Distribution of heavy assets over time

[Rabbit]

I agree with the reduction on maps like Khami, Burning etc.

I think Kashan is the only map that benefits from having more assets, as it becomes less effective to farm inf on bunkers due to the lower count of INF in the bunkers itself.

But I do heavily miss the 10 wait time for assets to spawn the first time around. made people actually prepare for CAS instead of turning their brain off and forgetting about it because it takes too long to remember to prepare for it.

Dunno, I like the layout black gold has.

[FFG]

Dunno, I like the layout black gold has.

Black gold has different gameplay based on the flag layout and proximity.

[Wicca]

Give med 200 player servers and boom, game is more fun!

[viirusiiseli]

Give me 200 player servers and boom, PRTA is even worse!

You can simulate that by typing in game.lockfps 10 to your console

[Wicca]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DX2gzyVTh4

Does that look like 10 fps?

[viirusiiseli]

Does that look like I could kill 2 communities within 2 years?

Proceeds to pick video of 4km map with literally nothing on it except a few trees, where players are bound to be spread out in large areas, person recording using some crappy 4:3 resolution.

why even try

Here's an actual example of FPS on 200 players

Sure looks like 10-20 fps to me.

[agus92]

Back to steamrolls:

Steamrolls suck and as INF you feel powerless when your tanks/cas die instantly.

Steamrolls can't be fought decreasing timers because of all the good points previously risen.

What can be done then?

Well, there are 2 weapons that can be modified in a reactive manner that are pretty much independent of the rest of the gameplay, and those are hats and manpads.

I suggest introducing an extra, "non respawnable", hat/manpad after 10 min of severe nmy tank/air supremacy.

[Wicca]

Proceeds to pick video of 4km map with literally nothing on it except a few trees, where players are bound to be spread out in large areas, person recording using some crappy 4:3 resolution.

why even try

Here's an actual example of FPS on 200 players

Sure looks like 10-20 fps to me.

The person who made the recording did not have 10 FPS, again some players receive less than 30 fps depending on hardware. And I am sure the number of people who had bad computers then has decreased drastically. Increasing the player number is an easy way to balance out heavy assets, since it simply increases the number of players allowed in a server without altering any GPO file.

Also, usually you would not play 1km or 2km maps with 200 players, I find that a waste and indeed quite a spammy way to play PR. Playing 200 players on a 1k or 2k map is like joining a 200 user teamspeak lobby with guns.

This thread is mostly about 4k maps and as such I would suggest for any balancing, just increase the player count, so that when you do play 4k maps, the number of players will balance out the number of vehicles.

Although I have a feeling you take any form of discussion on this forum personal, I am just a huge fan and advocate of 200 player server. And found this to be a good way to promote that, I wish nothing bad towards you.

[viirusiiseli]

This thread is mostly about 4k maps and as such I would suggest for any balancing, just increase the player count, so that when you do play 4k maps, the number of players will balance out the number of vehicles..

Except you don't count in the fact that a good asset player in 4k will just get twice the amount of kills because adding 100 more players just makes it easier to get crazy amounts of kills. Maybe there wont be a capout round like now because there will be so many enemies you can't just go through them. But it will end very fast when you end up getting 50-100 kills with 1 reload of a tank by just farming kills.

Nearly all 4km maps still have all their infantry combat centered around a <1km area anyways, creating a meatgrinder with terrible FPS.

[Wicca]

Well, I think in most senses you should account for every scenario.

If both teams assets players are bad, if one teams assets are bad but the other good. Or both are good.

The same applies to the infantry, and what emplacments are manned or not.

So, how do you create a system where each team has a fair chance of winning? And the game is always good since assets do not outcap the current players without altering too much?

Well, my take on it is allow for more players to join a server, maybe 200 is extreme, but let's say 128. Thats 14 more players per team, 7 more players to make up for squadleaders moving their squad into nowhere or armor squad losing all their assets.

My biggest issue with 4k maps is that some of them have only a few helicopters, the biggest issue people have with 4k maps, is losing all their fobs and only having truck transports. Noone wants to make a comeback from that.

So, I would suggest applying more helicopters to 4k teams maps, such as Kashan, Bamyan or any other map that might only have 2. Bring the number of helicopters up to 4 per team, or even more. And then you might see teams might have a better chance at comebacks.

Decrease the time it takes on all maps to resupply helicopters, and give helicopters the ability to drop repair stations, or make it a buildable emplacment or smt.

[Aleon]

The number people on the server hardly has anything to do with this.

Increasing the number of infantry gives the asset guys more people to shoot at and that's it. 44 people with 1 hat will do just as well against a squad of tanks as 80 people with 1 hat will. They'll get rekt.

[Wicca]

The number people on the server hardly has anything to do with this.

Increasing the number of infantry gives the asset guys more people to shoot at and that's it. 44 people with 1 hat will do just as well against a squad of tanks as 80 people with 1 hat will. They'll get rekt.

TOWs, LAT there are 7 lats in any team checking the .py files. There is 2 TOWs. All of them manned as opposed to them not all being manned.

[Filamu]

LATs being able to take down tanks is great for close quarters, but on a map like kashan, I would like to see more HATs. I guess you can't tweek limited kits on a map basis, but maybe drop kits is the solution? One extra HAT somewhat hidden in main? Would be useful on open asset maps where it feels like the HAT usually is wasted.

[Rabbit]

LATs being able to take down tanks is great for close quarters, but on a map like kashan, I would like to see more HATs. I guess you can't tweek limited kits on a map basis, but maybe drop kits is the solution? One extra HAT somewhat hidden in main? Would be useful on open asset maps where it feels like the HAT usually is wasted.

That was attempted on sbeneh for the FSA, unfortunately people didn't seem to notice.

[mebel]

oh shit, just wrote a long post and closed a tab ;/

[mebel]

You may find it not related to thread but Arnoldio was working on a vehicle physics mod that could actually do the thing and find a right compromise. I've wrote post about it, but lost it by closing a tab, hope I will cover again what I had to say in short, maybe elaborate later.

Personally I've found vehicles having too much mobility (not just heavy assets) - top speed, acceleration, climbing, etc. when compared to INF.

The thing is that terrain should affect any vehicle waaay more than it affects infantry in a matter of mobility, eg. mean speed through rough terrain is proportionally much affected in case of a vehicle.

BF2 engine cannot simulate detailed aspects of a terrain - and it is doing so now like all the terrain was made nothing but concrete with a nice grip. Not realistic, huh? Much older game - ofp:cwc was able doing that by implementing some kind of velocity maps to the terrain (and pseudo bumps offroad), wasn't a perfect solution but simple and it was working - eg. you can move faster on roads, don't know if it's possible in BF2 - it doesn't matter now, it's possible to make some workaround to achieve kinda same goal - like Arnoldio was/is trying to.
As I remember he was trying to reduce overall acceleration, make vehicles more prone to terrain shape, maybe also reducing/modifying top-speed.
On the other hand - reducing acceleration, soften suspension would make drivers feel that they're operating something that is actually heavy and valuable, would be a nicer feeling though, not just toy-like.

Like it was with inf damage model, we cannot put raw, theoretical values into game and voila. It wont be realistic and moreover, wont be fun because since game cannot simulate every co-related aspect we have to simplify/randomize things in a some kind of statistical way. Mobility is one of the aspect that seems to be overlooked, not just in PR. We just used to it. Even in a combat situation you would be likely not doing pedal to the metal things often, risking your vehicle and crew (except here would be a garry truck).

How above is related to the thread for me?
With this 'reduced' mobility of vehicles, infantry could eg.:
- predict vehicles movement better
- with a more precise prediction can make more effective ambush (HAT/mine)
- have more time to prepare defensive tactic, eg. take cover
- make more use of a terrain
- make vehicles more vulnerable to unguided HATs/slow-moving projectiles making those kits more 'noticeable' @Rabbit
and other things that You can think of

On flat maps like Kashan there would be not much difference, on the other hand on bumpy-forest ones difference should be noticeable - that solves some of Your concerns mentioned earlier.
It would be also kinda more realistic to spot vehicles where they are suppose to be. The idea of convoy could gain some importance.

As an inf player I have to say that playing vs. heavy assets is fun, but yes - I think they're kinda OP most of the time. Removing them drastically is not a solution, because we could loose a lovely property of PR.
Can't say much what I can expect from a crewman point of view, but don't think those changes would make PR less fun for them - heavy assets would be still playing a crucial role on a battlefield, maybe would be harder for them - but isn't game about being somewhat hard-rewarding?

A lot of words, but I'm not telling You about big changes, just slight optimizations leading towards reality/fun/whatever.
Keep in mind that changes proposed by Arnoldio were not this plain as I've described here, I've also extrapolated it cause I've found it useful in this thread. Here's original thread:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f388-p ... ments.html

[Rabbit]

- make vehicles more vulnerable to unguided HATs/slow-moving projectiles making those kits more 'noticeable' @Rabbit

I always thought they were quite easy to find.
https://i.imgur.com/u1bD7Hc.png

https://i.imgur.com/K2YsMAA.png

Back then I was really hoping they would get used a lot so I could up the armor on mec and lower it on fsa.

[Piipu]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe with faster asset respawns we could also get rid of the stupid durability on APCs. It's especially jarring to have BTRs survive side hits from LATs with little or no damage. Same goes for tank-ATGM balance too, and I suppose CAS could be made more vulnerable against ground AA when they don't have to go afk for half an hour after one mistake.

[viirusiiseli]

Sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe with faster asset respawns we could also get rid of the stupid durability on APCs. It's especially jarring to have BTRs survive side hits from LATs with little or no damage. Same goes for tank-ATGM balance too, and I suppose CAS could be made more vulnerable against ground AA when they don't have to go afk for half an hour after one mistake.

Make PR BF2 again?


we've come a full circle

[Aleon]

The point of this thread was to highlight an opportunity to increase balance by changing how heavy assets are distributed on asset maps. But seems like you guys are not buying it, so there is not much point in continuing.

If you want to discuss other means of balancing, I recommend making a separate thread that focuses on your specific idea, because this is already getting muddy.

/thread