Rifleman should not be a beginner kit

[axytho]

This is more of a feedback thread on the manual, but IMO rifleman should not be the recommended kit for beginners.

Rifleman's primary purpose is to resupply TOW's, and maybe AA's. Having a rifleman while capturing or defending a flag or fighting in a forest is not useful.

If you want to resupply, it's often easier to find an enemy rifleman kit and take his ammo than to find and ask your own rifleman for ammo. Or you can just go to a crate/ APC and resupply/request a rifleman off that.

It's better to tell beginners to take the breacher. You're never really in a situation where the breacher has to perform an action in a hurry (if you need to rope over something quickly, someone has done something wrong).

[Suchar]

It's better to tell beginners to take the breacher. You're never really in a situation where the breacher has to perform an action in a hurry (if you need to rope over something quickly, someone has done something wrong).

I totally disagree.

[saXoni]

Having a rifleman stuck to your AT like glue can be the difference between success and failure while capturing or defending a flag.
While I agree the breacher kit is not a difficult one to give a new player, there is no reason to dismiss the effectiveness of a rifleman.

[axytho]

I totally disagree.

It means that you're stacking your squad together to get over a wall somewhere. Ideally, you should only have other people going through other entrances at the same time.

[BigBigMonkeyMan]

Nah, a good breacher can make all the difference. I usually want my breacher to be one of the most experienced players in my squad because in order to deploy ropes effectively they have to have good map knowledge and know how to follow orders well. Also their ability as a FOB/cache destroyer is essential. With their shotguns, when the situation calls for it, I may ask them to take point in a building or crowded alleyway. An inexperienced breacher can destroy a plan and cripple a squads mobility. Inexperience LATs can get a squad killed. Inexperience ARs take the deadliest weapon out of the game. Bad medics don't make good choices when going for revives and die themselves.

An inexperienced rifleman cannot mess anything up that badly. The worst they can do is not cover a direction you asked them to, be dead when someone needs ammo, or stand around not shoveling.

[axytho]

My argument isn't that skill isn't necessary on the breacher. It's that almost all kits, for any skillset, are a better choice than rifleman. Even if you're completely new, a medic/breacher/grenadier/ar is still going to make your life easier than the rifleman kit.

And by extension, they'll make the squad's life easier.

The choice is not between having a good breacher or a bad breacher, it's usually a choice between a breacher or a rifleman. And obviously you want to have C4 when you arrive at the enemy fob, and not a redundant ammo box.

[MOSES!!]

Rifleman's primary purpose is to resupply TOW's, and maybe AA's. Having a rifleman while capturing or defending a flag or fighting in a forest is not useful.

The rifleman gets 2 grenades smokes a patch and ammo with his same rifle as any other std kit it can be used for playing the objective because its meant for infantry combat and ammo for emplacements lats get one or two shots ars don't get grenades breacher don't get smokes grenadiers grenades won't be useful in close quarters and medics only have their gun those roles have pros and cons on the equipment they get depending on the situation but the rifleman is good all-around with extra nades to throw or smokes for cover or his rifle in general, a new player in pr would already know about fighting infantry or playing the obj as that's in every shooter and the ammo is helpful to resupplying his mates or himself if there's no ammo or crate around may not be a lot but its something at least with the sl 2 medics ar breacher grenadier and lat that's 7 roles fill in a squad with one extra having the rifleman role is essential and can work for anyone.

[saXoni]

My argument isn't that skill isn't necessary on the breacher. It's that almost all kits, for any skillset, are a better choice than rifleman. Even if you're completely new, a medic/breacher/grenadier/ar is still going to make your life easier than the rifleman kit.

And by extension, they'll make the squad's life easier.

The choice is not between having a good breacher or a bad breacher, it's usually a choice between a breacher or a rifleman. And obviously you want to have C4 when you arrive at the enemy fob, and not a redundant ammo box.

I guess this all falls down to your own skillset, and what you as an SL require from your squad. I require my medics to communicate effectively, and know when to revive and when to wait 3-4 minutes to make sure no one goes dead-dead, and would therefore not give the medic kit to a new player.
I also require my AR to know where to position himself to be most effective, and expect him to do most of the killing. An AR with the same amount of kills as the rest of the squad has usually not done his job well enough, and would therefore not give the AR to a new player.
If you don't care about any of this then your squad might be better off using the medic and AR as a beginner's kit, but it would most definitely not make my squad's life any easier.

[axytho]

I guess this all falls down to your own skillset, and what you as an SL require from your squad. I require my medics to communicate effectively, and know when to revive and when to wait 3-4 minutes to make sure no one goes dead-dead, and would therefore not give the medic kit to a new player.
I also require my AR to know where to position himself to be most effective, and expect him to do most of the killing. An AR with the same amount of kills as the rest of the squad has usually not done his job well enough, and would therefore not give the AR to a new player.
If you don't care about any of this then your squad might be better off using the medic and AR as a beginner's kit, but it would most definitely not make my squad's life any easier.

Yes, again I love having my medics communicate effectively, but when you create squads made up of randoms, I'd rather have 2 medics + breacher+ LAT+ grenadier+ AR + machine gunner than 5 rifleman + sniper on the other side of the map + hat.

For me it's often not who you give the kit to, but whether the kit gets picked up at all.

The rifleman gets 2 grenades smokes a patch and ammo with his same rifle as any other std kit it can be used for playing the objective because its meant for infantry combat and ammo for emplacements lats get one or two shots ars don't get grenades breacher don't get smokes grenadiers grenades won't be useful in close quarters and medics only have their gun those roles have pros and cons on the equipment they get depending on the situation but the rifleman is good all-around with extra nades to throw or smokes for cover or his rifle in general, a new player in pr would already know about fighting infantry or playing the obj as that's in every shooter and the ammo is helpful to resupplying his mates or himself if there's no ammo or crate around may not be a lot but its something at least with the sl 2 medics ar breacher grenadier and lat that's 7 roles fill in a squad with one extra having the rifleman role is essential and can work for anyone.

1) Yes the rifleman is the easiest kit to understand in the game
2) But it is the easiest mainly because it can't do many thing that other kits can.
3) A breacher unable to fully exploit the benefits of his kit is still more useful (in a forest, say) than not having a breacher at all.


Perhaps I should change the title:

Rifleman kit is picked up too much, there are too many riflemen in any given random squad

Nah, a good breacher can make all the difference. I usually want my breacher to be one of the most experienced players in my squad because in order to deploy ropes effectively they have to have good map knowledge and know how to follow orders well. Also their ability as a FOB/cache destroyer is essential. With their shotguns, when the situation calls for it, I may ask them to take point in a building or crowded alleyway. An inexperienced breacher can destroy a plan and cripple a squads mobility. Inexperience LATs can get a squad killed. Inexperience ARs take the deadliest weapon out of the game. Bad medics don't make good choices when going for revives and die themselves.

An inexperienced rifleman cannot mess anything up that badly. The worst they can do is not cover a direction you asked them to, be dead when someone needs ammo, or stand around not shoveling.

I should clarify that the breacher is a good beginner kit on forest maps, and definitely less so in urban insurgency, where the breacher plays a very vital role.

[UncleSmek]

Rifleman is simply the standard kit that holds ammo.. you can imagine its importance by the limits of the other kits; in terms of ammo.

However, it's a powerful kit.. What do you need more than nades and a rifle

All kits have deeper layers of meta to them the more you learn about the overarching concepts in pr and what decides victory.
There are situations where a bad player is glued to the LAT but they end up giving the LATs position away and ruin everything.
In public games overthinking these things and expecting randoms to understand is a difficult thing.. Stick to the basics and if he asks why rifleman you say "carry ammo".

[rogdozz]

I think all these responses are completely missing axytho’s point, so I’ll give my opinion here.

Let’s think of a scenario where my squad runs into a BTR, there are 3 options:
1. An experienced player has the LAT (we will disregard this option here)
2. The new player has the LAT so now I have to find him, explain to him how he can drop his kit, hope that he complies and that he didn’t already waste his rocket on something else, and then I can finally use it. Or I let him shoot and hope he doesn’t miss.
3. Nobody has the LAT because the new player took rifleman, now I just have to find a crate and request it.

In most situations I would prefer 3 over 2 because it’s more predictable and usually it’s not that hard to find a crate sooner or later. So I would prefer if the new guy takes rifleman by default, and if I really want every kit to be occupied then I can just tell him that.

[bad_nade]

My argument isn't that skill isn't necessary on the breacher. It's that almost all kits, for any skillset, are a better choice than rifleman. Even if you're completely new, a medic/breacher/grenadier/ar is still going to make your life easier than the rifleman kit.

I have no problem to have beginner rifleman as my squad mate but I don't want to be in a squad which has beginner as a medic. Squad with an incompetent medic is a dead squad. Medic is one of most important kits in the game, which is reflected by the massive amount of points they get from doing their job. If an INF SL is the #1 on the score board, then #2 is probaly his medic.

[MOSES!!]

I would prefer if the new guy takes rifleman by default, and if I really want every kit to be occupied then I can just tell him that.

What if the new player doesn't know the range to that APC and miss an easy shot and the sl or his mates are dead from said apc hes better of taking rifleman and resupplying and covering an experience lat instead of taking a kit he doesn't know how to use and would said sl or mates take the time and tell him said range or would you just say give it to someone else while he take rifleman this goes with any special kit in general

[Grump/Gump.45]

This is more of a feedback thread on the manual, but IMO rifleman should not be the recommended kit for beginners.

Rifleman's primary purpose is to resupply TOW's, and maybe AA's. Having a rifleman while capturing or defending a flag or fighting in a forest is not useful.

If you want to resupply, it's often easier to find an enemy rifleman kit and take his ammo than to find and ask your own rifleman for ammo. Or you can just go to a crate/ APC and resupply/request a rifleman off that.

It's better to tell beginners to take the breacher. You're never really in a situation where the breacher has to perform an action in a hurry (if you need to rope over something quickly, someone has done something wrong).

Somebody has to carry the ammo. I feel you are not using the full potential of it. Your view point need to be more flexible into positive use of everything, otherwise you get nowhere. With the breacher I want somebody experienced to get my squad up in trees or know the double C4 timer. Its better to have a guy with ammo than to scavenge for the LAT off enemies.

Roping over something or going through a door, you will notice all your guys bunch up not in RPG spread looking at the door, each other or the threshold they are about to go over. So lets work on teaching the whole squad how to move by standard without complicating or limiting their minds by labeled formations. Just one man hurt per RPG formation in view of each other. Goes for all tasks.

Program their minds to "scan aggressively for anything suspect" by saying that. Your security will go up 100%. Tell them to dodge bullets while shooting to move to cover, try to get them down but back them off and survive. New guys need to learn the basics of the kits by seeing the pros use them, the ones who can offer to get you in a tree.

[Psyko]

Imagine if kits could be represented as floor of a building. without the low floor there would be nothing for the next floor up to sit on and the structure falls apart.

Ground floor, Officer. you cant have a functional squad without it. (you can, kinda, until the squad gets wiped)
First floor, Medic, if you get ambushed you need someone to revive the officer.
Second floor, Automatic rifle, while medic if reviving, someone needs to cover him
Third floor, LAT, chase away any APC that's attacking your squad. (Second and third floor are equal in value)
fourth floor, Grenade launcher, pin down campers firing at you from far away like up in a building.
Fifth floor, riflemen, basically they absorb some of the hits and act as decoys but can survive longer than the others because of the ammo bag. I would consider Rifleman to be a naturally defensive unit because they aren't chasing fobs or APCs and doing high risk activities.
sixth floor, breacher, used to cross obstructions and destroy fobs. however its actually best for a rambo to go kill fobs while the rest of the infantry press the flag. IF the breacher was "meant" to be embedded in the squad I presume the devs would have kept slugs over buckshot and removed the hand grenades from the kit long ago to discourage running off on their own.

The squad can function without the breacher by using a lat round and a couple of grenades to take out a fob.
I see it as "the fun kit" personally. Its challenging and engaging and never gets boring.

[theaceflyer]

First of all, rifleman is a unlimited kit. Its also sort of a support role in certain situations, which can be good for beginners. And the breacher kit is very important. Some new players might not know how to arrest a civilian. Some new players might not know how the C4 works. They will not know how to properly throw ropes. Rifleman just has your gun, ammunition, and nades, and patch. Its as basic as you can get. From the normal kit selection I think the second best beginner kit would be medic, third AR, 4th breacher/scout 5th/6th Grenadier and rifleman AT because those two kits require someone who knows how GL's and LAT's work and the hardest obviously SL.

[WingWalker]

Rifleman's primary purpose is to resupply TOW's, and maybe AA's.

Ok, well that's a new one.

Soooo, no one else ever needs to re-arm ammo?

I don't know man, it seems pretty easy to throw a bag of ammo down when someone tells you to.