Ramiel AAS Balance Problems.

[matty1053]

Well I hate to create another Feedback thread. But this is about Ramiel "Black Hawk Down" aas.

Honestly, the US is very overpowered. We only took down one little bird CAS chopper by shooting an RPG and made the pilot flip out and crash into a tree.

But blackhawks are being used as CAS.

I would recommend giving the ARF some AA Kits, and some AA Guns in the Mosques and their Main. It's nearly impossible to beat the US in that map.

Last time I played on the AAS layer, I was on the US. We steamrolled the ARF and literally made everyone quit. Why? Well, I was CAS Little Bird and I had about 32 kills. I am shocked no AA Kits availiable for the ARF..

Wouldn't mind having that changed.

[Truism]

We just won a round against an organised US team on CIA. I have to say though, we held the same point the entire round and _still_ only won with 230 tickets remaining. I'd like to see the US team racing against the clock a bit more with some heavier bleed for not completing objectives.

[matty1053]

We just won a round against an organised US team on CIA. I have to say though, we held the same point the entire round and _still_ only won with 230 tickets remaining. I'd like to see the US team racing against the clock a bit more with some heavier bleed for not completing objectives.

Haha! I was on there too.

But. The thing was. We took only one LB out. We don't get AA or nothing.

But yeah, the US team was sitting in the same spot the entire round. Well, they were before I disconnected.

Yes, they should have raced against the clock. But we get too many tix imo.

[Truism]

Haha! I was on there too.

But. The thing was. We took only one LB out. We don't get AA or nothing.

But yeah, the US team was sitting in the same spot the entire round. Well, they were before I disconnected.

Yes, they should have raced against the clock. But we get too many tix imo.

I completely disagree on the too many tickets, and I think the example of the game above is a great one to demonstrate it. The US team didn't use conservative tactics for most of the round, in fact, they were on Blackhawk 61 before we were at the start of the round with a series of aggressive drops. Throughout the round, the US team consistently had people in and around the point even after they set up the (two, we discovered much later) FOB in the NW.

We actually also killed a number of LB and BH throughout the round, starting fairly early, in the first 15-20 minutes, the attack LB was more of a problem though, since it consistently killed the techies before they could kill it.

But here's the issue, the ARF don't have any way of defending a point other than throwing bodies at it. The ARF can't establish mortars and emplacement fortresses and then create a spawnlock to drain tickets. They don't have armoured vehicles or CAS to dominate an area of the map and force ticket bleed that way. They can't force the US team to fight anywhere by attacking points or threatening key terrain.

From the start of the round to the end, the ARF are forced to defend, which is great and there's a fantastic mood to the round. The problem is that it gives the US team all the initiative as well as all the tools. It's a problem we've seen before in some INS maps, where the Blufor team has all the toys and gets to decide how the game will be played. The main difference is that the ARF have a ticket counter as well.

I'd almost argue 1100 is too few. The round we played is pretty close to best case scenario for an ARF team against an organised US team. We held our first flag and turned the blocks around it into a meatgrinder. None of the unconventional factions can ever hope to trade on even terms with the Bluefor factions - Blufor have overmatch in terms of range, firepower, ISR, OS, and even in close, their weapons recoil patterns and access to better medics and flexible specialist kits (AR, Breacher, Grenadier) are better than the unconventional kits. We forced them to trade against us in the most advantageous way we possibly good; the only way a round could go better for an ARF team would be an indecisive Blufor team with no teamwork or plan just meandering around the map and getting picked off willy nilly.

Herein lies the problem. We did as well as we could, and yet still didn't win by a big margin. The US didn't achieve a single objective until about 15 minutes from the round ending. That's unacceptable, and I've seen it on other unconventional maps like Kozelsk where the conventional team isn't able to even take the first objective due to a really tenacious defence for most of a round, but wins anyway because they're not really punished for not being able to take the objective as long as they're maintaining a solid KDR and keeping assets alive. The problem is that the unconventional factions have to play a meatgrinder style because it's the only scenario they're even close to parity with the conventional factions. Playing the standoff game isn't even a possibility against scopes and superior AFVs with thermals and the spread out and hide the fob game doesn't work against UAVs. That makes the only viable choice to force the conventional faction to fight you in close quarters, and yet even that isn't enough in these maps. Going back to Kozelsk again, consider what happens after the tunnel flag - you hold the Russian team off for an hour, and as soon as you're pushed off the tunnel flag, it doesn't matter what you've prepared in the more open flags, the superior AFVs and scopes roll you on subsequent flags and, more often than not, you lose from ticket loss on your second or third flags even though in terms of objectives you succeeded far more than the other team did (ie. you defended better than they attacked, but were forced to expend tickets to do it because of the "meatgrinder" effect"), and they still have a really healthy ticket amount.

The objectives in these pure attack/defend maps with an unconventional faction don't feel prominent enough. Holding a conventional faction capless is no mean feat, and it's not sufficiently rewarded right now. The round we had on Ramiel is a really good example of that - we burned 850 tickets defending the first flag - without knowing the US' starting tickets, I assume we actually used more tickets in our successful defense than they did in their failed attacks - but what other options do we really have? Give the flag up, give all the flags up?

The price for attacking slowly or not attacking well enough is too low for Blufor in these unconventional AAS defence maps at the moment. Both sides should be forced to play an objective based game - the unconventional factions have no tools to trade tickets evenly with Blufor at all, so Blufor should be punished heavily if their advance is held up. The fact that successful first flag defences very often punish the defending side more than the attacking side demonstrates this - they're too often pyrrhic victories, which just shouldn't be the case.

[Truism]

Actually, in general there isn't enough bias for action based around flags. Flags are largely cosmetic in PR. A great example of this is Muttrah, where the MEC bleed flag is the bloody Fort. USMC can have flag control of the entire city and not reap a single reward for holding 80% of the map's objectives. Ditto MEC holding the whole map but docks.

[Psyrus]

Actually, in general there isn't enough bias for action based around flags. Flags are largely cosmetic in PR. A great example of this is Muttrah, where the MEC bleed flag is the bloody Fort. USMC can have flag control of the entire city and not reap a single reward for holding 80% of the map's objectives. Ditto MEC holding the whole map but docks.

That's some very interesting thinking, actually. Expanding on that, we could have the flag-caps worth only say -10 tickets, but then every flag that aren't the 'middle' two would cause a -2 ticket per minute reduction.

Actually I like that idea so much I've expanded upon it. I'll make an internal suggestion along those lines

[AFsoccer]

KinglesPringles just posted an awesome video of this layer:



Pretty intense!

[Truism]

It's actually really fascinating how much easier it is to baserape Ins on Ramiel, Basrah and Fallujah than vice versa. I have very happy memories of carbombing the airfield on Basrah back in the days when the DOD was pretty much just inside the base itself. I genuinely believe that if the entire approach to the base is undefended when Blufor has such a huge kinetic advantage, they deserve to get carbombed in their spawn.

Conversely, Kokan has a more vulnerable main, but the DOD is still pretty big, it's just a very open map and base.

If anything, I'd love to see the old fashion server rules made available in map design; baserape is an abhorrent, bannable thing unless you're an insurgent, in which case nothing is too low for you to do.

[mangeface]

It's actually really fascinating how much easier it is to baserape Ins on Ramiel, Basrah and Fallujah than vice versa. I have very happy memories of carbombing the airfield on Basrah back in the days when the DOD was pretty much just inside the base itself. I genuinely believe that if the entire approach to the base is undefended when Blufor has such a huge kinetic advantage, they deserve to get carbombed in their spawn.

Conversely, Kokan has a more vulnerable main, but the DOD is still pretty big, it's just a very open map and base.

If anything, I'd love to see the old fashion server rules made available in map design; baserape is an abhorrent, bannable thing unless you're an insurgent, in which case nothing is too low for you to do.

I remember getting banned from a couple of servers after lobbing mortars on the mains in insurgency when someone would ***** that they weren't steamrolling the way they should and it wasn't 'realistic'.

But all above is spot on. Especially the points about no punishment for not attacking flags. I see that on Muttrah a lot myself. Everything turns into trench warfare at North City and South City or at the docks.

[Truism]

IDF on Coalition outposts unrealistic. K. I've now heard everything.

[40mmrain]

This map is really well designed, but I strongly, strongly agree with Truism.

The US army are not punished in the slightest for just sitting back on the hills to the east of the flag and "camping".

In reality it's a terrible attack direction, but EVERY GAME a FOB with all sorts of **** is built east of the the first flag to try and rack up kills. Any american stupid enough to walk through the open desert into the city gets slaughtered when they get too close of course, but that doesnt matter because when you outshoot the enemy and you lose nothing for not attacking then why even bother attacking. Ther americans should have a very slow ticket bleed before they get 6-1. Or alternatively it should be an auto loss if they dont capture all the opposing flags within a certain time limit or something.

Either way, I like Ramiel AAS a lot, but it needs refining still.

[bren]

To be honest, it isn't the fact the US is overpowered, it more less the fact that once the U.S. get the first cap, they have the game in a chokehold. To be fair, it's pretty much like barracuda or Op.Overlord from WWII, once the US breached the first caps they had the game. I was there. On the most recent Ramiel match we played the team on US was very good and did an excellent job, and the game was very close (13-0 US Win) as well as the teams being balanced. So I don't see any imbalances here.

[Pronck]

The ARF has to dig in tight around the first flag. Too often they get lured out which will create "gaps". These gaps can be used to get in the right position near the flag.

I believe it's often the lack of tactics that breaks the ARF up.