Why I think we're on the right track with PR v0.6

[Apheirox]

All that writing and this is the only response I get? Come on!

By the way, Outlawz, you are not right, in the new build the base is uncappable.

[PIMP{UK}1]

I LIKE

[Jaymz]

@ Longbow: 5.56 rounds are renowned throughout multiple field reports, and from marines and US army members I've spoken to, to be absolute bollucks. There is a reason why Iran and Turkey chose to arm their military forces with the G3, I'm guessing that a round with vicious stopping power is it. btw, you know what I meant when I said x39

@ Bob: I put Malaysia in there for two reasons

1. I suck at geography , though I really shouldn't since I was actually born in the middle-east (Al-Mousat,Kuwait) to be exact. I guess it's just from knowing european geography well and now learning US geography (since I moved here) takes up all my educational time.

2. It's a muslim nation with a heavy anti-US stance (at least on the governments part)



PS: Don't debate my comments on Malaysia in this thread. If you like, start one in off-topic and quote me.

[motherdear]

Okay . Why all top10 armies droped battle rifles out of service in 70s-80s ? Maybe because lighter round ( and AR's that fire it ) is actually better ? For it's time ( 60's , 70's , maybe even half of 80's ) G3 was good . Now it is outdated . M1 was great rifle in 40's but noone in 60's was going to equip newly formed army with M1's ...

It is goddamn rifle round , made by americans who were sick of giantomania during 50's . Thanks god , they havent addopted 30-06 round for assault rifles .

Bingo ! Another point to equip MEC with AK's as Russia would probably be the only country that may supply such coalition .

Something new to me . Never heared of such AR

ehm the last shipment the danish army got of the G3 rifle cost them 1$ a rifle, where as a rifle cost you 37$ in albania the most lawless part of europa and about 70% of the population gota weapon, and a lot of armies in south america/africa still use the g3, also it's the the most popular rifle in any army in history, even AK didn't surpass it since it was mostly used by civilians and the russian army, now of course a lot of armies got it, but south america still use the G3.

[Masaq]

Jaymz']@ Bob: I put Malaysia in there for two reasons

1. I suck at geography , though I really shouldn't since I was actually born in the middle-east (Al-Mousat,Kuwait) to be exact. I guess it's just from knowing european geography well and now learning US geography (since I moved here) takes up all my educational time.

2. It's a muslim nation with a heavy anti-US stance (at least on the governments part)


PS: Don't debate my comments on Malaysia in this thread. If you like, start one in off-topic and quote me.

*grin* Not debating... but... MEC does stand for the Middle Eastern Coalition, a geographical alliance. You wouldn't, for example, compare the French army's preference for a weapon to say, the UK's just because they're both predominantly Christian

But anyways. G3 is a decent weapon, it fits well with the feel of the side that uses it, and to be honest I'll usually pick it up off a corpse if I get the chance as a Yank or Brit, I like the stopping power. Plus, more importantly, it's been indicated that it's definitely here to stay- so discussion from G3-haters should cease lol.

Overall, .6 is amazing. I've had some glitchy visual errors in places- buidlings vanishing and such, one one completely random crash but teamwork's better, commander assets are awesome, the new running speed makes picking off frightened rabbiting squadies so much easier, and overall, it gets my seal of approval... whatever that's worth

[eggman]

In terms of the CMDR stuff.. also think we're on the right track.

The toughest part about that always was the "economy" aspects of it and I think we'll have some work to do there (just tweaking and fiddling mostly).

This is the first release where I feel we've transitioned away from the major mechanics in vBF2 and most stuff like flag capture, spawning, etc are now fairly pure Project Reality design elements.

The OB has been INVALUABLE. As a guy who got involved with this to make a game I'd enjoy playing (and not as some sort of representative of the team) my most sincere thanks to those of you who have played and commented on the v0.6 OB... it's really helped to make for a FANTASTIC release. We'd have been really screwed if we released something like the first OB build to y'all hehe.

[Longbow*]

G3-haters should cease lol.

I love G3 . I'm just arguing about G3 being realistic for newly formed rich coalition

[Bob_Marley]

US now is testing 6.8x43 . Stopping power + accuracy .

Well if they'd listened to Britain and Belgium 50 years ago and adopted the .280 British...

/national pride & bitterness (there, I've said it. Robbo, you dont need to make a post about it now!)

[Metis-M]

Jaymz']@ Longbow: 5.56 rounds are renowned throughout multiple field reports, and from marines and US army members I've spoken to, to be absolute bollucks. There is a reason why Iran and Turkey chose to arm their military forces with the G3, I'm guessing that a round with vicious stopping power is it. btw, you know what I meant when I said x39

G3 is overpowerd in BF2 because it has in reallity much more recoil and weight more.

It is a heavy rifle, weighing nearly 10 lb (4.5 kg) without a magazine, compared to 9.4 lb (4.3 kg) for the FN FAL, 8.5 lb (3.9 kg) for the M14,and 7.25 lb (3.3 kg) for the early AR-10. Although the G3 is capable of fully automatic fire, in practice this is only useful in close combat, as the recoil generated by the 7.62 NATO cartridge makes fully automatic operation impractical at anything beyond point-blank range.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_&_Koch_G3
Its Wiki but in english so u can read it.

Turkey use it for political reasons and economical cause got licence, but turkey is not a barometer for modern weapons, they also use M-60. On the other Hand turkish gendarmerie use also Aks and M-16.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Army
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Gendarmerie
Its Wiki but it really so.

The most important thing for us is, that Turkey is in NATO, they would never be in MEC fightin USA.


Iran dont use only G3 they also use Aks.
http://media.farsnews.com/Media/8601/Im ... 9_L600.jpg
http://www.irandefence.net/showthread.p ... 550&page=7

http://www.semp.us/_images/biots/Biot150PhotoB.jpg
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=15573

And Iran use many different weapons they also have Cobra and F-14 because befor Revolution their King (Shah) bought weapons not from communist but from western.
http://www.defencetalk.com/military_vid ... 060824.php

Jaymz']
@ Bob: I put Malaysia in there for two reasons

1. I suck at geography , though I really shouldn't since I was actually born in the middle-east (Al-Mousat,Kuwait) to be exact. I guess it's just from knowing european geography well and now learning US geography (since I moved here) takes up all my educational time.

2. It's a muslim nation with a heavy anti-US stance (at least on the governments part)



PS: Don't debate my comments on Malaysia in this thread. If you like, start one in off-topic and quote me.

Malaysia, Turkey and Pakistan would never be in a Middle Eastern Coalition, as mentioned Turkey is long time in Nato and dont deal with arabs but with Israel.
Malaysia is far away from middle east.
Pakistan, hey are u not britisch? You should know, pakistan have problems with India and nothing togheter with middle eastern arabs or iranians. They also under US-control.

MEC is a koalition of arab states and perhaps iran but not anyone more, they also speak and see like arabs.


-------------------------------
Let al basrah as it is in 0.5.

[Bob_Marley]

Yeah, and the largest state on the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, has the G3 as its standard issue rifle.

[Outlawz7]

Let al basrah as it is in 0.5.

*Above Bobs post, last line*

great, people again complain about Basrah...

If you hate the 0.6 Basrah so much, then why dont you continue playing 0.5 on a 24/7 0.5 Basrah server, while rest move to 0.6?

Maybe we should rename the final build to "pr06" so those with current "pr" which is 0.5, could continue to play the n00b t00b Basrah...

[daranz]

One thing I don't like about the commander changes is that it encourages the commander to be nothing more than an asset spammer, instead of also helping with team communication by actually commanding, replying to squads' requests, sending important assets (like aircraft) to certain places, etc. You get commanders who establish bunkers and sandbags, all nice and stuff, but if you ask them over VoIP to direct an A10 towards the enemy tank that's harassing you, you get no response whatsoever.

Whenever I play commander in .6, I get 20 people yelling at me to PLZ BIULD BKNUKERS PLZ, regardless of our tickets levels, the current situation on the ground, etc. People expect the commander to teleport into the middle of the place where they want a bunker, and then magically make the bunker appear there, already constructed, without anyone having to shovel it. In reality, people spam the chat asking for bunkers, but neither help with shoveling, nor establish a perimeter to make sure that the commander doesn't come under fire from 2 enemy squads upon driving into the area where the bunker was to be established. It really discourages me from being a commander, to be honest, but then, it's a player issue, not a game issue.

[Long Bow]

One thing I don't like about the commander changes is that it encourages the commander to be nothing more than an asset spammer, instead of also helping with team communication by actually commanding, replying to squads' requests, sending important assets (like aircraft) to certain places, etc. You get commanders who establish bunkers and sandbags, all nice and stuff, but if you ask them over VoIP to direct an A10 towards the enemy tank that's harassing you, you get no response whatsoever.

Whenever I play commander in .6, I get 20 people yelling at me to PLZ BIULD BKNUKERS PLZ, regardless of our tickets levels, the current situation on the ground, etc. People expect the commander to teleport into the middle of the place where they want a bunker, and then magically make the bunker appear there, already constructed, without anyone having to shovel it. In reality, people spam the chat asking for bunkers, but neither help with shoveling, nor establish a perimeter to make sure that the commander doesn't come under fire from 2 enemy squads upon driving into the area where the bunker was to be established. It really discourages me from being a commander, to be honest, but then, it's a player issue, not a game issue.

I played SL on Mestia two nights ago with a great commander who did non stop communication with all the squads. He really kept everyone informed and on the right spots. However after about a half hour my squad folded and I joined another. One guy in the squad was complaining that the Commanders job was to build fire bases etc. That the commander had no excuse for sitting around anymore with the new assets The SL and I were trying to to explain to him how great the commander was but he wouldn't hear any of it. The commander role now is very demmanding, but I think people need to realize it isn't the commanders job to set up a rally for you.

[eggman]

Aside from the issues with the actual assets and their implementation .. we'll certainly have a need to evaluate the role of the Commander... both how it's affecting game play and how the game play demands are affecting the Commander.

The removal of the uber zoom will hopefully help negate people expecting the CMDR to be a UAV of sorts.

I think any round where there is expected to be a Commander playing a useful function, there should be a squad called "CO SUPPORT". The composition of that should really just be 4 players:
- SL
- Engineer
- Rifleman
- Medic
(or very similar)

I'd lock the squad once it has 4 players because much more than that is taking away from offensive players.

There is one design element that is not part of v0.6: mortars. The notion here is that a Mortar Crew would be in a position fairly far from the front lines and hanging back with the CMDR would be a probable place to have the Mortar class set up for indirect fire on enemy objectives. That way there's a bit of something for the players to do while hanging back and defending / constructing assets.

Hopefully mortars will make v0.7. We're trying to do a really bang up job on the mortars and make them as realistic as possible.

So the CO SUPPORT squad would also include mortar support in an ideal situation:
- SL
- Engineer
- Rifleman
- Medic
- Mortarman
- Mortarman

Tho we haven't quite figured that out yet.. there's a probability that the Mortarman [and only the mortarman] will carry 1 but be able to set up 2 mortar tubes and the Mortarman, Officers and Rifleman will be the only ones able to operate the Mortars. In that case, 2 Mortarmen classes would be able to set up 2 tubes each, total 4.

The idea being that as the front line moves, the CO sets up some defences at a facility and the mortar team sets up there as well. We're looking to try and make the mortars have a realistic range and be fairly difficult to get rounds exactly on target (not artificially difficult, just not stupidly easy, if the approach we are trying for works, being good at Mortars will require some practice).

But... we're still sorting through how we'd like to implement mortars. Point being they will be a part of the overall dynamics around the CMDR and should contribute favorably to it.

==

wrt target designation, we're hoping to provide other means to designate targets, minimising the dependency on the Commander.

==

The overall idea of the CMDR role is that they can direct the battle from a sorta backfield area, mostly in a supporting sense.

As noted, we'll observe and listed to feedback through the v0.6 lifecycle to tweak the CMDR role as we go forward.

[Xmaster]

oooOOooh! mortar strikes *drools*
Nice read eggman. Sounds really great. Cant wait to see how this will go.

[Long Bow]

I think it was the first beta, not sure, but it had the mortars listed in the quarter master list? Everyone was trying to get that kit and lay waste to some one or a patch of grass

There will be a lot of excitment if you guys do manage to pull off the mortars smothly.

I played a round last night as the commander engy squad for the first time. We only played with three, mostly engys but switched to two engys and a rifleman, it was very effective. The new assets, once figured out, will have huge potential. If one team has a good commander (plus support) and the other team doesn't the outcome won't be pretty

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

I have found a lot of games with HQ squads, most often named " CO's *******" and even when there aren't dedicated squads there are people who will help the CO.

[Hawk_345]

well for the first time since PR i try to go as SL and create a squad who will do both roles of offencive and defensive, the palce i mostly put this into action is jabal, normally when playingas the US i pick a beach and ask comander to start seting up bunkers, sandbags, and everything else so we have a stable point on the map, my squad and maybe another will be taksed to defend it while the rest move out, but when you start pushing farther in i switch to ofensive and use diferent tactics, i would have never done this before 0.6, so thats why i think this is going to be one of the beter realeases.

[ReaperMAC]

I have found a lot of games with HQ squads, most often named " CO's *******" and even when there aren't dedicated squads there are people who will help the CO.

Aye, was in one last night, quite fun indeed

[Khidr]

Damn straight you're on the right track eggman. I played two full rounds last night as commander and it was AMAZING. Both rounds were on a full server with a good balance of vets on each side. Over the last few days I have mainly just experimented with the assets but last night I loaded up PR with the intention of using these assets to win the match. Last night I played Jabal al Burj and Danqing Oil feilds.

So many factors played into my pleasant experience but here are a few.

-Pace of the game. Nothing was too rushed to make it feel arcadey, but if you slacked off you would lose valuable ground. This meant that you had to get a feel for the rhythm of the match and adjust accordingly. When two solid commanders face off this is going to get very interesting.

-Excellent Squad Leaders. For both rounds as commander I was blessed with some of the most skilled and switched on SLs I have ever played with. I was a little worried at first as I was facing the likes of fuzzhead and dbzao, whereas I recognized none of my SL's. But as the match progressed my SL's never ceased to amaze me. Their comms we're excellent and they understood their part in the team, as opposed to trying to do everything themselves. They were responsive to my commands and gave me excellent feedback/intel when I asked this of them. They all also seemed to be well informed of the commanders capabilities and never asked for more than I could provide and always in a timely manner would lend me engineer support when I requested it. Straight up with capable SL's like these guys, it would be hard to lose a match. To me this means more SL's are coming out of the woodwork and the PR community can look forward to some spectacular games in the near future.
It is a pity that I remember none of my SL's names( other than SL#3, #4, etc) because I would go into battle with these men any day. They were that good.

-The potential for different paths a battle can play out. On Jabal we faced an enemy who built up defenses in the mountains NW of Bridge. This can be a difficult area to clear of enemies when they are not using commander assets, much less when they are organized and dug in. Now typically forces will just bash into each other until one side wins, but in PR this is no longer the case. One has to acknowledge when the odds are severely against one favor and adjust accordingly. In this case I opted to hold at Dam and let the enemy come to us, thus drawing them out of the protection their mountain fortress was providing. I had my squads concentrate on engaging enemy on the routes one would take from Factory and Bridge instead and by doing this took away MEC's defensive advantage. This was a very close game but in the end we won via greater tickets(about 100). If we had simply tried to assault the mountain fortress we would have lost much sooner. What makes me excited about future battles is the fact that for example the option was always there to recklessly assault, but choosing a disciplined and defensive approach still produced a victory. Commanders who understand this and play according will truly produce epic battles. BTW we never took the mountain fortress at Bridge(as much as squad#2 tried).

-In my second battle on Danqing, we literally almost lost the map in the first 10-15 minutes. We seriously had our last flag greyed within the first 15 minutes of the match. I will point out that until this battle I did not like this map in PR and thought it was ridiculous that it be included in PR0.6. Thus when we began playing I think my cynicism almost lost us the match. But with the prospect of being the commander of a full 30 player team to lose a map in 15 minutes, I finally buckled up and soldiered on. No fking way was I going to be the first commander in PR history to lose a map that fast. So with some luck one of my remaining squads(my team could not respawn at this point) was able to retake our main base. At this point(we were now down about 150 tickets) I took a breather and looked at the map from a strategic perspective. It was then that I realized now that the map layouts are almost irrelevant(to a point) and that the commander can truly manipulate were and when the action will take place. This means that with proper selection of terrain and deployment, you can swing the firefights greatly to your advantage. With that said I regrouped our forces and focused on building up defenses in the areas we somewhat controlled( our 2nd last flag). Within the next 30 minutes we had stabilized and were back in the game. I did not know how we were going to make up for the ticket deficit but at least we could still fight with honor. Then an amazing opportunity presented itself when one of my squads was able to grey the US's SW base(forget the name). I immediately swung over there with the trucks and engineers and we set up an elaborate Firebase overlooking the CP. At this point we had that place locked down and were able to now put pressure on refinery. When my SL's secured the refinery, bunkers and razorwire were deployed and we never lost the CP. The US fought hard to keep the SW flag grey but I was finally able to sweep the south area of any RPs or firebases with some armor. Once cleared we capped the flag and started ticket bleed on the US forces. With the US's last base surrounded, we just kept them contained until they bled out. It was a totally amazing win which I never expected. We went from a for sure loss in the first moments of the match to conclude with a solid win. My troops fought hard and never gave up. I give my highest praise to these men and their SLs. Very interesting match indeed.

-No more Satellite view. Thank you so much for removing this distracting feature. My one peev with playing commander has always been when my SL's order me to do a Satellite recce for then when some lone gunman is harassing their squad. As commander I do not have time for such trivial matters and a full squad should be able to send a scout to check the situation. Leave the commander to focus on coordinating the team, not a single squad/soldier. It gave me pleasure to inform some of my newer SLs that I no longer had the ability. Most accepted this reality immediately but one responded with "that is ghey". We'll you can't please everyone and I don't want to give said individual a hard time because otherwise he was an excellent SL.
I also noted that with out the sat view, I was forced to watch the match more in just the standard spawn map. This forced me to constantly see the bigger picture and think more in terms of longer term strategy as a team then short term tactical advice for a specific unit. In short it kept my focus where is should be.

-Original OB.6 to it's current RC1 build. Deploying assets in the original build was a nightmare. Very frustrating and you literally had to have 2-3 engineers up your *** to make things sort of work. Now they feel polished and are simply fun to set up. It definitely still takes coordination and commitment from a few engineers, but things seem a little more flexible and user friendly. As well the use of these assets is starting to play a more valuable role in game(ie. the tweaks you have made whether hitpoints, build timer, model etc) and people are starting to realize this. As commander I never had to harass anyone to help me and no one ever got bored waiting for me to set stuff up. Soldiers simply did their thing and when I requested it they came to my aid in a timely manner. I believe the build timer you have assets set at is close to perfect.


So to sum up I'll start with a big shout out to the DEV team. You guys took a game I am already obsessed with and brought it to a whole other level. This game will be a classic I guarantee.
I'd like to give a big thanks to the SLs I served with last night. For myself you were all new faces and the skill you guys showed only give me more assurances that the player base is adapting to the increased demands placed on them. I would not be surprised to join a public server in the next few weeks/months and have both teams entirely switched on. Matches are going to be insane.