Operation Archer - A Meat Grinder

[Pronck]

First of all I want to say that I am a huge Insurgency fan, not that I only play Insurgency, I also like to play AAS as well.

Operation Archer was one of my favourite maps in the past (0.86 onwards to 0.95). I felt that the Taliban was not that handicapped as of now.

Now it's just a meat grinder, a carnage, rape fest, the Canadians have every advantage on that map. Almost all their kits have scopes and are pretty accurate, the AKs however are suffering from quite some recoil so the Canadians are most of the time also pretty accurate on close quarters. The problem is though, that the Canadians can easily take the high ground and build assets there to cover the low ground. They have an advantage in transport and supplies, not even talking about their weaponry.

The Taliban have only assets that can aim up for some reason. Nothing to aim down the hill so if they camp the Castle or "Bunker Hill" they are just waiting to get killed from far away no matter where they hide.

The problem for the Taliban is that the caches are almost always on the low ground, and they find it every time camped from the high ground. In order to compensate for the lack of weaponry they need to get a numerous advantage (from 2:1 to even higher) but then the cache gets easily exposed.

So to wrap it up;

- Lots of scopes and accurate weapons
- Easy transport and logistics
- Camp the hill
- Camp the hill with APC (on alt)

= Easily 3:1 KD Ratio.

The one shot kill bug is of course also a reason why it's such a carnage but still, even then they often win easily.

The only way I can think of to balance out this map is by revamping it or giving the Taliban more things. But looking at the age of the map and it's design I think it's mainly the design which is game breaking. You have 2/3 huge hills overlooking all cache areas and those hills are easier to reach and take for the Canadians than for the Taliban. Once they have it their Chinooks can easily supply it.

The .50cal technicals which job are shooting down the Chinook are most of the time useless since they will get raped from a far by an AR camping a hill. The Chinooks also tend to take a lot of .50cal bullets before even smoking so often you only manage to take down 2 or 3 at the max.

The roads of course can be IEDed with the many IED kits, but those roads get camped as well and as stated before the current IEDs aren't powerful enough to make the enemy fear them.

Back to revamping the map. It's not easily done so I want to suggest some other things which you guys have already seen coming:

- More scoped kits for Taliban and a better scope (read: more zoom) for their sniper kits
- Rhino's Rocket Technical, despite my video I still like it and I think it's very useful on this map.
- Quad gun on the map somewhere, maybe 2 or an AA technical (the one from the Syria mod).
- Better IEDs
- A small revamped Taliban mainbase, so it can't be raped easily with a TOW from the Hill north of the VCP.
- Sandstorm, disable the Canadians from using all their scopes and thermal things by a huge dustcloud.

I think I am not the only one who is hating to be Taliban on this map in the current release. In the 0.98 release it already tended to be unbalanced but the amount of artillery IEDs already changed it a little bit.

I hope the DEVs can understand where this is coming from.

[X-Alt]

First of all I want to say that I am a huge Insurgency fan, not that I only play Insurgency, I also like to play AAS as well.

Operation Archer was one of my favourite maps in the past (0.86 onwards to 0.95). I felt that the Taliban was not that handicapped as of now.

Now it's just a meat grinder, a carnage, rape fest, the Canadians have every advantage on that map. Almost all their kits have scopes and are pretty accurate, the AKs however are suffering from quite some recoil so the Canadians are most of the time also pretty accurate on close quarters. The problem is though, that the Canadians can easily take the high ground and build assets there to cover the low ground. They have an advantage in transport and supplies, not even talking about their weaponry.

The Taliban have only assets that can aim up for some reason. Nothing to aim down the hill so if they camp the Castle or "Bunker Hill" they are just waiting to get killed from far away no matter where they hide.

The problem for the Taliban is that the caches are almost always on the low ground, and they find it every time camped from the high ground. In order to compensate for the lack of weaponry they need to get a numerous advantage (from 2:1 to even higher) but then the cache gets easily exposed.

So to wrap it up;

- Lots of scopes and accurate weapons
- Easy transport and logistics
- Camp the hill
- Camp the hill with APC (on alt)

= Easily 3:1 KD Ratio.

The one shot kill bug is of course also a reason why it's such a carnage but still, even then they often win easily.

The only way I can think of to balance out this map is by revamping it or giving the Taliban more things. But looking at the age of the map and it's design I think it's mainly the design which is game breaking. You have 2/3 huge hills overlooking all cache areas and those hills are easier to reach and take for the Canadians than for the Taliban. Once they have it their Chinooks can easily supply it.

The .50cal technicals which job are shooting down the Chinook are most of the time useless since they will get raped from a far by an AR camping a hill. The Chinooks also tend to take a lot of .50cal bullets before even smoking so often you only manage to take down 2 or 3 at the max.

The roads of course can be IEDed with the many IED kits, but those roads get camped as well and as stated before the current IEDs aren't powerful enough to make the enemy fear them.

Back to revamping the map. It's not easily done so I want to suggest some other things which you guys have already seen coming:

- More scoped kits for Taliban and a better scope (read: more zoom) for their sniper kits
- Rhino's Rocket Technical, despite my video I still like it and I think it's very useful on this map.
- Quad gun on the map somewhere, maybe 2 or an AA technical (the one from the Syria mod).
- Better IEDs
- A small revamped Taliban mainbase, so it can be raped easily with a TOW from the Hill north of the VCP.
- Sandstorm, disable the Canadians from using all their scopes and thermal things by a huge dustcloud.

I think I am not the only one who is hating to be Taliban on this map in the current release. In the 0.98 release it already tended to be unbalanced but the amount of artillery IEDs already changed it a little bit.

I hope the DEVs can understand where this is coming from.

I see everything in this good, aside from the Taliban main changes. Why would you make it a baserapefest?

[Pronck]

I mean can't
My fault

[X-Alt]

I mean can't
My fault

The one cache that is inside a bunker tends to be easy to defend though, you can burn them outta tickets, a sandstorm would be nice to spice it up..

[Pronck]

Which bunker? The one on the airfield gets raped from all directions except for the north. The one on the hill then gets raped from the castle and if you want to take and hold the castle you lose men and you end up with not enough people on the cache...

[X-Alt]

Which bunker? The one on the airfield gets raped from all directions except for the north. The one on the hill then gets raped from the castle and if you want to take and hold the castle you lose men and you end up with not enough people on the cache...

Its the one on a mountain that has a bunker lodged in it. You can rig it with C4 and have like 20 billion people just watch the ladder...

[Kerryburgerking]

Tbh this would be better as an AAS map with CAN vs MEC

[Jacksonez__]

If the SPG crew is even relatively good, it can disable the LAVs easily. But yeah, one SPG that respawns in 15 mins versus respawning x2 LAVs. It's hard.

Add sandstorm, would be nice!

[camo]

I like the idea of a sandstorm like the skirmish layer of black gold. Add some more character to a pretty frustrating map.

[K4on]

Taliban Team gets a few more armed vehicles for the next version.

[fatalsushi83]

That's really good to hear. I just hope they'll be armed vehicles that stand a chance against tanks and jeeps with machine-gun turrets. If they're the standard MG and SPG technicals it'll just be more meat (and scrap metal) for the grinder because of the open terrain. Seriously, though, thanks for addressing these issues. Looking forward to the update.

And +1 for the sandstorm suggestion.

[matty1053]

Sandstorm would be nice.

But most of the time, when I play.

It's either a dead close battle.
OR
A team that is shit.


Also, you should have ambush points set up on the road by their main. You will kill a lot of people.

[Murphy]

This map is a relic of the older versions when deviation existed. Back before 1.0 the long range fights were no where near as deadly as they are for Taliban since deviation has been all but done away with. There is zero balance where infantry is concerned. the C7 is a laser firing, one shot, high rate of fire, full auto capable, low recoil, no settle time monster of a weapon (with a fairly good BUIS) and the opfor infantry weapons are mostly garbage excluding a handful that are superior in specific situations where as Canadian weapons are good at everything.

The open ground used to be fought over, now we just have a kill zone that progressively moving towards an objective as the infantry closes in on a cache location. The techies are the only saving grace the Taliban have but any half decent AR will chew it up once stationary. I don't even know why the map designer felt an LAV would make any sense at all, if the aim was to create a balanced and enjoyable experience for both factions giving Canada anything beyond a G-Wagon has to be strongly considered before just throwing an idea out there. In previous versions the LAV was less of a threat, or rather more of a target, because the Taliban infantry could actually take and hold enough ground to allow RPG teams to maneuver.

[matty1053]

This map is a relic of the older versions when deviation existed. Back before 1.0 the long range fights were no where near as deadly as they are for Taliban since deviation has been all but done away with. There is zero balance where infantry is concerned. the C7 is a laser firing, one shot, high rate of fire, full auto capable, low recoil, no settle time monster of a weapon (with a fairly good BUIS) and the opfor infantry weapons are mostly garbage excluding a handful that are superior in specific situations where as Canadian weapons are good at everything.

The open ground used to be fought over, now we just have a kill zone that progressively moving towards an objective as the infantry closes in on a cache location. The techies are the only saving grace the Taliban have but any half decent AR will chew it up once stationary. I don't even know why the map designer felt an LAV would make any sense at all, if the aim was to create a balanced and enjoyable experience for both factions giving Canada anything beyond a G-Wagon has to be strongly considered before just throwing an idea out there. In previous versions the LAV was less of a threat, or rather more of a target, because the Taliban infantry could actually take and hold enough ground to allow RPG teams to maneuver.

Now, I agree with this whole thing.

But to basically win as a Taliban. You have to have AWESOME Cordination.

[Murphy]

I noticed that a bad trans pilot will usually cost 100s of tickets through out the round, not only with losing his asset but losing the inf he is transporting as well.

You are right, but it's only half the story. You need an exceptionally unorganized and wasteful blufor team to facilitate the loss of tickets, even with an intelligent Taliban force the Canadians have too many tools at their disposal and the talib too few.

[dysin]

i've killed so many lav's on this map that i'm considering it a full-time job.

sap every reasonable position- kill one, they spawn in main and never take the road again
800m spg emplacements- kill one, they spawn in main and that spg won't see another lav for the game
creep into hat range- picked off by a rifleman 400m away
bombcar is smoking by the time you make the movements necessary to flank that lav destroying the airport. bring a sapper kit for field repairs...

we've had plenty of matches with canadian's running past 400 kills, or single lav crews with over 70. depending on game length, i've seen the lav push past 100-0 on several occasions. at the ranges it tends to start working targets, it may as well be a railgun in orbit.

i'd suggest 1 lav and a punishing respawn time. putting it down would dramatically effect how the match moves forward, and give some incentive to aggressively resist the green reaper.

[Bringerof_D]

I think a good solution would be, if a model ever becomes available, to remove the LAVs and replace a number of the Gwagons with RG31s with remote turrets like in the CROW humvee.

[Kingy]

I think a good solution would be, if a model ever becomes available, to remove the LAVs and replace a number of the Gwagons with RG31s with remote turrets like in the CROW humvee.

The CROW Humvww on Karbala is so OP when you combine it with all the other assets, no I don't think that would help at all just make matters worse.
I actually think whoever suggested Archer as an AAS map alternative layout with MEC vs CAN was onto something, I can really see that working.

I haven't played Archer in sometime but giving the taliban a spawnpoint in the castle and one on either side West/East of the CAN main at the start of the round might help with the taliban's positioning early on and cause the canadians some trouble.
Apart from that I think the problem is with INS mode itself the map was fairly balanced in previous versions.

[fatalsushi83]

Apart from that I think the problem is with INS mode itself the map was fairly balanced in previous versions.

Yeah, I think it was more balanced, too, along with Fallujah, Basrah, and many others.

I think the two biggest factors that have throw most insurgency maps completely off-balance are the 100 player limit and the new deviation/recoil. Both of these favor bluefor, allowing them to encircle the caches with massive numbers, cut off redfor reinforcements, and pick everyone off at long range. A lot of the time you can't even move around and flank as redfor because you're so boxed in.

There's been a lot of discussion and suggestions regarding insurgency balance issues in other posts so we can only wait and see what the devs decide to do in the next update (fingers crossed).

[sweedensniiperr]

The sandstorm i can really see work on this map. Decreasing the viewrange(or whatever it is) alot.