Combat Engineer either less C4, by changing their model and the blast radius. Or stop complaining. Think about it logically. This game has barely any physics, you think about the destruction that the C4 would ACTUALLY cause... then argue about it. Defend your perimeters better.

[Brainlaag]

As much as that actually somewhat is a good point, it isn't at the same time. Look at the size of that C4 block that you're carrying around in-game. In most of those videos you've seen, I assume they've used sticks probably a fourth of the size of the massive chunk we carry around.

Not that you're wrong, but if you're going to change the blast radius, you bloody well change the model along with it. The size of the C4 we use in-game would easily be able to blow a hole in a wall, a shipping crate, sand bags. You name it. And the blast would proceed through that... a weapons cache is a hot spot... hell... you ever see an ammunition dump blow? It really doesn't take all that much to set it off, I'd say a blast that size... through a tiny cement wall, when the cache is actually close to the wall? Yeah, it'd blow through it.

I personally thing it's foolish to be arguing about this... there's a simple fix... give the Combat Engineer either less C4, by changing their model and the blast radius. Or stop complaining. Think about it logically. This game has barely any physics, you think about the destruction that the C4 would ACTUALLY cause... then argue about it. Defend your perimeters better.

Oh yeah and how often do you see IRL an engineer charging through a bullet-storm just to poop down a pack of C4 and blow it up after 5 secs, sometimes even at the risk getting caught in the blast. This is nowhere realistic, nor does it strengthen the argument regarding the exploit. It's a game, fine, you don't have to check the cache for all the equipment present, file a list and then wire everything down (taking up to half an hour IRL) but then don't bring up stupid arguments like "The model doesn't represent the proper size of the blast, hur dur", that is just cosmetic.

Bold: INS promotes lone-wolfing and shit like that in the current state, so a well organized defense is rather rare, because apparently only very few players are willing to take up the boring part, lose interest then and in a second of negligence the C4 ninja comes through. Not a rarity.

[Rudd]

^ Another good post there Brain.

I think one of the problems is that the blufor still get constantly pounded when they secure the actual cache, the only ways I see to counter that are to 1) decrease insurgent vehicle numbers, but give them a teleport ability between mains and hideouts and 2) to increase the radius at which hideouts become disabled due to enemy presence. That would mean once Blufor actually get on the cache, they might have a bit of breathing space, keeping blufor off the cache in the first place should be the focus, once thats failed, bluefor should be able to get that cache down really

[Sierra72]

Ah, I see the true issue now, thank you Brain. I meant the C4 itself isn't flawed, it's the usage of it by lonewolfers. Many times, I have moved in with my squad, we've gotten previous intel where the cache was, and as the combat engineer, with my squad setting up a defensive perimeter around me, I've planted the C4 and we all booked it out of dodge, to set it off and blow it up.

What Rudd said is absolutely correct, when the Blufor team starts getting hammered so hard we can barely move ten feet without getting every god-damn PKM and AK on the map firing at us, it gets tiring, frustrating and many people say... "Screw it, get out the suicide C4 kit.." and swarm at the cache. What do you expect them to do? I for one don't enjoy playing a game where I literally can barely move in on the cache.

Lonewolfing is the true problem here, and not C4. This bullshit of joining a squad at the beginning, grabbing a sniper rifle/combat engineer or some other limited kit and then immediately leaving is getting old and fast. I've had it happen to me a few times now a days...and it is absolutely annoying! I can't agree enough Brain, but don't take my argument as just.. 'The model is wrong, hur dur." as you're making me seem like an imbecile, which I am not. I'm simply saying, that C4 is fine the way it is... the size of the block, the explosion, etc... that's okay! It's not the object's fault... it's the lonewolfers that are using it.

I see no reason why as I stated earlier, I cannot walk up to a building (well, run up as fast as I possibly can as to not get shot) with my squad and have them cover me as I set a demo-charge on a close wall to a cache... or on the closest side of a Shipping Container (Which wouldn't hold up all that well, I wouldn't think)... and blow it up.

I do however see a problem with Rambo's running up on a building, bunny-hopping and insta-proning to avoid gunfire, plant the C4 and blow it up while standing next to it just to get rid of a cache.

[Brainlaag]

I'm sorry Sierra didn't want to sound too aggressive but I just facepalmed so hard about your observation of how the model isn't representing RL values. Anyway, yes the C4 seems to be an exploit but its just the effect of a flawed game-mode, which needs to be re-done, preferably from ground up (repeating myself over and over again xD).

[Sierra72]

Quite so, Brain.

Also, my comment about the model was to a previous comment made by Mojo I believe. If we were to reduce the blast radius, reduce the model to compensate for that. That's all. All I was saying is that the blast radius is fairly good for the size of explosives we have as a model.

-Shrug-

But at any rate, as I stated. It's lonewolfing that's the true issue, not the explosives! Also... change the game-mode!

~Sierra.

[PFunk]

As for you guys waiting in a house and making it your fortress, that's great (actually it's what I do usually for lack of other options). But how would you have felt if the techies stayed away, lightly pestering you occasionally, and someone rushed you on a motorbike (edit: or sneaked in like a ninja - it is possible even against a good squad, we've all done it), placed an Arty IED and then blew it?

Would have taken it like a man because we made ourselves a stationary target. INS mode as infantry operating from outside of the umbrella of CAS and armor you accept that you're facing a serious chance of being killed when you allow yourself to be targeted for a serious attack. I see Arty IEDs no different than if they called mortars on us or we called a Kiowa on them.

I do not begrudge the force multipliers.

[badmojo420]

Also, my comment about the model was to a previous comment made by Mojo I believe. If we were to reduce the blast radius, reduce the model to compensate for that. That's all. All I was saying is that the blast radius is fairly good for the size of explosives we have as a model.

That's a good idea, we could even give them more charges to compensate for the decreased explosion.

And please don't take my suggestions as me thinking a mud wall will protect a cache from C4, reducing the blast radius would still allow you to place them on the other side of a wall, it just wouldn't allow you to blow it up through thicker structures like caves or buildings.

[KiloJules]

The problem I have with this discussion:

Getting a guy to place C4 "close to" the cache at least requires that one guy to get there and stay alive for 10 - 15 seconds while being in a very hot zone.

Compared to:

Yesterday we played a round Karbala with 14 (INS) vs 15 (US) guys. First known was in the village area B/C 2/3 in the NW of the map. As no heavy assets were allowed all of us spawned in there, preparing a nice defense around the whole village. Couple of minutes later player count raised to sth. like 17 vs 17 and oc the Americans brought their tank. Before someone could really react (GARY started in main at one point but couldn't make it in time) they started shelling the cache building and the one next to it (I blame people switching over and knowing exactly where it was). After about 5-10 minutes the cache went bye bye without one American squad even trying to get close to it.

Now please do not tell me that this is more legit than someone sneaking in a defense and blowing it with C4? Pff...